By Laura Payton
Ottawa Centre’s next Member of Parliament will be selected through an electoral system that has changed little since Britain created it more than 800 years ago — a system many complain penalizes small parties even if they win broad national support.
Critics also say that Canada’s current system makes it harder for women and minority candidates to run for office.
Under the first-past-the-post system, through which each riding elects one Member of Parliament, smaller parties like the NDP and the Green Party don’t win as many seats as their popular vote would earn in a system of proportional representation. Indeed, the Greens have never won a seat at all.
Meanwhile, parties with support concentrated in one region of the country, like the Bloc Quebecois, the Liberals or the Conservatives, can win large numbers of seats because their votes are focused in particular ridings.
“That’s a majority according to (the first-past-the-post) system, but not a majority in terms of popular vote,” says Yves LeBouthillier, president of the Law Commission of Canada, a government agency that advises Parliament on how to modernize Canadian law.
The commission is one of a number of organizations pushing the federal government to adopt a proportional representation model for elections, which they say would better reflect how Canadians actually vote.
In the 2004 federal election, for example, the Liberal Party received 37 per cent of the popular vote but ended up claiming 44 per cent of seats in the House of Commons — in this case, a rare minority government.
The NDP, on the other hand, received 16 per cent of the vote but won only 6 per cent of seats, less than half the representation they would have enjoyed under the commission’s recommended system.
The Green Party fared even worse under the current system, winning no seats despite garnering 4 per cent of the national vote. Under the commission’s proposal the Green Party would have two MPs in Parliament right now.
Under the commission’s recommendation, one third of the seats in the House would be selected based on popular support for each party. The remaining two-thirds of the seats would be filled via traditional elections based on ridings. The number of seats in the House would remain at 308.
“It’s high time we had a voting system that reflects the will of voters, that makes the vote equal,” says Mark Greenan, Coordinator of the Yes On Mixed Member Proportionality Coalition, a group that campaigned for proportional representation in Prince Edward Island.
“Fifty-three per cent of Canadians voted for the Liberals or the NDP (in the last federal election) but the Bloc and the Conservatives have more seats in the House of Commons. It’s a dramatic example of the distortion of the Canadian democratic will that the first-past-the-post system engenders,” Greenan says.
Despite proportional representation’s advantage in better reflecting the popular vote, not everyone is convinced it is a better model.
Several Canadian provinces are considering electoral reform for their legislatures, but PEI voters overwhelmingly rejected the model in a November referendum.
Much of the opposition to proportional representation stems from its tendency to produce minority governments.
LeBouthillier says the minority governments that would result under proportional representation would not necessarily mean more unstable governments. He says that opposition parties would have less incentive to force elections since there would be little chance that they could win a majority. He also points to recent polls that indicate two-thirds of Canadians have preferred the current minority Parliament because “there is more room for compromise, discussions, various views being vented and various voices being heard.”
Supporters of electoral reform point to increased voter turnout in some countries, as well as a 5 to 6 per cent increase in representation for women and minority candidates, as reasons to push the government for change.
Some Ottawa Centre residents want more information about how the system worked in other countries before they decide whether they want proportional representation adopted in Canada.
“Are things more efficient?” asks Tanuja Kulkarni, 31.
“Is it addressing the issues that it was hoping to address? Does this system work and fill in the gaps that were identified before the system was in place? I don’t really have a clear vision on what that really means for government.”
Another Ottawa Centre resident, Boyd Tryon, 62, says the model sounds good but says that as a non-voter he would be no more likely to vote under a reformed electoral system than under the current one.
But Tryon’s wife Donalda Tryon says she needs more information. “My thought is try it before it’s made a dead-set rule.”
For those who support proportional representation, the choice is clear.