Many seem to have forgotten that in 2021, when Legault was far more popular (with his party polling between 40%-45%), his endorsement of O'Toole had little impact on voting intentions. Now, with his party polling at just 23% in Quebec, it's hard to see how his support would suddenly boost the Conservatives. What we’re seeing looks more like desperation from some Conservatives trying to spin something positive after a disastrous first week.
When you talk about the CPC's 'inefficient vote' in Quebec, you are talking about the distortions produced by first-past-the-post. Why do you never mention the perverse nature of our electoral system and the crying need for electoral reform? You claim to be a lefty, but you seem to be supporting an electoral system which systematically discriminates against the NDP and favours a two-party system and the strategic voting and polarization it produces.
It's the system we've got though, bottom line, and proportional representation is no silver bullet (nothing ever is after all), especially in the context of never-more-extreme "fringe" parties.
Being a "lefty" also means you think more critically, and can adapt to reality.
The reality is that it is easier for extremists to take power under 'first-past-the-post' (FPTP) than under proportional representation. In the recent German elections, the extreme right AfD only got 20.8% of the vote, and no party got more than 28.5%. In the USA, under FPTP, the extremists who control the Republican Party got almost half of the vote and are now in the process of dismantling democracy. This is facilitated by FPTP, which systematically discriminates against third parties and encourages polarisation. Wake up to the new reality!
What about Israel, then? It is one of two states in the world with 'pure' proportional representation - that is, the whole country is one constituency and seats in the legislature are apportioned on the basis of the popular vote. The two states in question are Israel and the Netherlands. The Netherlands has a functioning democracy; Israel does not. What's the difference? Firstly, the Netherlands has long tradition of tolerance; Israel does not. All parties in Israel (with the exception of the Communists and the Arab parties) are extremist in the sense that they are all dedicated to the exclusion of non-Jews from power; even Israeli Arabs, the only ones with the right to vote, are effectively excluded from government. Secondly, the Netherlands has a constitution, a truly independent judiciary, a Senate and provincial assemblies, all of which limit the powers of the national legislature. Israel has none of these counterbalancing forces.
The NDP, Greens and multi--hyper-partisan groups like Fair Vote Canada (FVC) want people to believe in a False Binary logical fallacy: that given FPTP has serious problems, that solutions that only solve a narrow focus on Party Popular Vote solves those problems.
It does not.
A focus on cross-Canada parties generates many of the problems we have today, including many regional divides, and what the NDP and Greens wanted to do (of having the controversial notion of Party Popular Vote allow seats to be granted based on party affiliation alone).
There is an entirely different (third) option, which is Ranked Ballots. This is a class of systems, some in single-member (AV, IRV) and some in multi-member (STV), etc.
The claim that STV fulfills the "Party Popular Vote" criteria is misleading at best. There is a huge difference between ONLY satisfying Party Popular Vote (Like MMP, DMP, and other similar systems do) and possibly ALSO satisfying PPV (For those who narrowly believe that PPV is the only thing that matters ).
There are electoral system options that are both better than and worse than FPTP. FPTP is not the worst option Canada could be using.
That is one of the problems right now with Canadian politics.
We are all being told good reasons to be opposed to some policy or party, but not necessarily being shown the full spectrum of alternatives to find out what we might actually be FOR.
So much of simplistic politics falls into the "Something must be done, this is something, so it must be done".
We would have had ranked ballots in time for the 2019 federal election if the NDP and Greens hadn't insisted on narrowly optimizing for Party Popular Vote. The NDP+Greens partnered with the Conservatives rather than partnering with the Liberals at committee, because the NDP+Greens were so stuck in their tunnel vision that they were unable to observe what they were told in the committee set up to study electoral reform.
In the 1990's I was a campaigner for the Greens, and their abandonment of Participatory Democratic principles (core to the Global Greens movement) is one of the many reasons I've abandoned that party.
Canada is heading to a two-party system in Canada BECAUSE of the NDP and Greens, so we shouldn't be feeling sorry for what to me is the logical outcome of their own policy failures.
I really can't comment, because I don't understand your terminology; what do you mean by Party Popular Vote, and what's wrong with it? Ranked ballots - or two-tier voting as in France - give similar results and tend to favour the larger parties. Is that what you want?
I want the opposite -- I want more voices and less divisiveness in parliament. I believe coalitions should be formed within parliament, and change dynamically as politics changes, not artificially manufactured prior to elections in the form of these dysfunctional top-down hierarchical big-tent parties.
I want decentralization of politics, giving more power to voters and the people we elect as representatives. I want less power to the corporate offices of the political parties who are increasingly treating elected Members of Parliament as staff with the US style Party Leadership Convention winners as the CEO.
----
This isn't my specific terminology, but terminology used by both academics and practitioners in the field. I’m happy to share anything I've learned as a volunteer in this area for decades.
Party Popular Vote is reported all the time by Canadian media, reporting as if any vote for a party nominated candidate in all Electoral Districts is a vote for the Party regardless of the Person whose name was on the ballot. While party affiliation is one factor in how we vote, it is not the only consideration that could ever be made. Local politics, and other demographics of the individual person may also be factors.
The concept of Party Popular Vote suggests that there is a National Canada-wide vote, with the same ballot on the same question in every district. This suggestion, and how it is reported by the media, exasperates regional divisions that have always existed (IE: Western Alienation, etc).
It is also contrary to how the Westminster Parliamentary system that Canada uses actually works, where we elect people to be members to the House of Commons -- we do not directly elect the legislative branch (Prime Minister, who then picks their cabinet).
Runoff Voting as used by France, and Instant Runoff Voting (as slowly being adopted in the USA https://fairvote.org/ ) or even better Single Transferrable Vote (as used by a wide variety of other countries, such as Australia https://www.prsa.org.au/hareclar.htm ) are not all the same thing.
Ranked Ballots, especially in multi-member district STV, don't have the impact on parties you may have been told -- exactly the opposite in fact.
If you only look at what happens to parties, most of what happens in Canadian politics will be missed. A party nominated candidate in “Calgary Center” is not going to be the same as if the same party nominated a candidate in “Ottawa Center” or “Québec Centre”. The politics, and even meaning of those parties locally, is entirely different.
Ranked Ballots discourage "Unite the X" movements as they do away with the concept of vote splitting. This allows regional politics to grow new ideas and new parties without vote splitting imposing merging.
Federally the Western Canada originating Reform Party and Progressive Conservative parties merged because of vote splitting. That wouldn't have happened if we had already been using Ranked Ballots, and there would be both Reform and PC MPs in the current parliament. Longer term, big-tent parties that don’t actually have much in common within the tents, become smaller themselves.
The divisiveness we currently see wouldn’t be as bad as candidates need to appeal both to who would pick the as #1, but not trash opponents during elections as their supporters may otherwise put you as a #2.
A focus on Party Popular Vote ignores local and regional politics, and alienates the majority of us who are not strictly tied to or feel comfortable within the confines of a single cross-Canada party. This narrow focus on parties also favours larger parties, even if that means 4 cross-Canada rather than 2 parties. If instead of ranked ballots we adopted “party top-ups” as proposed by the NDP and Greens, instead of more voices in parliament, we actually end up with less voices as we end up with more people in parliament that owe their seat entirely to party affiliation. These members are even less likely to speak up to hold the corporate executive of parties to account.
Note: I’m not suggesting Canadian Federal parliaments become as representative as the Nunavut and North West Territories that use a Consensus model. I think that would be too radical for most Canadians. I’m suggesting keeping the same overall Democratic Institutions that Canada has used since Confederation, but empower Elected members of Parliament to hold corporate party silos to account.
Thanks for taking the time to give me this thoughtful response. I see where you are coming from, I think, and I certainly share your concerns about centralization of politics. I like STV, which seems to work well in Ireland and which we would have had in BC if the government had not required a 60% majority in favour of the proposal. I am watching to see what happens in the UK and in France, where the possibility of reform seems to be greatest right now.
If you don't mind, I am also curious about your family name, which I have never seen before with a Mc or Mac attached. I happen to come from a little village called Ormond in Eastern Ontario.
What’s especially strange about the weird Legault hype is that we’ve been here before - he endorsed O’Toole in 2021, when he was much more popular, and it didn’t do shit!
This actually points to a bigger problem though: the odds of the Cons winning the most seats or a majority are just impossibly small without a breakthrough in Quebec (not to mention winning a plus share of urban seats in Canada). That is just never going to happen with the suite of policies and current leadership the Cons have.
And now the squeeze comes for Poilievre. With the Bloc and the NDP losing support in a dramatic fashion, his only choice is to try to get more Liberal voters. He will have to overtake Carney on the left and be more anti Trump.
It is possible to do this. For example, he could demand an export tax for oil. Or demand an explicit statement by Trump that Canada’s sovereignty is respected before any negotiation may start. He could advocate for turning off the supply of power to the US. He will lose the Convoy type voters to the PPC and he will try to make that up with soft Liberal supporters.
Will it work? I doubt it, but he will not have any other option.
What about Carney's reply at the end of his otherwise really good speech yesterday to the question of intervention in the Supreme Court case on Quebec secularism though? Trudeau always said they WOULD intervene when it came before the Supreme Court, did he not, kicking the can?
Carney seemed hesitant at least, referring to the Charter, but when Quebec is the ONLY jurisdiction on the continent to be wisely holding the never-shakier line on secularism, particularly in the noxious context of Project 2025, would this not effect the Liberals?
My bet is that it would have minimal impact on the seats count because it is not a huge issue in the greater Montreal area where most of the liberals seats and potential pick up are. Quebecers also often vote based on feelings. As most of you probably remember, they voted massively for Layton and the NPD although the party had almost zero root in QC. Now, many quebecers, like everywhere else, are worry about the economy and Trump and Carney is perceived, at least for now, as the reassuring figure in QC, despite his flaws. However, the campaign is still early!
Could be; there are indeed multiple more immediate priorities, but Quebec has also made secularism a defining issue and stuck with it, knowing whereof they speak with Catholicism so entrenched for so long.
As a woman, I very much appreciate them for this with Project 2025 so clearly being the blueprint for a return to the past, and the unyielding, insane power of patriarchy.
Not enough men acknowledge this, showing how much farther women still have to go, despite comprising half of humanity.
Thanks for this, Evan. A very interesting analysis of how messed-up our electoral system is in Canada … to which I say “Thank heavens!”
But it really gives me a sense that for Canada to be regarded as a true democracy, we really have to look at the notion of electoral reform in a serious manner, instead of throwing it out at the first opportunity as PM Trudeau did.
All that said, could you please comment on two headlines I I saw this week?
The first is “Has Carney peaked too soon?”; while the other one discusses a poll which shows the Conservatives outperforming the Libs in all age groups by a healthy margin, except for those over 65 years in age (where the Libs outperform the Cons by over 20%)? How can any of this be? How can 338Canada still be calling for 187 seats for the Libs if those voting-age group splits are to be believed? Can you help me out with that?
Many seem to have forgotten that in 2021, when Legault was far more popular (with his party polling between 40%-45%), his endorsement of O'Toole had little impact on voting intentions. Now, with his party polling at just 23% in Quebec, it's hard to see how his support would suddenly boost the Conservatives. What we’re seeing looks more like desperation from some Conservatives trying to spin something positive after a disastrous first week.
People are really pissed at the CAQ - they are HOPELESS
When you talk about the CPC's 'inefficient vote' in Quebec, you are talking about the distortions produced by first-past-the-post. Why do you never mention the perverse nature of our electoral system and the crying need for electoral reform? You claim to be a lefty, but you seem to be supporting an electoral system which systematically discriminates against the NDP and favours a two-party system and the strategic voting and polarization it produces.
It's the system we've got though, bottom line, and proportional representation is no silver bullet (nothing ever is after all), especially in the context of never-more-extreme "fringe" parties.
Being a "lefty" also means you think more critically, and can adapt to reality.
The reality is that it is easier for extremists to take power under 'first-past-the-post' (FPTP) than under proportional representation. In the recent German elections, the extreme right AfD only got 20.8% of the vote, and no party got more than 28.5%. In the USA, under FPTP, the extremists who control the Republican Party got almost half of the vote and are now in the process of dismantling democracy. This is facilitated by FPTP, which systematically discriminates against third parties and encourages polarisation. Wake up to the new reality!
A dynamic one. And what about Israel then?
What about Israel, then? It is one of two states in the world with 'pure' proportional representation - that is, the whole country is one constituency and seats in the legislature are apportioned on the basis of the popular vote. The two states in question are Israel and the Netherlands. The Netherlands has a functioning democracy; Israel does not. What's the difference? Firstly, the Netherlands has long tradition of tolerance; Israel does not. All parties in Israel (with the exception of the Communists and the Arab parties) are extremist in the sense that they are all dedicated to the exclusion of non-Jews from power; even Israeli Arabs, the only ones with the right to vote, are effectively excluded from government. Secondly, the Netherlands has a constitution, a truly independent judiciary, a Senate and provincial assemblies, all of which limit the powers of the national legislature. Israel has none of these counterbalancing forces.
The NDP, Greens and multi--hyper-partisan groups like Fair Vote Canada (FVC) want people to believe in a False Binary logical fallacy: that given FPTP has serious problems, that solutions that only solve a narrow focus on Party Popular Vote solves those problems.
It does not.
A focus on cross-Canada parties generates many of the problems we have today, including many regional divides, and what the NDP and Greens wanted to do (of having the controversial notion of Party Popular Vote allow seats to be granted based on party affiliation alone).
There is an entirely different (third) option, which is Ranked Ballots. This is a class of systems, some in single-member (AV, IRV) and some in multi-member (STV), etc.
The claim that STV fulfills the "Party Popular Vote" criteria is misleading at best. There is a huge difference between ONLY satisfying Party Popular Vote (Like MMP, DMP, and other similar systems do) and possibly ALSO satisfying PPV (For those who narrowly believe that PPV is the only thing that matters ).
https://r.flora.ca/p/justin-trudeau-electoral-reform
Fine with me. There must be many electoral systems that would be better than FPTP.
There are electoral system options that are both better than and worse than FPTP. FPTP is not the worst option Canada could be using.
That is one of the problems right now with Canadian politics.
We are all being told good reasons to be opposed to some policy or party, but not necessarily being shown the full spectrum of alternatives to find out what we might actually be FOR.
So much of simplistic politics falls into the "Something must be done, this is something, so it must be done".
We would have had ranked ballots in time for the 2019 federal election if the NDP and Greens hadn't insisted on narrowly optimizing for Party Popular Vote. The NDP+Greens partnered with the Conservatives rather than partnering with the Liberals at committee, because the NDP+Greens were so stuck in their tunnel vision that they were unable to observe what they were told in the committee set up to study electoral reform.
In the 1990's I was a campaigner for the Greens, and their abandonment of Participatory Democratic principles (core to the Global Greens movement) is one of the many reasons I've abandoned that party.
Canada is heading to a two-party system in Canada BECAUSE of the NDP and Greens, so we shouldn't be feeling sorry for what to me is the logical outcome of their own policy failures.
I really can't comment, because I don't understand your terminology; what do you mean by Party Popular Vote, and what's wrong with it? Ranked ballots - or two-tier voting as in France - give similar results and tend to favour the larger parties. Is that what you want?
I want the opposite -- I want more voices and less divisiveness in parliament. I believe coalitions should be formed within parliament, and change dynamically as politics changes, not artificially manufactured prior to elections in the form of these dysfunctional top-down hierarchical big-tent parties.
I want decentralization of politics, giving more power to voters and the people we elect as representatives. I want less power to the corporate offices of the political parties who are increasingly treating elected Members of Parliament as staff with the US style Party Leadership Convention winners as the CEO.
----
This isn't my specific terminology, but terminology used by both academics and practitioners in the field. I’m happy to share anything I've learned as a volunteer in this area for decades.
Party Popular Vote is reported all the time by Canadian media, reporting as if any vote for a party nominated candidate in all Electoral Districts is a vote for the Party regardless of the Person whose name was on the ballot. While party affiliation is one factor in how we vote, it is not the only consideration that could ever be made. Local politics, and other demographics of the individual person may also be factors.
The concept of Party Popular Vote suggests that there is a National Canada-wide vote, with the same ballot on the same question in every district. This suggestion, and how it is reported by the media, exasperates regional divisions that have always existed (IE: Western Alienation, etc).
It is also contrary to how the Westminster Parliamentary system that Canada uses actually works, where we elect people to be members to the House of Commons -- we do not directly elect the legislative branch (Prime Minister, who then picks their cabinet).
https://www.davidgraham.ca/p/leadership-by-caucus
Runoff Voting as used by France, and Instant Runoff Voting (as slowly being adopted in the USA https://fairvote.org/ ) or even better Single Transferrable Vote (as used by a wide variety of other countries, such as Australia https://www.prsa.org.au/hareclar.htm ) are not all the same thing.
Ranked Ballots, especially in multi-member district STV, don't have the impact on parties you may have been told -- exactly the opposite in fact.
If you only look at what happens to parties, most of what happens in Canadian politics will be missed. A party nominated candidate in “Calgary Center” is not going to be the same as if the same party nominated a candidate in “Ottawa Center” or “Québec Centre”. The politics, and even meaning of those parties locally, is entirely different.
Ranked Ballots discourage "Unite the X" movements as they do away with the concept of vote splitting. This allows regional politics to grow new ideas and new parties without vote splitting imposing merging.
Federally the Western Canada originating Reform Party and Progressive Conservative parties merged because of vote splitting. That wouldn't have happened if we had already been using Ranked Ballots, and there would be both Reform and PC MPs in the current parliament. Longer term, big-tent parties that don’t actually have much in common within the tents, become smaller themselves.
The divisiveness we currently see wouldn’t be as bad as candidates need to appeal both to who would pick the as #1, but not trash opponents during elections as their supporters may otherwise put you as a #2.
A focus on Party Popular Vote ignores local and regional politics, and alienates the majority of us who are not strictly tied to or feel comfortable within the confines of a single cross-Canada party. This narrow focus on parties also favours larger parties, even if that means 4 cross-Canada rather than 2 parties. If instead of ranked ballots we adopted “party top-ups” as proposed by the NDP and Greens, instead of more voices in parliament, we actually end up with less voices as we end up with more people in parliament that owe their seat entirely to party affiliation. These members are even less likely to speak up to hold the corporate executive of parties to account.
Note: I’m not suggesting Canadian Federal parliaments become as representative as the Nunavut and North West Territories that use a Consensus model. I think that would be too radical for most Canadians. I’m suggesting keeping the same overall Democratic Institutions that Canada has used since Confederation, but empower Elected members of Parliament to hold corporate party silos to account.
https://www.ntlegislativeassembly.ca/legislative-business/how-legislative-assembly-works/consensus-government
Thanks for taking the time to give me this thoughtful response. I see where you are coming from, I think, and I certainly share your concerns about centralization of politics. I like STV, which seems to work well in Ireland and which we would have had in BC if the government had not required a 60% majority in favour of the proposal. I am watching to see what happens in the UK and in France, where the possibility of reform seems to be greatest right now.
If you don't mind, I am also curious about your family name, which I have never seen before with a Mc or Mac attached. I happen to come from a little village called Ormond in Eastern Ontario.
Evan claimed to be a Lefty? News to me
He has said so many times.
What’s especially strange about the weird Legault hype is that we’ve been here before - he endorsed O’Toole in 2021, when he was much more popular, and it didn’t do shit!
Anyone enjoying all the leaks and backstabbing coming out of the CP war room? 😂
The knives are out for Jenny & Pierre and I am LOVING IT!
My ideal outcomes from this election are:
Liberals win a majority
NDP is not decimated
Pierre loses his seat
This actually points to a bigger problem though: the odds of the Cons winning the most seats or a majority are just impossibly small without a breakthrough in Quebec (not to mention winning a plus share of urban seats in Canada). That is just never going to happen with the suite of policies and current leadership the Cons have.
And now the squeeze comes for Poilievre. With the Bloc and the NDP losing support in a dramatic fashion, his only choice is to try to get more Liberal voters. He will have to overtake Carney on the left and be more anti Trump.
It is possible to do this. For example, he could demand an export tax for oil. Or demand an explicit statement by Trump that Canada’s sovereignty is respected before any negotiation may start. He could advocate for turning off the supply of power to the US. He will lose the Convoy type voters to the PPC and he will try to make that up with soft Liberal supporters.
Will it work? I doubt it, but he will not have any other option.
I think Pierre would rather lose than pívot against the GOP
What about Carney's reply at the end of his otherwise really good speech yesterday to the question of intervention in the Supreme Court case on Quebec secularism though? Trudeau always said they WOULD intervene when it came before the Supreme Court, did he not, kicking the can?
Carney seemed hesitant at least, referring to the Charter, but when Quebec is the ONLY jurisdiction on the continent to be wisely holding the never-shakier line on secularism, particularly in the noxious context of Project 2025, would this not effect the Liberals?
My bet is that it would have minimal impact on the seats count because it is not a huge issue in the greater Montreal area where most of the liberals seats and potential pick up are. Quebecers also often vote based on feelings. As most of you probably remember, they voted massively for Layton and the NPD although the party had almost zero root in QC. Now, many quebecers, like everywhere else, are worry about the economy and Trump and Carney is perceived, at least for now, as the reassuring figure in QC, despite his flaws. However, the campaign is still early!
Could be; there are indeed multiple more immediate priorities, but Quebec has also made secularism a defining issue and stuck with it, knowing whereof they speak with Catholicism so entrenched for so long.
As a woman, I very much appreciate them for this with Project 2025 so clearly being the blueprint for a return to the past, and the unyielding, insane power of patriarchy.
Not enough men acknowledge this, showing how much farther women still have to go, despite comprising half of humanity.
Good grief not Quebec PP playhouse of chicanery!
Thanks for this, Evan. A very interesting analysis of how messed-up our electoral system is in Canada … to which I say “Thank heavens!”
But it really gives me a sense that for Canada to be regarded as a true democracy, we really have to look at the notion of electoral reform in a serious manner, instead of throwing it out at the first opportunity as PM Trudeau did.
All that said, could you please comment on two headlines I I saw this week?
The first is “Has Carney peaked too soon?”; while the other one discusses a poll which shows the Conservatives outperforming the Libs in all age groups by a healthy margin, except for those over 65 years in age (where the Libs outperform the Cons by over 20%)? How can any of this be? How can 338Canada still be calling for 187 seats for the Libs if those voting-age group splits are to be believed? Can you help me out with that?
Our messed-up electoral system is merely a reflection of us, which social media has put on steroids, decidedly NOT to good effect....
J’ai biens hâtes au débat en Français avec Marx Carney. 😬
Je m’excuse - Marc Carney
L’ostie de spellcheck! Mark Carney🤦♂️