The Assessments Begin

H/t Moudakis

That the days and weeks ahead will see detailed assessments of the Trudeau legacy, both good and bad, I have no doubt. I shall leave most of those to the professional pundits, but today I'll offer just a few thoughts. 

There were many things that Mr. Trudeau did very well, not least of which was shephereding us through the Covid pandemic, the very pandemic that seemed to be the catalyst for the unhinged, who never forgave him for enacting restrictions on all of us for the sake of public health. They certainly epitomized the dumb in freedumb. You can readily read in the media other of his achievements, including the NDP pressure-induced childcare reforms and the beginnings of pharmacare and dentacare.

I heard yesterday a Brock professor characterizing his time as one of disappointment. There were so many promises of better days, sunny ways when Trudeau first took office, but, as I have expressed elsewhere in this blog, it didn't take long for the old Liberal arrogance to reassert itself. For me, that was acutely reflected first in the abandonment of his promise that 2015 would be the last election under the first-past-the-post protocol. Simple to understand, his promise of a ranked balloting system would have, in my view, induced greater democratic participation and less political cynicism. it would have been a system wherein the individual could feel her or his voice counted for something.

Yet Trudeau blithely jettisoned that promise. Here was his disinguously-expressed regret at his press conference yesterday:

 

The sanctimony of his statement rankled. First of all, he went into the election promising that reform. Secondly, he was elected, among other things, on that promise. Thirdly, he had a majority government, and implementing that reform would have been relatively easy. Majority governments do many things that they didn't campaign on (think Doug Ford and the Greenbelt in Ontario), so to suggest that he couldn't move without the support of the other parties is but a pathetic excuse for betraying his oath. And finally, just how much effort did he put into getting the support of the others? Not much, in my recall. 

The next few months will indeed be interesting ones. With PP puffing and huffing at the door, many will be watching closely the Liberals' efforts to salvage not only their reputations but their electoral lives.

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.

On Encouraging Political Participation

The other day I wrote a post on John Cruickshank's TED Talk about the low level of political participation among young citizens. His thesis was that as a society, we are losing our news-reading and news-watching habits thanks to the myriad options offered by our current technologies. Asserting that news reading is a skill, the devolution of that skill has affected our ability to think critically and be civically engaged.

A well-considered letter to The Star, however, argues that without structural changes in our political system, measures to encourage participation will be ineffectual:

Re: What's the big threat to democracy? Distraction, Insight Oct. 11

I read the dissertation by John Cruickshank on the threats to our democracy. Unfortunately, the analysis and subsequent conclusions are flawed.

The real threats to our democracy come not only from a disengaged younger electorate (understandable given the hardships they face relative to older generations in income, housing and equality of opportunity), but rather from a perversion of the existing democratic institutions by our current plutocracy.

Political parties have “gamed” the system to their advantage. Our current body politic is often about demagogues using power seized through campaigns of fear or misinformation to obtain power; with little recourse for voters if perverse and discriminatory policies ensue.

The newly elected representative quickly finds out that they are merely trained seals, told what to say and when, with little chance to have their views fairly considered on important matters.

To just encourage people to vote no matter what is not the answer. I would proffer that an uninformed voter is more dangerous to our electoral system than one who is informed but chooses not to participate. It could be argued that the uninformed who choose to exercise their right to vote are willing participants to the demagoguery that is pervasive.
Merely asking relatively uninformed citizens to go out and vote once every four years in the current antiquated system is not the answer. The answers will begin once we seriously consider measures to not only encourage civic engagement, but with an accompanying corollary of institutional reform.

This will include some type of proportional representation to better reflect the views of all voters, greater use of plebiscites, allowing recall votes, and having party leaders chosen by their caucus to make them more accountable to the members, rather the reverse. The guise of greater voter turnout will not lead us there.

However, if a major political party were to propose such visionary reforms, then we might experience a sea change in civic involvement.

David Dos Santos, Mississauga

On Voter Engagement

One of the purported panaceas for electoral disaffection, subscribed to by many, is some form of proportional representation, a subject upon which I admit to being poorly-schooled. Beyond some of the basic arguments both for and against PR, I know little. However, one of the most frequently-stated reasons for embracing it is that it would do much to remediate people's oft-stated reason for not turning out at the polls: the belief that their vote doesn't matter, certainly a perception that has been, I believe, promoted and exploited by the Harper regime to its advantage.

Although not considered a version of it, ranked balloting, also sometimes called instant runoff voting, seems to me a first good step toward electoral reform. Essentially, it involves the following, as described by Ranked Ballot Initiative of Toronto:

Instant runoff voting ensures that no one can win with less than 50% of the vote. It eliminates the risk of 'vote splitting', where two or more candidates ‘split’ the votes of a certain group. It also means that no one has to vote strategically – you can vote with your heart each time.

Ranked Ballots allow voters to choose multiple candidates, ranked in order of preference. It’s easy as 1,2,3. On election day all of the first choice votes are added up (just like we do with our current system). If someone wins 50% or more of the vote, they are declared the winner and the election is over. However, if no one receives more than 50% the candidate with the least votes is eliminated from the race.

With ranked ballots, there is no need for costly multi-round voting because voters have already marked their second choice. If your preferred candidate is eliminated from the race, your vote is automatically transferred to your second choice. Again, the votes are counted and if someone has a majority, they are declared the winner. If not, another candidate eliminated and it repeats until there is a majority winner.

However, while advocates of ranked balloting do not necessarily think it would be the best reform for provincial or federal elections because it wouldn’t fully address the problem of distorted results in a multi-party system, many are enthusiastic about its potential in municipal elections.

A report in today's Globe and Mail says that Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne is considering giving municipalities the option of adopting a ranked-balloting system, a reform that would take effect at the earliest in 2018. What I find interesting about this possibility is the fact that even though municipal government has the most immediate impact on our lives and our communities, it traditionally has low rates of voter participation. Changing the format would offer a good test of the belief that making people's votes count would encourage greater rates of participation.

Should that thesis prove true, we would then have a solid statistical basis for more significant reform at the provincial and federal level.