Made in Canada Proportional Representation System
On October 4, 2004, the first session of Canada's 38th Parliament will
open and I hope that all federal MPs will resolve to take seriously the
issue of democratic reform in this country, especially that of our
national federal electoral system.
The ongoing debate over reforming Canada's electoral system includes
three schools of thought:
One group staunchly supports the current First-Past-the-Post (FPTP)
election system; the second wants to replace it with a traditional
Proportional Representation (PR) system; and now a newer third group is
urging Canadians to consider a hybrid system which would retain the
best traits of the other two, while vastly improving the overall
fairness of the process.
The old FPTP system has admittedly served Canada well. It grew up from
grassroots people's democracy. It was used long before the Great Reform
Bill of 1832 in the U.K. and was used in the U.S. from the outset of
the republic.
FPTP is a plurality electoral system, not a majoritarian one. The
candidate with more votes than any other wins the election. It becomes
a majority system only when two candidates are running for a given
riding. This system demands accountability from each and every MP to
all the people of the riding, whether they elected him or her, or not.
Additionally, the elected member establishes an accessible public
office in that riding. Not surprisingly, electors take into account the
record of their MPs on local issues when casting votes in the next
election.
MPs are held personally responsible to all the people of their home
riding for policies adopted by the entire party they represent; and if
that party forms the government, the same holds true for government
policies enacted under their watch. All in all, the FPTP system is the
people's democratic power at work.
Understandably, many electors who are strongly pro-FPTP do not want
their vote assigned to someone they may never have met, whose track
record on local issues they do not know, and who they cannot hold
accountable for their voting record in Parliament. In other words, the
staunchly pro-FPTP movement does not want to see electors' votes
delegated to the party in general, but to a specific person.
Conversely, those who promote Proportional Representation as the answer
want a new electoral system altogether.
They argue, not without reason, that the electoral system should be
more accommodating to those parties which receive more of the popular
vote under the current FPTP system yet win no seats, or very few, in
proportion to the actual numbers who voted for them.
In the June 28 federal election, for example, the Green Party received
more than 500,000 votes across the country, yet won no seats because
not enough of those half-million voters lived in any given riding to
effect a clear win. (However, the status quo, or pro-FPTP movement
frequently argues, "but this is what democracy is all about.")
By contrast, in the same federal election, one independent candidate
won a seat with only 17,466 votes, because all the voters were from one
riding.
In this case, the pro-PR argument is that the current FPTP system is
actually a deformed type of democracy and that a PR election would
have given the Green Party one or more seats and a voice in Parliament.
However, there must be a cutoff point in the PR system as to the
support-level at which a party will win seats. Let us say a given
party must receive more than 10,000 votes across the country to be
eligible for representation in Parliament. If this were the case,
then the Green Party would certainly have earned seats on June 28 --
but then, so would the Marijuana Party, Christian Heritage
and Progressive Conservative parties. And if the limit were lowered to
5,000 votes, then you'd have to add the Marxist and the Canadian
Action Party as well.
Those in favour of PR do not really care if an MP is elected by, and
accountable to, the voters of a given riding. In the PR system, an MP
is more a delegate of his or her party than a direct hands-on
representative of the people.
The greatest advantage of PR is that parties, even small ones, can be
represented in Parliament. Every MP under the PR system is appointed
by the party -- or later elected by voters -- from a larger list made
public before the election (which in theory should represent more
women, and minorities).
The disadvantage of the PR system, though, is that the personal touch,
as well as direct accountability between people and MPs, would be lost
forever.
The third group whose voice for electoral reform is beginning to be
heard across the land, is suggesting a hybrid system -- Mixed Member
Proportional (MMP) -- in which FPTP would still be used to elect the
308 existing federal seats, but with an additional allocation of
say, 100 seats, to be awarded to parties according to the percentage
of popular votes they receive in a given election, thus increasing the
size of Parliament by one-third.
Another outcome would see the current number of seats retained, while
still allocating 100 to parties who qualify under the PR system; this
could increase the population size of some ridings by up to 30% and in
some cases, become unwieldy.
The answer perhaps could be found in a new made-in-Canada system
using PR-like weighted voting in Parliament, but keeping the existing
FPTP electoral system for its obvious benefits of direct and
accountable democracy.
The new system will empower each MP with a vote weighted according to
his or her party's popular vote. In our current federal Parliament,
for example, the weighted vote of the above-mentioned independent MP
would be 1 -- corresponding to the least number of popular votes
divided by the number of seats for his party (a party of one), or 17,466.
An MP from the Liberal, Conservative, Bloc Quebecois, or NDP parties,
however, would be allowed the equivalent of 2.1, 2.3, 1.8 and 6.5
votes, respectively. Electronic counting of votes will make the system
easily implementable.
These weighted vote ratios correspond to the number of popular votes
divided by the number of seats won by the party, which for the parties
listed would be, respectively, 37,000, 40,000, 31,000 and 111,000.
This new hybrid system would have a PR-like parliamentary system,
while maintaining the same number of MPs, along with the same number
and size of ridings. Thus, any vote for a given party is not wasted
under the new system, provided that party can get at least one
candidate elected in one riding.
The new system prevents any party from imposing on voters an MP known
only to the inner circles, but not to the people. Simply put, a
thoughtfully implemented hybrid system of this type will be what all
Canadians want ... fair.
(Dr. Mohamed Elmasry is a professor of computer engineering at the
University of Waterloo, and a longtime political activist. He is the
national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress. He can be reached
at
np@canadianislamiccongress.com)
