Opinion is divided on the question of whether Canada should
have a national referendum on electoral reform.
Supporters of the idea correctly suspect that the Liberal Government,
and indeed all political parties, are inherently in a conflict of interest and
should not be blindly trusted to design the rules by which they are
elected. The Liberals’ belated decision
to relinquish its majority on the Commons Committee on Electoral Reform, and
its commitment to having a free vote in the House of Commons on the final bill,
go only part of the way toward alleviating this concern.
A free vote will still
be based on the very distortion of representation that electoral reform is supposed
to correct: for example, individual Liberal MPs will have 54% of the seats on
the strength of 39.5% of the popular vote; and one Green MP will have 0.3% of
the votes cast despite representing 3.4% of the electorate. Secondly, even if these problems could be addressed
adequately so as to assure fairness between political parties, there might
still be a conflict of interest, since politicians as a class will still frame the question and ultimately
decide its answer, without due consideration of how much “non-Ottawashed” citizens
may not wish to affirm or support political parties as the primary
organizations that mediate the popular will.
Opponents of the referendum have an equally impressive list of arguments. It is clear is that referendums polarize opinion instead of
forging compromise, as both the Quebec referendum campaigns and the recent UK
vote to leave the EU have shown. The value of representative democracy is that
it can examine all sides of an issue and fashion solutions that serve the
interests of the majority while still being acceptable to minorities. The debate over Brexit showed how
misinformation and errors of fact (concerning Turkey’s membership and the
savings for the NHS, for example) could not be corrected in time for the vote,
with incalculable consequences for the future of the UK and of Europe.
The ideal solution, therefore, is one that fully addresses the problems of
legitimacy and conflict-of-interest that
a referendum is supposed to
solve, while at the same time avoiding
if possible all the problems of polarization and prevarication that a
referendum is prone to create. Such sound deliberation, suitably scrubbed of partisan
self-interest, was the both the purpose and the effect of Citizens’ Assemblies on
Electoral Reform in British Columbia and Ontario and the Citizens’ Committee in
Quebec.
Where those processes went wrong (particularly in B.C. and
in Ontario) was in keeping those islands
of deliberative democracy in splendid isolation from the voters, while letting
legislatures completely off the hook for the decision. Referendum results
reflected both the electorates’ lack of
familiarity with the Citizens Assemblies and the ability of the ruling parties to tilt
the playing field away from change. Legislators
relied too little on democratic persuasion and too much on 60% voter thresholds
and inflexible “take-it-or leave-it” ground rules.
Provinces are supposed to be the laboratories for policy. Applying the lessons learned from failed (or
partially successful) provincial experiments to the current referendum debate,
we should create a structure for institutional dialogue between a Citizens’
Committee on Electoral Reform and Parliament. Such a structure could force
politicians to justify their rejection of, or amendments to, a citizens’
initiative, thereby improving the legitimacy and deliberative quality of the
bill. The result would be to either reduce the felt need for a referendum (if
the process went well and a double majority of politicians and informed
citizens could reach consensus) or to
better prepare and inform the electorate if a referendum were needed to
adjudicate a fundamental disagreement between
parliamentarians and informed citizens. Even
many advocates of proportional representation, who fear that the rights of all to
have their votes counted equally in Parliament will be trampled by a majority,
would be more receptive to a referendum if it were needed to resolve such a
conflict.
The upshot is that a referendum is necessary only as a last
resort. A Citizens’
Committee should be struck to conduct parallel deliberations with the House of
Commons. If the House of Commons and the Citizens’ Committee prove unable to agree, then that impasse can
be resolved by a referendum. But if they
can agree, then a referendum should be deemed unnecessary.
Mark Crawford is an
assistant professor of political science at Athabasca University, where he
teaches courses in Canadian Government and Democratic Theory.
