Vancouver Courier
for January 21, 1998

Prime Minister Jean Chretien, in 1993, promised that the first item on the agenda after he was elected was Proportional Representation (hereinafter called simply PR). Preston Manning and the Reform Party are for it. So is Tony Blair.

Israel and Italy have it while Germany and New Zealand have it in part.

What is it and how does it work?

The best way to get started on this crucial subject is to read Nick Loenen's book, Citizenship and Democracy. Nick is a former MLA and this is his master's thesis in book form. It is scholarly and an excellent read.

Pure PR is the abandonment of the constituency and, more importantly, the "first past the post" system where, most often, the winning candidate wins with less than 50% of the votes. Under our present system it also means, as B.C. found in 1996, that a party can win an election with fewer votes than the runner-up.

Under pure PR, parties put up lists of candidates in order of their importance to the party. After the election, parties are allotted seats in accordance with the % of the vote they received. What this means is that the way the province or country votes is accurately reflected in the makeup of Parliament.

This has some drawbacks. If Screaming Lord Sutch and his Raving Loony Monster Party were to get, say, 3% of the votes (which is about what the Rhinos used to get) they would have 9 members of Parliament or two members of the Legislature. That's the problem with Israel's system and other countries have established a threshold - usually 5% - before a party is entitled to any seats.

The great evil PR seeks to eliminate is government by a minority party made up of MPs who have not received a majority. Had there been PR in place in 1993, the Liberals would have been a minority government, Reform would have been the opposition and the Tories would have had 47 seats instead of 2. Had we had PR in 1996 in B.C. there would have been a minority Liberal government.

(There is a great danger here. The fact is we did not have PR so we have no idea what other parties would have sprung up nor have we any way of knowing how established minority parties such as Green would have done.)

There is the disadvantage - some say - of perpetual minority governments.

That doesn't trouble me as much as the potential for majority coalitions which, as New Zealand has demonstrated, can have pretty strange people in the same political bed. Another disadvantage is that one loses one's representative once constituencies are replaced with party lists. Germany and New Zealand have dealt with that with a 50-50 division between PR and "first past the post". (New Zealand isn't quite 50-50 because of the special Maori seats.)

I have been a lukewarm fan of PR or partial PR for some time and Nick's book is very persuasive. My support has been on the basis that in Canada, there would be a better division of power across the country and that there would never be a Quebec and Ontario dominated Parliament to do as it pleases.

But ... I have some serious reservations.

As I've mentioned, we've no idea what would spring up in a PR election so it's difficult to judge how it would work.

Would we have perpetual rule by the center?

British critics of PR say that it will mean mostly Labour governments with a sprinkling of Liberal-Democratic with the right and the left severely marginalized.

This is an important consideration because the state needs the threat of radical change - after all, it was the threat of the CCF (now NDP) which forced Liberal governments to bring in social reforms. To think of Canada being forever ruled by the Liberals in concert with the center/left is frightening to many, including me.

If we went the combination route, thus cutting the number of ridings in half, would people in this spread out country feel they had a voice in Ottawa? After all, they don't now!

On balance, I think we should, as Canadians, debate the matter. For if PR or partial PR has one advantage it's that it dramatically cuts back the power of the Prime Minister and his appointed Cabinet. Minority governments seem to get a sudden dose of manners. Power becomes shared because it must be shared. Assuming that there is no coalition, the minority Prime Minister must appoint opposition members to Cabinet who, because their firing will cause a hell of a row, are usually accorded power and respect.

PR won't happen, of course, because Quebec will oppose it. Jean Chretien is not about to give Quebeckers something else to scream about.

We could, however, bring in this sort of reform in British Columbia but, alas, governments which gain power under one system aren't too eager to talk about changing it.

But nothing is forever. Let's talk about it.

And a very good point of reference is Nick's fine book.