Roundup: Asking for an electoral pony

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It was entirely expected to happened, and lo and behold, Nathan Cullen stepped in front of some microphones today to cherry-pick the results of the MyDemocracy survey to declare that it told him just what he wanted to hear. Or rather, the whole survey was a failure except for the one table that proved his point.

https://twitter.com/pmlagasse/status/824378237853769728

That single table was the index that said that Canadians want parties to work together. Obviously, that means proportional representation, right? Never mind the other responses that disprove that with Canadians saying that they want simple ballots and having single parties to hold to account when things go wrong – you know, things that are more hallmarks of a First-Past-the-Post system. Of course, PR advocates have a long history of hearing what they want to hear, like how our friends at Fair Vote Canada very creatively interpreted the Liberals’ platform promise about ending FPTP to “prove” that it obviously means a PR system and only a PR system. Because that’s what they wanted to hear. And then there was Cullen’s rhetoric around it. “The idea that the Liberals, having heard all this evidence in favour of proportional systems, would then turn their backs on that promise and try to bring in a ranked ballot, alternative vote system, would be the equivalent of nuclear war in politics,” he said. That’s right. Nuclear war. Cripes.

Here’s the thing about the whole “Canadians want parties to cooperate” thing. It’s like moms and apple pie. Of course people want parties to cooperate. That’s a no-brainer. The problem of course is that decisions need to be taken, and people need to be held to account for those decisions. Our system is very much built on accountability, because that’s really the whole point of parliament. It’s to hold the government to account for the decision that it makes. When parties cooperate to make decisions, it makes accountability harder because when everyone is accountable then nobody is accountable, which is a problem for our system of government. Add to that, under our system of Responsible Government, it requires competition between parties for that power to govern. The tension between government and opposition is crucial not only for the exchange of ideas, but to both ensure that there is accountability and a suitable replacement waiting in the wings if the government should lose confidence. You can’t do that if you’re all working together.

The other part about insisting that “Canadians want parties to work together” is that it’s a wish that has about as much depth as people wanting a pony. It assumes that there are no trade-offs or downsides, and that you can simply ride or pet that pony at your leisure and not have to worry about feeding it, housing it, cleaning it, or shovelling out the barn. It’s far less glamourous, and sometimes ponies are mean, and they kick and bite. Sure, a voting system that you think will encourage parties to work together sounds like sunshine and rainbows, but it also means smaller parties holding larger ones hostage to try and gain outsized influence on decisions, and the inability for a government to speak with one voice, which is another one of those crucial things in our system that helps keep things accountable. So sure, people will answer on a survey that they want cooperation. It sounds like a wonderful thing. Reality of course is different, and people need to be very aware of that.

Good reads:

  • Back on his “listening tour,” Justin Trudeau reassured Saskatchewan that a carbon tax won’t adversely affect it.
  • The Conservatives are holding their caucus retreat in Quebec City, focused on staying unified when it comes to holding the PM to account.
  • Current and former privacy commissioners want rules for when the government can monitor your social media.
  • A former Mexican congressman warns that while Trump says he loves Canada now, he’ll eventually turn on us too so we need to beware and not turn on our allies.
  • Japan’s ambassador to Canada says that we should still ratify the TPP to put pressure on the Trump administration.
  • Here’s a look at how Trudeau’s coffee-shop and town hall tour is helping to regenerate his brand.
  • Ruh-roh! It looks like a Liberal MP used one of those big novelty cheques in one of the improper ways that they criticised the Conservatives for doing.
  • Public opinion research shows that applying for CPP is a frustrating experience.
  • Apparently, Canada is also being used as a tax haven because of lax laws around corporate ownership.
  • Ruth Ellen Brosseau won’t be running for the NDP leadership, in case you were curious.
  • Kevin O’Leary instructed his campaign team not to respond to attacks from other candidates (like Lisa Raitt and her “Stop Kevin O’Leary” website).

Odds and ends:

Here’s an explainer about the executive orders that Trump is signing.

3 thoughts on “Roundup: Asking for an electoral pony”

  2. Aside from some neglect of several best-practices in on-line surveying, the chief flaw in the MyDemocracy survey was that it was not conducted last March, before the Committee convened. Any beginning student of decision-making and problem-solving will know that effective problem-solving begins with an effective identification of just exactly what the problem IS. Once armed with a specification of the problem, the search space for viable solutions is nicely narrowed. This is, in fact, the difference between experts and novices in any domain: experts are able to quickly specify the problem that needs solving, and then select from a smaller set of relevant actions. That’s how Connor McDavid can figure out what shot to take or pass to make in an eyeblink.

    Unfortunately, we started hearing from governance and electoral system experts without first specifying what it was that Canadians who were lured by the promise of “last election via FPTP” felt needed fixing. Naturally, with a whole list of pros and cons of this system and that, it would be impossible to formulate a viable referendum question. Maryam Monsef was partly correct in her frustration with the Committee’s report, but she would have had much less cause to be frustrated if she would have led with the MyDemocracy survey, and narrowed down the things to be fixed, *before* the Committee met to discuss viable solutions.

    I’m personally of the view, that much of the lure of the elimination of FPTP was really a frustration with the *behaviour* of a government that had a technical majority but declined to consult very much. Is the fix for that a *structural* one or an attitudinal one? Would a change in the structure of the system dictating who gets to Parliament necessarily provide the *behavioural* change that people want? Parties that win crystal clear majorities can still be consultative, and coalitions can still act like jerks.

    The MyDemocracy survey has clearly indicated that a behavioural change is desired. Perhaps if we had started out with that clarification, and narrowing down of the problem to be solved, we could have gotten a little closer to a viable solution, or at least eliminated those structural-change possibilities that we deemed irrelevant to the objectives, and formed a decent referendum question.

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