Winds of change: Proportional representation in Canada

Calls for change to our electoral system are not new – but they are gaining strength and coming from all sides. Academics and social activists, parties and individuals, and members of Canada’s diverse ethnic, religious and geographic communities argue that our first-past-the-post (FPTP) system is fundamentally flawed and in need of change. Governments seem to be listening.

Foundational to these calls for reform is the concept of proportional representation – the number of seats a party gets in the House of Commons or provincial legislature should closely reflect the share of the vote it receives. Proportional representation reflects fundamental elements of justice and equality: no person’s vote should count more than another’s, and the views of Canadians should be represented in their fullness and diversity at the highest levels of government.

Proportional representation is not a single electoral system, but rather refers to a family of systems, including single transferable vote (STV), used in Ireland and Australia, and list proportional representation (List PR) used in the Netherlands and Israel. In essence, the goal of a PR system is to achieve the greatest proportionality – in a perfectly proportional system, a party that wins 40% of the votes would get 40% of the seats in the legislature.

Why proportionality?

The basic tenet of proportionality is that the larger the number of people who represent an electoral district, the greater the proportionality. If a riding elects one person (as in our current system), the party that wins that seat gets 100 percent of the representation in that riding. Most ridings are won by a candidate who gets around 35 percent of the votes in that district – meaning that up to 65 percent of the votes did not succeed in electing anyone.

But if a riding is represented by three people, each winning party (or person) would represent 33 percent of the riding, which is a closer picture of how citizens in that riding have voted. As you increase the number of representatives (which tends to increase riding size), you increase proportionality. Hence the Netherlands, which has only a single, national-level riding, has one of the highest levels of proportionality, while FPTP systems have lower levels of proportionality.

Proportionality is a means of inclusion and respect for diversity – to include different voices and to incorporate different needs in the highest levels of decisionmaking and public discussion. In a more proportional system, every voter’s preference would go towards electing a representative, which would end ‘strategic voting’ – when voters select a second- or even third-preference party because they do not believe their first choice has enough support to win the riding.

The current system tends to reward parties that speak only in the broadest terms, or whose support is geographically focused, and often hurts parties that take distinct stances on specific issues. Thus the Green Party, currently polling at 10 percent nationally, has never elected an MP, while the Bloc Quebecois, whose support (if spread nationally) is also approximately 10 percent, currently has 50 MPs in Ottawa. Reformers argue that "minority viewpoints are snuffed out under our current system."

A move to increased proportionality would not only better represent groups that are marginalized in the current system, but may also change the way we think of representation – and voting. Parties and candidates may take more specific stances on issues, seeking to mobilize voters on different issues, including those that affect a minority in Canada. Voters may see their votes translated into representatives who more accurately portray citzens’ needs and viewpoints.

Canadian experiments

The idea that different points of view should be represented in the legislature is not new in Canada. Acareful review of our history points to numerous ‘experiments’ and changes in how we elect our legislatures, both federally and provincially.

Colonial Canadians usually elected two members from each riding, allowing for both a Catholic and Protestant representative. This two-member model continued well into this century, with British Columbia and Prince Edward Island moving to single-member ridings only in 1991 and 1994 respectively.

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION SYSTEMS

First Past the Post (FPTP): our current system, in which each member of the legislature represents a specific geographic riding, and is elected by a plurality of votes (more than any other candidate) from that riding.

List Proportional Representation (List PR): in its ‘purest’ form, this system has only a single riding across the whole district: citizens vote for a party (not a candidate). Parties get seats in the legislature according to the percentage of votes that they won. Parties choose those who will take the seats based on a previously published list.

Mixed Member Proportional (MMP): a ‘mixed’ system that attempts to balance geographic representation and proportionality. Some of the seats of the legislature are elected according to the rules of FPTP, while the other seats are allocated to the parties according to the percentage of the vote they receive (as in List PR).

Single Transferable Vote (STV): this system also attempts to mix geographic representation with proportionality. Several representatives are elected for each (usually enlarged) riding. Citizens vote on a ballot that allows them to rank their preferred choices, and that allows parties to nominate more than one candidate for each riding.

Various provinces have experimented with more significant changes towards proportionality. Manitoba and Alberta both adopted STV in the 1920s and maintained the system until the mid-1950s, when they returned to the current FPTP. In Manitoba, many suggest that the move to STV resulted from a desire to reunify Winnipeg after the bitter general strike in 1919. The return to FPTP in Alberta is usually blamed on the strength of opposition parties under STV, while in Manitoba, arguments were made that STV undermined the link between representatives and their ridings.

But electoral change has had a more recent resurgence across the country. In the last five years, three provinces have established commissions and two have established citizens’ assemblies to study the issue of electoral reform.

Quebec has been debating the issue since the 1970s, and in 2003, the committee responsible for examining electoral reform recommended a referendum on Mixed Member Proportional (MMP). While the referendum was never held and plans for reform are on hold, the recent provincial election could be the catalyst for renewed debate. Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick also launched commissions to look at the issue; P.E.I. held a vote on a MMP system in 2005, with 63 percent of the voters rejecting the model. New Brunswickers will vote on the MMP system in the next provincial election.

In 2004, B.C. launched the first-ever Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, which brought together representatives to consult across the province on the electoral system. They recommended a change to STV, and a referendum was held in 2005. While the proposal won more than a majority (57 percent), it fell short of the 60 percent ‘super-majority’ threshold the government had set. Because of this close result, the referendum will be re-run during the next provincial election in 2009.

Ontario launched a Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform in fall 2006, bringing together citizens from each riding over eight months. The Assembly recently recommended the MMP system; a referendum with a ‘super-majority’ threshold will be held in the October provincial election.

Change at the federal level has also been considered of late. The (now-defunct) Law Commission of Canada recommended in 2004 that the House of Commons move to the MMP system, and the Conservative government recently launched a process to examine the electoral system, due to report this month. Though this consultation process has been criticized, reformers remain hopeful that with upcoming referenda in several provinces and a federal election looming, they may just get their wish.

Caitlin Hayward is a former intern at CPJ, and a facilitator for the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform.

The Catalyst, spring 2007, Volume 30 / Number 2