As Chantal Hebert noted during CBC’s election night coverage, “I think this is what it looks like when you have a two-party system.”
The results of this election demonstrate, once again, that Canada’s archaic voting system is failing voters.
Canadians on the left and right flocked to the two big parties, with many motivated to block the other side from winning a majority.
The outcome may be more proportional than usual (similar to the United States, where the vote share and seat share closely match) but it leaves Canadians as divided as ever.
First-past-the-post also makes regional polarization worse.
In Alberta, the Conservatives won 34 seats,the Liberals 2 and the NDP 1. With a proportional system, Conservatives would have won 24, Liberals 11 and the NDP 2.
In Saskatchewan the Conservatives won 13 seats, the Liberals 1 and the NDP none. With proportional representation, the Conservatives would have won 9, the Liberals 4 and the NDP 1.
First-past-the-post also denied NDP and Green voters any seats in Ontario, whereas a proportional result would have seen the NDP pick up six seats and the Greens one.
Moving closer to a two-party system is not the answer for our democratic deficit.
Minority Government is an Opportunity to Fix the System
Six out of the last eight Canadian governments have been minority governments. Despite a first-past-the-post system, Parliaments in which no single party has all the power has become the norm.
A 2020 Leger poll showed that Canadians want our parties to work together to solve problems.
Our winner-take-all system incentivizes our parties to fight each other tooth and nail instead, each holding out the hope of winning a majority government with 40% of the vote.
Electoral reform is long overdue. 68% of Canadians support proportional representation.
Canada needs proportional representation
Canadians want an end to the political games. We want parties to provide strong leadership to face the challenges ahead, as Team Canada.
The way to improve our political culture is to make proportional representation happen.
Proportional representation is a principle which says if a party gets 40% of the vote they get about 40% of the seats. Almost every voter would help elect an MP who shares their values. With proportional representation, almost every vote would count, voters would be fairly represented.
With proportional representation political culture would evolve so that parties would learn to work together to solve problems.
Proportional representation is the principle behind the voting systems of 80% of OECD countries, and is used by the top ranked democracies in the world on the V-Dem Index. Of the top 20 democracies, 18 use proportional representation, including the top five.
Canada, by comparison, comes in at #26 on the V-Dem Index, lower than the United States.
Cooperation, stability and strong leadership can go hand in hand.
Mark Carney is Open to Electoral Reform
On April 26, 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney told the media he was “open” to pursuing electoral reform after the immediate priority of the economic crisis had been addressed.
Carney was clear that he would take a very different approach from Justin Trudeau, whose obstinate opposition to proportional representation, and single-minded fixation on winner-take-all ranked ballot stalled progress for years.
Around the world, proportional representation is achieved when two or more parties negotiate and compromise to find common ground.
This minority government, in which all the parties have nothing to lose and much to gain, is a perfect time to work together to move forward with PR.
A non-partisan, independent citizens’ assembly can provide valuable input to legislators about the best system for Canada to make every vote count.
Message to the Liberal Party: Canadians don’t want to be stuck in a polarized two-party system
This election saw a tsunami of “strategic voting”.
In the face of unprecedented threats from Donald Trump and the harsh choices presented by our first-past-the-post system, many voters abandoned the NDP and Greens, lending their votes to the Liberals out of fear that Pierre Poilievre would win 100% of the power with 40% of the vote.
With first-past-the-post, the 6% of voters who still chose the NDP ended up with only 7 seats (2% of the seats). With a proportional system, the NDP would have elected about 21 MPs, easily holding party status.
Canada’s Parliament and our politics will suffer from the lack of diverse voices in Parliament for years to come.
While one “side” of the left/right divide may be breathing a sigh of relief, moving closer to a two-party system means more serious problems down the road for Canadian democracy.
The United States has become a flashing billboard for what can happen when a winner-take-all voting system reduces a country’s politics to two warring camps, and where a single party or leader can be handed an incredible amount of power.
The Economist Intelligence Unit has been warning in their Democracy Index reports for several years that Canada’s political problems, particularly rising levels of polarization, are beginning to resemble those of the United States.
The most dangerous kind of polarization, “affective polarization”, goes beyond disagreements over ideas; it leads people to see those neighbours who hold different political views as morally inferior or dangerous.
Recent Angus Reid polling revealed that 87% of Conservative voters think the Liberals are a “threat to their country” and 84% of Liberal voters believe the same thing about the Conservatives. This closely mirrors how Republican and Democrat voters in the United States see each other.
In the United States, the majority of citizens now believe the situation is hopeless; there is no way back from their advanced state of polarization and division.
Researchers have repeatedly found that the countries with proportional representation have lower levels of “affective” political polarization.
Multi-party majority governments can be strong, stable and effective in the face of major challenges.
As Ireland’s Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Michael Martin told reporters on election night in 2024:
“Ireland has avoided the hyperpolarization that characterizes the United Kingdom and the United States.
And that’s a good thing. I don’t believe in a left-right polarized divide. I think that would be damaging to our economic model.
Right across the spectrum we have different parties from left to right, and it’s healthy to have that kind of competition within our electoral system.
Because it’s multi-seat proportional representation, we have a very diverse Dail (Parliament) now.
The system we have now is one that has given effective government over the decades.”
Proportional representation can also act as a guardrail against autocracy, by requiring power to be shared by more than one political party.
As one of New Zealand’s foremost constitutional scholars, Professor Dean Knight, recently explained:
“In the pre-MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) days, …we did have times where we had a very dominant executive in the House of Representatives… That era is described as an ‘elected dictatorship’ or an ‘executive paradise’. …And that’s why we celebrate MMP – when it atomised that power.”
Our political leaders cannot afford to ignore these important lessons from research and practical experience around the world.
If Mark Carney truly wants to strengthen our unique Canadian identity, to respect the voices of Canadians from across the country, and to move towards a fairer and less dangerous way of doing politics, he will show leadership on proportional representation.
