Response to Trudeau dropping electoral reform on Feb 1, 2017

Trudeau said, There’s “no consensus.”

Of course there’s no consensus whether or not to go ahead with an electoral reform that would lead to Proportional Representation (PR): If you're one of those people who looks at national averages, the parties that will lose power are mostly against PR, and the parties that will gain power mostly support PR. But that lack of consensus doesn’t mean that we should be forever satisfied with more false majorities.

In a society with slaves, there’s always going to be no consensus about whether to stop slavery: Strangely enough, the slaves are always going to be the ones against it and the slave owners will always be the ones supporting it. But that "lack of consensus" is not a reason to keep slavery.

If the status quo is unfair you change it – that’s a no-brainer that requires no referendum…unless of course you want to have a no-brainer question on a referendum like the following:

Proposed Referendum Question Based on the Golden Rule: “In a federal election, would you feel “treated fairly” if you were in a party that got results like the NDP and Greens have consistently had for fifty years? (For those results shown in one simple graph, see this link) Yes or no? (If the answer is “no” then we change our system to proportional representation.)”

If such a referendum, based on the Golden Rule, were to take place, would there really be an “augmentation of extreme voices” that Trudeau fears? Is it extreme to want basic fairness? What’s wrong with a loud power struggle if that struggle is for basic justice?

(Above graph sourced from "Is Canada Fair?" at this link. Click  photo to enlarge.)
(Also, it should be noted that the above graph shows national results only. But when you look at regions, election results from all parties are distorted with First Past the Post, as we see in footnote 3 below)

Trudeau said it’s “wrong for Canadians” to  keep the all promises he made in his “electoral platform”

Is it wrong to keep his promise of “making every vote count?”

Trudeau said, There’s “no clear path forward”

How’s this for clarity:  39% of votes should make 39% of seats.

Where’s the lack of clarity?

How’s this for clarity: You promised to “Make Every Vote Count,” people voted for you, so now you should “make every vote count.”

Where’s the lack of clarity?

Canada wouldn’t exactly be entering uncharted territory if we got proportional representation: 85% of OECD countries already have it.

On June 7, 2016, you already used the popular vote percentage (instead of the House of Commons seat percentage) to compose the members of the all party Parliamentary Committee on Electoral Reform, so why not implement an electoral system that would do the same thing to all of Parliament?

Liberal MPs Kang and Vaughan said: “We have more important things to do.” 

But what if everything you do will simply be undone by the next government in the next policy swing? Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a policy trajectory that is stabilized by the future coalition governments that would be formed under proportional representation? Trump, after getting into power with a minority of votes, is undoing every policy that the previous government put in place. Where does that leave your “more important things to do?”

What could be more important than protecting the policy trajectory that you are working so hard to create?

Footnotes:

1. The above quotes were drawn from Canada Electoral Reform: Liberal MPs React to Trudeau Abandoning Promise  Huffington Post, Feb 2, 2017 (Updated Feb 3) Author: Althia Raj

2. Precedent for Parliamentary Committees party composition based on popular vote share in a general election rather than seats in House of Commons:

See this link:  (at “mandate” press Expand) Look for this quote from the Committee mandate (dated June 7, 2016): “…that the Committee be composed of twelve (12) members of which five (5) shall be government members, three (3) shall be from the Official Opposition, two (2) shall be from the New Democratic Party, one (1) member shall be from the Bloc Québécois, and the Member for Saanich—Gulf Islands;…”
End Quote

3. Actually, when you look at regions, election results from all parties are distorted with First Past the Post. Here is a more nuanced analysis (written by Wilfred Day):

Myth: PR helps only the NDP and Greens.
Fact: In the 2015 election, in the GTA 396,000 NDP votes were ineffective, disregarded, wasted, and thrown in the garbage can by our skewed winner-take-all system.
But 944,000 Conservative votes in the GTA were ineffective.
And so were 993,000 Liberal votes in Western Canada.
While 235,000 Atlantic NDP voters elected no one, so did 249,000 Atlantic Conservative voters and 384,000 Alberta Liberals.
Across Canada, 8,921,682 votes were ineffective. That’s 50.7% of all votes cast.
But the majority of those disregarded votes were for Liberals and Conservatives: 30% for Conservatives and 26% for Liberals, while 29% were for NDP candidates, 7% for the Bloc Quebecois, and 6% for the Greens.

My response to Wilfred Day: While all of this is true, the national averages, as opposed to regional data, shown in the graph above, speaks for itself. In the national average, it is the smaller parties who lose the most in ANY country that uses the "First Past The Post" voting system. In Canada's case, it's the NDP and Greens who lose most.