Fair Vote Manitoba

It’s awesome to see Mike Morrice advocating for Proportional Representation and making it clear to Canadians that it is one of his top priorities!

The composition of Parliament under FPTP does not, by and large, accurately reflect the will of the electorate. For example, in Ontario’s most recent provincial election, the Progressive Conservatives received approximately 43% of the popular vote. Yet, under First-Past-the-Post, they secured a majority of the seats and were able to form a majority government, despite the fact that most Ontarians did not vote for the PCs. Implementing a PR system would not necessarily mean that the PPC would receive 5% of the seats in Parliament or hold the balance of power. In fact, based on the election results we currently have, the PPC would likely have only secured approximately 5% of the seats in 2021 under a PR system. Moreover, they would not have held the balance of power in any of the last three federal elections had they been conducted under PR. There is also no evidence to suggest that, under a PR system, support for the LPC, NDP, and GPC would suddenly be capped at around 45% (which would be a combined approximate % that these parties would need to receive under a PR system for your scenario of the PPC holding the balance of power with 5% of the seats to potentially happen), particularly when their combined support is currently approximately 60%. Nor is there any reason to assume that the CPC’s support, either on its own or combined with the BQ, would necessarily be sufficient to make the PPC the balance of power in Parliament with 5% of the seats. Your scenario about the PPC under a PR system does not reflect the current reality, or our last election results. Under a PR system, if the electorate’s collective preferences do not translate into the PPC receiving 5% of the seats or holding the balance of power, then that is what the parliamentary seat distribution and subsequent negotiations would likely reflect (based on parliamentary democracy, that is). And if other politicians did decide to allow the PPC to be part of government (an unrealistic outcome since we’re currently far from being in a place where the PPC would hold the balance of power to begin with) even though a majority of the electorate may understandably not want that (me neither), these parties could end up being punished in the next election accordingly. Vote-splitting is an issue with our current electoral system too. Under FPTP, a candidate can win a riding despite being opposed by a majority of voters in that riding. This means that a candidate can take office without having received the support of most of their constituents. PR offers a way to address this problem without forcing parties to merge or voters to abandon the parties they actually support. Different parties can continue to run independently, giving voters a wider range of choices at the ballot box, while the resulting distribution of seats can more accurately reflect those choices. In this way, PR can preserve political diversity while significantly reducing the distortions and vote-splitting associated with FPTP.

I don’t think our choice of voting system should be driven by ideological considerations. The purpose of an electoral system should be to ensure that Parliament accurately reflects the will of the electorate, rather than unfairly advantaging or disadvantaging particular ideologies, as our current FPTP system does. Under FPTP, politicians from across the ideological spectrum have still been able to get elected by running within one of the major big-tent parties. Furthermore, there is no evidence that Elizabeth May is a “grifter,” and I don’t think it’s fair to oppose proportional representation simply because you personally dislike the PPC, GPC, or NDP. The claim that our voting system works “great as it is” is simply not supported by reality. FPTP is a highly disproportional system that has repeatedly produced Parliaments that fail to accurately reflect how Canadians voted. It encourages vote-splitting and strategic voting, prevents the diversity of political perspectives across different regions of the country from being adequately represented, and allows parties to form majority governments without receiving a majority of the popular vote. FPTP is a bad voting system.