By Josh McJannett
It seems only in Ottawa could you pack a hall on an icy Tuesday night in January to discuss options for reforming how we elect our politicians.
More than halfway through a whirlwind tour of the province, Ontario’s little-known Citizen’s Assembly on Electoral Reform did just that during its stop in the national capital last week.
The process is one of the most interesting and important in our province’s history. Its outcome could bring the most significant change to Ontario’s electoral system since the introduction of parliamentary self-government, a tradition which pre-dates Confederation.
Despite the potentially far-reaching consequences of the Assembly’s recommendations, few Ontarians outside a small, albeit dedicated, community of democratic reformers understand, or are aware, of the process.
This problem is clear. Without wider public knowledge about what the Assembly hopes to achieve, our best chance to make provincial elections more meaningful will be wasted.
“We want to ask people whether Ontario should keep our current system or suggest a new one,” says George Thomson, a former judge and provincial deputy minister serving as the Assembly’s Chair.
In a province where less than two per cent of the population holds membership in a political party and fewer people turn out to vote every election, it’s clear we leave something to be desired as democratic participants.
Proponents of change say the problem is the feeling that our votes don’t matter. Many argue that tackling apathy requires a system that more closely links the number of seats a party wins to the number of votes they receive.
The Citizen’s Assembly is a chance for average Ontarians to study the status quo, look at other options and ultimately, make a recommendation about where to go next. That recommendation could be sticking with the current model or opting for a revamped system where voters rank preferred candidates or elect more than one representative.
The Assembly was created by the government last June as an independent, non-partisan committee of regular Ontarians charged with studying the options available for electing provincial legislators. The announcement fulfilled a Liberal election promise aimed at placating simmering dissatisfaction with a system that regularly sees majority governments elected with as little as one-third of the vote.
The process mirrors one established in British Columbia in 2003, an exercise which ended with the narrow defeat of proposed historic changes to the province’s electoral system after the government failed to promote the proposed system.
It’s a process that deserves a greater public profile and more serious attention. The Assembly may have been charged with examining how we elect our politicians; however their recommendation could change everything from how we’re governed to who holds power and what they will be able to do with it.
The Ontario model is made up of 103 randomly-selected citizens – one from each of Ontario’s electoral districts. The membership is evenly split between men and women. All registered voters were eligible to participate resulting in a wide cross-section of the population, including university students, labourers, teachers, engineers, retirees and Canadians born abroad.
Assembly members began consulting with the public in November through more than three dozen public meetings and by inviting written submissions.
While the town hall-style meeting in Ottawa brought out an impressive crowd, similar meetings held in cities like Barrie saw empty seats and an absence of any local media coverage.
It’s a challenge made all the more problematic by the fact that any changes proposed by the Assembly will be put to Ontarians in the form of a question on the ballot at the next provincial election, scheduled for later this year.
“What we really need is a massive public education campaign so voters can understand and make an informed decision,” says Jeannie Page, one of more than a dozen presenters at Ottawa’s public consultation and a former federal NDP candidate in Ottawa-South. Page touches on the essence of the Assembly’s challenge. Namely, that coming up with a better system isn’t the hard part, it’s explaining and selling that system to average voters that may ultimately prove impossible. The fear is that Ontarians are so disaffected and ambivalent about the political process that we’ll tune out our best chance to remake it into something meaningful.
While Thomson admits he hasn’t seen the details, he says the provincial government has promised to commit “substantial” resources to raising public awareness.
Given the Assembly’s current low-profile, a campaign to inform average Ontarians about participation opportunities is essential.
The battle lines are drawn between those who feel Ontario’s current system is outdated and those who argue we’ve been well served by the model for more than 200 years.
The deciding factor in whether Ontario opts for change, however, won’t be settled by either of these committed schools, but rather by the majority of Ontario voters who appear to know little about the process or alternatives.
Whatever the Assembly recommends, change won’t come easily if the success of a ballot question relies on the decision of a population unaware of the process and ignorant to the fact that this is the best chance Ontarians have to improve the system.