Proportional Representation and “Extremists”: A Closer Look at what Trudeau is telling Canadians
Photo credit: Darinka Maja
While the official party excuse for breaking the electoral reform promise is “there was no consensus”, Justin Trudeau made sure his claim about supposedly protecting Canada from extremists got enough media attention.
In the House, Trudeau stated, “an augmentation of extremist voices in this House, is not what is in the best interests of Canada.” Challenged by a woman in Iqaluit on the broken promise, he responded:
“Do you think that Kellie Leitch should have her own party?
If you have a party the represents fringe voices, and fringe elements, and they hold 10, 15 seats in the House, they end up holding the balance of power.
The strength of our democracy is that we have to pull people into big parties that have all the diversity of Canada and we learn to get along.”
In Yellowknife he said: “If we were to make a change or risk a change that would augment individual voices — that would augment extremist voices and activist voices that don't get to sit within a party that figures out what's best for the whole future of the country, like the three existing parties do — I think we would be entering a period of instability and uncertainty."
So, essentially, Trudeau is claiming:
All the diversity of Canada exists now within the three big tent parties
Big tent parties with a first-past-the-post system facilitate “learning to get along”
With PR for Canada, the extremist fringe Kellie Leitch Party (for example) could win 10 seats
With PR for Canada, the extremist fringe Kellie Leitch Party with ten seats (for example) would then hold the balance of power
PR for Canada would make extremist voices in general louder or more influential
The first two claims: the alleged wonders of cooperation and diversity with first-past-the-post, I’ve covered here. Fair Vote Canada has written a good mythbuster on “instability” here.
This blog will tackle the last three claims: The alleged dangers of the hypothetical Kellie Leitch Party with ten seats, and the possiblity of “extremist” and “fringe” parties in general.
Will the Kellie Leitch Party extremist fringe party win ten seats with made-in-Canada PR?
It’s easy for opponents to use the common fear of “extremists” to scare people away from a proportional voting system. These same fear-mongering arguments have been used against proportional representation for decades, with opponents hitching their story carts to whatever they can.
But it was winner-take-all voting which handed all the power to Donald Trump, and winner-take-all voting that is giving a real shot at government to France’s “extremist”, Marine Le Pen. Let's start by asking a question about two different scenarios.
1. Who’s afraid of the Kellie Leitch Party with ten seats?
I don’t mean who would be happy with it. Most people find some political views disagreeable, annoying or even alarming. That’s democracy. I’m talking about really worried.
Do you remember the 8 Independent MPs and 2 Strength in Democracy Party MPs who were sitting in the House of Commons in our last Parliament?
Remember how disruptive and powerful those ten were?
Remember how they controlled the whole Parliament and held the balance of power?
Right.
Let’s put ten seats into perspective.
2) Who’s afraid of a 39% majority government for four years led by Kellie Leitch or someone with a similar agenda?
Many, many people. Probably a strong majority of Canadians who don’t want the Barbaric Cultural Practices hotline, for starters.
With the first-past-the-post casino, a false majority government led by someone like Kellie Leitch is a reasonably likely future outcome. If not in 2019, then in 2023, or 2027.
“Extremist” views - if that is code for ultra-right, anti-immigration opinions - exist in the politics of Canada, and in the politics of most democracies we consider our peers.
First-past-the-post is the system that allows a party with the support of 25% or less of eligible voters to control the government.
A proportional voting system would immunize us from such a scenario.
Apparently, though, the Liberals want us to believe that we don’t need a fair and modern voting system because Justin Trudeau’s plan is that the Liberals are going to govern forever.
Will a “fringe” party win 10 seats anyway?
Justin Trudeau seems to refer to “fringe” and “extremist” in the same breath. But they are not necessarily the same. When most people think of a “fringe” party, they’re thinking of a TINY party, whose views are so different that they typically attract 50 or 100 votes in a riding, or at best could attract one or two percent of the national vote. Fact check: It’s simply impossible with the proportional models for Canada for a Kellie Leitch Party - or any party - to win 3% of seats in Parliament on the basis of obtaining 3% of the national vote. None of the PR models for Canada work this way.
“Pure” PR (a national party list with low or no threshold, like Israel) is simply NOT on the table for Canada and never has been. It’s unconstitutional and frankly, it’s an irrelevant straw man.
All the proportional models for Canada are designed for Canada.
All of the proportional models for Canada are moderate. (Not “extreme”).
They are designed to place our election results at a middle point between very countries with very proportional results - like Denmark - and countries with very disproportional results - like Canada and the U.S.
If you haven’t heard of places like Scotland, Ireland, Wales and the Australian National Territory being overrun with fringe extremist parties in their legislatures - it’s because they’re not. They use the kinds of moderate PR recommended for Canada. What does “moderate” PR mean?
A Mixed Member Proportional system (MMP) applied in small regions would mean for voters to elect one regional candidate to a regional seat, a party would need 8-11% of the vote. That’s the natural threshold. Is a party which can achieve that level of support even a “fringe”? An additional threshold such as 5% could be applied provincially, preventing any party with less than 5% of the vote across the whole province from obtaining that regional seat.
A Single Transferable Vote system (PR-STV) means that a candidate running in a five seat constituency would usually need about 16% of the vote to get elected (although it is possible to get elected with as little as 10%). In a four seat constituency using PR-STV, the natural threshold to get a seat would usually be 21%. Is a candidate which can achieve that level of support even a “fringe”?
Common sense shows that when it took the Green Party 20 years of work to reach their historic high of 6.8% of the national vote in 2008 (3.8% in 2015), moderate PR systems make winning seats possible but not easy for new and very small parties.
And they make it almost impossible for fringe parties.
All the 15-20 “fringe” parties put together in Canada can’t achieve 1% of the vote. That means over 99% of us now vote for mainstream parties. These are the Canadians who are casting votes which elect no-one.
Proportional representation for Canada will mainly redistributes the seats in Parliament fairly between the bigger parties we have now. It makes one wonder:
Is Justin Trudeau really worried about protecting us from “fringe” parties?
Or does he just want to make sure the Liberals and Conservatives can continue winning 39% majorities?
Will a party with ten seats “hold the balance of power”?
Thousands of elections in 90 countries around the world using PR are fertile ground for opponents to cherry pick an irrelevant example (think Israel with it’s low threshold, uniquely fractured politics and national party list system).
Common sense, research and a look around the world helps us answer that question better.
Canadians like majority governments and they also like cross-party cooperation. PR delivers both. The most common type of government by far in countries with proportional representation are majority coalitions.
Meaning, two or more parties, representing over 50% of voters, govern together with a shared policy agenda. These coalition agreements are often put in writing at the start of a term. (Minority coalitions and minority governments are also possible but not as common).
The larger parties aren’t usually going to be offering to go into a majority government coalition or any other type of agreement with an extremist party.
Even where such a centre-right majority coalition is formed, the larger centrist party would be unlikely to accept any radical demands from a small party that are politically unpopular with their own voters.
And in a minority government in Canada, a major party is not going to be offering to set up the Barbaric Cultural Practices Hotline exchange for a yes vote on their budget.
Let’s go back to the imaginary ten seat Kellie Leitch Party for a moment. With 338 seats in the House, the larger parties can work with the 97% of MPs in the House that aren’t from the ten seat Kellie Leitch Party.
If we look around the world at countries which have systems much more proportional than models recommended for Canada, we see that this is what usually happens. In Sweden, which has a very proportional system, the far-right anti-immigration party - the Sweden Democrats - got about 13% of the vote in the last election. After the last election, none of the other parties - left, right or centre - would work with them, period. Even if this changes in future, none are interested in adopting their immigration policy. In the Netherlands - an extreme example of a “purely proportional system” where 1% of the vote will get a party a seat - their far right anti-immigration “Freedom” party led by Geert Wilders is polling at 15% (hardly a “fringe”). Parties representing the other 85% have said they won’t work with them. (UPDATE March 16/2017: Freedom Party got 2.3% more of the vote in the March 15 2017 election compared to 2012 - bringing them up to 13.1% support and 5 more seats. In a first-past-the-post election, a 2.3% change if concentrated in a handful of swing ridings - like we saw with Harper in 2011 - can have huge consequences. In this case, with PR, nothing changed and still no other party will work with Wilders). The “Green Left” Party in the Netherlands is polling almost as high as the anti-immigration party, with a message of inclusivity. Unlike the Freedom Party, they have a realistic chance of finding common ground with other parties to govern. In general, research has found that, in contrast to the “tail wags the dog theory”, small parties don’t often have much influence in a coalition. The bigger parties are the “heavyweights”. How much influence a smaller party has is very dependent on the specific policies and political situation. Overall, a long-standing finding is that majoritarian systems are more likely to produce right wing or centre right governments, whereas countries with proportional systems lead to a mix of left wing, centrist, and right wing governments.
Anti-immigration "extremist" parties love to pay homage to Donald Trump, but with proportional representation - while majority coalitions may shift left or right - they’ll never enjoy his power.
Will PR “augment extremist voices”?
What about the argument that somehow extremist voices will become louder, get more media airplay, and have more influence on public opinion with proportional representation?
Consider:
Does anybody think that with our first-past-the-post system, Kellie Leitch’s leadership campaign isn’t getting enough media coverage? Anybody who follows politics has heard about her “immigrant screening” program at least 10 times. This “extreme voice” and one policy is in the news constantly for one reason: Because with first-past-the-post, it's possible that a party led by Kellie Leitch could form our next government.
If, instead, a proportional system tempted the extremists within the Conservatives to form the ten-seat-Kellie-Leitch-Party, it’s hard to imagine the leadership race for that party would occupy the major media outlets to the same degree. Contrary to the fear-mongering, research has also shown that even in countries with electoral systems where extremist parties can win some seats, people are no more likely to vote for extremist parties under proportional systems than under winner-take-all systems.
Salomon Orellana, in his research “Electoral Systems and Governance: How Diversity Improves Policy Making”, looked at media coverage in countries using proportional and winner-take-all systems. He discovered that one of the benefits of proportional representation is that the media covers a wider range of policy issues and policy positions compared to the media in countries using first-past-the-post.
He found that this coverage of diverse policy options was correlated with a more informed electorate. He also found that citizens in countries with proportional systems have been shown to have lower levels of prejudice towards minorities and marginalized groups, and are equally tolerant of immigrants compared to citizens in countries with winner-take-all systems.
The practical effect of more diverse media coverage, informed voters and inclusive decision making is that PR countries are more likely to be policy innovators. Countries with proportional systems tend to experience more rapid increases in public support for paying costs associated with environmental protection, for gender equality, and for medically assisted death among other issues - facilitating faster government action. The strong correlation of proportional representation with government performance on a range of policy issues is well documented here.
“It was my choice to make” Justin Trudeau has decided that a well designed, proportional system, where 39% majorities are a thing of the past, is “not in the best interests of Canadians.”
Justin Trudeau fears a Canada where our votes count. If every voted counted, what kind of Canada might we build together?
For Trudeau, it’s preferable that 52% of us continue to elect no-one. Canadian voters must be protected from the consequences of our own choices.
Maybe the Swedes - and voters in 80% of the OECD countries - can handle the responsibility of electing someone with their votes, but we can’t. He’s told Canadians, “It was my choice to make.” One Cabinet Minister remarked recently to a constituent about the broken promise of electoral reform: “Sometimes parents make decisions for their children that are in the children’s best interests, even if they don’t understand it at the time.”
It’s something to remember when you vote in 2019 - the one time some politicians remember who the “parents” really are.
