Is Justin Trudeau listening?
In a remarkable exchange during the Liberal leadership debate in Halifax on Sunday, March 3, Justin Trudeau conceded that most Canadians want proportional voting reform, but he won’t give it to them because “too many people don’t understand the polarization and the micro issues that come through proportional representation.”
Justin gets it, but you don’t.
Trudeau was responding to leadership hopeful Joyce Murray, who said, “OK Justin, well if you were actually listening to Canadians, you would know that two thirds of Canadians want proportional representation so that their vote counts, and so that we don’t have the divisive, toxic system that we have today, so if you were listening to Canadians, you would be going after proportional representation.”
Trudeau’s assertion that proportional representation “actually increases partisanship, not reduces it” will come as a great surprise to political scientists, most of whom agree with San Diego scholar Arendt Lijphart, who examined the impact of voting systems on politics in 36 countries in a landmark study in 1999.
Lijphart compared countries using winner-take-all or “majoritarian” voting systems, like our current first-past-the-post, with countries using proportional voting systems, which he calls “consensus democracies.”
Lijphart notes that the majoritarian model concentrates political power in the hands of a bare majority or a smaller plurality. The resulting political system will tend to be “exclusive, competitive, and adversarial”. The democratic institutions in the consensus model force broader participation in government and broader agreement on government policies. These political systems tend to be “characterized by inclusiveness, bargaining, and compromise…”
“Proportional voting eliminates phony ‘majority’ governments with only 40% of the votes,” says Doug Bailie, president of Fair Vote Canada (FVC). “This enables Parliament to hold Government accountable, and it also means political parties have to negotiate with each other to achieve their common goals. That’s why proportional representation creates a more consensual type of government and a more civilized style of politics.”
“That’s not just theory,” adds Wayne Smith, FVC Executive director. “Most developed countries have used proportional voting systems for most of the last century, so we can see how they work in the real world. Consensus democracies tend to have higher levels of voter satisfaction and higher voter turnout. They elect more women and minorities, have better social programs, and are at least as well run as we are in terms of inflation and unemployment.”