The electoral reform conversation has been going around, and proportional representation fans frequently take to my Twitter feed to harass me about the subject, and we usually end at the impasse where they refuse to deal with our system as it exists in order to comprehend its logic. Regardless, there are few voices out in the mainstream in favour of the status quo option, but I was pleased to see that the Ottawa Citizen’s editorial board wrote a defence of the status quo. While some of it needed a bit more work (particularly in how they went about describing how the current system can “skew” results – it really doesn’t if you read those results properly and don’t import the logical fallacies of popular vote figures), but the nub of their argument is the most important – that our current system is particularly valuable in that it lets the electorate throw the bums out on a regular basis. It’s often said that in Canada, we don’t elect governments – we defeat them. And every few years, we get tired of who is in power, and we punish them and elect someone new who will clean up the mess left behind (and really, most of those parties need the defeats to let them clean house, re-energise, and think about where they went wrong. Sometimes, it takes them a couple of elections to do just that). What the editorial didn’t address very specifically is that in many PR countries, there really isn’t this ability to throw the bums out. Instead, they tend to be dominated by a central party who remains in power for decades, while they simply shuffle up their coalition partners when they need something. This was certainly the case in Germany, and while we don’t know what a PR-landscape in Canada would look like, it is a distinct possibility as there would be more incentive for small and fringe parties who exist to start agitating for their own power and influence within a coalition (as that would be the likeliest way to form future governments in what looks to be a continued sense of minority parliaments). As more small parties grow, the larger ones will likely fracture as there will be less incentive for the interests that they contain would stick around when they could gain outsized influence as a smaller party vying for that coalition power. Add to that, if we adopt a PR system that employs party lists, that makes it even harder for problem MPs to be tossed aside, as their fortunes are in the hands of the party itself, not the electorate. While emotional arguments about perceived fairness and “wasted” votes tends to rule the day, accountability should be a feature that requires greater consideration. Most other systems can’t provide it the way ours can, and that remains one of the reasons why I remain with team status quo on our electoral system.

Good reads:

• Justin Trudeau has named former Toronto police chief Bill Blair as the point man on the marijuana legalization file. The mayor or Toronto approves.
• Trudeau also appointed MP David McGuinty to lead the way on creating the new parliamentary oversight committee on national security.
• Ralph Goodale wants Canada to be a world leader in anti-radicalization; he’s also promising more resources for the RCMP.
• John McCallum says that the parent and grandparent sponsorship cap will be raised from 5000 to 10,000 this year.
• Bill Morneau promises more open pre-budget consultation meetings (seeing as the finance committee still isn’t up and running).
• Maclean’s has a really great profile of defence minister Harjit Sajjan.
• Kady O’Malley lays out the conversation we need to have before we start getting wrapped up in electoral reform discussions.
• Andrew Coyne wonders about the double standards applied to dealings with China as opposed to Saudi Arabia.

Odds and ends:

Here’s a rather harrowing tale of a Parks Canada employee who was harassed by his employer after suggesting that park wardens be armed.