The recent election in Alberta underscores the deep-seated problems in Canada’s electoral system.
One of the frequent buzz terms in this and other recent elections such as the 2011 federal election is voting efficiency. This is the concept of turning a low number of votes into a high number of seats.
The NDP did just that. No majority government in Alberta history had ever been elected with less than 43 per cent of the popular vote. Rachel Notley led her team to a massive majority with just 40.6 per cent.
The outgoing 44-year Progressive Conservative dynasty suffered from severe vote fragmentation getting only 10 seats from 27.8 per cent of the popular vote. The Wild Rose Party, on the other hand, managed 21 seats from just 24.2 per cent of the vote because its supporters are concentrated in rural ridings.
It was absolutely infuriating to listen to Danielle Smith, former Wild Rose leader, complain about this, but she is right. She crossed the floor with eight of her MPs precisely to form a Stephen Harper-style PC-theocon coalition to prevent the vote-splitting on the right that would allow the NDP to come up the centre.
And it is exactly why we have been stuck with a majority Conservative government federally for the past four years even though they only got 36.7 per cent of the popular vote.
One thing the Harper Con artists have become very good at is voter efficiency. You can see it in the current polling where the Conservative and Liberal parties are virtually tied in popular vote, but the seat projections are 129 to 164 for the CP and 94 to 108 for the LP.
What we need is a merger between the Liberals and NDP. Despite protestations that they are fundamentally different, the underlying values are virtually identical. It seems both parties are relying on Canadians to strategically vote in the federal election to block Harper. The Liberals are counting on their vast governing history to pull the vote from the NDP. The NDP are counting on a growing shift in perception that they are not the socialist boogeymen the Conservatives would have people believe they are to pull the vote from the Liberals.
In any event, a pre-election coalition of progressives appears to be out of the question, which means, most likely we will have a Conservative minority in October.
At that point we must be prepared to not let Harper take power. The Cons will rail about the unholy coalition, about it being undemocratic, about the Liberals and NDP stealing the election. They will be wrong.
Ultimately we need to change the system to a proportional representation model, but in the meantime we just need to understand how our democracy is actually set up. We are so used to the party system in which the first team to get past the post (i.e., earn the plurality of seats) gets to form the government and the leader of that party is automatically prime minister.
That is how democracy is practiced in Canada, but it is not how it is legally structured. The Commons is made up of individual MPs elected by their constituencies. Currently, government MPs are virtually powerless under the party system, but in law, they are paramount. If they had the inclination and the will, progressive conservatives could join forces with the members across the aisle right now and displace the prime minister with any other MP. That is not going to happen, but it is theoretically possible.
That is because the Constitution does not say anything about prime ministers or political parties. We do not vote for a prime minister and we do not vote for a government. We vote for a local representative and then it is up to the 308 (soon to be 338) of them to decide how they want to organize themselves. Whoever can command the support of the majority of the HOC can go to the governor general and ask to form a government.
That means that after the election if Justin Trudeau and Thomas Mulcair, or Nathan Cullen and Marc Garneau—or Nikki Ashton and Frank Valeriote for that matter—can bury their differences and get 167 others to go along with them, we do not have to endure one more day of a Harper government that only enjoys the support of approximately a third of the population.
Currently, progressives are infighting, NDPers are calling the Liberal Party conservative-lite in an attempt to get centrists ride an orange wave. Liberals are basically ignoring the NDP, but will undoubtedly use left winger’s fear of more Harper to try and herd them into the ‘big red tent.’
When the dust settles, however, they must be prepared to form the coalition because whatever minor differences exist in approach to Canada’s problems, both parties believe in secularism, fairer distribution of wealth, national health care, peacekeeping, judicial and bureaucratic independence, evidence-based policy making, respect for the rule of law, separation of church and state, human rights and objective justice.
These are values Stephen Harper simply does not share.
