On Wednesday, the House of Commons voted against a motion calling for the federal government to establish a citizens' assembly to “determine if electoral reform is recommended for Canada and, if so, recommend specific measures that would foster a healthier democracy.” Those voting against the motion included a majority of Liberal MPs and most of the Trudeau government’s cabinet. But that doesn’t mean electoral reform is dead — or that it couldn’t still happen before the next election.
After all, a citizens' assembly would have taken time we probably don’t have. With Donald Trump poised to win the next U.S. presidential election despite trying to overturn the results of the last one, we no longer have the luxury of pretending democracy is somehow invulnerable or unassailable. There are even those in Canada who very much wish to assail it, albeit by less crude and crass means than Trump.
The merits of a more proportional system of representation are no secret at this point and require no further study or debate. British Columbia formed a Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform more than two decades ago and its conclusions were clear: "Election results will be fairer, reflecting a balance between votes and seats, voters will have more choice and candidates will work harder to earn their support," the assembly’s final report argued.
The case for electoral reform has only grown stronger since then as the lethal combination of social media, the first Trump presidency and a global pandemic has driven people further apart than they’ve been in generations. And then, of course, we have hostile state actors like Russia, China and India trying to exploit and profit from these divisions.
In 2015, when the Liberals promised Canadians would never see another federal election contested under our first-past-the-post system, electoral reform was part of the broader aspirational aims of the Trudeau team. Now in 2024, it’s far more existential. Canadians are increasingly disillusioned by and disengaged from the democratic process, and that’s especially true in places like Alberta and downtown Toronto and Montreal where large portions of the public are effectively disenfranchised by the electoral dominance of the Conservatives and Liberals. A more proportional system would see Liberals elected in Alberta and Conservatives in our biggest cities, an outcome that would yield a more diverse and representative national legislature.
It would also eliminate the frustration associated with so-called “strategic voting,” wherein New Democrats are often encouraged to vote for the Liberal candidate in order to avoid splitting the progressive vote. Allowing people to vote their conscience might increase the rates at which people participate in elections. In New Zealand’s last three federal elections, for example, turnout has averaged just under 80 per cent.
Just as importantly, a more fair and just electoral system would remove some of the polarization that’s come to define our politics. Without the ability to win artificial majorities with a minority of the popular vote, parties would have to be more open to working with each other — and, by extension, less willing to demonize their policies and people.
The Liberals wouldn’t be doing this entirely out of the goodness of their hearts, mind you. One of their biggest weak spots right now is with younger voters, the demographic that helped sweep them to power back in 2015. Only 25 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 34 support Trudeau’s Liberals right now, a significant drop from the 34 per cent that backed them in 2021 and the staggering 46 per cent that swung Liberal in 2015. Some of them aren’t coming back, but many were alienated by Trudeau’s decision to walk away from his promise to replace our first-past-the-post system. Delivering on that, albeit belatedly, might make a lot of them reconsider.
Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives would come out swinging against any attempt to change the electoral system, even if it would actually benefit them in a bunch of different ways. By electing a more geographically diverse slate of MPs, they wouldn’t necessarily be so beholden to their Prairie base. And in the last two elections, a more proportional system would have given them more seats — maybe even more than the Liberals. But with polls now showing the Conservatives poised to benefit disproportionately from first-past-the-post’s math — some projections have them winning 65 per cent of the seats with less than 45 per cent of the vote — they’re not likely to listen to these sorts of arguments.
Some Liberals might not want to hear them either, since implementing a more proportional system would almost certainly mean they’d never form another majority government. But they need to ask themselves what matters most: some potential future government or the next one that Canadians will elect. That one, after all, could easily unwind some of their most important achievements, from climate policy to childcare. It could even throw the door more widely open to the sorts of culture war nonsense that has so thoroughly infected American politics. And with conservative provincial governments in seven provinces, most notably Ontario and Quebec, it could even take a run at the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
If nothing else, the Trudeau Liberals should have realized by now that they’re not going to win the next election by tweaking their communications policy or doing some other rearrangement of their deck chairs. They need to think much, much bigger than that. Maybe it will backfire. Maybe Canadians will revolt against a government that changes the electoral system this late in the game. But one thing is for certain: if the Liberals don’t start swinging for the fences, they aren’t going to hit the home run they need.
It’s not too late for electoral reform
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08.02.2024
On Wednesday, the House of Commons voted against a motion calling for the federal government to establish a citizens' assembly to “determine if electoral reform is recommended for Canada and, if so, recommend specific measures that would foster a healthier democracy.” Those voting against the motion included a majority of Liberal MPs and most of the Trudeau government’s cabinet. But that doesn’t mean electoral reform is dead — or that it couldn’t still happen before the next election.
After all, a citizens' assembly would have taken time we probably don’t have. With Donald Trump poised to win the next U.S. presidential election despite trying to overturn the results of the last one, we no longer have the luxury of pretending democracy is somehow invulnerable or unassailable. There are even those in Canada who very much wish to assail it, albeit by less crude and crass means than Trump.
The merits of a more proportional system of representation are no secret at this point and require no further study or debate. British Columbia formed a Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform more than two decades ago and its conclusions were clear: "Election results will be fairer, reflecting a balance between votes and seats, voters will have more choice and candidates will work harder to earn their support," the assembly’s final report argued.
The case for electoral reform has only grown stronger since then as the lethal........
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