Unite the Canadian left? Please do.

A quarter of a billion potential voters in the world’s only democratic superpower will likely give a majority mandate to the next president of the United States. The 18 months of Democrat and Republican campaigning will entertain, offend and alarm sensitive people everywhere. This year, nestled just north, a relatively agreeable electorate of some 24-million potential voters will merely handicap an insider’s power game among the leadership of, possibly, five registered parties.

Canadians think Americans are too stupid to see that money makes their decisions. Instead, if all goes as progressives hope, Canadians will demonstrate their European sophistication by letting Canada’s professional politicians decide—after the October election—who best represents their unexpressed best intentions.

The Canadian Way, the Westminster Model, relies on two recognized pathways to 24 Sussex Dr.: 

Option 1: a one-party majority of elected members of parliament bound to support their leader
Option 2: an ad-hoc post-election coalition of parliamentary caucuses that provides one name for the blessing of the Governor General—an unelected gentleman whose qualifications for a ceremonial job most impressed the incumbent prime minister

The laughably obvious, most transparent option of simply tweaking Option 1 and Option 2 by creating a formal one-party, pre-election alliance on the left to take on the one-party, pre-election alliance on the right is, well, laughable. The leadership on the left hasn’t had the talent to pull it off since Sir Wilfrid Laurier.

Some columnists insist in whispers that fancy “cultural” differences keep the center and the left apart. Do they really think Harper’s center-right alliance has no center? That a conservative today must only look for friends, conversation, mates and lovers out in the wilds of the “base”? Do they think that only Barack Obama holds together the Democratic Party alliance of knuckle-draggers in Jersey and kale-eaters in San Francisco?

The New Democrats and Greens at least admit to the dreamy idea of negotiating within a left coalition, if no single party wins a majority.

Laurier sunny heir Justin Trudeau just isn’t interested. Also, many loyal Liberals think he can still win the old way: with the greatest number of seats and a modest plurality of votes—without the bother of winning a center-left electoral majority. 

Besides, don’t Liberals get along with others by being empathetic but apart, with the center to themselves?

Actually, inertia sustains the status quo.

The Liberal Party will campaign hard on the proposition the Harper Government is a threat to our Constitutional liberties, that he’s an embarrassment with war-like, fascist-like tendencies. But he’s not quite bad enough to have to confront him shoulder-to-shoulder with those “socialistic” Dippers.

There’s no reason to worry that carrying on with a less open, less decisive, less democratic system than America’s will harm our brand among anti-American friends in multinational agencies.

Nevertheless, it contradicts the center-left’s platform handwringing about participatory democracy and the menace of right-wing extremism.

The most constructive way to energize new voters is by being believable about who actually is the alternative to Stephen Harper.

And the surest way to inspire the Conservative Party to keep and recapture voters in the center is by giving the centrist voters two choices rather than a precious party label of its own. 

Liberal-NDP Coalition? What’s Trudeau’s Poison Pill?

Let’s agree for the time being that the concept of  "coalition government" and the real prospect of two Quebecers — a ruthless pol and neophyte — governing Canada at once won’t enthuse 905 and suburban Vancouver voters.  

Surely, the Liberals already will have seen the risks. However, Justin Trudeau hasn’t yet found a plausible way to kill the idea before next year’s federal election. What he desperately needs is a poison pill: a position (or positions) that would credibly deter a suitor with the intestinal fortitude of New Democrat leader Thomas Mulcair.

Beyond institutional inertia, he doesn’t have one. Indeed, his Party’s weekend policy resolutions quietly took a promising one off the table.

Right there at the bottom of #31 of the Liberal Policy Resolutions that were (formally adopted) is this declaration:

“AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED THAT immediately after the next election, an all-Party process be instituted, involving expert assistance and citizen participation, to report to Parliament within 12 months with recommendations for electoral reforms including, without limitation, a preferential ballot and/or a form of proportional representation, to represent Canadians more fairly and serve Canada better.”

The Liberal Party of Canada has thrived within the rules of the status quo. Further, up until now, its leader has entertained only the concept of a preferential ballot and explicitly rejected proportional representation. The New Democrats have long favored proportional representation. Nevertheless, the Liberal resolution is clear: for at least one year, Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau may govern together with the same open-minded approach to electoral reform.

America’s system is still liberalism’s best bet

The Liberal Party of Canada—colonial Canada’s earliest champion of American-style direct democracy—now seems to take its inspiration from Europe’s more layered approach to politics.

Its parliamentary leadership accepts First Nation’s Chief Theresa Spence’s demand that the British Crown be represented at First Nation negotiations with Canada’s Federal Government. And Liberal leadership candidates say they would scrap Canada’s First Past the Post electoral system—a system that favors big-tent national parties over protest parties, and often elects majority Prime Ministers, as the US system elects Presidents.

Smart people like the British, and Canadians too, can manage with today’s mixed monarchic, theocratic, and democratic system. Surrounded by danger, smart people like the Israelis can survive using a Proportional Election system that favors small parties and, consequently, puts a dozen party bosses in charge of hammering out—after national elections—the leadership, orientation, and priorities of the Israeli Government. 

According to past liberal principles and instincts, however, both of those models are second best. The monarchal model confuses people and thereby makes it more difficult to figure out who’s accountable and how to vote for effective change. Multi-party systems make it easier to be a politician, but it's next to impossible for voters to decide directly who should be in charge and whose vision should hold sway.

The direct election of political heads of state does make cautious people nervous. The US presidential system and the quasi-presidential Canadian party system can accommodate intemperate swings in the popular mood. That’s why 18th-century liberals favored a written bill of rights, federalism, and executive and legislative checks. Their conservative counterparts in Britain and Canada successfully preserved an un-elected Upper House and celebrate the magic (confusion) that goes with a hereditary, constitutional monarchy.

The First Past the Post system, along with the national election of the President, has been hard on new and uncompromising interests that want to speak for themselves. However, as instruments of direct democracy, they have made it possible for Americans to elect working majorities and influence national choices.

It’s passing strange that after all America has accomplished in the last century, after witnessing the success of Barack Obama in winning two liberal national mandates, that Canadian liberalism’s republican and pan-Canadian ambitions are now so feeble.

Surely, the key to inspire interest in progressive politics and to solve problems like the woeful state of First Nation communities in Canada is to champion an electoral system that can actually mobilize the will of the people. This year, the President’s Inaugural Address took less than twenty minutes. However, tens of millions in every state paid attention, and over half the people could claim a piece of its authorship.

The First Past the Post system now favors the center-right in Canada because they are united. It would continue to work for Canadian democracy and, again, for the center-left, if they united too. 

Two attacks on Canadian liberal values

Classic liberalism in Canada is taking a beating in its old home—the Liberal Party—and in its new home—the Conservative Government. One is thinking about further abridging freedom of expression and the other is ignoring the proposition that each vote must weigh the same in a popular democracy.

First, it is reported that the federal government is considering additions to the Anti-Terrorism Act that would outlaw “glorifying” terrorism.

Andy Ellis of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service clearly worries that “radicalized individuals” are more willing to commit crimes.

“Frankly speaking, security agencies do not yet fully understand why and how a seemingly ordinary young man or woman can grow up in Canada yet come to reject the Western, liberal and democratic values that underpin Canadian identity — instead replacing them with the violent, anti-Western ideology of al-Qaeda,” said Mr. Ellis, the CSIS assistant director of policy and strategic partnerships.

“What we do know is that terrorist ideologues who are the vectors of radicalization seek to promote an ‘us versus them’ storyline.

“Speaking at the Canadian Association of Security and Intelligence Studies conference in Ottawa, he said to tackle radicalization CSIS would have to work with other government agencies, police and at-risk communities. “We need to expand our efforts into longer-term, preventive programming that will foster individual and community resilience to extremist discourses.”

Click on: http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/11/15/tories-considering-expanding-anti-terrorism-act-to-fill-gaps-in-law/

What would they like to do: criminalize Chairman Mao T-shirts, Che Guevara’s posters, and Bin Laden beards? Turn intelligence agents into liberal proselytizers?

Security professionals everywhere loath radicals—it’s their nature. They would love to shield us from the “vectors of radicalization.” The Royal Canadian Mounted Police kept silly thick files on Canadian socialists simply because they used radical, anti-capitalist language in public.

However, a liberal democracy shouldn’t ever give such professionals all the powers they want. They should only be free to act against concrete efforts to incite specific individuals to undertake criminal acts of violence. It’s no excuse that the British Government has tried to criminalize the “glorification of terrorism.” It’s still a dangerous idea.  

At the same time, Quebec MP Marc Garneau formally advised Parliament that the Liberal caucus will vote against expanding the House of Commons by 30 seats in order to accommodate major shifts in Canada’s population. (He did not endorse the only equitable alternative: almost 30 seats are taken away from low or no-growth regions and given to growing regions. Those living in growth areas would eventually enjoy equivalent political representation. However, a constitutional amendment, with the consent of all the provinces, would first be required.)

By hitching their support for the status quo to the need for “fiscal restraint,” Susan Delacourt of The Toronto Star argues that the Liberals are “staking out a position that taps into long-standing populist discontent with politicians and Parliament.”

Click on: www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1087356--no-more-mps-please-liberals-say

Sorry. Populists can go overboard but they don’t fudge basic principles.

New Canadians in Mississauga and Calgary want the same political respect as founding families in Montreal and Halifax. Angry populists certainly want their votes to weigh the same as those of old elites.

Ballot reform: None of the above

Many conservative-minded thinkers tell us not to worry when barely half of eligible voters bother to show up and vote. Jason Brennan, an ethics and public policy lecturer at Georgetown University, put the argument baldly:

“The median voter is incompetent at politics. The citizens who abstain are, on average, even more incompetent. If we force everyone to vote, the electorate will become even more irrational and misinformed. The result: not only will the worse candidate on the ballot get a better shot at winning, but the candidates who make it on the ballot in the first place will be worse.”

Click on www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/11/07/should-voting-in-the-us-be-mandatory-14/mandatory-voting-would-be-a-disaster

He’s bold—but wrong.

Democracy isn’t a frail extension of the merit principle; its first task is to be representative. Low turn-outs will eventually make a mockery of Lincoln’s democracy “of the people” and “for the people.” Furthermore, there’s no reason to believe that the most demanding adults do most of the voting and reliably elect the best.

Those who vote are not a random sample—a proxy for the rest of us—and they’re not necessarily the best of us either. All we know for sure is that they can swallow one of the choices on the ballot.

There are, as likely, many very well-informed people who don’t vote not because they don’t care but because they cannot accept what’s on the menu.

Let’s worry less about the listless; let’s address the problem of those fussy citizens who don’t want to empower any of the registered parties or encourage any of the key programs on the ballot.

Rather than beg or drag out those who can’t be bothered to vote, why not offer an option for those who simply don’t like any of the above? Below the list of candidates and parties, why not leave a nice clean space on the ballot to put a firm X against “none of the above?”

Partisans of the well-financed and poorly appreciated parties of the status quo, of course, will think this is trivial mischief—besides, they’ll never let it happen.

Nevertheless, this one gesture could have real value.

It would give the conscientious objector a legitimate and visible option. Simply not showing up or “spoiling” the ballot by messing with the X are actions that are open to self-serving interpretations. Incumbents can keep saying that they stayed home because they are reasonably happy with the way things are and the losers can complain that negative advertisements “suppressed” the vote.

We should be able to demonstrate that we believe our right to vote is still precious and, at the same time, say that the existing options are not good enough.

Along with learning about the winner’s lead, imagine on election night also knowing that thousands of people bothered to come out in the rain and neatly mark the option “none of the above.”

We’d start talking more urgently about why so many good active citizens can’t stomach the choices offered by the professionals. 

Democracy’s mellow non-participants

Politicians tend to believe that the voters who didn’t bother to vote would have been on their side if they had. In Canada, at least, this looks like a poor bet.

The National Post’s Tamsin McMahon dissected Statistics Canada’s fresh survey of the 7.5 million eligible Canadians who didn’t vote in the May 2nd federal election. More than 50% said they didn’t show up because they were too busy or just not interested.

Sadly, only 7.6 % stated that they didn’t vote because they didn’t like the candidates or the issues that were raised in the election. Forgetfulness kept nearly as many away.

Click on: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/vote/5055509/story.html

If you’re looking for change, don’t count on those who don’t vote. The protest vote you should be aiming for is the one that bothered to show up last time.

New Democrats are soft on democracy too?

It’s official. It was first volunteered by their leader Jack Layton to the editorial board of The Globe and Mail just before the election and repeated last week by his Justice critic Joe Comartin: the social democrats in Canada’s national Parliament now believe that Quebec’s share of seats in Canada’s only elected legislative assembly must stay the same despite the fact Quebec’s actual share of Canada’s voting age population has gone down significantly.

Joe Comartin was as vehement as he was inventive “. . . any redistribution must ensure that Quebec receives a minimum 25% of the seats in that House, “its traditional share.” Conversely, Ontario, Alberta and BC shares shouldn’t go up even though their populations have grown by millions.

Click on: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/quebec-denounces-western-premiers-praise-plan-to-enlarge-house-of-commons/article2045487/

The Harper government is expected to bring in legislation (for the third time) to catch up with the last national census. To honor even roughly the primary driver of the electoral map—allocating seats according to where people live to ensure each vote is roughly of equal weight—Harper will ask Parliament to allocate some thirty more seats to Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. The NDP opposition, apparently, will ask him to be “flexible.”

Asking a so-called ideologue to be flexible is shrewd but, but on this issue, deceitful.

The New Democrats are not asking that Harper provide safeguards for smaller provinces and minority language, culture and religious rights—they’re already enshrined in the Canadian Constitution.

Quebec is protected as well as respected in the Constitution; it enjoys a minimum of 65 House of Commons seats and the same representation as Ontario in the appointed Senate. In addition, the choice and design of a federal structure of government for Canada was largely driven to protect Quebec’s interests from any future intolerant Canada-wide majority.

The allocation of seats in the House of Commons is guided by the decennial census and can be adjusted slightly within each province to respect practical geographic differences. However, the House of Commons membership historically has been driven by one fundamental principle: each vote should be of equal worth; consequently, the allocation of seats must be regularly adjusted to reflect where people actually live.

There would not have been a liberal union of southern and northern American states or a Canadian union of Tories, Grits, Quebec nationalists and, later, socialists and social-democrat offsprings without agreement on one powerful legislative assembly that would represent all the people, as equals.  That is the rationale, the business, and the constitutional obligation of the House of Commons.

Indeed, to persist much longer in denying the dramatic relative growth of the populations of Ontario and Western Canada is to invite legal redress before the Supreme Court.

Yes, yes, Jack Layton is in a tricky spot; his new political base in Quebec won’t benefit directly by giving faster growing regions more seats. However, Official Opposition leaders, by definition, have many people to please and disappoint. He’s putting himself in a tough spot for an unworthy impulse; some decisions can’t be finessed and are best survived by standing for a principle—in this case, one embedded in the DNA of the left. In this political community, citizens—new and old—are equal.

Hints for the outs: stability is now a political winner

National electorates in Canada and Great Britain expressed themselves clearly on one question: would you favor a little less stability for a little reform in how you elect your government? Both electorates said no. Left of center “reformers” have been told brutally what their right of center counterparts in America can learn for free. Effective government is the dominant concern today.

The British electorate was offered a modest alternative to the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system that Britain (and Canada) has employed since the emergence of disciplined political parties in the mid 19th century. The alternative vote (AV) proposal wasn’t very complicated; after making the effort to decide who you favored first, you could choose who you liked next on the ballot and, if you had opinions on every candidate, you could rank all of them. This wouldn’t discourage the lazy or advantage the zealots and would lead to a winner with the consent of at least 51% of the voters in each riding.

The downside was slight: modeling indicated a slight shift in seats away from the two dominant parties (Labour and Conservative) and a slight shift of seats in favor of the Liberal Democrats. Forming majority governments would be only slightly more difficult. It would, however, be easier to cast your first vote for an emergent protest party. You’d be able to have as good a say as others in choosing the ultimate winner; once your preferred marginal candidate was eliminated your second choice would be counted.

AV was rejected by 70% of those who voted in the referendum. The British didn’t say the status quo is perfectly fair. But, clearly, they weren’t prepared to make it any easier to fragment the electorate or any more difficult to elect strong majority governments.

Last Monday’s Canadian election is instructive as well. Every decade or so, Canadians change their minds on the merits of majority verses minority government. At this moment, they clearly moved away from the “responsiveness” of minority government, rejected the idea of coalition government, and embraced (or at least accepted) a return to majority government. Only in Quebec, whose plurality has been voting as a regional lobby for a generation, do the machinations of coalition/minority government have persistent appeal. Canada gave a five year, uninspiring, uncharismatic, dogged conservative incumbent the majority he campaigned for. Even in a two party system he could have won a tiny majority in English-speaking Canada.  

Unless we’re told convincingly, and often, that the world isn’t changing and that Canada and the US are free to bicker rather than address big issues, North American politics will be heavily constrained by a growing popular desire for strong government.

In Canada, the center left will get nowhere selling proportional representation and coalition government to avoid an institutional merger of the Liberals and New Democrats. And in avoiding a merger—in eulogizing their so-called cultures and ancient ideological roots—they’ll undermine their primary task of convincing the public that they’re competent to govern.

In the United States, Republicans will soon have to find a new way to demonize Obama or quickly help him put the most divisive budget issues behind both of them. If they run again as the “official opposition” they could lose both the House of Representatives and the White House. If Obama could campaign today for a “working majority” like a British or a Canadian incumbent he’d likely easily win.

Canada’s promising election results

If you’d already lost interest in the dark dreams of Stephen Harper and weren’t waiting for the centrist politics of the 90’s to re-assert themselves, then you’re free to appreciate that Canada’s new majority Parliament is positively pregnant with possibilities.

Quebec’s “federalism plus” status in Canadian politics is effectively over. For nearly a century, Quebec has either dominated or circumscribed the exercise of federal power in Canada. Since the Second World War, Quebec has been with every winning majority and has sent four majority Prime Ministers to Ottawa. When it was off side, it held the balance of power in minority parliaments.

So long as les autres were divided, Quebec didn’t have to worry about being with the winner. That changed this week and, more important, is not likely ever going to be like the good old days again.

Last April, the minority Harper government introduced legislation to re-allocate Parliamentary seats strictly according to changing demographic patterns. Support was voiced by a majority of MPs but it was grudging and the bill wasn’t passed.  (An earlier proposal watered down the impact of population growth and, consequently, infuriated Ontario and the west.) With a majority and with the distortions in the electoral map growing, Harper will not be able to fail to pass it now.

Today, his government can survive for up to five years without the support of a single MP from Quebec, including any of the six Quebecers now in his caucus. After the next redistribution, it is likely, Ontario will have 18 more seats, Alberta 5 more, and BC another 7. That’s 30 more seats outside of Quebec that federal parties can pursue to win a future majority without Quebec.

That will, of course, not be the choice of the federalist parties, they’ll want to grow their support in Quebec; the other will try and, as ever, offense is the best defense. However, this new situation gives Quebec a fresh reason to alter its strategic approach. It can pursue independence. But it can’t any longer be the power it was in Canada by acting unilaterally.

Optimistically, regional protest politics will play a lesser role and Canadians will divide more on a national basis--on how the federal government should lead and when it should defer.

Neither the Liberals nor the New Democrats will get anywhere by accentuating their regional brands. Since they both now represent widely diverse constituencies, the logic of staying apart will steadily erode.