Trudeau Remains Prime Minister Thanks to Canada's Pathetic Voting System

What do Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump have in common? Both leaders actually lost the popular vote in the last elections. However, they both became the leader of their respective countries due to the distortions of the voting systems used in each one.

In the 2015 electoral campaign, Justin Trudeau promised that this would be last the Canadian federal election using the archaic voting system, single member plurality (SMP) better known as first-past-the-post (FPTP). He didn't keep his promise. Now we know why.

In yesterday's general election, from a democratic perspective Trudeau did not win the election. He lost. The Conservatives actually received more votes. He is the Prime Minister because of the manner votes are translated into seats in Canada.

In reality, there are 338 separate elections during the general election. In each one, all that is required is to receive the most votes. There is no direct relation between the total number of votes cast and the distribution of seats.

In a hypothetical example, if we divide a region into ten distinct electoral districts and in each district, Party A wins 40% of the vote, Party B wins 30%, and Party C wins 20% of the vote, Party A wins all the electoral districts and gets 100% of the available seats. Obviously, the goal here is not to provide democratic representation but to reward the political party who wins what is essentially an electoral contest not an exercise in democracy.

That's just what happened in Canada. Trudeau didn't win a democratic election. He won a piss poor electoral contest just like Trump won in the USA, held with slightly different rules but with the same intent.

In Canada during the last 15 years, there have been 6 referendums at the provincial level that gave the option of changing the voting system. There will be a seventh referendum in Quebec in 2022. The problems of FPTP are well known. Even Justin Trudeau is aware of them.

So, why don't Canadians demand something better?  Well, that would entail sustained political engagement and Canadians are just too lazy and would simply prefer to defer to authority and continue to participate in electoral contests rather than live in a democracy.

Perhaps, the only way to get out of this mess is for the Supreme Court of Canada to declare the voting system null and void for not respecting the right to vote as stipulated in Section 3 of the Charter.

Soon, there will be Charter Challenge launched by a group of citizens that seeks such a result.

Maybe the Supreme Court will uphold the rights of Canadians to participate in a meaningful exercise of democracy when choosing their representatives. 

Canada's General Election Looks Like a Bad Kabuki Performance

Normally, I find Canadian General Elections to be rather boring. For 150 plus years, Canadians have been governed by either the red party or the blue party. Now, since neither party can attract 40% of the popular vote, the election is decided by which party will receive the benefit of the systemic distortions that the first-past-the-post voting method brings about. In the last election, the red party was awarded all of the 61 seats available in the Maritimes although it had only received 56% of the popular vote there. This was enough to give the red party a majority of seats in Parliament and full control of the government. No wonder the leader of the red party, Justin Trudeau, reneged on his electoral promise of changing the voting system.

But this general election is turning out to be something different. It reminds me of the Japanese traditional theater, Kabuki, in which the actors dress up in vivid costumes, wear a lot of make up, and strike dramatic poses to make contact with the audience.

In the Canadian version, Justin Trudeau has had photos of him unearthed, revealing him dressed up like a genie from the Arabian Nights, wearing dark brown make up. Say no more. A picture is worth a thousand words, but this time the staging has gone awry.

Coming after a multitude of photos showing how cool our Prime Minister was supposed to be, these photos suggest something totally different. Without his staff photographer there to stage the shot, these photos suggest the real character of the person playing out his role in our political theater, one that is certainly not very flattering.

In this case, the pose, the costume, and especially the make up shout out racist hypocrite.

My oh my, how is the audience going to react? Certainly, many Canadians will feel like they were duped into thinking that Justin Trudeau embodied the values of social justice. Looking at these photos along with the video showing him as a young man wearing black face, I can't help but think that a great many voters who voted for the red party in the last election will either vote for the green party or decide to sit out this election and not go to the polls.

So the only real question left to be decided in this is whether Trudeau's abysmal Kabuki moment will be enough to oust him as Canada's Prime Minister.

Fortunately, this crappy telenovella will soon be over.







 

When It Comes To Boring Nobody Does It Better Than Canada

A Group of Canadians Watching the Leaders Debate

Same as it ever was . . .
Same as it ever was . . .
(Once In A Lifetime, The Talking Heads)

It's a moody Manitoba mornin'
Nothing's really happening, it never does (Moody Manitoba Morning, The Bells)

Having lived for almost all my life in Canada, I am struck by the boring sameness of life in the Great White North.  Yes, there are some interesting places to visit and some interesting people to get to know, but, all in all, living here is like watching the snow melt.

I think it has something to do with the geography.  In a travel brochure you might see some appealing photos of Quebec City, Peggy's Cove, Niagara Falls and the Rocky Mountains, but what the brochures fail to mention is the vast distances separating our sights of interest and how excruciatingly boring it is to traverse those spaces of the big empty.

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Canada's Lamentable Lack of Imagination

Canada's Greatest Cultural Achievement: The Charter of Rights and Freedoms

I know.  I come from the prairies.  Living in Winnipeg was cool, but ask anyone what it is like to drive in or out of Winnipeg on the Trans Canada Highway.  The greatest danger comes from the fact that the land is incredibly flat and the road is incredibly straight.  It is so boring that people fall asleep at the wheel while driving, leading, of course, to tragic consequences.

A couple of years ago, I decided to drive from Ottawa to Winnipeg and traversed our largest province, Ontario.  Let me tell you, the Canadian Shield is interesting for about fifteen minutes of the two full days of seeing nothing but rocks and lakes and trees and the occasional Tim Horton's, Canada's favorite coffee and doughnut shop.  So boring that my two sons sucked me into an argument when leaving Thunder Bay about whether Terry Fox is a Canadian hero just to yank my chain in order to break up the monotony.

I can also attest that driving from Winnipeg northward to Thompson, Manitoba, and along Quebec's Lower North Shore are as boring if not more so than driving across Ontario.  Some would argue that the most boring drive is from Montreal to Toronto.  It's difficult to decide.  To do so would involve an extremely boring conversation I would rather avoid.

Regardless, if people are to survive and prosper in Canada, they need to be genetically endowed to be able endure long periods of time where nothing much happens and to fill those days, weeks, months, and years, with mind-numbing routines in order to pass the time.  Life in Canada is about exciting as paying down a 25 year mortgage.

My father, on the other hand, lived through some remarkable times.  He grew up during the Depression; went off to fight in the Second World War; played professional football; brought up two kids that saw a man walking on the moon.

Not me.

The only iconic moment that comes to mind thinking about the last fifty years in Canada was Paul Henderson scoring the winning goal with the time running out in the final game of the Canada-Russia Summit Series in 1972.  Not a lot has happened since.  Like what?  The Charter, NAFTA, Justin Bieber?  That's about it.  History is what happens outside of Canada. OK. The Raptors winning the NBA title was pretty awesome.

Which brings me to Canada's current General Election, which will go down in history as one of the most boring electoral campaigns ever held, as about exciting as driving across Ontario.

In fact, Canada's present social contract has been in place for more than 40 years.  All we do is tinker at the periphery.  Raise or lower taxes slightly.  Add on an additional social program here and there.  Nothing that would rock the boat.  Steady as she goes.

All in all, it comes down to which leader can do the least harm.  Four more years of the same, or four years of someone brand new that is trying to convince us that there are no big plans in the works?  These are the choices?

In any case, whoever forms the next government will probably not have a majority of seats in Parliament.  Nothing new there.

Stay tuned.  Given how the first-past-the-post voting system does not work very well with multi-party elections, I am sure that the either the Red Party or the Blue Party will be the recipient of an electoral distortion that will either one a majority of seats. Ho hum. Same as it ever was.

After all, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.  Let's keep on chugging along with what we got, and thank God we are not living in Central America, a place where you can't sit patiently and watch the snow melt.

Connecting the Dots Between Electoral Systems and Income Equality

At long last, people have realized that the politics of economic growth are conceived to enrich the top 0.1% of the population at the expense of the bottom 99%.

However, one huge question remains: how do you fix the system?

The answer is that you have to change the electoral system that enables a small minority to effectively buy the politicians that will do their bidding. To do this, we have to get rid of selecting our elected representatives by the single member plurality method more popularly known as first-past-the-post.

If ever there was a voting system designed to favor rent seeking, the economic term for buying favors, it is first-past-the-post. I love the name because the horse race allusion captures what happens in the stands at a race track: being able to pick the winner backed by a significant wager pays off handsomely.

Let us remember that there is no greater return on investment in countries that use first-past-the-post than making a financial contribution to a political party coupled with a post election lobbying campaign. In the market, competition is fierce and investments to increase market share or profitability are fraught with uncertainty as competitors try to gain advantage in a zero-sum game. So, instead of trying to tip the entire playing field in one's direction, it is much easier to increase profits by getting those who set the rules of the game to intercede on one's behalf with a government contract, favorable legislation, or fiscal policy.

This is how the top 1% reap the lion's share of the nation's wealth. They hedge their bets, so it doesn't matter who wins the election. Both parties that offer government options to the electorate are funded by or by those who owe their social standing to the one per centers. Consequently, electoral campaigns come and go, focusing on peripheral issues, leaving in place the cumulative gains that the constant lobbying piles up for those in the upper most echelons of the society.

Indeed, accumulating favors is relatively easy to do when polling data tells you where the political parties stand relative to one another and all that is required is to pick which candidate will garner the most votes in each single electoral district. No messy formulas that award seats on the basis of the popular vote. Few surprises with regard to which candidate from which party will get elected. As a result, it is not difficult to identify who needs to be influenced in order to obtain preferential treatment and a cosy symbiotic relationship between politicians and their financiers comes about.

No wonder the anachronistic first-past-the-post resists attempts to replace it with other electoral systems that give better representation of the popular vote. To change the voting system, especially for one that gives proportional representation, increases the uncertainty of the results and consequently increases the risk of getting a return from one's campaign contribution.

In fact, multiparty coalitions are much more difficult to influence since there is no one who can wield authority in a unilateral fashion. Moreover, when everything has to be negotiated, there are no guarantees that the negotiated agreement will deliver the goods. In the process of negotiation, one's preferred outcome may fall off the table in the process of reaching an agreement.

To change the political economy so that there is a more equitable distribution of a nation's wealth, the demos, in other words the 99% who are effectively under-represented, must ensure that the transfer of political power from the electorate to elected officials that occurs as a result of election is done in a truly democratic fashion.

This will not occur as long as the first-past-the-post system is in place. To change the distribution of wealth, people must disable the political institution that enables the concentration of wealth in the first place.

(This post first appeared in November, 2011.) 

Too Many Bozos On This Bus

Desperate times require desperate measures. The privilege of the old stock citizens, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, is being threatened in the USA, the UK, and in Canada. It's just a question of demographics. 

Low birth rates combined with the arrival of many immigrants from around the world, in other words, people of color, give rise to demographic projections that the old stock will soon be outnumbered. As a result, long standing privilege could be threatened

In all three countries, there exits an unholy alliance between the ultra rich and the plebes from the old stock. On the one hand, the ultra rich do not want to be funding the social programs that are extended widely to the population at large. On the other, the old stock wants to maintain their perceived superior position in the status hierarchy so they give their votes to the political parties that want to conserve how the society is structured.

Trying to point out to the old stock that well-funded social programs like health care, child care, and post-secondary education, to mention just a few, would also be beneficial to them is, for the most part, a waste of time.

Tribal identities take precedent over rational thinking. Therefore, twenty-first century politics in these three countries has morphed into a weird form of infotainment where buffoons can become the leaders of the ruling parties and their supporters don't seem to mind.

How else can you explain (other than the rigged electoral systems) the presence of Donald Trump as the President of the United States, Boris Johnson as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and Doug Ford (brother of Rob Ford) as the Premier of Ontario, the largest and most populated province in Canada.

All three are clown-like in their behavior, and this personality trait appears to be an integral component of the new electoral strategy for right wing political parties. The more outlandish the leaders, the better.

We know from cognitive research that stimulating the reptilian brains of humans is the best way to get them to behave in a certain manner. With regard to politics, tribal identities and fear can be easily manipulated so that the higher cognitive functions like reason never come in to play.

For instance, research has shown that when conservatives were exposed to evidence demonstrating that a partisan belief was false - such as a report demonstrating that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction or that lowering taxes doesn't increase government revenue - they became more convinced than ever that those beliefs were actually true.

In other words, leaders who tell lies and behave erratically not only invite criticism, they benefit from it by solidifying support among their supporters since their brains will go into overdrive to protect their tribal identification with their party and its leader. 

Off-the-wall statements like: build a wall to keep out Mexicans and get them to pay for it, leaving the European Union will be beneficial to the Brits, or promising people from Ontario a buck a beer might seem so ridiculous to risk losing votes, but such tactics actually motivates supporters to go out and vote in general elections that have low participation rates. 

Essentially, the idea of winning over undecided voters on the basis of a well-thought out electoral platform that includes measurable objectives and lays out realizable plans to achieve them are a thing of the past. Instead, governments are now formed on the basis of galvanizing core supporters with clearly communicated boundaries of us and them and fomenting fear about what the others would do to us if they ever gained power.

As well, the buffoonery of the leaders divert attention away the real political agenda that is being advanced for the benefit of the ultra rich. Any outlandish statement a leader makes is quickly picked up by social media and is given sufficient political spin so by the time it appears in an individual's news feed, it has been sufficiently altered to confirm the recipient's political beliefs. So much for reasoned political debate. 

Given the systemic distortions that the electoral systems in all three countries bring about, any advantage that can be gained in mobilizing the core supporters is then amplified when the popular vote is then translated into electoral college votes in the US, or number of seats in Parliament in Canada and the UK. Importantly, it isn't necessary to garner the greatest number of votes. In fact, all that it takes is to win a sufficient number of electoral districts and the voting system will take care of the rest.

So, don't expect any significant change within the Anglo-American Empire as long as the old stock voters provide the ultra rich the means to maintain their political power. Eventually, demographic change may tilt the playing field in the other direction, but I wouldn't count on it. Moreover, those who presently control the political agenda will not leave quietly. They will go out with a bang not a whimper.

  

Will Quebec Finally Become a Distinct Society Politically?

These are interesting times in North America. There are general elections looming in both Canada and the United States. In 2019, Canadians will decide if they want to continue to be led by Justin Trudeau, and in 2020 Americans will decide if they want to be led by Donald Trump. 

In Quebec the situation is different. The biggest decision facing the population is whether it will continue to elect its government with an outdated electoral system that regularly distorts the outcome of how the voters actually voted. For example, in Canada, Justin Trudeau leads a majority government with only 39% of the popular vote, whereas in the United States, Donald Trump is the President despite the fact that he obtained fewer votes than Hillary Clinton.

As should be expected, the question of democratic legitimacy remains a central issue to how both Canada and the United States are governed. In both countries, governments were formed that did not respect the desires of the electorate as expressed by the popular vote. In short, the systemic distortions produced by the respective electoral methods allows for a the will of the majority to be circumvented in favor of the desires of the few.

The question concerning the democratic legitimacy of elected governments in both countries is nothing new. Attempts to change the voting system in Canada have come and go for more than 100 years. In the United States talks about changing how the electoral college elects the President surface when its method produces a democratically unacceptable result as it did in the last Presidential election in 2016.

The continued use of such overtly flawed electoral systems brings to the surface the cultural values of the nations that use them. Evidently, there must be a larger societal good that is advanced in the place of having fair elections. Taking into consideration the very large inequalities in the manner wealth is distributed in English speaking countries -- the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada are among the worst offenders among developed countries -- the electoral systems in place in each of these respective countries advance the desire to concentrate great wealth with a small minority at the expense of the majority of its citizens.

In Quebec, however, although the province uses the same first-past-the-post voting method like the rest of the provinces and states in North America, the inequality in the distribution of wealth in Quebec is significantly smaller. In 2016, using the most widely used measure for wealth distribution, Quebec's Gini coefficient (0.292) was almost identical to Germany's (0.291) and more in keeping with Sweden (0.273), Finland (0.264) and Norway (0.250) than that of the United States (0.457).

Having lived in Quebec for twenty-five years and having learned to speak French fluently, I can attest that from a cultural perspective Quebec is a distinct society when compared to the rest of North America. Maintaining the continued survival of a French-speaking community requires much more concern with the well-being of the collectivity than a simple focus on the well-being of the individual so common in English-speaking societies. As a result, the state is much more present in the social-economic sphere, the most obvious example being the language laws that promote the use of French and limit the use of English in commercial activities. Moreover, there is strength in numbers so the Quebec government actively supports the formation and the well-being families via generous maternity and paternity leave, government-subsidized day care, and inexpensive post-secondary education. 

Indeed, the very fact of being a French speaker in Quebec carries with it a deeper concern for the well-being of other French speakers because the continued survival of the community requires a level of attention to its overall health not found in those regions in North America where a laissez-faire mentality reigns. Consequently, although how the Quebec government performs is always under scrutiny, its continued presence and legitimacy in the society is not subject to debate as is the case in the rest of North America. For instance, people in Quebec pay higher taxes than those living in other states and provinces, but there exists a widely-held realization within the population that those taxes are converted into social programs that benefit the entire population.

Historically, these fundamental cultural differences have fueled the political desire to create an independent state in Quebec, separate but associated with the rest of Canada. There were two referendums (1980 and 1995) concerning the creation of a sovereign state but in both instances the proposal was rejected. Subsequently, the support for a sovereign state has waned but those fundamental cultural differences remain, which brings us to the question of the decision to use a different electoral system in Quebec than in the rest of North America.

Notwithstanding the continued desire to create an independent state in a significant minority of the population, there is a proposal on the table to change the electoral system in Quebec supported in principle by three of the four political parties represented in the National Assembly that would bring its political system in much better alignment with its political culture than the one in use today that was transplanted upon North American soil by the British.

In summary, single member plurality voting (SMP) systems (better known as first-past-the-post) allow for the strongest minority within a country to rule as if they were the majority and to impose their agenda upon the electorate despite the fact that their agenda is very often at odds with the desires of the majority. In fact, elections in countries that use SMP do not have as there objective to reflect the voting intentions of the electorate. 

Rather, the distortions inherent to the systems tilt the voting intentions towards a single party that will be declared, more often than not, the winner of a winner-take-all contest and awarded the right to rule as if it had the support of the majority of the voters. As a result, we can say that this type of electoral system produces an authoritarian government which lacks democratic legitimacy but rewards those who finance the electoral campaigns quite handsomely. This is one of the legacies of the British Empire.

Conversely, if we look at Europe and, in particular, countries that are small, relatively homogeneous, and like Quebec, that need to protect and promote a historic, linguistic community (Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands), we notice that their governments are consensual, arising from the use of electoral systems that do not distort in any meaningful way the composition of the respective national assemblies from the popular vote. 

Consequently, the authority to govern is not based on the systemic distortions inherent to the voting method and the ensuing governments represent a variety of viewpoints since these voting systems (proportional representation) do not normally award a majority government to a single political party.

Presently, the new voting system being considered to replace the outdated British variant is a proportional voting method and the current Premier of Quebec, Francois Legault of the Coalition Avenir Québec party promised that he would implement the change, unlike the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, who made the same promise in the last federal election but then broke it once he became Prime Minister.

It has been said that the willingness to change the electoral system is proportional to the proximity to power. Once elected by a SMP system, the political parties that propose to make the change when in opposition invariably find the reasons not to make the change once they form the government.

Clearly, the ball is squarely in Francois Legault's court. What remains to be seen is whether he will act in a politically expedient manner, or bring Quebec into the twenty-first century by breaking with the past to give Quebec an electoral system that reflects its distinct culture.