Chasing the God of Consensus

Let's start with this: Three parties representing 63% of voters promised to Make Every Vote Count in 2019. None of those parties informed Canadians that the fulfillment of this promise was conditional on: - achieving a consensus of all or a specific number of parties - getting marginalized groups of people in 60 secret meetings with Minister Monsef to express a consensus on an electoral system - getting Canadians to express a consensus - as interpreted by the government - on an as-yet-undefined set of "values questions" via a postcard survey - a referendum Many of us really wanted to believe Justin Trudeau was sincere about his promise to make every vote count in 2019. I mean, it was a clear promise. Repeated many times. We were willing to go along with the premise that the Liberals needed to conduct a public/expert consultation process to engage people on the details. Thus, we participated en masse in an extensive, multi-faceted four month consultation process. You can read the results here:

http://www.fairvote.ca/strong-mandate/ Almost all the experts and evidence heard by the electoral reform committee (ERRE) and public participants at the ERRE consultations were for PR. Which is eerily consistent with the last 13 commissions, 50 years of research, etc. Guess that wasn't the answer the government was looking for. The Result: In a high risk move days before the end of negotiations, the NDP decides to go to the media and announce they'll work with the Conservatives on a referendum. There's only one possible reason for this: Despite promising to end first-past-the-post and "Make Every Vote Count" the Liberals on the committee obviously refused to negotiate ANY VERSION OF ANY MODERATELY PROPORTIONAL SYSTEM WITH THE NDP and Greens. Faced with that scenario, the NDP could have let the issue die for now - to live in the government's obfuscating black hole of "we tried, but we couldn't keep our promise because nobody agrees." That would have meant that the Liberal Party would obviously bear the responsibility for failing to look at their own evidence, failure to bring anything to the table, failure to fulfill their promise. Cold comfort for those who voted Liberal for this reason, or had such high hopes and worked so hard for this window of opportunity, but it would mean the issue could possibly be revived in the next election. With a narrative attached to the next set of promises that we just had this giant, expensive consultation that doesn't need to be repeated, and the credibility of specific parties on this issue. Instead, in the most recent "leaked" news, the NDP have decided to GO FOR A MAJORITY COMMITTEE REPORT RECOMMENDING A REFERENDUM. Just so we can have a "majority report" that recommends doing something. The something being a referendum they don't want. If you don't remember voting for that, it's because you didn't. As the latest EKOS polls confirm, mostly only Conservative voters who want it. So out of the campaign promise and the ERRE consultations has emerged a recommendation for the one option with a 100% proven track record of producing exactly what the politicians and opponents desire - no change! The vocal opponents of PR who have been demanding referendum for a year just got their dream recommendation handed to them on a platter, from a committee that disregarded their own party's promises and the 71% of expert witnesses they heard opposed to a referendum. The cherry on the sundae? Now the Liberals can blame any failure of electoral reform on the opposition parties, rather than their own broken promise. After all, "We just gave them what they wanted." Wow. The Globe and Mail better dust off the daily op eds about the wing-ding extremist parties in Italy.

Making a God of Consensus

The stage for a referendum was set when the opponents equality who were still pretending not to be outright opponents made a God out of "consensus." The platform promise to make 2015 the last first--past-the-post election was but a inconvenient memory - to be buried as thoroughly as possible. Their narrative became "What kind of legitimacy does the government need? What kind of consensus?" Just as bad as the media messages suggesting no PR should proceed through Parliament unless the Conservatives also to agree to it (like, when hell freezes over) the Liberal government has also apparently decided that getting a consensus on voting systems from people who know pretty much nothing about voting systems (with no help from the government to fix that) is the next gold standard requirement. Much more important than: - Evidence - Fairness - Campaign election promises It's not just the referendum-by-13-million-postcards that's coming soon to mailbox near you. It's the letter from Minister Monsef to the ERRE committee last week, claiming - even as her public tour stops were packed with PR supporters - that she heard "no consensus." What was that about? It came into focus this morning on CBC's the House when Minister Monsef made clear what I have suspected for a while: The "no consensus" she was referring to WASN'T about her public tour stops (although she won't even admit that most people there were for PR - and there were many witnesses). She's claiming the "no consensus" was from her 60 SECRET, INVITATION ONLY meetings. Most likely with what she calls "marginalized groups" - people she defined at the outset as the least likely to be proactively participating in conversations about democratic reform. You know, the Canadians most likely (not) to give her informed opinions about whether Canada should change its electoral system and why. So...since she likes to talk about poor and homeless people so much in her interviews (it is heartwarming - money for housing would be better), let's say she went out to a soup kitchen and did a focus group with some homeless people and the outreach worker. Did any of the homeless people there bring up proportional representation using the Single Transferable Vote? What about Rural-Urban Proportional?

"You know, Maryam, thanks for reaching out to us. In between trying to find a place under the stairwell to sleep when it's -20 degrees, my main concern is the quota." When she said "I'm here to talk to you about democratic reform and to listen to your ideas and concerns", did anyone say to her: "Thanks for asking. My top priority is that any new system us open regional lists." OF COURSE NOT. If she even ASKED those people about voting systems specifically, most of them probably said: "I'm not sure" or "I don't know how voting system changes are going to help me." I'm sure she got a real hodgepodge of responses. Then they probably told her about their real problems and how democracy is not working for them because no politician listens, they all lie, and what they want is politicians who take the time out to find out what their lives are really like and implement solutions that work. Did she ask, as a matter of general values interest, "Do you think 39% of the vote should get a party 100% of the power?" and take a straw poll of that? I am certain she didn't. Because that is where a consensus lies among ANY group, no matter how much or how little the issue means to them. Did she bother to explain that while a proportional system isn't going to solve their most pressing lie problems right now, PR systems are strongly associated with governments that redistribute wealth more and take better care of their citizens? I am certain that she didn't. She probably didn't actually explain much of anything about the how or why voting systems matter, since she hasn't done it anywhere else. At the last tour stop, her assistant was still pretending she couldn't explain the slide on STV. But I'd be happy to see a video of one of these meetings and be proven wrong. So, naturally, groups like this - and the "people with disabilities and exceptionalities" - probably talked about other things than voting systems. Perhaps reducing barriers to getting to the polls on election day, accessibility, and having enough ID. Minister Monsef probably did a lot of listening about the disconnect between what marginalized people experience and how our democracy responds - which frankly, was the right thing to do. But it has nothing to do with whether the Liberals should honour their promise to voters make every vote count. From those meetings she tells ERRE: "There's no consensus - over to you, folks!" Can you imagine if the government did this with other issues? Go send Ministers to talk to groups of marginalized people about: Agriculture policy Trade deals Refugee policy

The target Debt-to-GDP Ratio Carbon tax vs cap and trade Then guess what, guys? If there's no consensus from those meetings, or the people don't really know enough about the choices, we don't keep our promises!! Let's follow that protocol and ditch all the promises here right now: https://www.trudeaumetre.ca/

Or maybe just the inconvenient ones. By the way, the Waterloo chapter of Fair Vote Canada held weekly electoral reform (voting systems) dialogues at the Working Centre's community cafe from August through October, with the results sent to the ERRE. Anyone could walk in, learn about the options in a 101 presentation and through written information on systems, discuss the government's own questions in a small group, and fill out a survey. One day a homeless man joined one of the groups. After learning about the options, he liked STV.