Canada's Undemocratic Democracy

[Rob Beckers]

Since about 10 years I have been calling Canada 'home', and in many ways it is a great place to live! That is not something I say lightly; I grew up in The Netherlands, and after my university studies lived in Spain, Israel, and the United States. I've traveled quite a bit as well, and not of the packaged-tour type. Over the years I have been to almost all European countries, including many trips to East Germany in the days when it was still a firmly communist country. In short, I've seen my share of countries, political systems, and living conditions for their people. All in all Canada ain't bad!

Since last year I can even call myself a Canadian, having gone through the long process to acquire citizenship. As you may have heard Canada is currently (October 2015) having a national election, and this is the first time I can vote, which I in fact already did the past weekend (Canada has the option of "advanced voting", so you don't have to wait until election day).

In the process of finding out who should get my vote I educated myself about the mechanics of politics and the democratic process in Canada, and found out that not all votes are created equally, it all depends on where you live...

The Canadian federal electoral system works with districts, called "ridings", that carve the country up in little pieces according to some mechanism. In each riding a number of candidates can make themselves electable, so they appear on the ballot. Generally this means each political party has one candidate in each riding, though what parties are active in a riding varies. My own riding has candidates from the Liberals, Conservaties, New Democratic Party, and the Green Party. In other ridings there could be more, less, or other parties, for example in Quebec the Bloc Québécois has a candidate in many ridings. There could also be independent (non-party affiliated) candidates, though those are few and far between.

As a citizen, I can vote in my riding (and only in my riding, where I live), and I can only vote for one candidate. The candidate that gets the most votes wins the riding, and becomes my representative (the 'member of parliament') at the federal government.

That means those votes given to candidates that did not win the riding, and by extension to those parties, do not count at the federal level. Only one candidate (and party) moves on to the federal level. The party with the most candidates that won in their ridings gets to form a federal government. In short, a "winner takes all" system.

At the surface this may seem democratic, but it has a very serious flaw: There are many, many ridings in Canada where the winner is a foregone conclusion. My own riding is very strongly conversative, the conservative candidate routinely wins with 60+ percent of the vote. Then there's me, not conservative. It doesn't matter what I vote, or if I vote at all, it will not affect the outcome one bit. My vote (if it is not conservative) does not count.

There is more to it than that: Say I wanted to vote for the Green Party. At the national level it is not the number of votes for the Green Party that count, but how many riding they won by getting the majority vote in those. Unfortunately for them (and those that believe in the Green Party) they have only won one riding to date. They may get around 5% of the national vote, but they only get that one seat in parliament, and not what would be in proportion to the vote they receive. Representation at the national (federal) level is not proportional to the vote at all!

This is a system that favors the big parties (in essence just the two; the conservatives and the liberals), and cripples the small parties. It is a system where the principle of one person, one vote, does not work that way. It is inherently undemocratic.

As for me, in the conservative riding I find myself in, my options are limited. I could vote for the party I believe in, and in a very real way 'waste' my vote. Alternatively I could vote for the liberals, them being the only party that maybe, just maybe, has a chance at beating the conservatives in my riding, so my vote would have some effect. Neither is an appealing scenario.

Canada got to this unfortunate form of democracy because it inherited the English political system. Much like another very large country on this continent did, and that country even claims to be the world's example in democracy (which it is not). It would be good if Canada took a look outside its borders, at the systems in other strongly democratic countries (northern Europe comes to mind). There is a great deal of room for improvement here: A system that distributes parliament seats proportionally, by number of overall votes, would certainly be much more democratic (and the party with the most seats would get to form the government, as it is done in many other democratic countries).

The smaller parties here are in favor of election reform. Of course the big parties object to it, since the current system works very much in their favor.

I am not going to hold my breath, but hopefully the politicians will eventually see reason, and make Canada's democracy truly democratic!

-RoB-

[Ralph Day]

An excellent Civics 101 class Rob. Even for those who live here.

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

Thanks Ralph! :nuts:

So how can we change this...
Make Canada an even better country!

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

Sounds a bit sad, Rob, especially for minorities. Just briefly the Australian Federal system (states can vary) has a two tier system, the House of Representatives (Lower House) and Senate (Upper House).

Lower House has seats roughly proportional to the number of voters but this has a fairly broad spread of numbers. The Upper House is, depending on your political ideology, a "states" house, a house of review, "the unrepresentative swill" (according to former prime minister Paul Keating) or a roadblock to progress ie implementation of all the policies of a particular political party.

Each state has an allocation of 12 seats in the senate, half of which have a 3 year life and the other half a 6 year life. The "new" senate takes effect in the June following the last election. The territories (eg Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory) have 2 senate seats.

Preferential Voting: To gain a seat in the Lower House, a candidate must achieve a majority of votes - ie 50% of the votes plus 1. To achieve this the system has "preferential voting". ie you are offered a number of candidates, assigned in random order on the ballot paper. There are three (really two) "major" parties, the Australian Labor Party, which as the name implies springs from the union movement, and used to be regarded as "left wing", the Liberal Party, which supports (and is supported by) big business, mining, etc, and the National Party which draws support from rural areas. Although seeming to be separate the Libs and Nats generally form a Coalition, and swap preferences, or even sign a legally binding agreement to form the "Coalition government" or LNP.

There is a Greens party, plus other independents or minor parties.

The preferential system enables the voter to choose a preferred "minor" candidate, but also number in ascending order other parties in order. In the final count, if a voter chose a certain minor candidate, but another candidate won the majority (as above) then that's it, the count ends there. However, if after the first count, there is no clear majority, the votes for the candidate with the lowest number are recounted but using the second preference. Effectively the weakest candidate is removed from the ballot paper and it's as if they were never on the paper initially. If after the first preference count there is STILL not a majority candidate, the next weakest candidate is removed and their vote redistributed and so on, until finally a majority candidate emerges as the winner.

Unlike "first past the post" voting (as in the Canadian system) it is not possible to elect a candidate who the majority of voters did not vote for.

Whilst not impossible for a minority to get up, the Lower House seats are usually won by the "major" parties.

Although it is not formally recognised in the Constitution, government is customarily formed by the party which wins the greatest number of seats in the Lower House. This has led (on several occasions at both Federal and State levels) to minority government, where a party doesn't have a majority of seats, but can negotiate a "deal" with minor parties or independents.

Further, the Prime Minister of the country is NOT elected by the voters, but by a majority of members of Parliament in a particular party. In effect the Prime Minister is simply the leader of their party in the house. And if you have kept an eye on Oz politics, we've had 5 prime ministers in 6 years, with the voters having very little say in who the PM is.

From Wikipedia "Australian Senate":

The Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Chapter I, Part II of the Australian Constitution. There are a total of 76 senators; 12 senators are elected from each state, regardless of population. Each of the two autonomous internal territories (the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory) have two senators

The number of Senate candidates can be quite intimidating (sometimes over 80 on the ballot paper). The candidates are listed by parties, the order determined by the parties before the election, but the columns are ordered randomly. Voting is on a state wide basis. In order to achieve a senate seat, a candidate must achieve a "quota" ie 100% / 12 seats ie 16%. If the first candidate in a party's group of candidates achieves a "quota" then any further votes for that candidate are transferred to the next candidate for that party. (Parties usually put up more candidates than seats, so some of the candidates are put into "unwinnable" positions - usually 4th-5th.

However, because of this system it means that is quite possible for minor parties (eg the Greens) to actually get a voice in parliament, because legislation has to pass BOTH houses of Parliament (sometimes it will pass the Lower House, be amended in the Upper House, return to the Reps and then the Senate again.) Thus a party with a tenuous hold on power in the LH has to think very carefully about how to get legislation passed by the UH.

The major parties dislike this intensely, because they want supreme power, but don't always have it.

One of the most interesting happenings has concerned the Senate vote. Below is an image of a Senate Ballot Paper.

https://independentforum.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/fig-3.jpg

You will see there are TWO ways of choosing candidates. Firstly, the voter can number "below the line" which means they number EVERY candidate from 1 to whatever and thus have their preferences counted. Secondly, parties can agree that a set distribution of preferences can be agreed upon with the Electoral Commission, and a voter can simply tick a single box "above the line" and their preferences will be distributed accordingly by the AEC.

In the last election there was much "preference whispering" and absolutely miniscule parties were elected into the Senate, sometimes on less than 1% of the primary vote. :eek:


http://morningmail.org/senate-voting-reform/

However, this only gave the twisted result if people were too confused (or lazy) to mark all the boxes themselves. Personally I spent an hour printing out a "dummy" ballot paper and working out where I wanted my preferences to go. And by starting at the last number and working my way backwards, I was able to ensure that I numbered every box. I spent 16 years in the army defending the Oz brand of democracy, so I didn't consider it too onerous a task.

[Andy Rhody]

Haven't been around here for a while. Glad I dropped in.

Rob said:

"Canada got to this unfortunate form of democracy because it inherited the English political system. Much like another very large country on this continent did, and that country even claims to be the world's example in democracy (which it is not)."

Guess he's talking about down here in the USA LOL! Yeah, I know we can get pretty arrogant sometimes about us being the best at Democracy and most everything else. I sometimes get a bit embarrassed. (example: Our insurance based healthcare system and gun laws.) Anyway, an example of what Rod's seems to be talking about down here may be the way our Presedential system works with the "Electorial College" where each state has X amount of electorial votes based on population. So if Pennsylvania has 10 million people and one candidate wins by only 5 votes but Pennsylvania has 25 electorial votes, winner takes all. For our state senators and representatives in Congress, we still seem to go by the popular vote. I wouldn't say that the USA is as "Parlimentry" as England. I only had one Political Science course and the was over 40 years ago.

[Rob Beckers]

The preferential system enables the voter to choose a preferred "minor" candidate, but also number in ascending order other parties in order. In the final count, if a voter chose a certain minor candidate, but another candidate won the majority (as above) then that's it, the count ends there. However, if after the first count, there is no clear majority, the votes for the candidate with the lowest number are recounted but using the second preference. Effectively the weakest candidate is removed from the ballot paper and it's as if they were never on the paper initially. If after the first preference count there is STILL not a majority candidate, the next weakest candidate is removed and their vote redistributed and so on, until finally a majority candidate emerges as the winner.

Unlike "first past the post" voting (as in the Canadian system) it is not possible to elect a candidate who the majority of voters did not vote for.


Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is is IMO just a variation on the "first past the post". How much your vote counts still depends on where you live. For example, if my own riding here in Canada used the Australian system, say I wanted to vote for the Green Party. That would be no. 1 on my ballot. Now, following the "ABC" principle (Anything But Conservatives) I would fill in my other votes 'strategically', with the Liberal Party candidate getting no. 2 on my ballot, and the NDP becomes no. 3. Lastly, the Conservative Party candidate gets no. 4.

When it comes time to count, this has the same problem our current system has: The Conservatives win this riding with 60+% of the vote. Under the Australian system that would be the end of that; it doesn't really matter what I vote for, it doesn't count at the national level.

Let's say Conservative doesn't get the majority, so we get into the "instant run-off" phase where the second choices are counted. The Conservative candidate will most likely win this too, since in a riding like mine they start off with a far higher base number, now getting people's second choices added. Saying that no candidate can win with a minority of votes is a technicality: Those second and third choices people put on the ballet are not 'choices', they do not represent people's preference but are more about who they don't want to win.

The system of 'districts', 'ridings' etc. where there is a winner that moves on to count at the national level is what is at the root of the problems: It introduces a granularity that should not be there. A vote should directly count at the national level to ensure that each vote carries the same weight, it should not depend on the place that you live.

I am not against having a local representative at the national level. There are merits to that, though in today's world that has largely been hollowed out here in Canada. People by-and-large don't vote for a particular candidate, they vote for the party of that candidate. My own representative for example has become the prime minister's right-hand man and I can't imagine he even has the time to concern himself with local matters. Still, what we need is a disconnect between the outcome at the national level, for the formation of government, coalitions, and seats in parliament, vs. the representation of a riding at the national government. Maybe more of a "governor" system as they have in the US, where there's a representative (voted in the riding) that functions as the liason between the people of that riding and government.

By the way, I like Australia's mandatory voting requirement! Something I believe goes a long way to make people more engaged in their own government. We could use that here.

As to the "upper house", "senate", or whatever it is called in various countries: Canada has serious issues there too (and those have been finally recognized over the last year or so, thanks to a number of scandals). I firmly believe a bi-chamberal system is a good thing, it keeps the government-of-the-day from being able to run completely off the rails (and make drastic changes to the country). It offers a checks-and-balances approach to politics, a division of power. Ideally this would be the "wise old men/women" that are non-partisan that focus on governing and not politics, but I don't think we'll be able to get politics completely out of this. Still, right now in Canada the senate is highly politicized with senators appointed for life by the prime minister. Not a good system!

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this is is IMO just a variation on the "first past the post".

I'm not sure how you arrive at that view. In our Lower House, a candidate cannot gain a seat unless they gain a majority of the votes, what we call Two Party Preferred or TPP. Perhaps this explanation from the Australian Electoral Commission's website may help to clarify.

http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/counting/hor_count.htm




How much your vote counts still depends on where you live. For example, if my own riding here in Canada used the Australian system, say I wanted to vote for the Green Party. That would be no. 1 on my ballot. Now, following the "ABC" principle (Anything But Conservatives) I would fill in my other votes 'strategically', with the Liberal Party candidate getting no. 2 on my ballot, and the NDP becomes no. 3. Lastly, the Conservative Party candidate gets no. 4.

When it comes time to count, this has the same problem our current system has: The Conservatives win this riding with 60+% of the vote. Under the Australian system that would be the end of that; it doesn't really matter what I vote for, it doesn't count at the national level.

Here each seat for the Lower House has (roughly) the same number of voters. There are other factors such as commonality of interest, physical size of the electorate, and every few years we have a "redistribution" which adjusts the boundaries of each seat. This can cause great agitation amongst the politicians as, depending upon past election results, a seat can be seen as a "safe" seat for one or other party, and a redistribution can alter the "notional" political base.

Let's say Conservative doesn't get the majority, so we get into the "instant run-off" phase where the second choices are counted. The Conservative candidate will most likely win this too, since in a riding like mine they start off with a far higher base number, now getting people's second choices added. Saying that no candidate can win with a minority of votes is a technicality: Those second and third choices people put on the ballet are not 'choices', they do not represent people's preference but are more about who they don't want to win.

Perhaps it's really just a point of view thing. I see the preferential voting system as saying "If you can't get your first choice of candidate elected then who would you have instead." (If you don't like any of the other candidates then you can make an informal vote, but I'd like to use my vote "against" those I don't like.)

In Australia the political divide seems to be such that in many cases, although the conservative candidate may win the largest percentage of votes (but NOT a majority) the "left" tend to give the preferences to each other - eg Green voters will prefer Labor second and Labor voters tend to give their preferences to the Greens. (That's a VERY broad brush approach however.) Thus in many seats although Labor may achieve a smaller primary (non-majority) vote than the conservatives, when the preferences are redistributed, the Labor (or Greens) candidate achieves a majority overall. But it also applies the other way, when the Liberal party stands a candidate in a seat with a National Party candidate, the Liberal candidate and National will swap preferences with each other, so the Liberal (or National) candidate may poll fewer votes on his/her own account, but will still win the seat.

But as I mentioned previously, it's not unknown for a Greens candidate to win a seat, especially if as happens the notional political base of the seat is such that one of the major parties will not even bother standing a candidate because they've no chance of winning.

In South Australia, Senator Nick Xenophon is an Independent candidate who is so popular that he was won a Senate seat without needing anybody else's preferences.

One of the merits of this preferential system is that even though a major party may win a seat, the primary vote of a non-major candidate was so strong that the seat itself becomes "marginal" and the winning party has to then deal with the fact that there majority is so slim that they could be tossed out of office at the next election, so they have to listen to what those people who DIDN'T support them say.**

This can (and has) resulted in members of Parliament "crossing the floor" and voting with the other side on individual pieces of legislation. Intra-party discipline is usually pretty strong, and to break ranks can result in loss of pre-selection by individual branches of the party at the next election. But that can be a two-edged sword, because if a party goes too far and starts losing support in the house, new political blocs can arise. Cf the Australia Democrats, who for many years held a formidable balance of power - their catchcry "Keeping the Bastards Honest"! They are now a spent force due to internal disagreements but give an example of how fickle public support can be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Democrats



One of the constant complaints which arise here is that a result gets thrown up that sees one party may gain the higher number of votes overall nationwide, but wins fewer seats in the parliament. However, since this is a fairly common occurrence, it cuts both ways, and to me it's just a case of sour grapes, since that is the way the system was created and you have to live with it.

... Ideally this would be the "wise old men/women"* that are non-partisan that focus on governing and not politics, but I don't think we'll be able to get politics completely out of this. Still, right now in Canada the senate is highly politicized with senators appointed for life by the prime minister. Not a good system!


*Sometimes I am sharply reminded that the words "senator" and "senile" are both derived from the same roots.

I think "true" democracy will arise when we are able to put our voices directly to the representatives by use of computers and the internet, but I can see politicians being very hostile to that because they will be the losing power to tell what is good for us, according to them. But I have a system which I think might give power to the people.

**NOTE: Somebody must be monitoring this thread, because even as I write the Government is trying to cut a deal with the independent members about the budget. Oh dear!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-20/federal-parliament-live-blog-october-20/6868002

[Rob Beckers]

**NOTE: Somebody must be monitoring this thread, because even as I write the Government is trying to cut a deal with the independent members about the budget. Oh dear!


HaHaHa!! :laugh:
I'm sure the NSA's filter software is making overtime; there must be dozens of words and phrases in this discussion setting of alarm bells there!

OK. Back to the topic at hand. So I do understand the Australian system correctly (I think). While I agree it is a vast improvement over the single-vote winner-take-all system we have here, it is still a winner-take-all system via the backdoor, and depending on where you live your vote may or may not count for much.

What I would like to see is a system where the granularity is not at the district/riding level, but at the national level. Each vote is counted nationally and determines the distribution of seats in parliament.

New Zealand seems to have an interesting hybrid that partially retains local representation (ie. ridings/districts) while making the distribution of seats in parliament follow much closer to the overall popular vote. What's more, they put automatic reviews in place every so many years with mechanisms to correct inequalities if they are found. I like that a lot.

There's also the "deep end" I would not want to see a country fall off of: For example in California they have taken democracy to the absurd, and more importantly, the ungovernable. Sometimes limits are a good thing.

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

Yesterday was election day, and the results are in: The Liberal Party won a majority, actually by quite the landslide. That means they don't need anyone else to form a government. The bad part is that parties in Canada have a tendency to get "drunk on power" when they have a majority, a minority government tends to work better as far as effective government goes.

The Conservative Party lost quite a few seats (of course), though they are firmly in second place. The biggest losers this time around are the New Democrats (NDP). Lots of soul-searching today why that would happen, but the simple truth is that a large part is due to people simply voting "strategically" where they realize an NDP vote has no value under the winner-takes-all system. To get rid of the conservatives many voted liberal regardless of conviction.

As to my own riding; there is no unseating the Conservative candidate here. He won, though by a very slim margin this time around (just 47% instead of the usual 60+%, while the Liberals are nipping on his heals with 43%).

The parties that lost the most, as with any election here, are the small ones. For example, the Green Party received 3.4% of the vote, they only got 1 seat out of 338 (0.3%).

Let's hope more people are interested in electoral reform!

-RoB-

[Rob Beckers]

To give a few more numbers that illustrate just how unfair the current system is:


Liberal Party: 39.5% of popular vote - 54.4% of seats in parlement (!!)
Conservative Party: 31.9% of popular vote - 29.3% of seats in parlement
New Democrats: 19.7% of popular vote - 13.0% of seats in parlement
Green Party: 3.4% of popular vote - 0.3% of seats in parlement (!!)

This comes on top of what I already mentioned, of one's vote having more or less value depending on the riding one lives in. Of people voting not for the party they believe in, but to get rid of the party they don't believe in.

Time for change...

-RoB-

[Joe Blake]

Careful what you wish for. ;)

In 1922 the Parliament in the state of Queensland abolished its Upper House.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queensland_Legislative_Council

It's led to one of the most corrupt governments in the history of the country during the Bjelke-Petersen era, with the National Party-Liberal coalition gaining 21% of the popular vote while gaining a majority of seats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joh_Bjelke-Petersen#Gerrymander

The situation has been slightly improved but without an upper house there is nothing to stop any government doing whatever it likes.

[Rob Beckers]

Very true Joe!
I'm not wishing to abolish the upper house (or senate as it's called here). Quite the opposite, I believe a bi-chamberal system with a parliament and senate is a good thing to keep politicians under control. What I've written in this thread is about the parliament; how the current system is not very democratic, and that is what I would like to see change.

There is quite a movement afoot here to change the senate though, after a number of scandals that highlighted just how poorly that functioned, and how much some of its members are abusing their privileges. Currently our senate is appointed, any time there is a vacancy the prime minister appoints new members that serve for life. There's no election for the senate, there are no requirements, it's simply a pay-off for the prime minister's buddies and a very cushy job!

So, change is needed for the senate, but I don't want to see it abolished. It's good to have a (hopefully) independent chamber putting a limits to the power of parliament.

Democracy is a very fragile thing, and not a "stable system". There are many factors at play to corrupt democracy, not in the least because 'politics' in the way it's played by the large political parties today is not to the benefit of democracy, but all about finding its loopholes and shortcuts to pervert the system for the party's (or in some cases personal) gain...

-RoB-

[David Essam]

Electoral theory is an interesting debate, the difficulty being that as soon as there are more than two political parties, all systems are flawed, you just have to choose which flaws in the system you prefer living with.

You've made a very good case pointing out the flaw in first past the post that it leaves small geographically diifuse minorities unrepresented, I agree that this is "unfair", but the alternatives are also "unfair" in other ways, it isn't a completely clear cut argument.

To balance things, here are a couple of problems you would introduce if you change to a fully proportional system.

It becomes almost impossible for regional (eg ethnic) parties to gain national representation, leaving places such as Wales, N Ireland, and possibly Quebec in your case suddenly in the position that someone like the Green party (or UKIP) was in prior to the change. Persons in such regions will rightly find this just as objectionable, with equal justification.

Now let's look at the "representitive" government that typically results in a proportional system, usually you get two large minority parties who typically oppose each other on everything, and a small third group who actually decide which of the big parties wins on every issue or bit of legislation that comes along, which upsets everyone, or results in elections every 3 months like Italy used to have.....

Alternatively the parties disappear into back-rooms and stitch together a "program" that bears no resemblence to any party manifesto & is actually the best deal the small minority could ransom the bigger parties to. Nobody actually voted for the result, and most voted against it.

This IS now fair, you have dissatisfied absolutely everyone, it's analagous to Dad settling which of two take outs 2 sons and 2 daughters want to eat, by serving stew.

FPP isn't fair, no system is, it's one saving grace is that it satisfies the biggest minority, instead of satisfting nobody.

Personally I'll take having a government I voted against sometimes, in return for sometimes having one I voted FOR, it beats hell out of never ever getting what anyone voted for. If nobody ever gets what they want, you might as well dispense with elections and appoint a tyrant or dictator at random.

I know many countries manage with PR based systems, many also burn coal to generate power, just because it works doesn't make either the best solution.

My two pennies worth.