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That seems to be what Monsef was getting at when she said the electoral system must produce governments that “appeal beyond a narrow base of Canadians and encourage the building of a national consensus.” She added: “We need to move beyond a system that pits neighbour against neighbour. Elections should unite Canadians and not appeal to narrow constituencies.”

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As an account of the incentives that arise out of FPTP, it is exactly wrong. In fact, is systems of proportional representation (PR) that tend to give rise to issue-specific parties that target a narrow base of Canadians. That is why niche-issue parties like the Greens are so keen on moving to PR. Furthermore, if it is the building of a “consensus” you want, again you aren’t going to get it from PR. As narrowcast parties proliferate, the resulting parliament will be a beggar’s banquet of horse-trading, log-rolling, and gutter brinkmanship, with voters left looking on in anguish and impotence.

In contrast, the logic of FPTP inevitably leads to the creation of “big tent” parties that have comprehensive platforms designed to appeal to wide swaths of the country. And as the McGill law professor Daniel Weinstock argues in a new paper, this means that parties under FPTP tend to be excellent forums for deliberation and national consensus-building, as all the single-issue constituencies come to the table to get a hearing inside the tent.

In short, the virtues that Monsef wants to see in Canadian politics are pretty much already fulfilled by the current electoral system. Instead of wasting its time trying to find a new electoral system, her special committee would do well to figure out ways of helping Canadians understand the one we have.

Their first student should be the Minister for Democratic Reform herself.

National Post

Andrew Potter is a former editor of the Ottawa Citizen and the incoming Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.