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Did Canadians get what they voted for?
By Joyce Green
The 42nd General Election for Parliament is over, thankfully. At 78 days, it was the longest election in over a century.
The cost of the election calculated as the combined totals of party funds and private donations is mind-boggling and arguably was mostly a waste of money which, through donations and through Parliamentary allocations, came out of citizens’ pockets.
Elections are held to produce a Parliament (federally) or a Legislative Assembly (provincially and territorially). They are the vital democratic link between citizens and government. The constitutional obligation of each elected body is to represent the people by forming a government and an opposition.
The role of government is to make policy, pass legislation, and maintain the confidence of Parliament; the role of opposition is to hold government accountable and, if that government loses the confidence of the House of Commons, provide an alternative government. All parties are to be dedicated to the integrity of Parliament and the Constitution, represented by the Crown: this is why the Official Opposition is called Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.
Parliament is composed of the House of Commons, the Senate, and the Crown. All parts are integral to the passage of legislation. We’ll set aside for the moment the matter of whether the Senate can or should be eliminated, and the proposition that Canada should become a republic and eliminate the Constitutional connection with the Monarch.
So how did the system work in the 2015 election? It depends on the criteria applied. Using the existing formula of the Plurality or First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system, the election produced a majority Liberal government and an Official Opposition (the Conservatives) and other opposition (the NDP, Bloc Quebecois and Green parties).
Actual 2015 Election results (Plurality Electoral System)
Party Seats Popular Vote %
Liberals 184 39.5
NDP 44 19.7
Conservative 99 31.9
Green 1 3.5
Bloc Quebecois 10 4.7
Other 0 .8
Parliamentary total 338
Electors vote for a candidate for MP in each riding; the party with the most votes wins the riding. The votes for other parties are effectively lost because they do not count toward an elected representative. The winner wins with a plurality – that is, more votes than the nearest competitor – even if the winner does not have a majority of support.
Often the other parties have more support in total than does the winner. Thus, this system is both unrepresentative and undemocratic. It also produces highly partisan Parliaments and discourages collaboration, as each party wants to win ridings and beat the competition rather than make a Parliament work. However, the seats that each party holds as a result of the plurality system are not a very good reflection of the parties’ share of the popular vote.
What would the 2015 Parliament look like if Canada used proportional representation (PR), a system which aggregates votes for each party and then produces seats in Parliament directly proportional to this share of the popular vote?
2015 Election Results under Proportional Representation
Liberals 133
NDP 67
Conservative 108
Green 12
Bloc Quebecois 16
Other 2
Parliamentary Total 338 (numbers are rounded so total is not exact)
The results under PR are more accurate and thus more democratic. Moreover, votes are not wasted as every vote is counted toward the total seats of the party. There would be some changes, however: electors would vote for a party, not for a particular MP. After the election parties would select their representatives from a ranked list.
So how did the current electoral system work here? In Kootenay-Columbia, the NDP’s Wayne Stetski edged out Conservative David Wilks by about 285 votes. That’s not anywhere near a majority and in fact is a minority when you consider the votes given to the Conservative, Liberal and Green candidates.
Stetski received 23,529 votes; Wilks, 23,244; Liberal candidate Don Johnston got 12,315; and Green Party candidate Bill Green, 4,115 votes. The total non-NDP vote was 39,674. In our winner-takes-all system, however, the NDP counts Kootenay-Columbia as a win and the other candidates all lose.
The antidemocratic impulse of the plurality system is evident here. It was evident as voters made their decisions, too. Many voted against something – a highly unpopular Prime Minister – rather than for their preferred party. For example, many voters decided against supporting Bill Green and the Green Party because they thought (in a self-fulfilling prophecy) that he couldn’t win against Wilks or out-poll Stetski or Johnston, their second choice. Thus, the Green party lost votes as voters calculated who their next best choice was, and the Green, Liberal and Conservative votes in Kootenay Columbia are all effectively lost in the wake of the NDP win.
That result produces a measure of cynicism in the voting public, which feeds apathy.
Research shows that PR reduces partisanship in favour of collaboration among parties, because PR is structured to make Parliament work, not to secure partisan advantage. The electoral outcome more accurately reflects the wishes of voters. Interested readers can consult the Law Commission of Canada’s study of electoral systems Voting Counts: Electoral Reform for Canada, and Dennis Pilon’s 2007 book The Politics of Voting. Fair Vote Canada is an excellent online source of information about PR. And with this calibre of information we don’t need more studies.
Clearly the Liberals benefited this time from the plurality system. However, during the election the party promised democratic reforms, saying “2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system.” The NDP – which was hurt the most by the plurality system – and the Green Party promised to immediately adopt proportional representation if they formed government. The Conservatives said they would keep the current system.
Will the Liberals deliver on their promise now, or will they move to study the matter into oblivion? Wait and see. Governments tend to lose their appetite for change when the status quo serves their partisan interests well. But democracy is not served well by our electoral system, and surely democracy is more important than narrow partisan interests.
– Joyce Green is Professor of Political Science on faculty at the University of Regina, currently living in Cranbrook.
