Scott Reid on electoral reform

I know next to nothing about Conservative MP Scott Reid and, based on his website, I see that he opposed same-sex marriage and supports cutting gas taxes, which is two strikes in my book, although I imagine that both of those stances reflect the majority view in his small-c conservative riding of 'the eastern Ontario government-hating boonies' (officially known as Lanark-Frontenac, Lennox and Addington).

Still, if this article (found via the Idealistic Pragmatist) about electoral reform (available in Canadian Parliamentary Review) is any indication, he's a pretty sharp guy (and a pretty good writer as well).

Reid talks about the difficulties in achieving electoral reform because the power to reform the system is generally in the hands of the people who were elected by the unreformed version of the system. He points out how even those jurisdictions which have achieved a better electoral system, generally didn't get it because the ruling party decided to do what was in the best interests of their country,

"The depressing truth, which became clear as the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs undertook its study of different roads to electoral reform earlier this year, is that electoral reform in the countries we examined had rarely been achieved by means that Canadians could - or would want to - emulate. In practice, electoral reform has typically been imposed in three different ways - imposition by outside forces, unilaterally by the majority party or by accident.

Ireland's much-admired STV system was imposed by the departing British in the early 1920s as a way of ensuring that the Protestant minority would not be frozen out of the Irish parliament, as they might have been under British-style FPTP system. Germany's much-admired MMP system was imposed by the victorious Allies in the late 1940s as a way of ensuring that no marginal party could ever again elbow its way into a position of power, as the Nazis had done in 1933. Scotland's MMP system was imposed by London. The innovative STV model now being used for the legislature of the Australian Capital Territory was imposed by Australia's federal parliament. Clearly, this method of achieving electoral reform is not open to Canadians.

In a number of other jurisdictions, perfectly good electoral reforms have been imposed for overtly partisan reasons....

Reid also does a good job summarizing how electoral reform came about in New Zealand (almost by accident) and describing some of the mistakes that were made in British Columbia (although he praises B.C. as the "world's most successful effort, to date, for building a popular mandate for electoral reform.")

Most impressively, he concludes with some well crafted recommendations for how electoralshouldrm shold proceed at the Federal level,

"I am advocating that Canada should use a preferential referendum whereby voters would place a '1' on the ballot beside their preferred option, a '2' beside the option that they like second-best, and so on. If no single option won a majority of the votes, the least-favoured option would be dropped from the ballot, and the ballots of voters who had chosen this option as their first preference would be redistributed to the options that had been their respective second choices. This process would continue until a single option achieves a clear majority.

Under a preferential referendum, voters would have the option of indicating their preference for the option of which they most approve, without having to make FPTP the default option. Advocates of all options could aggressively campaign in favour of their preferred option without having to become de facto champions of the status quo, as occurred in British Columbia.

Preferential balloting is the best way of arriving at consensus outcomes, when no obvious majority exists; this is why it is used by many political parties, including my own, for selecting their leaders."

This is pretty much the same conclusion I came to at the end of being fairly closely involved with the referendum in B.C. and I certainly agree with Reid that this is the best approach to take federally.

Alas, the prospects for electoral reform don't look too good right now at the federal level. Jack Layton has demonstrated fairly clearly in this minority government that the NDP's top priority is not proportional representation (as he claimed a couple of times while trying to lure Green party voters to vote NDP) but is instead the increased social spending which is the NDP's core issue. Meanwhile, the Liberals are pursuing an almost comical policy of trying to say the right things while doing nothing - just read this skewering of their latest shenanigans (a Scott Reid press release). The Bloc claims to support electoral reform, but I'm skeptical about their level of interest in pursuing a policy which would only serve to marginalize them.

Finally the Conservatives, despite the presence of Scott Reid, have said and done little on the electoral reform front. Personally, I think there are too many Conservative party members and backers who dream of someday forming a majority government and being able to run the country without compromise for them to support any real action on electoral reform. I hope I am wrong, but in the end, I think we're back to Reid's basic point, which is that if Canadians want an improved electoral system, it will be up to us to force it on the politicians.


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Note: The Pragmatist's post also links to a couple of other articles in the last issue of Canadian Parliamentary Review on electoral reform which are also interesting, but if you're only going to read one, read the one by Scott Reid.