File Photo (Image Credit: Mel Rothenburger)

By Mel Rothenburger

Armchair Mayor

ROTHENBURGER: Proportional representation shows up again like an uninvited guest

Sep 25, 2021 | 6:41 AM

LIKE AN UNINVITED house guest, proportional representation keeps showing up and wanting to move in. It’s happening again.

It was inevitable, perhaps, that the losers in the federal election would whine about how they deserved better and would have gotten it if only Canada had a pro rep (prop rep, PR, etc.) system for electing governments.

The old “35 per cent of the vote shouldn’t mean 100 per cent of the power” and so on. It’s not quite as catchy when minority governments have been chosen but they persist with the notion that total popular vote should be totally tied to the number of seats a party gets.

It’s voodoo math, as I’ve called it in the past. It’s been studied to death. British Columbians have rejected it no less than three times in provincial votes. Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Alberta have all studied pro rep and either turned it down or put it on the shelf, and Justin Trudeau once promised it but changed his mind when he took a closer look.

Local NDP candidate Bill Sundhu wasted no time complaining about first past the post (FPTP) and praising proportional representation after his Monday night defeat. Neither did Green Party candidate Iain Currie.

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They both echo the positions of their parties but their quest is supported by the likes of Fair Vote Canada, its affiliate Fair Vote Kamloops and the Council of Canadians.

Yes, pro rep has been defeated multiple times but they remain unrepentant and unbowed. They continue to lobby for pro rep with postcard campaigns to Justin Trudeau and such. Dreams of a national assembly on electoral ‘reform’ refuse to die.

The push for pro rep was present though not prominent during the election campaign, with the Council of Canadians urging voters to demand that candidates support a citizens assembly.

The problems with proportional representation have been well defined: higher costs, endless coalitions, perpetual instability and government that’s dependent on deal making among parties, the sort of deal making that can give fringe parties a disproportionate amount of power.

(Pro rep requires a threshold — typically five per cent of the total popular vote — that parties must cross before they’re entitled to seats. The People’s Party of Canada achieved that threshold last Monday and would have been entitled to 21 seats, according to projections by political science wonk Philippe J. Fournier. Under other simulations, the results differ depending on the version of PR that’s used.)

Then there’s the issue, in PR, around who actually gets elected and who gets appointed from party lists. In the mixed member proportional (MMN) option, a form of prop rep proposed in the last B.C. referendum on electoral change, 40 per cent of members would have been appointed by the parties, not by voters.

Pro rep proponents insist their system is simple but it’s actually complex and almost unfathomable with its shuffling around of electoral boundaries, multiple-member ridings and ballot options. Check out the BC-STV option if you don’t believe me.

But the greatest failure of pro rep is the claim that it’s more democratic than first-past-the-post. I’ve written a lot about this over the years, including a rather eloquent explanation (if I do say so myself) in a column called ‘Don’t be fooled by the hocus pocus of pro rep math’ in 2018.

The argument against pro rep begins with the very argument it makes in favour of itself — “40 per cent of the votes should equal 40 per cent of the seats and 40 per cent of the power” and all its variations.

Pro rep, as I explained in that column, is an at-large or total-popular-vote system that centralizes electoral power at the expense of local communities.

FPTP, on the other hand, puts the power to choose representation in the hands of local voters within their constituencies. It amounts to many elections in one.

At-large systems work with certain demographics and populations but they aren’t made for countries like Canada with vast geographical areas and a rural-urban split in population.

To quote myself, “PR puts the power base in big population centres. The at-large system of government is inappropriate for a major jurisdiction like B.C. In order to retain ridings at all it must resort to complex combinations of elected and appointed representatives.

“The First Past the Post ward system is straight-forward. Wards, of course, are called ridings, constituencies or electoral districts at the provincial level. We usually associate ward systems with civic elections and I’m not a fan of them for any but the largest cities. In the case of a sprawling province with widely diverse economies, cultures and aspirations, however, FPTP works….”

PR proponents believe everybody should be a winner. That’s not what democracy is about. The majority doesn’t rule in pro rep. In FPTP, it does, while protecting local voices, and that’s as it should be.

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Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.