• Protecting Water and Farmland in Simcoe County

Where there’s a will, there’s a way towards proportional representation

By
In AWARE News Network
Nov 29th, 2022
0 Comments
203 Views
From Hill Times
by Ryan Campbell.
Photograph courtesy of Flickr/Can Pac Swire

Canadians are sleepwalking into a democratic crisis. Gradually decreasing voter turnout, mediocre government policy, and toxic hyperpartisanship are eroding the principles of peace, order, and good government that have been the foundations of Canada’s success for generations. Proportional representation is needed to reverse these trends, and it is needed now.

The malaise from inequality and a failure to address voters’ concerns breeds extremism and polarization, undermining our institutions and leading to a downward spiral of declining trust and failure of government.

The decline in voter turnout is both a symptom and a cause of this decay. In Ontario’s most recent provincial election, only 43.5 per cent of eligible voters bothered to cast a ballot and less than half of those voters actually saw someone they voted for elected. In proportional representation countries like New Zealand, 92 per cent of those who cast ballots had someone they voted for elected to Parliament, and turnout has increased in each of the last three elections.

When a larger segment of society is included in the legislature, this broader representation leads to real gains for society. Researchers have found that governments in countries with proportional representation are more responsive to the needs of the “average” citizen. Proportional representation gives governments greater incentive to tackle issues like income inequality, unaffordable housing, deteriorating long-term care, climate change, and lagging economic growth.

Around the world, the countries teetering on the verge of democratic failure tend to be those that have for too long tolerated skewed results. The United States is a poster child for democratic collapse, stuck in a doom loop of increasing political polarization. As in Canada and the United Kingdom (the only other two Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries still using first-past-the-post exclusively), societal divisions are being exacerbated by the adversarial nature of the voting system. Italy is another prime example of first-past-the-post gone wrong: an alt-right-led party bloc captured 59.3 per cent of the seats with just 43.8 per cent of the vote through a near-clean sweep of Italy’s first-past-the-post seats.

If you were to bet on which country is still going to be a democracy in 2030, would you bet on proportional representation countries like Germany and New Zealand, or would you bet on more majoritarian countries like Italy and the United States?

What holds back electoral reform is politicians’ dishonesty and cynicism. By repeatedly breaking promises to fix the system, political leaders like Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Quebec Premier François Legault put partisan self-interest ahead of the common good. Political actors muddy the watersby spreading misinformation about how proportional representation would work, often pushing for phony reforms that would only consolidate their own power and boost their party’s seat count.

Proportional representation in Canada would strengthen local representation while maintaining geographic accountability. It would still mean voting for individual candidates rather than just for parties, but voters would also have a choice among candidates from their preferred party. Rural progressives and urban conservatives would earn representation in proportion to their numbers, resulting in a more diverse set of MPs in every region.

The vast majority of developed countries have adopted some element of proportional representation. We can get there, too, by insisting on greater honesty and integrity on this issue from our political leaders.

It’s time for a proportional system that would ensure that Canadians―rural and urban, rich and poor, in all their diversity from coast to coast to coast―see themselves and their concerns fairly represented in Parliament.
Ryan Campbell is a longtime federal Liberal and a member of Fair Vote Canada’s board of directors. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto’s engineering science program.
Fair Vote Canada here

Leave a Reply

Commenters must post under real names. AWARE Simcoe reserves the right to edit or not publish comments. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *