NDP MP Nathan Cullen penned an op-ed for National Newswatch over the weekend, and it’s a total hot mess. Hot. Mess. Where to begin, where to begin? Let’s start with the opening paragraph:
One of the recurring conversations I’ve had over the years, with folks of all political leanings, is the condition of our democracy and how our voting system doesn’t reflect their voices at the national level.
Demonstrably false, since what we vote for are who to fill individual seats. People who are elected to those seats are the reflection of the wishes of that riding. Ergo, our voting system actually is reflective of voices at the national level. The entire second paragraph is a gong show:
It’s not a new charge that the first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system too often produces false majorities. Our current voting system is broken. Too many Canadians simply feel their vote does not count. Something is deeply wrong if our very voting system encourages people to tune out of our democratic process.
Nope, nope, nope, and nope. There is no such thing as a “false majority” because the popular vote is a logical fallacy. You can’t extend 338 separate and simultaneous elections, mash them together and come up with a figure when you don’t have the same number of parties running in all ridings, nor does it reflect the fact that we elect individual seats, not parties. The voting system is not broken – it accurately reflects that we elect individual seats in individual ridings. Canadians feel their vote doesn’t count because of sore loserism, and apparently votes only count when the person you voted for wins, which is childish and wrong. Our voting system does not encourage people to tune out of our democratic process – our appalling lack of civic literacy does. From there, Cullen goes on to defend his idea of a “proportional” Commons committee to consult on electoral reform, except it’s a) not proportional, b) it’s designed to play up his desire for proportional representation (if the committee can be proportional…) and c) it’s designed to game the process, while he professes new ways of doing things. From there, Cullen meanders into a defence of the NDP as “progressive opposition,” which sounds more defensive by the day as the Liberals continue to outflank the party on the left, and finally, the piece moves into a defence of Thomas Mulcair as party leader, with Cullen professing support – you know, to look like he’s not angling to replace him should Mulcair happen to fall well short of expectations at the upcoming leadership review vote. After all, the federal NDP have a culture of it being unseemly to not be in complete and total lockstep at all times when the cameras are on. So there you have it – a complete hot mess. What is that old journalistic expression? Get me rewrite.
https://twitter.com/jameslhsprague/status/699297692837666816
Good reads:
- Bill Morneau is expected to release new fiscal projections today, with the budget still about a month away.
- Rachel Notley is mulling some kind of a demand for a bailout of the oil industry to do what exactly during a supply glut? I don’t understand the logic here.
- Conservatives are leaping all over tech sector demands that the Liberals halt their plans to tax stock options.
- Business groups are concerned that the influx of Syrian refugees will crowd out spaces for needed economic immigrants.
- Catherine McKenna wants to have a discussion about a minimum national carbon price, but Brad Wall continues to cry bloody murder.
- It looks like language hidden in C-51 allows CSE to become a “virtuous hacker” for CSIS without need of a warrant.
- Nits are being picked as to how this government and the last are characterising what is and is not a combat mission.
- There appears to have been some chaos on the industry committee around the invitation of the minister to speak to them.
- It sounds like the Bloc are going to wait until 2017 to choose a new leader, but they are likely used to being effectively leaderless at this point.
- There are more questions about the justice minister’s husband’s lobbying activities, despite consultation with the Ethics Commissioner.
Odds and ends:
Here’s a look at the Glen Gould piano at Rideau Hall
Old journalists and lobbyists reminisce about the closure of Hy’s.
https://twitter.com/stephaniecarvin/status/701550137412337665
https://twitter.com/stephaniecarvin/status/701550349950259201
Dale, your entire rebuttal to Nathan Cullen is basically “the system elects representatives to individual seats, and it does that just fine, so there’s nothing wrong with the system”. But it is exactly that narrow purpose, and evaluation criterion, that you ascribe to the electoral system that is out of touch with voters’ priorities. It would be laughable to deny that far more voters care who their prime minister is than who their MP is. This is not because they’ve lost sight of how democracy works, it’s because they’re rational people, and the government has far more effect on their fates as individuals, as communities and as a nation than the local MP. The essence of democracy is populations deciding who governs them, not who sends them little fridge calendars.
It is perfectly reasonable for a person to want to vote for a certain party to form government. And perfectly reasonable, if said party is in contention to win nationally but doesn’t stand a chance in that person’s riding, for them to feel arbitrarily left out of the national decision. It is also perfectly reasonable to want to vote against a certain party, and reasonable to feel the system has let you down if your attempt to do so results in a vote split in that party’s favour. Our voting system was developed at a time when caucus discipline was not a given and responsible government was a concept under construction. The NDP is not unique among modern parties in focusing on central messaging and the leader’s personal image; that is just what Canadian politics has become, and the voting system hasn’t changed to reflect that.
I’m not writing to support any one model of electoral reform; they all have their features and flaws. But to say the system works because it does what it does is circular logic that doesn’t contribute to any deeper examination of the quality of our democracy.