First-Past-The-Post: An Ontario Horror Story

Has Justin Trudeau not betrayed his promise of electoral reform, perhaps all provinces would be seriously considering it for their own jurisdictions, not just British Columbia and Quebec.

And now Ontario is about to reap the full horror of the first-past-the-post system: a clown (no doubt accompanied by seltzer bottle and whoopee cushion) about to plant himself in the premier's chair. Despite that province having rejected an opportunity for reform in 2007, The Star's Mitch Potter suggests that result could have an impacct on people's thinking:

Thursday’s outcome in Ontario — with the clear majority of voters, nearly 60 per cent, now on the outside, looking in — makes the province prime hunting ground for activists now looking to enlist the province in the reform momentum taking hold elsewhere in Canada.

“We see a shining silver lining in this terrible mood in Ontario, where you now have a government most of the people don’t want that will be doing things that most of the people don’t want,” said Réal Lavergne, president of Fair Vote Canada, a grassroots organization of 70,000 people coast-to-coast that advocates for proportional representation.

“We don’t wish that upon the people of Ontario, but we will hit the ground running, we will parlay it. There’s an opportunity to help people better understand how the status quo distorts the ideal of equal and effective votes for all.”

Fair Vote Canada held its annual general meeting in Ottawa on Saturday, poring over the entrails of the Ontario results. The organization itemized the shortcomings, noting that 52 per cent of Ontario voters essentially elected no one at all.

Such widespread disenfranchisement, and its resulting effect of voter alienation, does nothing for the health of a democracy.
And finally, it is clear that Ontario's dire state, laid bare by a bit of numbers-crunching by letter-writer Tony D’Andrea of Toronto, cries out for remediation.

Albert Einstein, who knew something about time and place, said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

So, welcome to electoral insanity — the Ford Nation brought to Ontario by its first-past-the-post style of democracy. Thus Premier-designate Ford, who was just elected by 40 per cent of voters who didn’t care that he doesn’t have a plan, has now been empowered to reverse or nullify the progressive plans of the 58 per cent who voted for Ontario to not become the populist regressive Nation of Ford.

Such is the sorry state of politics in Ontario. Once again, the legitimate power to rule determined by FPTP means that there is a disconnect between a majority government and its corresponding match with actual Ontarians.

Actually, since only 58 per cent of the eligible individuals cast their votes, it means that just 23 per cent of them voted for Ford. Consequently, his victory is representative of less than a quarter of the population. Yet Ford has a mandate to do whatever he politically chooses to do. And, although this is not illegal, it most certainly doesn’t add up democratically.

There is an urgency for the public to hurry up and discover that the math governing our elections makes a travesty of our democratic principles.

As one can see, not all horror stories are confined to the realm of fiction.

The Golem Of Ontario

I just finished reading a book by Jordan Tannahill, entitled Liminal. Here is an excerpt that, given the Ontario election results, seems an appropriate parable. I offer it without further commentary:

He mentioned being totally transfixed by an old Yiddish story about the Clay Boy, a variation of the golem, in which a lonely elderly couple made a little boy out of clay. Much to their delight, the clay boy came to life and the couple treated him as their real child. But the clay boy didn't stop growing. He ate all of their food, their animals, and eventually the elderly couple too, before rampaging through the village.

Thus endeth the lesson.

A Few Impressions

I realize that Ontario's pending provincial election is likely less than riveting for those living outside the province; however, the fact that a demagogue like PC leader Doug Ford has been leading in the polls until recently should concern all of us.

As Canadians, we like to feel smug vis-à-vis the United States, saddled as it is with its choice of an imbecile for president. However, that smugness needs to be tempered both by the election of populist crack user Rob Ford, who was the mayor of Toronto, and the realization that brother Doug's robotic presentation of himself as "for the people" has yielded him quite a following. To ignore those realities does no one any service.

Last night's debate, featuring the leaders of all three major parties, was a study in contrasts. Both the NDP's Andrea Horwath and (outgoing?) Premier Kathleen Wynne acquitted themselves quite well (although I thought Horwath interrupted too frequently), displaying a poise and a depth of knowledge that one would hope for in a leader. On the other hand, Doug Ford relied on boilerplate promises to lower taxes and find efficiencies, at the same time 'guaranteeing that no one would lose their jobs.

And it got even better, as he

promised a 20-per-cent cut to the second-lowest income-tax bracket, an end to the province’s cap-and-trade system, and a 10-cent-per-litre cut to the gasoline tax.

Welcome to Magical Thinking 101.

To compound his amateurish bluster, Ford warned of dire consequences should the NDP form government:

“I travel around, I’ve talked to hundreds and hundreds of companies — they are terrified of the NDP coming in,” Ford told viewers during the raucous 90-minute televised debate.

“They’ve told me personally, ‘We will pack up and we will go down south in half a second.’ God forbid the NDP ever get in, they will destroy our province,” he said, predicting Horwath “would annihilate the middle class” and “bankrupt this province.”

To the thick-headed, this strategy (Hyperbole/Fearmongering 101) would surely strike fear and loathing of those godless socialists. To drive home his point about the perils of an NDP government, repetition being his forte, Ford Added,

“They will destroy our province, destroy our economy. That’s a fact..."

This has been but a brief reflection by one who has followed politics for many, many years. As a student of human nature, I find all elections fascinating, offering as they do a kind of Rorschach test of one's fellow citizens.

Elections help determine the kind of society we live in. For those who feel strongly (and everyone should) about such matters, their responsibility to cast a vote is undeniable. Otherwise, of course, you are letting someone else impose their vision.

Ah yes, the beauty of democracy.

For those who didn't see the debate and might want to dip into it, here it is in its entirety:

Rediscovering Democracy

Since I became eligible to vote many years ago, I have participated in every federal, provincial and municipal election that has been called. Even though it has become something of a cliché, the assertion that voting is a sacred duty has never been far from my mind.

And yet, for all of that, up to a few months ago, I was seriously considering doing something I had never done before: going to the polling station and officially declining my ballot. In that contemplation, I felt a righteous justification.

Why did I consider that option? First of all, of course, the Progressive Conservatives were never a consideration. Just like those who are gun-shy about the NDP after Bob Rae's Ontario premiership, I have never forgiven nor forgotten the depredations of the Harris years, an era when government sought to pit citizen against citizen, stigmatizing people according to socio-economic status and drastically cutting funding for an array of programs, an experience from which we have never fully recovered. And of course, there was the bone-headed move by these self-proclaimed fiscal masters of selling a 99-year lease on the lucrative highway 407 for a mere pittance.

Kathleen Wynne's Liberals were off my radar, having betrayed all Ontarians by the majority sell-off of Hydro One, the publicly-owned power transmission utility. Her justification? To broaden ownership and raise cash for green infrastructure, all without raising taxes. Of course, the first billion dollars was used to eliminate the government's deficit. Currently the government receives about one-third of the revenue from Hydro One it was receiving before privatization, and estimates are for the loss of billions over the longer-term, billions that government can ill-afford to surrender.

So that left the NDP for me to consider, and for the longest time I discounted offering them my support. The last election was triggered by Andrea Horwath's greed for power, despite the fact that the party held the balance of power over a minority Liberal government. And Horwath ran a campaign where the term small businesses was uttered regularly to the exclusion, if memory serves me, of any reference to the working class or working folks (the latter term seeming to have become part of today's political nomenclature). The closer they thought they were to power, the more to the right they tilted, the same error Thomas Mulcair made in the last federal election.

So prospects for voting seemed dim. What changed my mind? It was this column by the Star's Martin Regg Cohn, a journalist for whom I have a great deal of regard. Written at the end of February, it was a piece lamenting the increasingly low turnout in Ontario elections, a trend he sees as a real threat to democracy:

In the last two elections, barely half of Ontarians bothered to cast a ballot — an embarrassing 48 per cent voted in 2011, and a dispiriting 51 per cent turned out in 2014.

They were the worst showings by civic no-shows in our democratic history. And far worse turnouts than in any other provincial or federal election ever.

With the next election coming in roughly 100 days, Ontario’s democratic deficit is creating a crisis of confidence that no party can solve alone. No matter who wins on June 7, the worsening turnouts will prove a losing proposition for everyone — the politicians and the people.

This downward spiral undermines the very assumptions upon which democracy is based:

More than six in 10 Ontarians (62 per cent) believe that “the legitimacy of the government is called into question” if less than a majority of eligible votes are cast in a general election, according to the polling by Campaign Research.

I hope you will read Cohn's entire piece, plus other articles he has written within the past year on democracy. Simply go to the search function on The Star website and put in his name.

In closing, I cite his final sentence in the above-referenced article:

Democracy is an opportunity. Which is why a vote is a terrible thing to waste.

Those Star Letter-Writers

They never disappoint. They can spot a shyster a mile away.

It’s sad that Doug Ford’s solution to the high cost of gas is to reduce the gas tax. A much better solution would be to incent people to not buy the largest, heaviest and most powerful SUV they can afford. When I switched from a turbo Volvo wagon to a Toyota hybrid, my gas bills dropped by 60 per cent. But what else could we expect from someone who bought his brother a Cadillac Escalade. It doesn’t get any less environmentally friendly than that.

Michael Yaffe, Toronto

Doug Ford’s policy on gasoline shows that he doesn’t care about the environment. Reducing the price of gasoline will only make air pollution worse, as people who are buying more gas-guzzling SUVs and pickup trucks will consume more fuel.

Rene Ebacher, Toronto

PC Leader Doug Ford claims to be upset with the excessive compensation being paid to board members and executives at Hydro One. However, he also vows to cut the corporate tax rate by 8.7 per cent. Who does he think will benefit from this corporate windfall? No doubt already highly paid corporate executives will receive a big slice of it. And who does he think will have to pay more to make up for the loss of tax revenue? No doubt many of the taxpayers he pretends to be looking out for. What a hypocrite.

Peter Bird, Toronto

... Contrary to Ms. Horwath’s posturing, the NDP and Liberals could, and should, find many points of agreement on a plan to govern if the opportunity presents itself. It is only being fair to the majority of Ontario voters to have confidence that such an outcome is indeed possible and would be chosen when and if the election results permit it.

Back in 1985, the Liberals and NDP agreed to a legislative accord when the Tories had the most seats but not a majority. Ontario was well served by this arrangement and it may well be needed again. The very notion and real possibility of a Doug Ford government should be sufficient reason for any progressive person to not pre-emptively and arbitrarily rule out this option.

Simon Rosenblum, Toronto