Big Finance Leverages Territorial Representation in the US Big Time

Watching the Goldman Sachs spectacle and at the same time watching the
Republicans perform in the US Senate brings home the point of how the
geographic bias built into the electoral system allows for and actually
encourages the systemic looting of the public purse.

Clearly, the charges laid by the Securities and Exchange Commission -
Goldman Sachs packaged and sold toxic debt securities and then placed
bets on the eventuality that the debt obligations would not be met -
should indicate that investment banks in the US were not properly
regulated. However, although Republican Senators would join in on the
public shaming of Goldman Sachs representatives that occurred during the
hearing, they all voted against beginning the debate to reform the
financial system in the Senate.

In the US Senate, it takes 60 votes from the 100 votes available to
approve a motion. In other words, only 40% of the votes, a clear
minority, is required to block something as important as reforming the
financial system. Keep in mind that the public funds allocated to
bailout the financial system are twice what has been spent on the war in
Iraq. Moreover, since each state is allotted two seats in the Senate
regardless of its population, the 40 votes needed to oppose any reform
can represent as little as 12% of the population.

Now, that's leverage.

With the mid-term elections coming up there seemingly is the possibility
that the Republicans could experience a net loss of seats in the Senate,
which would make qualitative financial reform inevitable.
Unfortunately, the US Supreme Court recently ruled that there can be no
limits to the amount of money corporations can give to political
parties, thus creating an extremely unlevel political playing field.
Without question, Big Finance will target the senatorial races where
their dollars will make the difference, and unless the Democrats can
successfully repeat their performance in getting out the vote last
November, Big Finance will reap huge rewards on their investment and the
industry will continue to suck out the life blood out of the real
economy and out of the nation.

God Bless America for the land is blighted by an amoral rapacious elite
with an insatiable appetite for acquiring riches that has no
reservations bringing misery to millions.

Peace, Order, and Crappy Government

Despite the good intentions of the fathers of Confederation, who enshrined the phrase, ‘peace, order, and good government’ into our constitution as a guiding principle for our governance, I can’t help feel that we have strayed far from this ideal.

In reality, we have crappy government because we are unable to exit from the cul-de-sac of a system of governance that is set up to give domination and control to our two founding charter groups at the expense of having the capacity of delivering what the vast majority of Canadians want: a healthy environment, an effective education system, health care that is there when you need it, and a sense of individual and collective well-being.

I’ll start with an analysis of the problem and then finish with how our elected governments are not meeting the performance requirements that we should expect as citizens from a democratic government.

Canada is a large piece of territory carved out of the Americas as a result of the vagaries of European imperial conquest. When the first settlers arrived, they were met by indigenous peoples who had occupied the territory for thousands of years. We seem to have acquired a collective amnesia over this point, especially if we recognize that aboriginal title to much of Canada has never been extinguished by the state and that according to the principles of common law, as the successor state we are bound to uphold by our own constitution, section 25 of the Charter, the rights stemming from the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which recognizes the rights of First Nations peoples, including land rights.

In short, our political system was modeled on the British system, with an electoral system that initially gave the vote to white, male, property owners to the exclusion of everyone else. Although the right to vote evolved as our conception of human rights evolved, (yes women, people of colour, and non-Christians are also humans) the electoral system still has a geographic bias that gives disproportionate voting power to the descendents of the charter settler groups. For a more detailed explanation see my post: Canada at 150: Ethnocratic Settler State or Multi-ethnic Pluralist Democracy?

In this system, we divide up the territory into electoral districts and the declared winner of each electoral district those who got the most votes becomes the representative. There is no aggregation of votes or of political preferences. We are only concerned with who gets the most votes, not whether a majority has been established.

Given that the rural seats in a vast territory such as Canada comprise the majority of seats and the people who live there are mostly from the ethnic groups who first settled (appropriated?) the land, this electoral system awards effective political control over the territory to these groups at the expense of the democratic principle of one person, one vote. In other words, Canada is still a dominion in which French-Canadian Catholics dominate and control the territory of Quebec and Anglo-Canadian Protestants dominate and control the territory outside of Quebec.

In my view, there is a trade off between control and domination of the charter groups and good government.

At the time of Confederation, the settlers’ principle concerns were to protect borders, secure the territory and exploit the natural resources therein, and the system of governance put into place reflected those concerns. Today, however, we live in a world that is exponentially more complex, and we expect our government to be able to the meet the social and economic challenges within our borders and play a responsible and effective role with regard to global concerns.

Unfortunately, these expectations cannot be met by a political system that reduces the complexity of issues to for or against the question at hand, and a vote for either the red party of the blue party. Yet, that’s what the system gives, and those who have the power to change the system to make it more intelligent, to make it more democratic, prefer to hang onto the outdated system because at the end of the day, they retain the power to decide what makes it onto the nation’s political agenda and how it gets decided.

Take for example Canada’s woeful performance on climate change. How is it that we are signatories to the Kyoto Accord, the majority of the population supports that we respect our international obligations, and the majority of the members of Parliament think likewise, yet we do precious little to meet those obligations?

Put simply, the idea of reducing greenhouse gas emissions doesn’t fit into the Anglo-Canadian Protestant hegemonic idea that nothing can be done if it would cause harm to the economy. Forget science, forget risk management; it is sufficient to raise the spectre of less economic growth and to say this is a bad thing and the descendents of the charter groups fall into order and vote accordingly. Keep in mind that together the Liberals and the Conservatives have little more than the support of only one third of the electorate (38%) and the present government is there thanks to only 23% of the electorate or 17% of the population.

Of course, the situation would be much different if the make-up of parliament actually reflected the popular vote, but to do so would mean moving out of a control and domination mode into a consensual mode of government. Heaven forbid.

Here in Quebec, the electoral system gives us the choices between two government options: the red team, the federalist Quebec Liberal Party, an incompetent and probably the most corrupt government since the days of Duplesis, and the blue team, an equally incompetent party that reduces the complexity of Quebec’s social and economic problems to the question of sovereignty.

Yes, regrettably these are the choices.

Never mind that the public education system is a disgrace, the health care system is a bad joke – this week a fundraising raffle included as a prize, gaining patient status with a family doctor – the province has the highest level of public debt in North America and its citizens are among those who pay the most taxes.

Never mind that the obsession with a Westphalian conception of sovereignty hardly applies to a territory we occupy as a result of European conquest, and that the Council of the Federation, free trade with the European Union, and plans for turning Quebec’s North into the land of milk and honey or whatever cliché that you prefer are essentially political diversions to cover up the real problem: neither the blue team or the red team has the capacity to govern effectively.

If that’s the case let someone else into the game. Let my vote count as well as the hundreds of thousands of other voters here in Quebec and the millions of others in Canada who can think critically and who don’t let their ethnic allegiance determine how they vote.

Until that day arrives, I am and will be the disgruntled democrat.

Canada at 150: An Ethnocratic Settler State or Pluralist Multi-ethnic Democracy?

In the near future, Canada will be celebrating its 150th birthday. Many would say the nation is still in its infancy, but within this relative short historical period our population has grown 30 fold, and the size of our economy allows us to be a member of the select G8, which demonstrates that we have become an important player on the world’s stage.

Certainly, Canada has evolved. Since confederation, our borders have expanded so that we are now the second largest country in the world. Within these borders, the demographic portrait has shifted from a population predominately of British and French origin, widely dispersed throughout our rural regions, to a population that is multi-ethnic and concentrated in our urban centers. Politically, a franchise that was limited to male, Protestant landowners gave way to universal suffrage, and with the adoption of the Constitution Act, 1982, which includes the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we became the masters of our own political destiny. However, despite these changes, Canada remains a vestige of European empires that have long since receded. Although we have developed some of the political institutions that are normally associated with free and democratic societies, we have yet to fully embrace democracy, and we cling to our heritage as an ethnocratic settler state.

Essentially, what keeps us from becoming a full-fledged democracy is that we maintain the privileged position of the initial settler communities. Similar in kind to other former British colonies, most notably Australia and New Zealand, Canada embodies a system of governance that is, however, slightly different: it is “for” and “by” two charter groups rather than a single specific ethnic community: French-Canadian Catholics within Quebec and Anglo-Canadian Protestants throughout the rest of Canada.

Regrettably unfamiliar to most Canadians, the term “ethnocracy” was coined by political geographer Oren Yiftachel in his investigations concerning the role of law in creating and enabling ethnocratic land regimes. The use of the term as it applies to Canada sheds light on our historical past and helps to make sense of recent political developments.

As explained by Yiftachel, ethnocracy is a distinct regime type that facilitates the expansion of a dominant ethnic nation in a multi-ethnic territory. Within these regimes exists a constant tension between two opposing principles of political organization: the ‘ethnos’ (community of origin), and the ‘demos’ (residential community of a given territory). In the heydays of ethnocracies, the ‘ethnos’ enjoys clear legal and institutional prominence. Ethnicity, rather than citizenship, constitutes the main criterion for distributing power and resources.

The regime sub-type ‘settling ethnocracy’ stresses the ethnic settlement project as a constitutive element of the regime. In the formative periods of settler societies such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, the state is usually deeply involved in a strategy of ethnic migration and settlement, which aims to alter the country’s geographic and ethnic structure. As the charter group of settlers usually refrains from mixing with indigenous populations and ‘inferior’ groups, such societies are based on deeply ingrained patterns of segregation frequently resulting in three major ethno-classes: founders, immigrants, and indigenous.

(a) The ‘Founders’ (also termed the ‘charter group’) – this group achieves the dominant status due to the high military, cultural, political, and economic standing established during the state’s formative years. Furthermore, intergenerational mechanisms, such as the land regime, together with rules of inheritance and transfer of property rights reproduce over time the ‘founders’ privileged position in different societal realms.
(b) The ‘Immigrants’ – this group comes from a different ethnic background from the founders (and is often split into a number of sub-groups based on ethnic background and race). Formally, the immigrants are part of the new nation built into the settler society. However, while they undergo a prolonged process of ‘upward’ assimilation into the ‘founding group’ they often remain in lower economic, geographical, and political positions.
(c) The Indigenous or ‘Foreign’ People – these groups, also termed ‘aliens’ or ‘natives’ or ‘others’, are characterized by long-term marginalization through the process of nation-and-state building; they are generally isolated in the geographical, economic, and social periphery of the settler society. Such groups include, for example, indigenous peoples such as Native Americans in nineteenth-century USA, the Inuit in Canada, the Aborigine in Australia, and the Maoris in New Zealand. They also include other ‘alien’ groups not fully included in the settling nation, such as the Chicanos in nineteenth-century southwestern USA, the Tamils in Sri-Lanka, or the Palestinians in Israel.

As explained by Yiftachel’s associate Alexandre Kedar, the establishment of ethnocratic settler states usually entails the construction of new property regimes. The acquisition of land is crucial component in this phase and often occasions a vast and violent dispossession of indigenous peoples from land they possessed for generations. While in most cases land is originally acquired by direct force, this violent acquisition is subsequently translated into institutional arrangements that represent and legitimize power relationships in the ethnocratic state.

As we have seen, ethnocratic settler societies usually contain three major groups: founders, immigrants, and natives. Ethnocratic land regimes reproduce and reinforce this social stratification. In the land regime they create, the founders control most land resources. Immigrants usually receive only a small part; while indigenous and alien groups, who often serve as the main contributors of the land, are generally denied a fair share of its allocation. By freezing this ‘initial’ spatial arrangement, the new property system facilitates the perpetuation over generations of the ethnocratic power structure.

The property regime also constitutes a legal-cultural order that reduces the necessity of direct force to maintain the ethnocratic system. Elites of the dominant ethnocratic group strive to institutionalize a hegemony that deflects open debate about the system and justifies their control of the territory. Under this hegemonic system, the ethnocratic spatial order is constructed as something ‘taken for granted’. Law and courts occupy a special place in the institutionalization and legitimization of these socio-spatial power structures.

With regard to the Canada’s indigenous peoples, the conflict caused by the imposition of the European property regime by the charter groups is intractable. In the famous words of former US Chief Justice, John Marshall, “conquest gives title that the courts of the conquerers cannot deny.” Consequently, aboriginal title to the lands obtained by conquest cannot be recognized in a meaningful way since to do so would require a complete transformation of the existing property regime.

As Canada continues its process of decolonization, however, further appropriation of indigenous lands will be curtailed, and we can expect that there will be some minor victories for indigenous groups in the Courts, but nothing of the sort that would threaten the existing order. Canadian Historian, Peter Russell, notes that “these juridical wins come with a downside – a reminder of the subordinate place of native societies within the larger settler societies in which they are embedded, and of their dependence on the courts that pronounce upon their rights in that larger society.”

Conversely, with regard to the relation between Canada’s charter groups and its immigrant population, there exists the potential for a significant realignment of the power relations between the two groups. According to Statistics Canada, by 2031 one in three Canadians will belong to a visible minority. One in four will be foreign born. Their ranks will grow from 5.3 million today to between 11.4 and 14.4 million. Between 29% and 32% of the population could belong to a visible minority group, nearly double the proportion reported by the 2006 Census. More than 71% of all minority people would live in Canada’s three largest metropolitan areas: Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. The increasing tension between the ‘ethnos’ and the ‘demos’ brought about by the demographic change could cause a bifurcation of the nation: the ethnocratic settler state gives way to the creation of a modern democracy.

Historically, the charter groups in settler states have been able to maintain their position of dominance within their respective political systems by the use of malapportionment of seats between urban and rural districts, thereby ensuring the domination of the legislature by the rural regions where the members of founder groups form large majorities. However, reapportionment along the democratic principle of ‘one person, one vote’ disrupts the hegemony of the ethnocratic elite since the votes of the other ethnic groups cannot be controlled by traditional identity politics and cultural cognition.

Indeed, the election of President Barak Obama and the subsequent reform of the American health care system, which will extend health insurance to approximately 34 million previously uninsured Americans, for the most part members of visible minority communities, signal the end of the Anglo-American Protestant hegemony in the USA. In short, landmark decisions from the US Supreme Court, most notably Baker v. Carr (1962) and Reynolds v. Simms (1964) paved the way to equal representation for equal numbers of people, without regard to race, sex, economic status, or place of residence within a state. A complete redistricting of state and federal electoral maps ensued, and, as a result, a series of progressive programs such as Social Security and Medicare were enacted that empowered what previously had been an underclass to rise up and eventually elect one of their own as President of the United States.

Here in Canada, malapportionment has recently become a concern, but the context in which it is addressed is less fraught with inter-racial tensions because of the manner that the right to effective representation is protected constitutionally.

For example, a number of recent studies have demonstrated that urban ridings where immigrants comprise a significant percentage of the electorate have less voting power than those rural ridings where the electorate is comprised largely of members of the charter groups. For the most part, theses discrepancies (an urban riding in Alberta has three times as many electors as one in Prince Edward Island) are due to the constitutional guarantees afforded to the smaller provinces for the number of seats they are accorded in Parliament, in other words, an unintended consequence of Confederation. Moreover, section 51 of the Constitution Act, 1867 guarantees that, notwithstanding the measures taken to protect the representation of the smaller provinces, each province will be represented in Parliament with a number of seats that is proportional to its share of the population. Consequently, in April 2010, legislation was introduced to award 30 additional seats in Parliament to the provinces (most likely to be enacted after the 2011 Census has been completed) which have experienced marked population growth as a result of the growth of their immigrant communities in their urban and suburban regions. Furthermore, the substantive equality guarantees of section 3 of the Charter limits population variations between ridings within a province to 25% from the provincial average for the number of electors per riding. This is a far cry from the 400 to 1 and greater population ratios between urban and rural electoral districts to be found in the United States before Baker v. Carr. Finally, it should be noted that the decision to change Canada’s ethnic composition was taken, and is being taken by the legislative assembly, the Parliament of Canada, that is dominated by the two charter groups, and they are fully aware of the demographic consequences of their decisions.

More serious concerns with regard to malapportionment in Canada arise from the continued use of a Single Member Plurality (SMP) electoral system that dates back to medieval Britain. Essentially, the SMP system manufactures majority governments that require far less than a majority of votes from the electorate. Generally speaking, 40% of the popular vote translates into 60% of the available seats in the legislature and 100% control of the political process. Most often, a candidate requires only a simple plurality of votes to be elected, which means that the majority of votes cast are discarded and have no bearing on the electoral results.

Since representation is given strictly on the basis of winning territorial electoral districts, and the population of the charter groups is widely distributed throughout the major portion of the territory in sufficient number to form pluralities in most of the rural ridings, the SMP system gives charter groups considerable political leverage. Essentially, the property regime is the source of political power, where the territorial control of electoral districts, winning seats, translates into the effective control of the political process.

The degree of leverage arising from territorial control is considerable, especially when we consider the dwindling percentage of eligible voters that choose to exercise their right to vote. For instance, as a result of the 2008 federal election, the Conservative Party formed a minority government, which exercises the power of a majority government subject to the willingness of the opposition parties to plunge the country into another general election, having won 143 of the 308 available seats. What is remarkable from a democratic perspective is that the government was formed with the support of only 22.16% of the eligible voters or 16.5% of the general population. Moreover, this was done with only two seats from the metropolitan centres, of Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, which indicates that the present government was elected for and by the charter groups, primarily by Anglo-Canadian Protestants.

As we could expect, this type of electoral result exacerbates the tension between the organizing principles of ‘ethnos’ and ‘demos’ within the country. Recently, the trigger events were the usually innocuous parliamentary practice of proroguing Parliament. However, in both instances, the act of proroguing Parliament – an anachronistic royal prerogative transferred from the British Monarchy to the Prime Minister – was widely perceived to allow the Prime Minister to escape the democratic will of Parliament: in the first instance, as a way to escape a non-confidence vote that would have surely brought down the government; in the second, as a way to delay the provision of potentially damming evidence to the opposition parties concerning the transfer of Afghan detainees. Shortly thereafter, hundreds of thousands of Canadians took to the streets in order to protest a practice, although legal and in keeping with a constitutional monarchy, because it was believed to arise from a flagrant disregard of democratic principles.

It is unlikely that the structural tension between ‘ethnos’ and ‘demos’ will subside. As a result of the Liberal Party losing its capacity to offer the electorate a government option, the historical alternation between the Liberals and the Conservatives forming governments since Confederation has been broken. In fact, the two charter groups now find representation in political parties that are diametrically opposed, Anglo-Canadian Protestants with the Conservatives and French-Canadian Catholics with the Bloc Québécois. Consequently, Canada’s system of governance inherited from the British is mired in successive minority governments with no immediate prospect of exiting from what is supposed to be only an irregular inconvenience.

Throughout the last decade, a number of citizens groups have contested the continued use of the SMP voting system in Canada because of its systemic distortion of the popular will in translating votes into seats in the legislature. No less than four provincial referendums were held without success to replace SMP with voting systems that gave more proportional results. Yet, the problem remains, especially for the supporters of the emerging Green Party that amassed approximately one million votes in the last federal election but gained no representation whatsoever. Of note, the Greens in their support of the environment reject the property regime advanced by the charter groups. Their core beliefs are much closer ideologically to those of the indigenous peoples.

Presently, the Greens are pushing forward with a Charter challenge of the constitutionality of the SMP system, having already won the equivalent of Baker v. Carr in that the question was ruled judiciable in the lower Courts and are pressing forward to have the Supreme Court rule that the continued use of SMP is in fact unconstitutional. Essentially, the Supreme Court will be asked, as much if not more as it did in the Saskatchewan Reference, to determine the nature of Canada’s electoral system and, as a result, its system of governance. In brief, by upholding the continued use of SMP, the Court will validate Canada’s continued existence as a ethnocratic settler state; by striking it down, the Court will put into place a process that will eventually bring to an end the hegemony of the charter groups in Canada as the territorial bias within the electoral system that is responsible for ethnic domination will be severely curtailed.

A second eventuality will also come into play that could cause Canada to deviate from its path as a dominant settler society. Indeed, the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign as Canada’s Head of State will create a window of opportunity for Canada to step away from its colonial past. When that day arrives in the not so distant future, Canadians will be faced with the decision of whether to allow for Prince Charles’s succession as Canada’s sovereign. Without question, royal succession will bring to mind the position of the dominant ethnic group and it will be debated in a far different cultural context than when Elizabeth II took the throne. For instance, when Elizabeth became Queen, Canada relied almost exclusively on Europe and in particular Great Britain for its immigrants. Today, Canada’s immigrants are primarily non-European and account for a far greater percentage of the population. Consequently, there will be far less identification with the new British Monarch, most probably the weakest identification with the Royals in Canada’s short history.

Given the scale of demographic change that will occur in Canada during the 21st century, a re-alignment of the power relations between the charter groups and Canada’s immigrant groups will most likely occur along the ethnocratic/democratic fault lines previously discussed. How and when these changes will impact on Canada’s democratic institutions is uncertain, but the trend is clear: Canada’s charter groups will enter into a new power sharing relationship with its immigrant communities.

Quebec Needs Its Own Gomery Inquiry

In my last blog, I wrote at length of the pathetic state of Quebec’s electoral system, but yesterday’s revelations by Marc Bellemare, the former Quebec Minister of Justice and Quebec Attorney General, went way beyond what many of us here in Quebec had suspected.

In short, Bellemare stated that the Quebec Liberal bagmen had exercised undue influence upon Premier Charest’s Cabinet in order to make sure that their preferred candidates were appointed to the judiciary. A second unidentified source today confirmed Bellemare’s allegations.

As you can imagine, these allegations cut to the heart of the democratic legitimacy of Quebec’s elected government. So serious are these allegations is that the Premier finally capitulated and announced that he would be striking a public inquiry to examine the manner in which judges are appointed.

So far so good, but what about Bellemare’s other allegations: money in envelopes being transferred to representatives from the Liberal Party, undue influence by Liberal financial backers in other government appointments and interference in the legislative process?

Apparently, we are supposed to accept Charest’s word that everything is above board with the manner in which the party receives its funding in spite of the fact that three other ministers said publicly that they couldn’t prevent businesses in the construction industry from making financial contributions and that these donations are illegal.

Moreover, we are also supposed to put aside our desire to have a public inquiry into the financial link between the construction industry and the Liberal government because it struck an investigative task force called Operation Hammer.

Wow John, which comic book universe do you live in?

Apparently in John’s world, the very individual who has had some very serious allegations made concerning his behavior can exercise his judgment in setting the terms of reference for the public inquiry. Conversely, the entire political class here in Quebec has come out and said that Charest cannot be one of the principle targets of the investigation and decide how the very same investigation will be conducted.

John doesn’t get it, but Pauline Marois the leader of the PQ does.

It’s all fine and well to have a public inquiry, but the terms of reference in this instance need to be determined by an impartial, independent, competent person who has much needed experience in dealing with such matters. According to Pauline, none other than retired judge John Gomery would be perfect for the job.

Couldn’t agree with you more Pauline. Brilliant suggestion.

Quebec’s Pathetic Electoral System

All is Not Well in the Belle Province

Aside from arts and culture, things are screwed up big time here in Quebec. If Quebec were a country, we would be among the top five debtor nations in the world. Counting our share of the federal debt, we have an accumulated public debt of approximately 90% of our GDP. Moreover, the Quebec Government recently amended key sections of its zero-deficit legislation so that we could again run substantial deficits without any clear plan on how to eliminate them.

As well, our social service programs are in a shambles despite the large amounts of money we invest in them annually. For example, less than 50% of Quebec high school students will graduate with a diploma within the prescribed five years. In Montreal, only 33% will do so from the Francophone public high schools. Estimates of the levels of illiteracy run as high as 15% of the population and as high as 50% if we include those who are deemed to be functionally illiterate. With regard to health care, good luck trying to find a family physician, and be prepared to wait more than 24 hours to see a doctor in one of our emergency wards, which doesn’t guarantee that you won’t die on a stretcher in a corridor while waiting to be transferred to a bed.

Furthermore, as a result of a highway-overpass that collapsed killing four people, the Quebec Government has gone a multi-billion dollar spending spree to fix our aging infrastructure, but it appears that the tendering system is rife with corruption. So much so, the vast majority of Quebecers cry out to have a public enquiry held to investigate the corruption and collusion within the construction industry, only to be met with the steadfast refusal of the Premier Jean Charest. Apparently, the Charest-led Liberal Party has very close financial ties with the province’s leading engineering and construction firms.

Even our sacrosanct publicly-funded, day care system has come under attack when it was revealed that financial contributors to the Liberal Party had been given preferential treatment in the awarding and exchange of the permits required to open a day care.

Well, you might ask, if things are so bad, why not simply vote the Liberals out of office?

It sounds like a viable option. However, we may have arrived at a point where the Liberals’ capacity to raise funds, voter apathy, disenchantment with the sovereignty option, and an archaic voting system have given them an institutional lock on political power.

Indeed, looking at the key components of the electoral system: the manner in which votes are translated into seats in the legislature, the electoral map, the financing of political parties, and the lack of an effective independent agency to monitor and prescribe electoral practices has led me to believe that Quebec has the worst electoral system in North America.

Looking southward, all 50 states are bound by the US Voting Rights Act of 1965, which reduces the variation of the congressional districts to less than 5% compared to the 25% variation allowed in Canada, and the distorted multi-party representation in Quebec’s National Assembly brought about by a voting system that is designed to accommodate only two political parties gives Quebec the highest levels of disproportionate results as measured by the Gallagher Index.

The Systemic Distortion of the Popular Vote

To begin, Quebec’s outdated first-past-the-post voting system produces large distortions of voting intentions so that majority governments are formed without having the support of the majority of electors. This is done by the system’s tendency to award more seats to the ruling party and less seats to the opposing party than they merit based on their respective share of the popular vote. Moreover, third parties are severely under-represented and representation is most often denied to smaller parties. Occasionally, a party will go on to form a majority government despite not having gained a plurality of the popular vote. This was the case in the 1944, 1966, and 1998 Quebec general elections.

One disturbing feature of the voting system is to repress political diversity and, as a consequence, reduce the level of participation during the electoral process. Since votes cast for third and smaller parties have little or no impact on electoral results, voters are given an institutional incentive not to cast their votes for their authentic choice or not to cast their votes at all. Lately, this institutional bias has led to a significant drop in the participation rate during general elections: from 81% in 1998 to 54% in 2008.

The vagaries of first-past-the-post are well known in Quebec. In fact, on four separate occasions the public has been consulted on how to fix the problem, and in each occasion recommendations were made to replace the existing voting system with a proportional system. Yet, the anachronistic first-past-the-post remains in place because those who benefit the most from the status quo – those who are elected by its use – are the least apt to change it despite the fact that changing the voting system is part of the official party policy for each of the parties that are represented in Quebec’s National Assembly.

The latest farcical attempt at change arose from Premier Charest’s 2003 electoral campaign promise to introduce elements of proportionality into the voting system. Draft legislation was tabled and yet another public commission was struck. Nevertheless, it became readily apparent that the proposed model would do little to correct the chronic problems inherent to the system. The citizens committee, which was part of the special commission, offered specific recommendations to make the system truly proportional, whereas the elected officials committee would only go as far as recommending that the new model not be implemented as it was proposed.

The Minister responsible for the file referred it back to the Director General of Elections (DGE) for further study, and a year later he responded with an exhaustive study of the possible modalities from which changes could be made. Unfortunately, the report was released on the last day before the legislature’s Christmas recess, and it was promptly shelved without a word of protest from the DGE.

Quebec’s Electoral Map: Some Are More Equal Than Others

Having gone through the motions of proposing changes to the voting system, the Quebec government still faced the legal requirement of drawing up a new electoral map after two subsequent general elections. However, this didn’t deter the Liberals from calling a snap, third general election with an out-dated electoral map to take advantage of weak polling numbers of the official opposition, notwithstanding the embarrassing fact that at least 18 of the 125 provincial ridings did not comply with the electoral law’s stipulation that ridings are required to have no more than a 25% deviation from the provincial average for the number of electors per riding.

Afterwards, the DGE wrote up another report and went on another public consultation to explain substantive changes to a new electoral map that would bring the size and number of ridings within the parameters of the electoral law. In short, two ridings would be eliminated from the outlying regions and two additional ridings would be created in more populous regions. Although the new map did not address the problem of how the votes are counted and then translated into seats, it did bring Quebec’s electoral map in line with the federal Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act and existing jurisprudence.

Yet, the Liberal government, having already run roughshod over the DGE, added insult to injury by rejecting his report and tabled legislation in which the Liberal government, not an independent electoral commission, would redraw the electoral map to its own liking. Again, the DGE did not speak out publicly against what was clearly an affront to the independent role a director of elections must play.

Importantly, the new electoral map gives short shrift to the democratic principle of one person, one vote. It allows for ridings in the outlying regions that do not conform to the 25% deviation limit of the existing electoral law. Over and above, the exceptional circumstance ridings (there are two: the Madeline Islands and the North of Quebec) which the electoral law makes provisions, there will be several ridings in the outlying regions with have less than half the electors as the large urban ridings. As we could expect, the Minister responsible for guiding these dubious changes to the existing electoral law through the legislature represents a riding that has less electors than the law prescribes.

Malapportionment on Linguistic Lines

Beyond the failure to respect the notion of one person, one vote, the Liberal map also increases the already existing imbalance of voting power between the majority Francophone and the minority Anglophone and Allophone populations.

Presently, it is well known that the Anglophone/Allophone ridings contain more electors on average than what are traditionally known as the Francophone ridings. Based on the latest data provided by the DGE, the voting power of the ridings where Anglophones and Allophones comprise more that 20% of the electorate is 7% less than the ridings in the rest of the province.

As a result, there exists an interesting phenomenon in Quebec where at the onset of each general election, the media reminds voters that when looking at polling numbers to keep in mind that the Liberals, which carry all of the Anglophone/Allophone ridings, must have a 5 to 7 point lead in the polls to be on equal footing with their rivals the Parti Quebecois (PQ). With regard to the distribution of seats in the legislature, votes cast in these ridings produce fewer representatives in the National Assembly than the same number of votes cast in the Francophone ridings.

What garners no attention in the today's very limited debate is that the proposed changes to the electoral map will exacerbate the malapportionment among the linguistic communities since the ridings that will be allowed to have fewer voters than is prescribed by the law have electorates that are approximately 95% Francophone. As result, the voting power of the Francophone majority increases while that of the linguistic minorities decreases.

This movement toward further “linguistic gerrymandering” of the electoral map also underscores the limitations of a voting system that awards representation strictly on the basis of geographically located districts that elect a single representative. To maintain the number of ridings in the outlying regions so that they conform to the 25% deviation limit would require an additional 26 ridings to be dispersed in the more populous regions. Since this reasonable measure does not appear to be a viable option, the Liberals have decided to push the present electoral system beyond its constitutional limits rather than to give voters a better electoral system, which would have occurred if they had made good on their promise to introduce elements of proportionality into the voting system.

The Power of Money

Although the Liberals would be in line with popular opinion if they were to adopt a proportional system, by doing so they would inevitably undermine the power of money to determine electoral results, and this would not sit well with the rank and file supporters of the party.

One of the traditional arguments put forward in maintaining the present system is that it respects the so-called sacred link between the deputy and his or her constituents. Supposedly, the multi-member districts to be found in proportional electoral systems would make it more difficult for citizens to establish contact with their elected representatives. Not only does this insult the intelligence of the electorate, but it also hides the fact the few electors ever try to make contact with their deputy, in fact more than 50% cannot recall his or her name, and those that do often do so for reasons of personal gain.

In summary, the first-past-the post system is above all else an electoral system that turns financial contributions from donors into patronage goods: government contracts, appointments, and favourable political intervention into the marketplace and the society at large.

Indeed, the popular term for our voting system, first-past-the-post, is an appropriate choice. The analogy drawn between an election and a horse race confirms the cherished feature of the system: the odds of the payoff. Of all the voting systems in use the developed world, it is the easiest system from which political donors can back the right horse with little need to hedge one’s bet. First, polling data is quite accurate in predicting overall election outcomes. Second, only the very least in the way of performance is required for the payback: winning the most seats in the legislature rather than gaining a majority of the popular vote. With such institutional practices in place, it takes very little for politicians who offer the likelihood of forming a majority government to convince potential donors who are very eager to participate in a quid pro quo.

The adoption of a proportional system, however, would increase the uncertainty of placing a winning bet on a particular party since it is rare that a proportional voting system produces a majority government. This feature diminishes considerably the capacity of a single political party of reward donors with acts of patronage. Moreover, in multi-member districts in which each political party fields several candidates, it is more difficult to predict which of the favoured party’s candidates will come up on top. This means that, in order to manage the risk, contributions need to be spread out over the entire slate of candidates a party runs in a district.

Other majoritarian systems that use a preferential ballot or use two or more rounds of voting also add uncertainty to the outcome since a favoured candidate might not garner sufficient support on the second round of voting or after the second and subsequent preferences are counted.

Clearly, the element of risk with regard to receiving a return on one’s financial investment after an election is significantly lower within first-past-the-post, which explains why the Liberals, who are favoured by the business and investment class, did not respect their electoral promise to introduce elements of proportionality into the voting system.

Serious Doubts Concerning the Integrity of the Electoral System

One of the most important legacies of the PQ’s relatively short time in power was to prohibit donations from corporations and unions to political parties and to limit donations from individuals to $3000 per annum. This feature of Quebec’s electoral law served as the model for similar legislation at the federal level. Unfortunately, in Quebec the electoral law is easily circumvented, and the Director General of Elections appears to have little interest in enforcing the law.

It is common knowledge that all one needs to do is to have one’s family members make similar maximum $3000 donations or distribute money to one’s employees to do likewise. Over the last year, three current ministers of Premier Charest’s cabinet have stated that it is common for construction companies to donate money to the Liberal Party in spite of Quebec electoral law’s prohibition of this practice.

Upon analysis of the public records concerning donations of more than $200 to political parties, it has been noted that since 2005 more than $300,000 has been donated to the Liberal Party from employees of the major engineering firms that do business with the government. As well, more than 200 Liberal donors exceeded the $3000 annual limit.

In light of these revelations, the only response that came from the DGE’s office was a statement to the effect that the law is difficult to enforce.

Finally, Quebec’s former Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Marc Bellemare, has publicly declared that he brought the subject of financial irregularities to the Premier’s attention. In response, Premier Charest denied he was made aware of the problem, which prompted Mr. Bellemare to state that Jean Charest “lies as easily as he breathes.”

Furthermore, the former Attorney General says that he has proof that he made the Premier aware of the problem, stated he was ready to testify before a parliamentary committee, and refused to appear before the DGE, who he claims to have sold out to the Premier. A motion to have Mr. Bellemare testify before a parliamentary committee was introduced by the opposition but was subsequently voted down by the Liberals.

Failure of Quebec’s Democratic Institutions

What makes this turn of events intolerable for those who believe in the principles of democracy is that the political party that exercises the power of the majority and is responsible for these unfortunate turn of events was elected with the support of less than 25% of the electorate. Consequently, Quebec democrats have to confront a reality in which a well-financed minority is circumventing the rules that oversee its election and is in the process of re-writing Quebec’s electoral laws, having usurped the responsibility from what is supposed to be Quebec’s independent Commission on Electoral Representation.

Relief could be expected if the PQ were elected in the next general election. Unfortunately, given that the malapportionment inherent to the electoral system actually favours the PQ, it is unlikely that any significant changes would be made to Quebec’s democratic institutions until after it achieves its goal of independence for Quebec, which means that we could be waiting for a very long, long time.

It would then appear that the only recourse to exit from this political cul-de-sac is to bring the matter before the courts. In 2004, the Association for the Revendication of Democratic Rights (ARDD) filed a motion in Quebec’s Superior Court to have Quebec’s use of first-past-the-post voting system declared unconstitutional. Moving forward ever so slowly, the case will be argued before Quebec’s Appeal Court at the end of 2010 with a great likelihood that the case will be tried before the Supreme Court of Canada sometime before the end of 2012.

A decision in favour of the ARDD would have the effect of forcing Quebecers to decide which voting system they should adopt to replace the anachronistic system we have been using for almost 150 years. Even British Parliamentarians in the House of Commons voted to adopt a law that would have its citizens participate in a nation-wide referendum in which they would have to choose between first-past-the-post and a voting system incorporating a preferential ballot (the alternative vote).

On the positive note, Quebec’s superior Court did rule that the ARDD’s motion was justiciable, which means that an elected government’s choice of a voting system is subject to judicial review. What remains to happen is for the Court to rule that the continued use if the first-past-the-post system infringes on the rights of citizens to have effective representation and to participate meaningfully in the electoral process. In making such a ruling the Court would pave the way for Quebec and subsequently Canada to become a truly democratic state.

Budget 2010-2011: When in Doubt, Sit Tight and Wait it Out

Reaction to the latest federal budget has been muted: boring, same old same old, to be forgotten as quickly as the prorogation of Parliament. Well, given the uncertainty in the global economy, maybe boring is a safe bet while we wait and see what is going to happen in the United States and the European Union.

Looking at the numbers and by making comparisons with previous budgets, the 2010-2011federal budget is pretty much steady as she goes. Spending is up as a result of a deficit-fuelled economic stimulus, but as the saying goes: "we’re all Keynesians now."

In breaking down the numbers, I notice that spending in the key categories of transfers to individuals, social transfers, and program expenditures as a percentage of total expenses is pretty much the same as the Conservatives' first budget in 2006-2007. One exception is the amount to service the debt, which is down from 15.3% of total expenditures in 2006-07 to 11.2% in 2010-11.

On the revenue side, the most notable change over the last four fiscal years is that personal income tax now represents 50.5% of total revenues, up from 46.7% in 2006-07. At the same time, revenue from corporate income tax is now only 11% of total revenues, down from 16% four years ago. In absolute numbers, individual Canadians now contribute $7 billion more while the corporate sector contributes $12 billion less. In real terms, increased revenue from individual taxpayers is in keeping with inflation; however, for the corporate sector, its contribution is approximately $15 billion less in real dollars. Needless to say, the issue of the corporate sector’s contribution to deficit reduction will be politically contentious.

With regard to the environment and the need to address climate change, well what did you expect? If no one other than B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell noticed that we held the Spring not the Winter Olympics and that it was the warmest winter in the last 100 years in B.C., why would a government for and by the people do any different? Unfortunately, climate change remains an inconvenient truth. It is devoutly to be wished that the economic stimulus would be in reality a deep shade of green, but given the political reality of the alignment of self-interest of the maudits boomers with the investor class, there is little chance that Canada will allocate the necessary financial resources to address the problem in a significant way anytime soon. The only relief is some green schadenfreude from knowing that decreased conventional economic activity corresponds with decreased emissions of green house gases.

That being said is a stay-the-course budget with regard to its global revenues and expenditures an appropriate response to the global political and economic context?

This might appear strange coming from me, but if I put aside my own political and economic preferences and look at the level of uncertainty we now face in attempting to come to terms with the fallout from the financial crash of 2008 and the failure of our economic models to predict its occurrence, it appears that for now what the future holds in store is anybody’s guess. Given such a state of affairs, we need to wait before making the big decisions that we need to make.

First, we have no idea if we are out of recessionary woods. Forget the V-shaped recovery. That’s for sure. Yet, are we in a U-shaped economic period, a double dip W-shaped period, or the dreaded L-shaped period in which economic recovery is at least 10 years away? No one knows.

Second, what can we expect from the US economy? Consumer consumption accounts for 70% of US GDP and the American consumer is all tapped out, and Asia’s entire consumer consumption is only 40% of America’s, so it is not very likely that a global shift of economic activity toward the east will benefit Canada in a significant manner.

Moreover, the US economy has shed jobs for 26 consecutive months, more than 8 million jobs, coupled with 1.5 million people entering its labour market annually who are not finding work. This represents a job deficit of more than 10 million, which means that aggregate demand will not be returning to anything like 2007 levels for years to come. This does not bode well for Canada since most of our exports our destined for the U.S.

Third, what can we expect for the price of oil? Again, no one knows. Presently, it’s around $80 a barrel, but that could change quickly as oil did reach a historic high of $140 barrel not so long ago. The price of oil and the regulatory framework has a huge impact on Canada. Certainly, without changes to the regulatory framework, we would expect the price of conventional oil to continue to rise as world production and export levels off or begins to decline. This has huge consequences for the tar sands and for the value of our currency. Yet, we don’t know whether the US will impose a continent-wide regulatory framework. It will be difficult to get such legislation through the US Senate, but the US Environmental Protection Agency has the legal mandate, backed by a US Supreme Court decision, to regulate the emission of green house gases.

Fourth, where are interest rates going? Today, they are at historic lows, but will it last? In the short-term, Canada can afford to run up some substantial deficits since the cost of servicing the debt is very low, but that could change. A sudden upswing in the price of oil has in the past triggered substantial increases in the rate of inflation and corresponding hikes in interest rates. Modest inflation combined with low interest rates and real economic growth are actually beneficial to debtor nations such as Canada since inflation reduces the real value of the accumulated debt while real economic growth increases our capacity to pay it down. However, high levels of inflation combined with high interest rates and no or little real economic growth can substantially reduce our capacity to service our debt and would impact on our material well-being.

In other words, the economic dust hasn’t settled from the latest financial crash. Economic conditions could be radically different two years from now. As a result, staying the course for the next fiscal year seems to be the prudent thing to do. Yes, our accumulated debt will return to previous levels in absolute terms, but the real value of the debt has decreased while our capacity to service the debt has grown.

However, this state of affairs will not continue indefinitely. For the moment, the global economy is far from equilibrium, but a more stable order could re-emerge. We still will have some tough decisions to make since it seems unlikely that we will simply be able to grow our way economically back to prosperity. And this brings me to my final point.

If a population is faced with difficult decisions, it is my opinion that the only legitimate way of going about making these decisions is through a democratic process. Yet, Canada has not evolved from a constitutional monarchy into a modern democracy. Majority rule does not exist. We have plurality rule which is another way of saying that we are ruled by the most powerful oligarchy. Before making any deep structural changes to our economy, we should reform our political institutions so that any changes to our political economy represent the will of the many and not the desires of the few. If sacrifices are to be made, they will need to be made in a just and equitable manner. Otherwise, the social fabric of this nation will be tested as it has never been tested before.

Les Maudits Boomers

First, I have a confession to make. I’m part of the problem. I am a boomer though I fall into the category called the SOL (shit-out-of-luck) boomers, those who are in the second wave that graduated from university after 1981.

On average, if you graduated during the recession of 1981-1982, upon graduation, you stood to earn $25,000 less than the maudits boomers who graduated before, and twenty years later, you probably had earned at least $200,000 less over the same time frame.

As a result, although I benefited from the social investments that made going to university ridiculously cheap and a growing population that turned residential homes into cash cows, I was never in the game of conspicuous consumption because I never had the income that would allow me to even enter into the game.

Nevertheless, I am extremely grateful for the social fabric that was provided for me that allowed me as a working- class kid to get a quality university education, which enabled me to attain an enviable quality of life on the cheap.

So, what’s my beef?

Well, I have a bone to pick with the maudits boomers, the most spoiled generation that ever graced the planet, who are so immersed in their own narcissistic self image that they have no idea what a pathetic legacy they are leaving for future generations.

From a financial perspective, they are ringing up a huge tab and are intending to stick future generations with an unmanageable debt load, and from an environmental perspective, they are pursuing a scorched-earth policy, hell bent on extracting as much fossil fuels from the earth as they can in order to maintain their unsustainable lifestyle as long as they can.

Now, that the chickens of the financial-speculation led, global recession have come home to roost, we are witnessing an inter-generational class war when it comes to the struggle to balance the books and to decide how to distribute the collective wealth.

This is where the economy becomes extremely political and we must be sensitive to the questions of social justice, in particular the question on inter-generational social justice, that underlie the debate over the numbers.

At the heart of the no-tax-increase position of economic and fiscal policy is the fact that the refusal to increase taxes coupled with a reduction of social program expenditures other than healthcare outlays benefits the maudits boomers and the silent generation at the expense of everyone that follows.

Here, the positioning to be prudent managers of the economy – remember the cant before the onset of the latest recession that the fundamentals of the economy were sound and that we would have no deficit – is a ruse to cover the collective greed of a large segment of the population and its intent to screw the rest.

Let’s face up to the facts. The huge increase in the quality of material life for post-war North Americans was due to a unique configuration of variables that will never be repeated: oil was cheap and abundant and the rest of the world lay in ruins while we switched our economic focus from the production of armaments to the production of consumer goods.

The maudits boomers had the extreme good fortune of being born into a generation that, through no effort of their own, afforded them the scale of economic opportunities that no subsequent generation will ever see.

The second fact to keep in mind is that there is no empirical evidence to support the claim that increases to the marginal tax rate will impact negatively on economic growth and, as a result, on government revenues.

The reality is that there is no correlation between tax rates and economic growth among OECD countries. Robust economic growth is possible in high tax rate countries like Sweden and Finland and in low tax rate countries like the US and Japan. In short, tax rates are conditioning not determining factors for economic growth.

So, the refusal to raise taxes and the intent to slash expenditures offset by increases in user fees is tantamount to setting up a social system built by and for the maudits boomers and then slamming the door behind them as they head off into retirement, which for many will be longer than the years they participated in the work force.

What kind of legacy is that?

It seems to me that at the very least boomers should leave behind a state of affairs that is at least as healthy as those that greeted them when they were born and that they enjoyed over the course of their lives.

Measures must be taken, other than offloading our collective problems to future generations, to ensure that we leave our children and our grandchildren a world in which we would want to live in.

Importantly, boomers have the democratic weight at the polls to translate our collective desires into the policy options of our choosing.

Since we are just days away from the tabling of the first post-recession beget, I will put questions concerning environmental stewardship aside and return to them in a later post.

To reduce deficits provincially and federally revenues must increase and expenditures must be controlled in a manner that adheres to the principle of inter-generational social justice.

Looking at the revenue side, the imposition of a financial transaction tax as a means to address structural deficits and accumulated debt holds great promise. Potential revenues are huge and the tax is progressive in nature since those who make the most transactions will pay the most taxes.

Moreover, since it has become readily apparent that risk management towards the economy is more important that fiscal policy focused on growth, the imposition of such a tax benefits everyone because increased economic stability reduces systemic risk.

In absolute terms, the benefits accrue on a progressive gradient: jobs for the working and middle class garner more protection and the rentier class is less apt to experience catastrophic losses when financial markets drop significantly, which now includes those who benefit from pension funds.

Second, relatively painless for those who were fortunate to experience economic conditions that led to unprecedented increases in material wealth, estate taxes should be raised significantly.

Collectively, since it is our generation that has benefited the most from the creation of our generous social programs, we should on our exit pay our fair share to ensure that we do not imperil the capacity of future generations to address their collective challenges.

Think of it as a boomer exit tax. It’s progressive by nature and it can be designed so that it balances our desires to leave a heritage to our individual families with the necessity to protect the common good.

On the expenditure side, let’s not get into the zero-sum game of healthcare versus education. Personally, I find it morally repugnant that we allow healthcare expenditures to take up approximately 50% of provincial budgets (supported by federal transfers), do nothing to bring them under control other than making a lame reference to further privatization, and then demand the younger generation to pay more for their post-secondary education, thereby forcing many of them into becoming wage slaves so they can pay down their individual debt while supporting our generous pensions and healthcare system.

If raising estate taxes is the first sacred cow that needs to be sacrifices, the second is the payment-by-medical act-performed healthcare system.

This system is no longer sustainable and it should be modified so that physicians are salaried employees as they are at the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Health Center, two of the leading healthcare institutions in North America.

From a deontological perspective, given the well-documented negative effects of income disparity on public health and the revenues physicians presently enjoy, they would be hard pressed to justify why we should continue to maintain their present levels of remuneration relative to the population at large.

If ever there was a time to think creatively about how we are to deal with our collective challenges, the time is now, especially since we are at the beginning of a demographic transition of which we have no idea of our public institutions capacity to adapt.

What is desperately needed is some exemplary leadership from boomers, so that we can properly assume our roles of stewards for future generations.