Proportional representation part 4

https://petitions.parl.gc.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-616

3. In the coming weeks, outline a firm timeline for public consultation regarding the proposals mentioned above, detailing the proposed timeline until introduction before the house of commons.

Does "public consulation" mean referendum?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggests one of the reasons he abandoned his 2015 campaign pledge on electoral reform was due to concerns over parties representing fringe voices, noting Kellie Leitch's push to lead the Conservative party. 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/trudeau-asks-woman-at-iqaluit-event-if-leitch-should-have-her-own-party/article33978880/

Quote:

"Do you think Kellie Leitch should have her own party?"

Not in the sense that I think she's entitled to such, but if enough Canadians agree with her that her new party could be electorally successful, then on what grounds would we say "No"?

Note that if she or her imaginary party propose things that are illegal, that's more a matter for the law than for the electorate.  Plus, Elizabeth May has her own party, but out of humility she refers to them as "the Greens".

And under FPTP we've already had what would be considered on a national scale to be fringe or localized parties - the Bloc Quebecois / the Reform Party - that achieved significant numbers of seats (including Official Opposition), so Trudeau's latest BS stinks, and fails to hold up to the scrutiny of recent past history. He's just spinning because he didn't get what he wanted - ranked balllots, which would have guaranteed Liberal majorities ad-infinitum.

Quote:

Magoo, I'm sorry to intrude on your fantasy world, but there really is a Green Party

Of course.  And as I noted, even Elizabeth May refers to them as that.

Leitch would prefer to take over an existing party. She would work within it as well so long as it is batshit crazy. But if the Conservatives pick a moderate she might reconsider. Trudeau's breaking his promise on ER may make her less likely to branch off.

Sean, you seem to be making the mistake of actually believing that Leitch believes one single solitary word that she is saying in her leadership campaign. I don't believe she does. i think its all a cynical ploy to get attention - i predict that once she loses she will very quickly fall in line behind whoever the new leader is and be as sycophantic as possible in the hopes of getting a high profile shadow cabinet post. She will drop all her talk about screening immigrants for canadian values like a hot potato and go back to being a very very conventional CPC politician.

Rev Pesky wrote:

Geoff wrote:

So, Germany is beset by political instability, caused by PR? Has JT warned Angela Merkel? Apparently, she is unaware of the imminent danger.

PR doesn't create instability. It does exacerbate it. As long as everything is going along fine, PR works a charm. Everybody is happy.

It's when times are tough that PR breaks down. We''ve seen that over and over again in Greece, Israel, Prortugal, Italy. Elections that don't result in a government, small parties scrapping with each other over the spoils, demagogues rushing in to take advantage of the electors disillusionment. More elections, more confusion, more disillusionment.

That spiral can, and has, led to some very dangerous governments, so pardon me if I'm a bit chary of PR.

 

All PR systems are not created equal; some have built in checks and balances to ensure that fringe parties can't rule the roost (i.e. minimum percentage of votes before a party can be represented in Parliament).

Some of the examples you provide would be in trouble whatever their electoral systems. Canada, I believe, would have more in common with Germany than with Greece or Italy.

Geoff wrote:

Rev Pesky wrote:

Geoff wrote:

So, Germany is beset by political instability, caused by PR? Has JT warned Angela Merkel? Apparently, she is unaware of the imminent danger.

PR doesn't create instability. It does exacerbate it. As long as everything is going along fine, PR works a charm. Everybody is happy.

It's when times are tough that PR breaks down. We''ve seen that over and over again in Greece, Israel, Prortugal, Italy. Elections that don't result in a government, small parties scrapping with each other over the spoils, demagogues rushing in to take advantage of the electors disillusionment. More elections, more confusion, more disillusionment.

That spiral can, and has, led to some very dangerous governments, so pardon me if I'm a bit chary of PR.

 

All PR systems are not created equal; some have built in checks and balances to ensure that fringe parties can't rule the roost (i.e. minimum percentage of votes before a party can be represented in Parliament).

Some of the examples you provide would be in trouble whatever their electoral systems. Canada, I believe, would have more in common with Germany than with Greece or Italy.

It is incorrect to blame PR entirely on the politcal culture of countries that have long led to more fringe parties. These fringes often predate the PR systems there.

Also there can be minimums for a party to even stand for election to the House. And there is a political culture that will not embrace radical parties just becuase they can be counted.

Let's do a little logical myth-busting here. Trudeau and his ring kissing cheerleaders (the polite description) have an argument that they peddle here and elsewhere in public. It is largely ignored as obviously full of baloney. Still, we can take a moment to demolish it once and for all.

This argument against PR is that it would let in the fringe parties. Andrew Coyne wrote about how small that fringe is:

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne-dont-fear-trudeau...

“In the past election, the vote for all fringe parties combined — parties, that is, other than the five currently represented in the House of Commons — added up to 0.79 per cent of the vote. Over the past two decades, it has averaged just over one per cent. The largest fringe party typically receives less than one-third of one per cent of the vote… Of course, if you change the voting system, you change voter behaviour… Hell, make it four, no, five times as many: a 400-per-cent increase in the fringe vote. That still wouldn’t be enough to elect a single member, let alone the 15 or 20 the prime minister foresees — no, not even under proportional representation.”

Presently, people who vote for fringe parties know there is no chance in them getting elected. The Liberal idea is that with PR they might decide to. But with PR fringe parties would lose as many or more votes to bigger parties as they would gain from them.

Those who vote fringe often have only one, maybe two local options who have a chance. In some rare cases three. About half the seats in Canada are not competitive. It is reasonable to recognize that in many cases a person not wanting to support the FPTP leading candidate, may throw their vote to a fringe candidate who really is no worse a waste than voting for the second party.

More viable parties would provide more competition. Having more viable options is not going to help increase the vote to less viable ones.

-          A person who hates the Conservatives and live in a riding only a Conservative would win. They vote Communist in protest. Now a vote for the NDP would count.

-          A person who hates Liberals the CPC candidate has no chance locally in FPTP so the person votes some far right party. Suddenly the vote for a Conservative would count.

PR would likely draw away as many or more votes as it would encourage to go for parties that really are still not viable. This dynamic would make it very hard for those parties to grow as for every vote they gain they could lose one. Fringe parties are a way of throwing a vote away. PR means fewer people would have to.

It isn't a false majority. The majority of geographic areas chose to give their seats to the Liberals hence they have a majority of seats. Nothing false about it. Our system was deliberately designed to not be one person one vote because we are a federation of provinces who joined Canada individually based on guarantees. These guarantees ensured provinces with a smaller population would have more seats than warranted by their population. PR would mean that Ontario and Quebec would run Canada even more than they already do.

I wouldn't even be surprised if over time Canada split up over it based on Alberta's resentment of the RoC and Quebec's distinct society.

So far the only benefit I see to PR is to give the NDP more power, and I'm not even sure that would happen.

Any electoral reform that doesn't give me more power isn't worth the trouble.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

LMAO  I believe I BELIEVE in any bullshit my leader peddles. 

Redefining terms like false majority is in fact a very well worn propaganda technique. Interesting to see the Liberal war room starting to really go into the disinformation routine. Lies are not enough now lets just redefine the terms until your objections become meaningless. 

Empty retoric. You don't address any points that I made. I think the ability to recall MPs would give people more power therefore be more democratic. I think having far more access to government financial data would boost democracy enormously. Much more than PR. You use examples of countries in which PR is working as well as any other system but you don't discuss examples in which it has been disastrous.

I don't support the separation of Quebec from the rest of Canada because both levels of government are so corrupt it isn't worth the turmoil.  I'm not saying FPTP is such a great system. It just doesn't seem any worse than PR. There is no political party that represents my views so I don't want to vote for political parties.

PR is not the be all and end all of democracy, some magic bullet that will transform Canada into a more progressive or more democratic country.

Pondering wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

LMAO  I believe I BELIEVE in any bullshit my leader peddles. 

Redefining terms like false majority is in fact a very well worn propaganda technique. Interesting to see the Liberal war room starting to really go into the disinformation routine. Lies are not enough now lets just redefine the terms until your objections become meaningless. 

Empty retoric. You don't address any points that I made.

I addressed the main point that declared that a false majority is not a false majority because you say it means something else. Yours is not empty rheteric it is outright fabrication from thin air. Wait that is a lot like Trudeau's promise to end FPTP in our country. Thin air that reeks of horse manure.

Pondering wrote:

It isn't a false majority. The majority of geographic areas chose to give their seats to the Liberals hence they have a majority of seats. Nothing false about it.

The majority of voters did not. Hence, it's a false majority.

Quote:

Our system was deliberately designed to not be one person one vote because we are a federation of provinces who joined Canada individually based on guarantees. These guarantees ensured provinces with a smaller population would have more seats than warranted by their population. PR would mean that Ontario and Quebec would run Canada even more than they already do.

There is nothing anywhere in Canada's founding debates (which I recently reread for a research project) that suggests that provinces were enticed to join with the guarantee elections would be first-past-the-post. Canadian elections take place under that system because that's the system Britain had at the time. (Women and First Nations were also disenfranchised at the time, before we go writing any more paeans to the glorious foresight of the Fathers of Confederation.)

The guarantee of PEI having four seats instead of one is an artifact of its having four senators. There is no PR proposal that would eliminate this, just as there is no PR proposal on the table for Canada that would eliminate ridings and provincial divisions and have all 338 MPs chosen from a single nationwide list constituency. The idea that FPTP somehow stops Ontario and Québec from dominating Canadian politics is blatantly false. If anything, it's FPTP that allowed the Bloc to become official opposition in 1993 despite having fewer votes than the PCs, who were reduced to only two seats.

By eliminating the ability of parties to have a clean sweep of provinces with a narrow plurality, PR would, in fact, require parties to campaign in provinces they'd ordinarily write off.

I do believe PR is important. I don't, however, believe that it should result in the elimination of provinces or local ridings. That's why the system I support is MMP. As I said before, the German model (where each province has a single list that accounts for half its seats) would mean an effective threshold of 25% in PEI, but only 1.66% in Ontario. This is, indeed, less fair to Islanders who vote Green than to Ontarians with the same preference. (It's even less fair to the territories, who'd be stuck at one FPTP seat apiece, unless the entire North were combined into a single list riding with a threshold of 33.3%.)

I don't believe that these minor flaws justify abandoning the entire enterprise of electoral reform. You are, of course, free to disagree.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

LMAO  I believe I BELIEVE in any bullshit my leader peddles. 

Redefining terms like false majority is in fact a very well worn propaganda technique. Interesting to see the Liberal war room starting to really go into the disinformation routine. Lies are not enough now lets just redefine the terms until your objections become meaningless. 

I didn't redefine it. As far as I can tell it was created by people who support PR to imply that FPTP is undemocratic even when it is democratically chosen by the people.

Quebec was also guaranteed a specific number/percentage of seats regardless of population. Provinces joined the federation individually based on specific deals.

If proportional representation ever became a genuine possibility I absolutely guarantee Quebec would demand that it keeps the same proportion of seats regardless of population.

There is nothing false about the number of seats Quebec has or would continue to have even if Quebec's population were cut in half.

PR is not a magic bullet. It gives political parties, not individuals, more power. To ME, it is the equivalent of shifting the chairs around on the Titanic. The point whatever % would still be running the show to suit themselves.

The only reason I am against PR is because it would be a waste of money and a distraction from the real problem that Canada's "left" is ignoring.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Pondering wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

LMAO  I believe I BELIEVE in any bullshit my leader peddles. 

Redefining terms like false majority is in fact a very well worn propaganda technique. Interesting to see the Liberal war room starting to really go into the disinformation routine. Lies are not enough now lets just redefine the terms until your objections become meaningless. 

Empty retoric. You don't address any points that I made.

I addressed the main point that declared that a false majority is not a false majority because you say it means something else. Yours is not empty rheteric it is outright fabrication from thin air. Wait that is a lot like Trudeau's promise to end FPTP in our country. Thin air that reeks of horse manure.

I didn't define "false majority" so I obviously didn't say that it means "something else".

"False majority" is a term coined to mean that the proportion of individual votes each party receives is not reflected in the number of seats each party receives. There is nothing "false" about it because our system is not designed based on division of power between parties. Our system is designed based on who wins individual seats in specific geographic areas. In this particular case it is the Liberals who won the majority of seats. There is nothing false about it.

To vote for the separation of Quebec I would have to believe that Quebec would be administered better as an independent country. No political party has established that they would be any less corrupt so the upheaval wouldn't be worth it just on the chance that it might be better.

Same goes for PR. The only benefit I see accrues to political parties.

I keep forgetting what the difference is between the NDP and the Liberals. Now that the NDP is down on their luck they are trending left again but that could flip back overnight if the NDP gets a chance at power. Notley could be praising PR now and run her next election campaign on it but we all know that isn't going to happen because it wouldn't benefit the Alberta NDP. The BC NDP appears to be doing great, finally, because they took a stand against pipelines. The federal NDP isn't pushing as hard on EE as they were but they certainly aren't against it. They aren't expressing any support for the majority opposition in Quebec.

I am a card carrying member of Quebec Solidaire because Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois is inspiring and will oppose EE as does the party. I may become a card-carrying member of the NDP because of Guy Caron and his willingness to talk about the need to restructure the economy.

I am not a supporter of PR because the models offered only appear to benefit political parties and do not lead to people having any more power over government than we have now so I don't see the point of the upheaval.

Here is the NDP's position for the current BC election:

https://www.bcndp.ca/better-government

So does make the idea of implementing PR without a referendum anywhere in Canada deader than a doornail?

Quote:

I am not a supporter of PR because the models offered only appear to benefit political parties and do not lead to people having any more power over government than we have now so I don't see the point of the upheaval.

Do you mean to say that if we switched to some flavour of PR, some parties would see an immediate increase in seats and others would see a decrease?  That's pretty self-evident since it's a zero sum game.  If there were to be no change whatsoever in the makeup of the HoC then you'd be right that it wouldn't mean anything.

Meanwhile, though, a party receiving more seats than the popular vote would suggest (e.g. 30% of the seats with 23% of the vote) clearly benefits that party, and not individual voters.  I'm not sure how anyone could suggest otherwise.

FWIW, though, I do agree with you that if we adopt PR then we need to abandon any jerrymandering intended to give this or that region more electoral influence than any other.  That's literally exactly the opposite of PR, and it would be illogical to basically try to heat the house and air condition the house at the same time.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Pondering wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Black is white. Carry on it goes well with lets increase bitumen exports and LNG exports to help reach our climate change targets.  2 + 2= 5  Canadians are a peace loving people that is why we sell arms to Saudi's and all the countries bordering Russia. War is peace.

You're the one avoiding facts and promoting blind faith in a political party.

We are talking about PR not the NDP.  Three parties in BC the Greens, the NDP and the Liberals all ran on changing the electoral system. About two thirds of Canadians voted for parties that claimed to support PR. The Liberals adopted it as a platform item and ran hard on it because it is a popular policy.

Your photogenic aristocratic water boy stood in front of the cameras and lied about his intentions to change the electoral system. You supported the Liberals and had no objections to PR before the election. I am pretty sure your objections to PR began coincidentally about the same time as Trudeau the Liar broke his oft repeated promise on the issue.

You're wrong. I was against PR long before the election and during the election I expressed strong doubt that anything would come of it despite what Trudeau was saying and it seems I was right. I did not support "the Liberals" I chose Trudeau as the leader most likely to defeat Harper which he did. I supported him even more strongly when he committed to marijuana legalization which he is following through on.

If you think this is an issue Trudeau is vulnerable on go ahead and attack him on it in 2019. No skin off my nose.

Voting for NDP leader will be online so I plan on joining before the deadline. Then Guy Caron can be my new water boy.

Mr. Magoo wrote:

Quote:

I did not support "the Liberals" I chose Trudeau as the leader most likely to defeat Harper which he did.

How did you help elect Trudeau WITHOUT supporting the Liberals (your local riding Liberal, at least)?

Or are you just saying you held your nose?

All I did was vote and yes to some extent I did hold my nose but not election night as the relief of Harper being gone felt like a huge win after 10 years. It still is a relief that he is gone. In my view Trudeau and the Liberals are pretty much living up to, or down to, what was expected of them. I expected the timing and approach to pot legalization would be based on political considerations. It doesn't matter. Once it is legal the truth of it will be self-evident.

I'm not saying Trudeau will be difficult to unseat because I want it to be that way. I'm saying it because history suggests he will likely get a second term and it will likely be another majority.

To defeat Trudeau the NDP will have to take bold positions that capture the support of the 99%.

cco wrote:

Well, given there will be no electoral reform in this mandate, it seems to me the NDP only really needs to capture the 37%.

To get that 37% they will need to appeal to the interests of 99%, not subsets of it because it is highly unlikely they would get the votes of all the people they hope to appeal to.   The far right has gotten away with aiming a few subsets because they are people who vote and who have no where else to turn.

If the NDP doesn't want to do it I hope a party can rise that does want to represent the majority.

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Pondering wrote:

If the NDP doesn't want to do it I hope a party can rise that does want to represent the majority.

In the meantime we are stuck with Trudeau the Liar who you still support despite the fact he has proven that he rules for the Canadian oligarchy every bit as much as Harper did. Your concern trolling has been honed to a fine art but personally I find it rather passe.

I don't know what you are talking about "still supporting Trudeau". I can't unvote.  I've agreed he's a crappy PM. My vote is up for grabs in 2019. I've been ignoring politics and the news in general for a few months, biggest headlines filter through. If I were religious I would pray for someone better than Trudeau to show up. It doesn't seem like it should be that high a bar to clear. Why can't the NDP get their shit together? You blame everyone else for the failures of the NDP. You don't want to know why Trudeau and the Liberals succeeded and Mulcair and the NDP failed. I doubt I influenced a single person's vote other than my own and the Liberals lost my riding to Mulcair.

You don't agree with my opinions so you attack me personally whenever there is a chance to take a shot at me. There's a word for people like that.

From time to time someone here has suggested that perhaps a Charter challenge should be brought against FPTP voting. I got an email today from Fair Vote Canada announcing just such a challenge, with its own web site. I find it difficult to imagine that such a case would succeed, but are there any actual lawyers here who can comment?