By Arthur Weinreb
Monday, September 17, 2007
On October 10, election day in the province of Ontario, Ontarians will be asked whether or not they wish to change our electoral system from a first past the post (FPP) system to one of a mixed membership proportional (MMP) system.
Currently there are 107 seats in the Ontario legislature. The candidate in each of the province's 107 ridings who obtains the most votes wins the seat. Like most things in life, there are elements of unfairness when candidates are elected in this way. It can happen that a party with strong second place finishes in a lot of these ridings can gain the greatest percentage of the popular vote and yet not have enough first place victories to gain power. And a minor party such as the Greens can get a significant proportion of the popular vote and yet not be able to win any seats in the Ontario legislature.
Under the proposed MMP system, the number of seats will rise to 129. Ninety of these seats will be directly elected as they currently are now while the remaining 30 will be appointed from lists that are made up by party officials. Seats will be awarded to the parties according to the percentage of the vote that these parties obtain during the election. If for example, a party is entitled to five seats under this method, the first five people on that party's list will become a member of the provincial parliament. This will enable minor parties such as the Greens to have members sit in the provincial legislature provided that they get a certain percentage of the vote.
One of the major criticisms of this system is that it gives the political parties too much power in deciding who will be our "elected" representatives. For example, let's suppose that there is a Liberal member of the Ontario legislature that a lot of people, including those who vote Liberal, want to get rid of. Under our current system he or she could simply be defeated in their own riding by a candidate from another party. Under the MMP system, if the Liberal Party is determined to keep this member, all they have to do is put him or her at or near the top of their list. There is nothing to preclude a person who runs for election to be included on a party's list. If they happen to win their seat, their name is simply crossed off. The Liberals, PC's and Tories are guaranteed that they will have members chosen from their party's lists so under this scenario, a candidate who is specifically rejected by the electorate will be guaranteed a seat in the next legislature if the party so wills it.
We all know, and most of us are resigned to the fact that the Senate of Canada is a place where loyal political hacks go to die. Occasionally however, a senator will come up for air and this happened last week with Tory Senator Hugh Segal. Segal was trumping the MMP system and attempting to allay fears about it to a group of business people at the Economic Club of Toronto. The senator was quoted as saying that Ontarians have nothing to fear from the proposed electoral system because the province's political parties will have to be careful about how they draw up their lists. If these lists do not reflect what the people want that party will be "crushed like a bug, as they should be" during the next election".
"Crushed like a bug". Yeah, right. If life were really like that, Dalton McGuinty would be crushed like a bug for all of the lies that he's told during the last four years as well as the misuse of Ontarians' tax dollars that were thrown at ethnic and religious groups in an effort to curry votes. But we're less than a month away from going to the polls and it appears that the bug will be re-elected. Segal's insect theory just doesn't wash.
Senator Segal also criticized the unfairness of the current riding system because of all the manipulation that goes on when local ridings choose a candidate. According to Segal, many of these riding associations are closed and manipulation can be used to deny opportunities to women or other minorities and of this can be avoided if the parties are required to draw up lists in an open manner. This kind of thinking is awfully close to the way that dictators think; there is a lot of corruption going on that couldn't occur if a strong leader takes power away from the people and stops it. In dictatorships, as well as under the MMP system, there may be less corruption and unfairness but it will come at the expense of the right of the people to vote for who will represent them at Queen's Park.
If the best argument that someone like Hugh Segal can make for MMP is to say that we should trust politicians to do the right thing, then we should all go to the polls and vote in favour of retaining our current system of electing members of the legislature.
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