Having spent the last several posts on the environment, I want to turn next in a completely different direction. At this point, I wouldn't blame people for thinking I was in the Green Party, despite my sincere effort to develop a more realistic and market-oriented environmental outlook. Now, though, I want to go to an issue that is at the heart of Canada's conservative movement as it exists today, and yet which nothing ever seems to get done on. That is the issue of democratic reform.
Democratic reform in Canada is necessary for a variety of reasons. Among them are the following:
1. The nature of our multiparty system means that the seat count in the House often does not correlate well with the popular vote.
2. As a result of item 1, ~8% of Canadians are without representation because the party they vote for has no members in the House of Commons or the Senate.
3. In regions where a single party dominates, the dissenting voters feel as if their votes do not count. For example, consider Liberal or NDP supporters in Alberta, or Conservative supporters in Montreal or Toronto.
4. Our current electoral system makes influential regional parties possible, which is generally counterproductive to finding national solutions to national problems. The Bloc Quebecois currently garners 10% or so of the national vote but can concievably win nearly 20% of the seats in the Commons.
5. One of the Senate's designed purposes is to provide for regional representation in the government. The Senate cannot currently do this effectively because of the public backlash that would result from the Senate overruling the democratically elected Commons.
6. The tendency in Canada towards stable, long-term, single party dynasties in the House of Commons, and the fact that Senators are appointed rather than elected, make it likely that the Senate will be dominated by a single party.
7. The Senate is expensive to administer, and in its present form it is not an efficient use of taxpayer money.
These reasons make democratic reform an attractive proposition. However, it is difficult because many of the proposed solutions to the above problems would require significant overhaul of Canada's electoral system, and likely at least one constitutional amendment. This would be a time-consuming process and would likely fail because of the provincial approval requirements for such amendments.
There has been strong pressure on the government for some time to tackle democratic reform, and many potential solutions have been put forward. I want to address two of these in particular.
The first proposal is to switch the method of election in the House of Commons to be by proportional representation. This would solve issues 1, 2, 3 and 4, but would cause a myriad of other problems. The most important of these would be that it would essentially wipe out the possiblity of a majority government, and force a constant succession of minority or coalition governments. Given how minority governments have generally performed in the past, Canada would likely be faced with a federal government that would have a very hard time accomplishing anything and would almost certainly have very frequent elections.
The second oft-discussed proposition that would address some of these problems is ameding the constitution to provide for a directly elected Senate, which would then have a greater mandate to exercise its powers. This would solve problems 5, 6 and 7, but would create problems akin to those in the United States, where progress could be impeded by a stalemate situation if a different party controlled the Senate and the Commons.
Taken together, the two above reforms would address the concerns I have outlined. However, as I have mentioned, they have significant drawbacks.As an alternative to these proposals, I would advocate the following actions, which I believe would go a long way towards solving many of Canada's democratic reform issues.
1. Pass the previously proposed legislation setting 8 year term limits for senators.
2. Pass legislation requiring the Governor General (on the PM's advice) to appoint senators with party affliliations corresponding to the proportion of the popular vote achieved by the parties in the last election, provided that the party with the greatest differential achieved at least 5% of the vote in the province the Senate seat is allocated to.
Appointments would be based on whichever party currently has the largest percentage discrepancy between their senate representation and their vote share. For example, the situation after the 2008 election looked like this:
Liberal Party- 2008 Popular Vote 26.26% and 55.24% of Senators
Conservative Party- 2008 Popular Vote 37.65% and 20% of Senators
New Democratic Party- 2008 Popular Vote 18.18% and 0.95% of Senators
Green Party- 2008 Popular Vote 6.78% and no Senators
Bloc Quebecois- 2008 Popular Vote 9.98% and no Senators
Other- 2008 Popular Vote 1.15% and 7.62% of Senators
16.19% of Senate Seats (17) were vacant
This makes the percentage differentials as follows:
Liberals- (28.98)
Conservatives- 17.65
NDP- 17.23
Green- 6.78
Bloc- 9.98
Under my plan, the 17 vacant seats should have been filled as follows:
9 Conservative Senators from the appropriate provinces
8 NDP Senators from the appropriate provinces
This changes the percentage differentials to the following:
Liberal- (28.98)
Conservative- 9.10
NDP-9.63
Green- 6.78
Bloc- 9.98
Say that the following year, there were 14 senators whose terms expired, 5 Conservatives, 5 Liberals and 4 Independents. This would result in the following adjustments and differential changes:
Appointment of 8 Conservative Senators (New Differential:6.25)
Appointment of 3 NDP Senators (New Diff: 6.78)
Appointment of 3 Bloc Senators (New Diff: 7.13)
Green Diff: 6.78
Liberal Diff: (24.23)
Say, however, that only two of the Senators whose terms are expiring in my hypothetical are from Quebec. This would preclude the appointment of more than 2 Bloc Senators, being that the BQ did not achieve 5% of the popular vote in any other province. The remaining seat would be allocated to the party with the next highest total, which in this case is a tie between the NDP and the Greens. In the event of such a tie, my proposal would be to allocate the seat to the party with the fewest Senators, in which case the Greens would get that seat.
3. Once the previous legislation was in place, I would consider a third piece of legislation mandating the appointment of Senators elected in provincial elections (such as those in Alberta and those proposed in Saskatchewan) assuming that their party affiliation is compatible with the legislation I have outlined above. This would simply provide further democratization to the Senate.
I believe that these three legislative actions, combined with the willingness of the new, much more democratic Senate to make more effective use of its designated powers and authority, would address all the problems I have outlined with regard to democratic reform and the Senate, without requiring a constitutional amendment and without creating huge legislative gridlock. It would also probably have the advantage of being easy to pass, as it is highly likely the NDP would support the Conservative government on this proposal, given what they stand to gain and the fact they support abolishing the Senate in its current form.
I would also support a fourth piece of legislation that also has to do with democratic reform, but which is mostly unrelated to the issues above. I believe that Canada is failing to take advantage of one of the prime advantages of our derided first-past-the-post system in the Commons. This is that each riding is represented by their own MP, who is supposed to be responsive to their needs and desires.
However, in Canada, having your own MP is basically useless because party discipline is so strong. I would wholeheartedly support legislation that made it illegal for political parties to take disciplinary action against their members for breaking with party line. For practical reasons, it is possible that budget votes could be exempt from this rule, but think of how much more representative and dynamic our politics would be if your MP actually supported your interests as opposed to those of his party.
Democratic renewal is one issue where the Reform party had it exactly right. Without a reformed Senate, and without some changes to increase citizen involvement in the political process, Canada cannot be a model 21st century nation.
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