Re: Parties failed to rise above self-interest in electoral reform debate, Hébert, Dec. 4

Parties failed to rise above self-interest in electoral reform debate, Hébert, Dec. 4

The Liberals have blown it and the honeymoon period is now officially over.

One of the governing party’s key platforms during the October 2015 election, and one which helped them get elected, was the promise to reform Canada’s voting system by replacing the current first-past-the-post (FPTP) system with a ranked-ballot or preferential voting system in time for the next election.

They did not promise a proportional representation (PR) system or to hold a referendum, and by taking far too long to begin addressing this issue, wasted valuable time and allowed themselves to be outmanoeuvred by the Conservatives (who have never been in favour of reform).

Unfortunately, referendums seldom lead to satisfactory conclusions, especially if all the options are not fully and completely explained to or understood by those voting. Several Canadian provinces have already tried, and subsequently failed, to change their voting systems from FPTP to PR systems, likely because the majority of voters just didn’t understand how the various proportional systems work.

On the other hand, a ranked system of voting is easy to understand, eliminates strategic voting and the feeling that one’s vote will be wasted, and affords voters more of a say in who is ultimately elected. It works at party leadership conventions and would work just as well in general elections.

I am extremely disappointed in the way this issue has been mismanaged by the Liberals and am not particularly hopeful that the damage can be undone in time for the next election. In acting as they have on this file, they forgot that they were elected to make strong decisions and, as so often happens, in trying to please everyone, have ended up pleasing no one. Shame on them.

Diana Hooper, Willowdale

So what else is new? It has been a long time since any of our political parties have put the interests of the electorate ahead of naked partisanship, the consequences for the citizens they collectively represent in a parliamentary democracy be damned.

Exhibit A: the hyper-partisan, if not utterly unhinged, Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef.

Like the Liberals, I favour a ranked ballot as the best tweak to what is no longer a binary (Liberal versus Conservative) party system. Nevertheless, first-past-the post (FPTP) remains superior to any flavour of proportional representation, which is demonstrably less democratic.

In practice, proportional representation (PR) encourages and rewards party fragmentation at the expense of centrist parties, with elections decided not directly at the ballot box but by back-room wheeling and dealing, along with unsavory kowtowing to fringe political groups in order to assemble weak and inherently unstable coalition governments.

Environmentalists may decry that our electoral system only delivered one seat to Elizabeth May’s Green Party during the last election, rather than the 11 or so out of 338 that apportionment by popular vote might have provided — hardly a mandate to govern, even so.

But that same democratic filter also kept Marxists, Islamists, white supremacists and other fringe groups from achieving political legitimacy and even winning a parliamentary seat with as little as 0.03 per cent of the total popular vote, which they could do under simple PR.

The glory of FPTP is that it delegitimizes political orientations that are beyond the pale to the overwhelming majority of the electorate. It is Justin Trudeau’s greatest achievement so far that we get to keep it.

Edward Ozog, Brantford

Maryam Monsef’s criticism of the electoral reform committee was well founded but misdirected. Since the committee was not asked to propose a single electoral system, it did what the Liberals surely intended it to do. It produced a list of alternatives to FPTP. Submitting this list directly to a referendum guarantees the perpetuation of the non-proportional misrepresentation we have always had.

It is the oldest game in politics to win a plurality by dividing the opposition. In this case, the opposition is the list of alternative electoral systems, each of which will garner some support, inevitably leaving FPTP in place.

Paul Collier, Toronto

Learning from history is a lesson politicians often skip to their regret. Prime Minister Trudeau would do well to learn from the very recent history south of our border, where the majority of American voters for president of the United States will go unrepresented due to the electoral college system.

The Liberals must keep the promise of electoral reform so that future governments reflect and represent all of us in Canada.

Gayle Clow, Pickering

Has Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef attended any of the town hall debates on electoral reform? The support for it (and proportional representation) is huge. By insisting on instant consensus, the Liberals are trying to short-circuit the process in order to keep a tidied-up version of the status quo.

N.G. Spencer, Montréal

The government’s failure to deliver on this key election promise will result in a huge loss of Liberal support. Yes, we need a referendum. Now. And we need to have a new system in place for 2019. If the proposed models result in the odd coalition government, so be it. Last time I checked, it hadn’t brought Germany to its knees.

Anne Millyard, Toronto

Lessons from Trudeau’s electoral reform fiasco, Dec. 5

I have been following the attempts to get a better voting system since 2004, and talking to Canadians about proportional representation ever since. Everyone agrees that this is the way to go. Our recent committee of MPs also agreed, but then foolishly agreed to recommend a referendum as well.

Neither referendum nor post cards will help. The latter survey doesn’t even give us a chance to say we want PR. My belief is that many Canadians haven’t time to do the studies on PR and/or have given up on voting. The people just want the government to do what the experts say — make our votes count.

Two good, specific PR systems were listed in the committee report. Mr. Trudeau must get a few knowledgeable persons to craft a proposal, so he can keep his promise to bring in our long awaited new dawn.

William Shore, Sutton

I was apprehensive about our Liberal majority government. Still, I hoped they would be better than this. The slow fade the incumbent government is performing on the issue of electoral reform is disheartening.

The disingenuous attempts to poll public opinion, when they know there is strong majority support for electoral reform, it’s shocking — a blatant fishing trip to justify ignoring their mandate.

The refusal to include proportional representation in the online survey is enraging.

Trudeau’s Liberals are demonstrating exactly why electoral reform is so badly needed in Canada. Every Canadian needs to let their MP know, we see them squirming.

James Venn, Toronto

Colour me skeptical, or downright cynical, but the Liberal government sending out a questionnaire on electoral reform is just another fruitless exercise pandering to those who are already agitating for some kind of change to our electoral system — namely, proportional representation or ranked ballot.

These folks have already been to the meetings and town halls, and will undoubtedly take the time to fill out this questionnaire, while the rest with go on with our lives and not bother getting involved in something we don’t feel very strongly about in the first place. It is usually only those who are invested who come out or fill in these kinds of things anyways.

And therein is the rub: The Liberal government will hold out the results of this obviously skewed result and proclaim a mandate to change the system, probably the ranked ballot one they are favouring.

The very fact that they have dismissed the report from their own committee tells me the game is afoot and the results are already rigged.

So much for transparency and fact-based governance. It’s just the Liberal same old, same old, we know what’s good for you, etc. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Tim Lentz, Lindsay, Ont.

Justin Trudeau is right to remain adamant on electoral reform. He has also cautioned about people “lashing out” in Canada as they have elsewhere in the world. Granted, he points to worries about “economic opportunity” as the reason, but perhaps he was also paying attention to the fate of the Democrats in the U.S. election?

Hostility toward adamant proponents of the status quo resulted in a massive political upset. People who vote for things like Brexit and Trump are battling the status quo itself, fuelled by hurricanes of cynicism with consistently underestimated fervour.

If Trudeau’s Liberals are sincere about preventing this kind of lashing out in Canada, they need to succinctly attack the status quo; they need to implement electoral reform.

It will come at the cost of the huge advantages that first-past-the-post gives them over other parties. Indeed, with strategic voting eliminated, they would have to work harder to earn votes. As it should be.

Or, they could maintain the unfair imbalance they share with the Conservatives, wait for Canada’s version of Trump to become prime minister with 39 per cent of the popular vote, and undo everything they’ve accomplished. No cynicism here.

Jordan Winters, Scarborough

I’m following this issue closely. I’d like to add a nuanced point to Paul Wells’ list of reasons why referenda are poor tools for decision-making.

People often vote not about the issue at hand, but rather “to send a message” to whatever party is ruling — hence all the surprised people after the Brexit vote who said they’d never have voted to leave if they had believed it would actually happen.

Similarly, I know of at least one generally intelligent person who was planning to vote “yes” for Quebec sovereignty in 1995, not because they were keen to see Quebec split from the rest of Canada but because they were tired of the government in power.

It was only after I pointed out that the referendum was one thing and the current government was another, and that we were being asked to vote for sovereignty, that this person changed their mind.

I’m sure that were Canada to have a referendum on electoral reform, we’d have scores of votes that would be motivated by similar sorts of inclinations.

Nicole Gombay, Montreal

The Star’s coverage, or rather lack of coverage, of the content of the parliamentary committee report on electoral reform is extremely disappointing. I am tempted to conclude that the omission is deliberate. We will then be told later that there is no public interest in the topic.

In fact, a quick scan of the report reveals it to be a very clear and comprehensive study of electoral reform in Canada and elsewhere, with analysis of the pros and cons of different systems. It deserves to be widely known and discussed.

The Liberal government obviously would prefer that the report be ignored, but surely the role of a major newspaper is to enlighten the public.

Helen Riley, Toronto

As a longtime campaigner during elections, I can’t understand all the complaints against our prime minister. The people heard, as I did, when he made 321 promises during his election campaign.

I talked to many voters who were supporting Justin Trudeau because his father brought them to this country. The voters elected a young man with very little political experience. They elected a majority, Liberal government because of a name.

Too late, they have discovered that a famous name doesn’t always produce good government. Too late for editorials from Liberal backers that Justin Trudeau has gone back on his word. I guess it is true that you deserve whom you vote for.

Joy Taylor, Scarborough

Trudeau insists election reform on table, Dec. 2.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won a landslide victory in the last election with the massive support of left-leaning voters because of his pledges to reform our first-past-the-post (FPTP) electoral system and combat climate change.

Without these pledges, he could not have won left-leaning voters and the NDP would have won the last election. Now, by approving two pipelines, he has angered two of his most loyal constituencies: environmental activists and native Canadians.

If he abandons the pledge to reform the electoral system, most left-leaning supporters might abandon him and his meteoric rise in politics will be short-lived. Tories will return to power and the Liberals will return to political wilderness. Personally, I will be sorry to see a promising career cut short.

Mahmood Elahi, Ottawa

Maryam Monsef apologizes for outburst in House of Commons, Dec 2

It is unfortunate that this drama has overshadowed the recommendations of the report given the importance of addressing the distortions in Canadian federal election outcomes.

The primary purpose of electoral reform is to address that a party winning less than 50 per cent of the popular vote can hold majority governments that do not represent the values of the majority of the electorate. One only needs to look south of the border to see the dangers of a voting system that rewards a candidate who lost the popular vote.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has to decide whether to keep his promise to make every vote count and have the 2015 election be the last conducted using the first-past-the-post system. He could instruct Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef to implement the election reform committee’s recommendations of a proportional voting system.

Given the election of Donald Trump and the result of Brexit, demagoguery and populism is growing in the Western free world. This dangerous new reality should make Trudeau and the Liberal government consider what is in the best interest for Canada’s future. A new voting system that encourages co-operation and consensus-based decision making is now more important than ever.

Dustin Su, North York

How many readers remember Justin Trudeau’s gaffe in 2013 about admiring China’s “basic dictatorship.”

Do we see in this candid remark the source of Trudeau’s shameful reluctance to honour his promise of electoral reform? Now that he has a false majority, and 100 per cent of the power, he likes it? So to heck with the majority who did not support his party and who are once again 100-per-cent excluded from influencing public policy.

The good news is that the Liberals still have the option of honouring their promise. They can still go down in the history books as the government that showed true leadership on this key question and rose above partisan self-interest.

If our democracy is to thrive and survive, we must bring in proportional representation. Or we can keep first-past-the-post and our democracy can go south, as in USA-style south.

David Fraser, Ottawa

Hands up everyone who knows enough about the various electoral options to make an educated choice in a referendum on the subject.

Geoffrey Kemp, Toronto

It is so difficult to accept the reaction and rejection of the Trudeau government to the electoral reform report. The need to correct the distortion of our FPTP voting system — matching the voters intentions to the allocation of seats in Parliament — is the most important recommendation. Surely another delay is not leadership.

The government should proceed cautiously with proportional representation: in brief, for three election periods. Let the voters be educated and have practical experience with it. Then, if it is deemed necessary, have a referendum.

This would live up to the promise — and it would be a solution that the majority of Canadians would accept as consensual, fair and honourable.

Patrick J. Mullin, Windsor, Ont.

I don’t understand the Toronto Star’s position on electoral reform.

I thought the Star was a progressive newspaper, and as such would logically support proportional representation as the fairest and most progressive alternative.

Instead, you support burying your head in the sand and doing nothing about reforming our outmoded FPTP system. Is this because it guarantees never-ending conflict between political parties and because conflict sells newspapers?

FPTP is a very wasteful system because bills that get passed by one false majority government are often dismantled by the next false majority government. Doesn’t this seem like a huge waste of time, human resources and money?

By not supporting proportional representation, the Toronto Star supports continued conflict and waste and is doing a disservice to its readership.

Gerrard Weedon, Toronto

Electoral reform is causing the Liberals problems. It will always be problematical for politicians because they personally win or lose by the changes. There is a simple solution: let the voters decide.

Instead of a referendum, at each general election, include an additional question: How do you want the next election in your riding to be decided? This offers five significant benefits:

It limits the decision to each individual riding. If change is adopted in one riding, it is because the voters in that riding voted for it. If other ridings prefer to keep the current system, they can.

It applies to the next election, so the rules of the game are clear in advance.

Implementation on a riding-by-riding basis simplifies the decision by limiting the choices to what can actually be done in a single riding. There would be two leading alternatives: the current first-past-the-post or ranked balloting, which takes into account voters’ second or third choices.

Incumbent representatives would be less likely to rely on divisive policies, since antagonizing a sizable portion of their electorate would increase likelihood of facing a change in the rules.

Lastly, it’s far less expensive to add a question to the ballot than run a referendum.

Hastings Withers, Toronto

The Star’s editorial mentioned that a referendum on electoral reform would be a wise decision, as “a government elected with 39 per cent of the vote” should not use its “majority” to make changes to the voting system. It therefore could be argued that a government with a 39-per-cent majority does not have the power to make any decisions of an important nature.

Therein lies the problem with first-past-the-post, which creates these false majorities. Only a proportional system, which is what the electoral reform committee recommended, can give every voter a voice and truly reflect how the country has voted. But this is a message the Liberals do not want to hear.

We are now presented with the spectacle of one 40-per-cent majority government using the same tactics to stifle dissent that the previous 40-per-cent majority government used: criticize those who disagree with you.

Susan Fraser, Toronto

If, as the Liberals claim, Canadians “aren’t engaged enough” in electoral reform, that must have been government’s intent. Since the Liberals formed government, we’ve been treated to countless staged photo ops and carefully crafted messaging to promote both their leader and their agenda.

Why didn’t they use their formidable communication skills to promote the benefits of a fair, proportional voting system (which is what was implied when Trudeau pledged to “make every vote count”)?

Because it simply is not, and never was, a promise they intended to keep.

Freya Keddie, Victoria

I am a 35-year-old father of twin girls living in Toronto. I wantto believe in democracy. I want to be engaged and active, to vote and to contribute.

But my whole life I have been disillusioned and disappointed in the imbalances of our electoral system. First-past-the-post is an antiquated system that inequitably rewards the dominant player and penalizes parties with moderate support across a broad base of ridings — the Greens, for example — versus parties with concentrated support like the Bloc. In this system, more times than not, my vote hasn’t counted.

I truly believed Justin Trudeau when he said 2015 would be our last first-past-the-post election. I was so excited to see Stephen Harper’s ugly partisanship behind us. Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef’s behaviour in Parliament saddened and embarrassed me.

I hope for my sake, my children, and all Canadians to come that Monsef and Trudeau step up and lead us towards a brighter electoral future.

Greg Roderick, Toronto

I would like to comment on the plan to ask one third of Canadians about changing the voting system. I find it insulting that the government will listen and change the voting system after only listening to a small number of Canadians. In a democracy, everyone should have a voice, not a small number that could be manipulated.

Jim Greenwood, Barrie

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