Terry Glavin's hysteria

Has Terry Glavin's "progressive" mask finally fallen off entirely? Not content to slander the Canadian peace movement, or suggest that someone is an anti-Semite for referring to him as a "neo-con" (Glavin is Irish), we now have this wretched little piece of yellow journalism.

Try to follow the logic. It's a little sketchy, but here it is: Maude Barlow and her fellow progressives oppose the so-called "Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)," because talks are talking place among senior politicians, bureaucrats and corporate leaders out of sight of the public, and because this likely heralds a new phase of what has been called deep integration. Bulk water exports from Canada to the US are on the table, despite official denials; unrestricted and unaccountable information exchange amongst security agencies, which has already led to the rendition of Maher Arar and the stupid (thankfully temporary) refusal to allow a mild-mannered labour relations professor to teach at Carleton University, will be heightened; Canada's environment and sovereignty, already threatened by NAFTA, will be under even more pressure.

But some far-right America Firsters are also against the SPP. They think it will lead to unrestricted immigration, amongst other things, and world gummint, probably run by the Jooooos, if not the Illuminati, which will impose socialism, race-mixing and God knows what else, sending the patriots off to the hills (if they aren't there already) to chow down on C-rations and pick off ZOG agents at their leisure. Yee-haw!

Now, because there happens, for whatever wacky reasons, to be an alignment of concern about the SPP--not an alignment of views, mind you--it is all too obvious, to Glavin at least, that there is some kind of sinister ideological convergence. So, in his classic fashion, he links to an earlier post connecting the left with--well, what else, he's hipped on the subject--radical Islam. See, it all fits together--Maude Barlow, terrorism, Pat Boone, the John Birch Society, anti-Semitism, environmentalism...a "subtle pattern," as Glavin puts it. Subtle indeed.

The odd thing about this foolish fantasizing is that it has all the earmarks of the very wingnut theorizing that he complains about in his post. Somehow the same people who go to the wall fighting homophobia, sexism, racism, and (let's call a spade a spade) American imperialism, are really in bed with fascists and Islamists and anti-Semites and terrorists and homophobes and woman-enslavers....not to mention turtles and Teamsters. It's, well, a conspiracy.

We defeated the MAI and the FTAA--so far--simply by exposing those multi-legged white grubs to the bright light of day. There are more grubby deals in the offing, though, and the SPP is just the latest of them. Progressives will continue to research, write, publicize and protest, thank goodness--more power to them. And those living in their closed delusional universes will continue to spin bizarre paranoid theories: "It's the One Worlders! No, it's the Islamic-socialist axis! It's the Jews! No, it's the Council of Canadians!" Terry Glavin and Pat Boone, in fact, have far more in common than either of them might imagine.

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UPDATE: (August 22) Just caught this comment by Glavin about the policing of dissent at Montebello: "Pick a fight with a riot squad, you deserve to get your ass kicked, I reckon."

Bits 'n' pieces

I couldn't title this post "ephemera" without compromising my warm relationship with blogger David Thompson, but ephemera these are.

Item: Jason Cherniak comes clean on MMP

Although they might not admit it in public, the reality is that the NDP supports MMP because it will give them more elected politicians. Am I allowed to suggest that MMP is a bad idea for precisely the same reason?

As I said at his place, of course he is. Refreshing honesty, in fact, which might explain the Liberal troop surge against MMP going on at the moment.

I wonder whether you think it is right to have a referendum of the population on electoral reform, when at least 90% of them know even less about political systems than me. [Comment]

And, of course, he is absolutely right. But let's not stop there. I know a bit, but not much, about economics, maybe a little more on foreign affairs, not a great deal about Aboriginal issues, and very little about the federal-provincial relations thing. But I know more about this stuff than a lot of other people do. Why should we have general elections when so many people know even less about these matters than I? Democracy, as I never tire of pointing out, is far too precious to waste on just anyone.

Alas, Jason didn't stick to his admirable candour for long:

For the record, the number of NDP MPPs is not so much my reason for opposing MMP as it is a symptom of MMP that highlights my more principled concerns with it.

Darn. I kind of liked the guy when he went off-message for a moment.

Item: book panned, authors banned

A couple of American academics have run into a buzz-saw before their book, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, has even gone on sale. As reported by CommonDreams, some of their fellow academics have reacted swiftly to diss the book and shut down discussion:

The subject will certainly prompt furious debate, though not at the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a Jewish cultural center in Washington and three organizations in Chicago. They have all turned down or canceled events with the authors, mentioning unease with the controversy or the format.

As a sometime literary critic myself, I was most impressed with the critical methodology employed by Aoibheann Sweeney, director of the Center for the Humanities at City University of New York. “I looked at the introduction," she said, "and I didn’t feel that the book was saying things differently enough [from an article written previously by the two authors].”

(H/t Carson's Post)

Item: Protest TV at Montebello

This intrigued me. Politics is always theatre, but now it's TV. After a peaceful demonstration at the APEC summit in Vancouver was crushed by thuggish RCMP officers in 1997, the judge who later investigated the matter, Ted Hughes, stated that protesters have a right to be seen and heard in Canada, and that visiting leaders shouldn't be immune to lawful protest. So the Montebello demonstrators will be held in a couple of those infamous "free speech zones," but the summit leaders can watch them on closed-circuit television.

Alan Borovoy of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association thinks that having the zones next to the hotel is "progress," but in fact the holding pens (as protester Jaggi Singh rightly calls them) are more than a kilometre away. Nevertheless, he's nailed it: as reported, he understands the concerns of protesters who want to "generate an atmosphere of political tension and disapproval." That, after all, is what protest is really about: not something somewhere else that one watches on TV. How effective is dissent if it's sequestered in special areas patrolled by police, and mediated through a glass screen?

Item: But on a lighter note...

Since we shouldn't spend our Friday fussing about our mutual funds, Hurricane Dean and the listening devices planted in our houses by the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, here's a cheery little story about spreading peace in the Middle East. Enjoy!

(H/t Dymaxion World)

UPDATE (August 18): Agence France-Presse points out the "virtual" nature of the planned Montebello protest. For some reason this reminds me of Jean Baudrillard on the first Gulf War.

Dawg vs. man: third bite

The MMP wars continue. David Graham is back, with reiterated arguments, and not a little indignation. He was unhappy with my restatements of his position in my previous post, although I think I did a pretty good job summarizing them, and I linked to his article in my very first sentence. Nevertheless, this time I shall simply quote his responses in italics, under the original headings, although it will make for a very long article.

1) MMP will create unstable coalition governments.

I never referenced PEI's population, I referenced its size. The diversity needed is regional diversity. Our MMP proposal has no provisions for this, allowing parties to create lists of indentured MPPs from any area, with little to prevent them from concentration on vote rich urban areas.

There are a number of things that divide voters in Ontario and in Canada as a whole. Canadians, certainly are divided by region, each with its specific issues and concerns. But we are also divided by ethnicity and by values, the latter asserted in various political positions. FPTP has done an abysmal job of representing the political views of Canadians, excluding many of them while distorting the support given to others. And it has done a poor job of representing our diverse peoples (e.g., Aboriginals). Further divisions--rich/poor, urban/rural and so on--do find their political expression under FPTP, but that is not threatened by MMP.

Some issues, in other words, are geographical; others are cultural; still others transcend such boundaries and are national, or, in the case before us, Ontario-wide. As noted earlier, FPTP emphasizes a narrow, local view, sometimes to the point of exaggeration. MMP offers the opportunity of a politics that is not solely regional, while retaining the regional component with 90 ridings.

The fear that parties will concentrate their list MPPs in urban areas is mere speculation. Let me offer some counter-speculation. Any party foolish enough to ignore Northern Ontario by choosing all of its list MPPs from Toronto will suffer devastating results in the next election. Not only the party, but also local candidates, will be punished for such a move. Rival party strategists will have a field day pointing to the narrow, divisive Toronto-centrism of the party in question, and will ensure that their own lists have proper geographic balance.

In order to achieve the diversity that MMP proponents inexplicably assert will magically happen under our proposal, there either needs to be a law mandating diversity on the party lists, or the parties need to create their lists in a manner that is not completely and openly democratic. For a party to disqualify anyone from any list entry based on their race, sex, religious background, or number of toes, is completely undemocratic and will be necessary to create diverse lists.

We shall have to agree to disagree on this one. No truly democratic system ignores questions of representation. A legislature without Aboriginals, or without women, or one that is lily-white, however elected, cannot be said to be democratic. It's that diversity of perspective again, which FPTP has failed so miserably at achieving. MMP is not a panacea here--the complex question of Aboriginal representation, for example, is not addressed by it--but it offers at least the possibility of better representation over-all. Don't consider this "disqualification" of beleaguered white males, Graham's subtext here: consider it qualification of many other groups and interests presently shut out. Ultimately, the voters will decide in any case.

MMP is inappropriate because it replaces the last vestige of independent representation with another layer of party oversight, breaking away from the core tradition of the Westminster model of representatives representing their ridings to the government. That's key. It should be noted that every country that uses MMP uses FPTP to select at least half its representatives, so while more than four European countries may use MMP, every country that does uses FPTP and all the problems that entails for riding elections. To say that FPTP is bad and retain it in our proposal is hypocritical.

This is somewhat self-contradictory. How would the system proposed for Ontario "replace the last vestige of independent representation" when it retains the riding system for two-thirds of the seats in the legislature, ridings in which anyone can still run? And to argue that a mixed system retains elements of FPTP is a truism--it does so by definition. Why this is "hypocritical" is a mystery, given that the objections to "pure FPTP" are what we are supposed to be discussing. MMP offers a cure for the worst ills of pure FPTP, without killing the patient.

[Dawg: the Ontario threshold is relatively low--5% rather than 3% is more common. But that can be fixed if it proves to be a problem--it's hardly an argument against MMP as a whole. Ditto for the lack of overhang provisions (addition of extra seats after an election if required to preserve proportionality), which could indeed result in rare majority governments with minority support. Far from being rare, though, such false majorities have been the rule in Ontario under FPTP.]

This is, of course, more a matter of opinion than argument, but I do not share MMP proponents' hatred of majority governments, even when they are held by a party other than one that I would support. My ideal, as long as we are condemned to a party system, is to have a mixture of majority and minority governments, where when all parties misbehave with majorities we can return to minority, but when minority gets too dysfunctional we can return to majority. Both types of government have their strengths and their weaknesses. The system of purgable majority is what we have as demonstrated by the minority governments in both Ottawa and Quebec City with no return to majority in sight in either case. The issue of "false majorities" is a bit of a misnomer. Yes, majority governments happen with, in some cases, less than the plurality of the popular vote, but I believe this owes more to a democratic failing in a lack of accurate, regular redistribution of ridings and of our lack of a preferential ballot than to any inherent weakness in the riding system.

Of course, this disingenuously misrepresents the supporters of MMP. What we have been saying all along is that stable government based upon coalitions has been the experience in European jurisdictions: that's majority rule by another name.

In Canada, false majorities are not "some cases," but the rule. They have nothing whatsoever to do with poor riding boundaries or the lack of a preferential ballot, but with the plurality system that characterizes FPTP. Indeed, even when on rare occasions a genuine majority government is formed, the results can be exaggerated: for example, Frank McKenna's victory over Richard Hatfield in New Brunswick, in which the Liberals won every single seat with 60% of the popular vote. How would redistribution have affected that one?

There are likely to be two classes of caucuses. The first is what we have now, with caucuses made up of riding representatives. The second is likely to be dominated by list MPPs. The Liberals and Conservatives will likely be the former, with the NDP and Green more of the latter. Within the parties where MPPs are dominated by representatives of ridings, current levels of internal discussion are likely to continue. In parties where the current party line is more important than the party principles, as in the NDP, the party-appointed members are likely to be the dominant voice within caucus and will not be as inclined to barter.

This is simply wild speculation, and caricatures the NDP--Graham's non-partisanship once more in evidence. What would the bartering consist of? Usually it has two axes, the first being contending regional interests, and the second being regional vs. national/provincial interests. In the case of a caucus where list MPPs predominate, why would the "party line," which seems to come out of nowhere in Graham's scenario, lead the caucus to electoral disaster by ignoring the regional interests that could be addressed to their advantage in the riding races? I submit that the discussions within such caucuses would not differ much from those in caucuses where riding MPPs predominate.

In Germany, everyone's favourite example, a 1996 study of MMP MPs found the following rather interesting bit of information:83.2% of German constituency MPs felt that they should represent all citizens in a constituency. By contrast, only 55.6% of list MPs in Germany felt the same way. This discrepancy goes to show that even German MMP MPs do not share this crazy notion that there is no second tier under MMP.

I'm not certain what it shows, frankly. As one of Graham's own commenters points out, how will a list MPP know how a constituent voted? So, in practical terms, when that MPP is doing constituency work, how would their private preferences (if that is what Graham's cited study indicates) find any real expression?

We have had numerous minority governments in the country's history, and extraordinarily few formal coalitions. Without a requirement to form a coalition before taking office, which is not something that I would support anyway, there is no obligation for a party to form a coalition with another if it feels it can govern on an issue-by-issue basis.

This is apples-and-oranges reasoning. Under pure FPTP, coalitions have of course been rare--who needs them, if you can get a majority in power with 40% popular support or even less? Under MMP, coalitions will become necessary, and the political culture will have to change from narrow partisanship to a more cooperative, win-win approach to governance.

Based on the last election, the Liberals should have had 62 seats with 2% popular overhang which is 3 seats short of the 65 seats needed for majority in a 129-seat house, still within the 3%/4-seat allocation margin for a fringe party balance of power.

I'd be interested in Graham's method for demonstrating this. As noted, the Fair Vote Canada analysis was that, in a 103-seat legislature, the Liberals (winning 46% of the vote) would have achieved around 48 seats under a proportional system. Extrapolating to a 129-seat legislature, a proportional system would have yielded 60 seats--ten short of a majority.

2) MMP will allow small fringe parties to call the shots.

No other jurisdiction has a comparable MMP system to that proposed in Ontario for the reasons stated elsewhere here, such as an asymmetric list/representative set, low margin of entry, completely closed list, and the underlying political traditions and culture. What would happen here can best be described as "undefined behaviour" and my contention is that fringe party control will happen sooner or later, though not continuously.

That's simply speculation. In any case, as I noted earlier, MMP is not the Israeli "pure PR" system with its multitudinous parties and one electoral district: coalitions are more likely among parties with similar interests. Why would the NDP and the Liberals, for example, allow the Christian Heritage Party to call the shots with one or two seats? Better that the two parties join forces, swallowing hard, of course.

3) MMP will elect members who represent no one, and whom no one's ever heard of.

A party with pure motives and a completely democratic list, which may or may not come to exist, will challenge the list of another less perfect party in the election, without doubt. Where I have doubt is that any party will be sufficiently uncorrupt in its party list creation to be able to make such accusations without losing more than they gain. Even a party that has its membership in a party-wide vote select its list members is no less of a corrupt procedure than the already tainted party nomination procedures already in place in ridings across the province. Parties are made up of its members, and party memberships make up a tiny fraction of the province. Barely enough Ontario voters hold party memberships to achieve the MMP minimum threshold for being granted list seats were they all to vote themselves into their own party.

The notion of a balance of corruption is unsupported in any country with MMP save Russia. I suspect that, once voters who currently waste their votes feel that they have a real stake in an electoral outcome, party membership will increase. Much will depend, of course, on how the parties deal with the list question--we can agree on that. But Graham's equivalence--that the party nomination process under FPTP is "tainted," and so will the list process under MMP be--is hardly an argument for FPTP.

[Dawg: Graham goes on to display his fundamental misunderstanding of the MMP proposal by arguing that the 39 list MPPs will lighten the load in only 39 of the proposed 90 ridings, leaving 51 MPPs to do more work than their riding colleagues. But no one has claimed that a list MPP would be available only to the electors in a single riding. They could, and indeed are far more likely to, work in regions, not single constituencies.]

This is not my misunderstanding: it is based on Dawg's assertion in his original "lies" piece. What I wrote is, "if this were to be the case [...] with 39 list MPPs and 90 overgrown ridings, a maximum of 39 ridings will get additional representation from list MPPs seeking an alternate way into Queens Park." The case I reference is in his quote from Louis Massicotte, where he quotes: "Typically, a list member starts out by running unsuccessfully in a constituency. To run, he or she has to become familiar with the local issues. The person tries again in the next election. If his or her party comes to power, its number of list seats will decline noticeably and the only way to get elected will likely be by running in a constituency. For this reason, such a person will remain active in the constituency during his or her term of office and give such activities almost as much effort as a "directly" elected member." Massicotte, not I, is suggesting that a list MPP is only going to be interested in representing a riding in which that person has a chance of getting elected should the need arise, which in our imbalanced MMP proposal, means that fewer than half of constituencies would get a second representative, by Dawg's own argument.

Massicotte is, of course referring to MMP in Germany in which 50% of the members are list MPs. There is, of course, a riding-to-list fit there. Nothing in the Ontario proposal will prevent a list MPP from working regionally rather than in a specific riding: if he or she eventually runs, one assumes that it would be in a riding in that region.

Using European examples is not necessarily an applicable comparison to Ontario, whether it is Russia or it is Germany. If he would like to compare Ontario to Germany, we could just as easily compare it to Russia where the lists are openly corrupt. The system with which we will be creating our party lists is closer to that of Russia than of Germany anyway, as at least Germany has laws mandating that lists be created in a democratic way, something not part of the Ontario proposal and objected to by MMP's proponents.

The latter is simply not the case: here's one MMP supporter who would have had no objection to specific laws to ensure a democratic process, although the devil would assuredly be in the details. The view of the Citizens' Assembly was that the political process itself, including a legal requirement for transparency in list-formation, would accomplish that aim.

4) MMP is less efficient than Single Member Plurality (First-Past-The-Post)

[Dawg:Graham cites a frustrated Helen Clark, Prime Minister of New Zealand, who said in an interview, after trying to get her way on monetary policy, that it's hard to make tough decisions under MMP. This isn't an argument, but an anecdote. One would hope, in any case, that under a democratic system, tough decisions would be made with majority legislative approval.]

Tough decisions are always hard to get as party interests seldom match up with provincial or national interest. The party system, not the voting system, is my number one enemy in our democracy.

That's another debate. The party system itself is not under review. Maybe it should be, but, whether it's FPTP or MMP, the party system is what we have.

[Dawg: He continues his response to this point by claiming that reducing the number of riding MPPs reduces the effectiveness of riding representation, blithely ignoring the fact that there will now be list MPPs in the regions to shoulder the load. (While I can agree that Ontario, and Canada, have diverse regions that require region-specific attention, the same cannot be said of ridings. As an urban Ottawa voter, for example, I would be hard-put to name differences of interests between, say, the electors of Ottawa-Centre and of Ottawa-South.)]

I agree with the Ottawa example, which is why I suggested that MMP is less inappropriate for jurisdictions smaller than PEI, which Dawg interpreted as population, but I meant as physical size. When regions are as wide and diverse as Ontario, it is necessary to have regional representation. When our largest of over a hundred ridings is 50,000 square km, or around 10 GTAs, larger than the entire country of New Zealand, our issues are bound to be very diverse. That we will have list MPPs who will represent these sparsely populated vast regions of the province rather than the vote rich urban centres, like Ottawa, is not at all clear.

Nor is it unclear. See my response under [1]: there would be serious political risks entailed by ignoring the diverse regions of Ontario. But the geographical size of a riding is a bit of a red herring, in any case. People vote. Rocks and trees do not.

5) MMP does not require parties to explain how their lists are put together

[Dawg: Here, once again, Graham claims that list-formation will be a non-issue. See my response under (3).]

This is addressed under (3).

Indeed.

6) MMP will make contact with your representative more difficult

Voters votes will have put their parties into the legislature. Parties will have put the MPPs there. Try not to overlook this critical fact. The result is that list MPPs represent their parties to the voters and to their government, and not the voters to the government and their parties. In Germany, studies show that barely half of list MPs believe representing voters is high on their priority lists.

I'd like to see these studies, which run competely against Massicotte's findings, cited earlier. As he notes, list MPs today can be riding MPs tomorrow, so that list MPs do pay attention to their constituencies.

Tom Wappel is a disgrace without doubt for his handling of his constituency request from the supporter of another party. MMP takes Tom Wappel's behaviour and makes it the norm. MMP list MPPs especially will be expected to treat voters the way Tom Wappel did. The comment that MPPs tend to support the party line is a matter that needs addressing as part of democratic, rather than electoral, reform. One of my key objections to our system that is retained and even strengthened in MMP is the existence of whipped votes, which I find completely contrary to democracy. As I have stated in the past, if you need to tell your MPs that they have confidence in you, you do not deserve their confidence.

Again, as noted above, list MPPs will usually have no way of knowing how a person voted--the Wappel case is, in that respect, a bit of an aberration. The question of whipped votes has nothing to do with either FPTP or MMP: either system could exist without it.

7) MMP is confusing.

Dawg again takes what I wrote and only looks at a small part of it. I expressed a preference for Condorcet, but as I stated in my submission to the assembly, I believe that, for the sake of simplicity, Approval Voting would be the optimal. In between is Instant Run-Off, variants of which nearly every party uses for its own internal elections (whether instant run-off or just run-off).

That said Condorcet is not as complex as it is made out to be. I have fought three elections under variants of Condorcet, most recently last month and the voting is the simplest of any form of preferential, while the counting system is rather complex and more or less requires computer assistance. The results, however, are the most democratic of any voting system I am aware of.

I guess Graham concedes my point about the Scottish MMP balloting confusion. With respect to the Condorcet system, which, as he notes, requires computer assistance to perform the count, I don't believe that voters choose among candidates by imagining an endless number of person-against-person races. Voters like me are simple folk, who vote for the person or the party they like, and hope that both do well. Any system that encourages an array of second, third and fourth-best choices, and results in the election of (for example) everyone's second choice, is not one I would personally favour. As for the various run-off schemes, they produce a simple majority instead of a plurality of support for the winner, but they still result in large numbers of wasted votes for voters' candidates of choice.

8) MMP will produce two tiers of political representative

The point is that some MPPs directly represent ridings, while others do not. This is, by definition, two tiers. My question that he ignores completely is whether the two tiers is a good thing. It could be argued that it is, but at that point we should be considering a return to a bicameral government in which the proportional seats become a senate and so at least recognise the two tiers for what they are. I would argue that it is not a good thing, as all representatives should be equal.

9) MMP is undemocratic

Whether the party selection process for the lists are under scrutiny is clearly a matter of conjecture for both sides in this debate. Dawg believes they will be, I believe they will not be. That he would assert that either way is a fantastic assertion and that therefore the other is obviously right is more than a little conceited. I do not believe that the 39 names on each of the 4 major party lists and the several other lists that show up as additional parties join the fray will be under any serious scrutiny, nor do I believe that the process itself will be under serious scrutiny. Each party will have its own way of doing things, and short of selling off lines on the lists, I don't see the media caring enough to keep it on the front burner and make it an election issue. Parties may challenge each other, but in a sufficiently corruptible process, each party will adopt the same corruptible procedures.

See my note about the "balance of corruption" under (3).

Preferential balloting would be a meaningful form of electoral reform as it keeps what is good about FPTP and eliminates what is bad about it. It is no more wrong to say that voters will not make the "Natural Governing Party" their first or second choice than it is to say that voters will punish parties that have questionable entries on their MMP lists. Preferential balloting, except some forms like Borda, severely reduces strategic voting. It gives the advantages of the two-sided vote MMP gives us in spades, without the disadvantages of party lists. That all said, having everyone's second choice govern is still better than having everyone's fifth choice hold the balance of power.

Preferential balloting, as already noted, favours the Liberals because NDPers are unlikely to choose Conservatives as second-best, and Conservatives are unlikely to do the same for the NDP. It also forces second or third-best choices, when what we really want, I hope, is a system that favours first choices. I have already dealt with the "fringe party holding the balance of power" argument, and will not repeat myself.

Under MMP the FPTP's strategic voting model remains unchanged. The notion that it will not be suggests that MMP proponents believe the riding representatives are completely irrelevant which belies an agenda of pure Proportional Representation, an extraordinarily dangerous destination. Who wins in the riding will be just as important as who wins in the list seats to the overall outcome of the election. MMP also creates, on top of the FPTP strategic voting, a second layer of strategic voting as described.

Graham is right to point out that, so long as we have a riding system, strategic voting of the old kind will continue--I concede that point.[Not so fast--see UPDATE, below]* But there will be less concern about it, given that (for example) the NDP can now win list seats under MMP. Hence, the Hargrove solution--"NDPers, vote Liberal to keep out the Conservatives," will not threaten the political viability of the NDP, as it does under FPTP. Admittedly, though, a one-ballot MMP system (in which a single vote is for both party and candidate) would do more to reduce this kind of strategic voting--although that system has its own flaws, including the virtual elimination of independents.

10) MMP is divisive

A regional party will be able to leverage far more power with far fewer seats than is now the case under MMP. If the MMP proponents' prediction of near-constant minority governments comes to pass, which I don't believe is in doubt by anyone, a regional party with just a handful of seats will have far more power than a larger regional party would have today. That said, I don't see Ontario as particularly vulnerable to regional parties as compared to Canada as a whole and therefore am not terribly concerned about geographic-regional parties, at least in the short term, although I could definitely see a GTA-vs-non-GTA rift forming with myself being firmly in the latter, especially with the likely further GTAification of Ontario politics with the advent of MMP. My counterexample, as Dawg puts it, if he had cared to read it, was addressing the overall culture of cooperation within parliament, or lack thereof, and had nothing to do with regional parties.

Here, at least in the Ontario case, we appear to have some agreement about regionally-based parties. On the national scene, I don't agree that the same need for regional parties exists under MMP. I addressed this point already in my "Ten Lies" piece under point (10).

Graham's counterexample--the opinion of a retired police officer in New Zealand--is, as I said, not an argument but an anecdote. And I don't agree with it. MMP creates pressure for cooperation in the legislature, and against narrow partisanship, which would no longer be in the parties' best interests.

[Dawg: MMP, Graham asserts, will push us further away from such basic reforms as a legislatively elected Premier. It is not at all clear why this should be so. If the electors vote in MMP, they will see for themselves that the existing system is not part of the natural order of things, like gravity, but a structure subject to change. The debate around other reforms will be likely to grow, not dissipate.]

It might, but the debate is not exactly out of sight and out of mind at the moment. What passing MMP does is start us from further back when meaningful democratic reforms are next discussed. Having a legislatively elected Premier would be nice, but giving parties more power to create their own representation and weakening independent representation will only serve to weaken any efforts to make it ever happen.

I'm afraid that this doesn't follow. The parties have no vested interest in awarding the premiership to the winning party--the case under the current system, where the premiership is decided by that party and by one riding in the entire province.

I would welcome progressive change, but I do not consider MMP to be that progressive change and as I have said before, changing to MMP is not better than not changing at all. Changing to a preferential ballot and retaining a full or increased slate of representative ridings, and/or removing direct party control over the legislature would be progressive change.

I think we should try to demystify the notion of "party." Yes, they do become institutions, but they are really people who have agreed on common approaches to the issues of the day. That grouping will happen whether Graham gets his legislature of independents or not. One thing that MMP does offer that his preferences do not, by the way, is the ability for some MPPs to take the province as a whole into account in their political calculus. That can only be a good thing, and it militates against divisive, parochial politics.

Another concern of mine with the untimely passage of MMP is the probability that MMP will meet the "good enough" test of electoral reform and with previously ostensibly under-represented parties now holding a near-permanent balance of power, the issue will simply never be allowed to be re-opened unless it can be further modified to their benefit, which real democratic and electoral reforms will not be, as they would not be to the benefit of any party.

On the contrary, it will open up the debate. A Premier and Cabinet appointed by the legislature, for example, is in the interests of all parties. But, more than that, the electors themselves will be encouraged by their success in winning MMP to be active in this respect, and grassroots proposals for reform will not necessarily be ignored by the parties--they could, indeed, become political issues in election campaigns, now that the electors have sensed that they can actually change the natural order of things.

I maintain that MMP has no merit as an electoral system for Ontario, and nor do the arguments of the MMP lobby who have a great deal to gain at the expense of the province as a whole. One key point that proponents of MMP deliberately fail to grasp is that the representatives we send to Queen's Park actually have to govern the province through good times and through bad, and not just sit pretty.

I fail to see the logic or the point here. Under any system whatsoever, the problems of governance will remain. What does this have to do with the relative merits of MMP and FPTP?

I will leave out Graham's last paragraph, which consists largely of character assassination, and end here. There is only so much trouser-leg I can rip at one go.

_____________

*UPDATE (August 18): My friend Wilf Day of Fair Vote Canada reminds me not to concede this point after all. Under a proportional system, unless there is overhang, such voting is not "strategic"--you're just voting for the candidate that you prefer. If you go on voting for NDP candidates, rather than voting for your second-choice Liberal in a riding where the NDP has no hope, the electoral outcome (riding seats plus list seats) will still be the same, decided by the second (party) vote. Say there's a 40% party vote for Conservatives: they'll still get 40% of the seats, whatever NDP voters do for the Liberals in the ridings. If more riding Liberals are elected with NDP help, the Conservatives will simply pick up more list seats. So, unless there's a specific Conservative riding candidate that he or she simply can't abide, where's the strategy for an NDP voter in voting for a Liberal riding candidate?

Paranoia: are the Liberals trying to defeat MMP in Ontario?

John Hollins, head of Elections Ontario, has stated publicly that referendum regulations require the political parties to stay out of the electoral reform fray. Is this happening?

I'll be the first to say that I dunno. But a glance, admittedly brief, at the "NoMMP" campaign does raise some questions in my mind.

Take the website itself (please). It's registered to David Graham:

Status:         EXIST                                 
Registrar:      eNom Canada Corp.                     
Registrar-no:   505567                                
Registrant-no:  638983                                
Domaine-no:     1946336                               
Subdomain:      nommp.ca                              
Renewal-Date:   2008/07/19                            
Date-Approved:  2007/07/19                            
Date-Modified:  2007/07/19                            
Organization:   David Graham                          
Description:                                          
Admin-Name:     David Graham                          
Admin-Title:                                          
Admin-Postal:                                         
    Guelph ON  Canada                     
Admin-Phone:    +1.5197639692                         
Admin-Fax:                                            
Admin-Mailbox:  cdlu@pkl.net                          
Tech-Name:      David Graham                          
Tech-Title:                                           
Tech-Postal:                                          
    Guelph ON  Canada                     
Tech-Phone:     +1.5197639692                         
Tech-Fax:                                             
Tech-Mailbox:   cdlu@pkl.net                          
NS1-Hostname:   asteria.debian.or.at                  
NS1-Netaddress:                                       
NS2-Hostname:   moo.cdlu.net   

For good measure, Mr. Graham has registered "nommp.org" as well.

Graham runs his own blog, these days devoted pretty well to anti-MMP propaganda. His alleged non-partisanship is perhaps revealed by this recent statement: "Stéphane Dion has my full and continued support" (scroll to the end). But in any case, let's take a look at the two head honchos of the "NoMMP" campaign.

The Chair, a Mr. Michael Ufford, is a Liberal who recently donated $100 to the Gerard Kennedy leadership campaign. What of his Director of Communications, Joseph Angolano? Why, he's another Liberal, a McGuinty Liberal at that, who expressed support for the Ontario Citizens' Assembly process, giving it as a reason, in fact, for voting for McGuinty in the last election!

The "NoMMP" website directs our attention to a Facebook "No" group. After an admittedly cursory look at the names there assembled, these jumped out at me. I ran down their provenance for readers (although, to be fair, there is a smattering of Conservative activists listed there as well):

James Janeiro, University of Toronto Liberal Club vice-president;
Andrea Micieli, member of the same club;
Matthew Jurczak, ditto;
Joanna Murrell, ditto;
Ian Widgett, member, Liberal Party of Canada;
Mark Kalzer, Ajax-Pickering Young Liberals;
Nadia Bedok, Ajax-Pickering Young Liberals;
Jonathan Pinto, Peterborough Federal Liberal Youth Association;
Al Maghnieh, Liberal Party contributor and Susan Whelan campaigner;
Holly Ann Garnett, President, Nipissing Young Liberals;
Justin Tetrault, President, Algoma Young Liberals and northern Young Liberal coordinator;
Rachel Chertkoff, Liberal contributor;

and some guy named Jason Cherniak, who's probably a Liberal too.

Now, there was a Young Liberal Conference last weekend, in which two-thirds of those attending gulped down the anti-MMP Kool-Aid. Networking happens. But how do we explain the hidden Liberal face of the allegedly "non-partisan" "NoMMP" campaign, apparently run by party apparatchiks? Why hide that face?

Against all of this, of course, is the noble "Liberals for MMP" group, which is a blogroll inviting Liberals with pro-MMP interests to get on board. Nothing sketchy here--everything is above-board, affiliations are out in the open, a common purpose is identified. But as for the other bunch--Elections Ontario, are you doing your due diligence?

UPDATE (August 15): Joseph Angolano, a self-described "Liberal friendly-voter" [sic] who will be supporting Dalton McGuinty in the October election, would like it recorded that he is not now, and has never been, a member of the Liberal Party or a financial contributor to it, much less a Liberal "apparatchik." DawgNews hence retracts any suggestion to the contrary, and offers apologies to Mr. Angolano for any embarrassment caused. With the further information now at our disposal, the phrase "fellow traveller" would have been more appropriate.

UPDATE: (September 14) Mr. Angolano has taken down his blog, so the link to it, above, no longer works. For the record, this is his comment about McGuinty and the Ontario Citizen's Assembly:

Firstly, let us look at the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform. McGuinty took one very important issue, that of electoral reform, and said that he would leave entirely up to the people of Ontario to decide what kind of electoral system they want. Political elites did not get involved. This, folks, is called true empowerment of the citizens. By creating this assembly, McGuinty has done more to advance democracy in Ontario that any other premier before him. I think he should be re-elected for this act alone.

Another kick at the MMP cat

David Graham has been at the "No MMP" thing for a while now, and he's decided to have a go at my "Ten Lies" piece. Let's see how well he does.

To help the reader, I'll use my original headings: he does as well. Here are the original misconceptions/ misapprehensions/lies once again.

1) MMP will create unstable coalition governments.

Graham doesn't stick to the question here, but takes a scattershot approach. He argues, or rather asserts, that an MMP system is "inappropriate to represent the diversity needed" in a population larger than that of PEI. He claims, after noting that we Canadians aren't European and have separate political traditions, that only four European countries have MMP--Scotland, Wales, a province in Serbia and Germany. (Alas, this is only the first of his factual inaccuracies: I shall correct them as we go along.) He notes the relatively low Ontario threshold (3%) required to obtain a list seat, and the lack of overhang provisions, in the current model. The internal caucus horsetrading that goes on now will be reduced under MMP, he asserts, because list MPPs will have no incentive to barter--they will just follow the party line. He suggests issue-by-issue agreement will be more likely than coalitions under MMP. Finally, Graham claims that had the 2003 Ontario election been run under MMP it would have resulted in the Liberals being only one seat shy of a majority.

I feel like the proverbial mosquito in a nudist camp, but here goes:

• How does FPTP accommodate diversity as opposed to MMP?
• How do our political traditions differ from the Westminster system from which they arose, and why does this make MMP inappropriate?
• With respect to European MMP, is Graham forgetting about the forms of it to be found in Hungary, the Ukraine, Russia and Italy (which recently abandoned its chaotic pure PR system)? Other European countries use a variety of other forms of proportional representation. Indeed, the only European country that uses FPTP is Great Britain. Most of the other countries where it's still in force are former British colonies.
  
• the Ontario threshold is relatively low--5% rather than 3% is more common. But that can be fixed if it proves to be a problem--it's hardly an argument against MMP as a whole. Ditto for the lack of overhang provisions (addition of extra seats after an election if required to preserve proportionality), which could indeed result in rare majority governments with minority support. Far from being rare, though, such false majorities have been the rule in Ontario under FPTP.
  
• List MPPs will be unlikely to keep their heads down and toe the party line, for a variety of reasons. First, they will very likely have to run as MPPs at some point, if the German example is any guide. Secondly, that "party line" itself evolves within a party caucus, and they will have their say like anyone else: it doesn't just fall from above. Finally, they will have to debate the issues with riding MPPs, who outnumber them two to one.
  
• Coalitions, like parties, are built around a constellation of political values. The notion of political governance based upon issue-by-issue agreement seems unlikely, based upon experience of MMP in other countries, none of whom have that hypothetical form of governance.
• Finally, under MMP in 2003, the Ontario Liberals would have fallen five seats short of a majority, not one, according to Fair Vote Canada's analysis: I'd be interested in how Graham arrived at his result. Incidentally, with a mere 6% increase in the popular vote, the Liberals doubled their seats in the legislature.

2) MMP will allow small fringe parties to call the shots.

Graham simply argues that it's a hypothetical possibility, based upon his erroneous account of the 2003 Ontario election. Perhaps, however, we should actually look at how MMP functions in the real world. Would Graham provide us with examples, or is he counting upon us conflating MMP with the Israeli pure PR system where, indeed, his scenario has been frequently observed?

3) MMP will elect members who represent no one, and whom no one's ever heard of.

Here Graham first argues that list-formation will not be an electoral issue, because the media will only cover controversial choices. With respect, I think he's missing the point. It's not just who end up on the list, but how they do. Rival parties will not be slow to point out weaknesses--if, for example, Party A's list is stuffed with party insiders whom nobody in the electorate has ever heard of, a smart Party B strategist would take full advantage of yet another wedge issue for the campaign.

Graham goes on to display his fundamental misunderstanding of the MMP proposal by arguing that the 39 list MPPs will lighten the load in only 39 of the proposed 90 ridings, leaving 51 MPPs to do more work than their riding colleagues. But no one has claimed that a list MPP would be available only to the electors in a single riding. They could, and indeed are far more likely to, work in regions, not single constituencies.

Finally, having chided me for using European examples, Graham himself indulges in silly fear-mongering, pointing to Russia where some parties sell list positions to raise funds.There is "no reason this couldn't happen here," he says. To which I can only reply, citing examples closer to home, that there is no reason it would.

4) MMP is less efficient than Single Member Plurality (First-Past-The-Post)

Graham cites a frustrated Helen Clark, Prime Minister of New Zealand, who said in an interview, after trying to get her way on monetary policy, that it's hard to make tough decisions under MMP. This isn't an argument, but an anecdote. One would hope, in any case, that under a democratic system, tough decisions would be made with majority legislative approval.

He continues his response to this point by claiming that reducing the number of riding MPPs reduces the effectiveness of riding representation, blithely ignoring the fact that there will now be list MPPs in the regions to shoulder the load. (While I can agree that Ontario, and Canada, have diverse regions that require region-specific attention, the same cannot be said of ridings. As an urban Ottawa voter, for example, I would be hard-put to name differences of interests between, say, the electors of Ottawa-Centre and of Ottawa-South.)

5) MMP does not require parties to explain how their lists are put together

Here, once again, Graham claims that list-formation will be a non-issue. See my response under (3).

6) MMP will make contact with your representative more difficult

As noted originally, the German electorate make no distinctions between list and riding MPs: list MPs are accessible to citizens and do their share of constituency work. Graham insists that it is "brain-damaged" to claim that list MPPs in Ontario would represent voters; I would say that it's a little odd to argue otherwise, since voters' votes put them into the legislature.

He goes on to produce that oft-heard canard that riding MPs, once elected, represent everyone in the riding, not just those who elected them. In some rarified, theoretical sense (never mind Tom Wappel) he might be right: in practical terms, our elected representatives tend to support their respective party lines on legislative votes. On a constituency basis, of course, their offices are open to anyone, but as noted the same would be the case for list MPPs.

7) MMP is confusing.

The best Graham can do here is to point to a Scottish study that showed considerable confusion among the voters when MMP was introduced. True enough--which is why in future elections the single-ballot system proposed in Ontario will be used there as well. It is profoundly insulting to the electors, in any case, to assume that giving them both a vote for a riding candidate and a vote for a party will reduce them to sobbing incomprehension.

And, at the end of his article, Graham, without a hint of embarrassment, expresses his support for one of the most complex voting systems of all time--the Condorcet system. (See for yourself.)

8) MMP will produce two tiers of political representative

Graham merely reasserts this--and then segues into the Speaker's alleged difficulty in recognizing members who wish to address the legislature! Members are now recognized by their riding name, he points out--whatever will the poor Speaker do when there are list MPPs as well? How will he address them?

Good grief.

9) MMP is undemocratic

Graham continues to argue that lists are undemocratic, and hence continues to evade the point that the electors will have the final say--and that the party selection process will be under scrutiny (he claims it won't be, which I have already indicated is a fantastic assertion). He would prefer a preferential ballot, which would, whether he supports this outcome or not, inevitably put the Natural Governing Party in a majority position, since the Liberals are everybody's first or second choice. (Conservatives will prefer Liberals over NDPers; NDPers will, as Buzz Hargrove illustrated, choose Liberals over Conservatives.) I don't see this as serious electoral reform. Under MMP, on the other hand, NDPers will support their first-choice NDP, and Conservatives, their first-choice Conservative Party.

Graham argues that strategic voting will still occur. He is not entirely wrong on this, but it would be quite a different kind of strategic voting--apples and oranges. Currently, as I noted, strategic voting means voting for a party you don't want in order to keep out a party you want even less. Under MMP, strategic voting, if it occurs, would mean splitting your vote between your party of choice and a likely coalition partner. What's wrong with that?

10) MMP is divisive

Graham argues that MMP will do nothing about regionally-based parties, but he doesn't really come to grips with the issue. Currently, a party facing a national (or provincial party) with a national (or provincial) base of support is tempted to exacerbate regional differences, as I noted before. Under MMP, regional differences will not go away, but there is less incentive to blow them out of proportion, because a party can gain seats by appealing to a broader constituency rather than having to concentrate its support in a few regional ridings. Graham's counter-example uses a retired New Zealand police officer as an authority, and it doesn't bear upon the regional issue at all.

Concluding Note:

MMP, Graham asserts, will push us further away from such basic reforms as a legislatively elected Premier. It is not at all clear why this should be so. If the electors vote in MMP, they will see for themselves that the existing system is not part of the natural order of things, like gravity, but a structure subject to change. The debate around other reforms will be likely to grow, not dissipate.

"MMP has no merit," Graham baldly concludes. I'm afraid that I have to say the same about his arguments. Readers--and, more important, Ontario electors--will of course decide for themselves. But I can only hope that they aren't swayed by such specious reasoning.

Our national disgrace: disband the RCMP now

Enough is enough. What does our national police force have to do to be reined in--launch an abortive coup d'état? Now it actually has the face to defend its negligent and possibly criminal actions against Maher Arar, and its subsequent sorry efforts to cover it all up. How much more are Canadians and the gutless political "masters" of this out-of-control police force willing to take?

Over the past few months we've watched Mounties execute shoot a young man under dubious circumstances and do their best to hide the trail, assault a group of Native people celebrating a soccer victory in their own village, lie to Parliament, and now shamefully rationalize their cover-up in the Arar case, a cover-up that turns out to be based, not upon questions of national security, but on protecting assorted asses, not excluding their own.

How many more civilians will be shot under suspicious circumstances? Taxpayer dollars mismanaged to the tune of billions? Natives brutalized? Whistleblowers punished, with the complicity of Canadian courts? Peaceful demonstrators and infants pepper-sprayed? Citizens sent to other countries to be tortured, based upon false information? Mass-murderers uncaught because of bungling incompetence? Civilian "review" scoffed at?

A new Commissioner won't do it--it turns out that he's into this muck up to his neck. Reforms won't do it--the corruption has by now extended deep roots into the culture that has been allowed to fester in this police force for years. It's a sick culture, one in which sexual harassment runs rampant, where young Native girls are seen as an occupational perk, where racism is the order of the day.

The "horribly broken" RCMP doesn't need to be reformed. It needs to be disbanded.

It's 2007 and it's time for a clean slate. Are you listening, Prime Minister Harper? Stéphane Dion? Jack Layton? Gilles Duceppe? Canadians have a right to--and we must have--a new national police force, one not only sworn to uphold the law rather than break it with impunity, but under a civilian review board with the power to ensure that the oath is kept: one that can actually bring errant officers, and indeed the Commissioner if need be, to account.We need a new police discipline and a new police culture, and they need to be rebuilt from the ground up. We're long, long overdue. Which political leader will have the courage to step up to the plate first and demand it?

Not straight enough: deportation looms

An American man who fled San Francisco for Canada and claimed refugee status is facing deportation, DawgNews has learned.

Skip Tracey, 26, who left his home city last year claiming persecution because he was heterosexual, has for a second time had his refugee claim denied. Refugee Board adjudicator Ida Knowe issued a ruling yesterday that Mr. Tracey "just doesn't seem straight enough," noting that for the past several years in Canada Mr. Tracey has not had a girlfriend, and describing his wardrobe as "flaming."

"That's complete nonsense," said Biff Bomber, a spokesman for the Canadian Straight Arrows advocacy group, after the ruling. "If straight people have to have girlfriends all the time to prove they're straight, where does that leave Roman Catholic priests?" As to his attire, Bomber says, "He's not homosexual, he's metrosexual. If the Refugee Board hasn't got that one figured out, they're living back in the 50s. I mean, come on, get with the program."

Bomber, who says he is "between marriages," claims that Tracey faces serious reprisals if he is sent back to San Francisco, noting that Gay Pride Parade attendance is mandatory, and that forced pedicures are not uncommon. "They think it's funny to paint straight men's toenails," Bomber says. "Straight-bashing is an ever-present possibility."

"Tracey loves Canada," Bomber went on. "It's a safe place for heterosexuals. They can cruise public parks with baseball bats all night without fear," he said, noting with regret however that police still harass them on occasion. "But we've come a long way. We make almost as much as gay people, and some of us are even doing well in the fashion business."

Refugee Board spokesperson Mitch Tanner rejected Tracey's claims of persecution as "fanciful." "Tracey doesn't have to go back to San Francisco, just back to the U.S.," she said. "He can settle down in Montana if he wants," she continued. "But he's going to have to wear denim. Like that'll ever happen."

There has been no word as yet on Tracey's last-ditch appeal to Immigration Minister Diane Finley. His current whereabouts are unknown, but it is suspected that he is seeking sanctuary in a well-known Toronto breeder bar.

QOTD: the new Arar revelations

John Ibbitson in today's Globe & Mail:

National security my ass. Foreign Affairs, CSIS and especially the RCMP were simply trying to keep hidden their incompetent, duplicitous, disgraceful handling of the Arar case. And they're still at it.

Why should anyone trust anything that our government says about Maher Arar any more?

What could anyone add to that?

Ten lies about MMP

1) MMP will create unstable coalition governments.

This is not borne out by the record. Germany, for example, has had an equivalent system in place for decades, and has had the most stable governments of any democratic country during that time. The many other European countries with MMP have experienced no such instability either. Canada is one of the last holdouts in the world for Single Member Plurality (SMP), commonly known as First-Past-The Post.

We should look at the nature of a coalition, in any case. Many of the existing parties are coalitions in all but name; caucus bartering goes on all the time, attempting to reconcile varying interests across the country. Backroom dealing, which representatives of some of these very parties now profess to be afraid of, is an everyday fact of life in those parties, both inside and outside the legislature.

The necessity of forming formal coalitions will require a change in political culture, which is not a bad thing--more openness to compromise, more emphasis on win-win solutions. This is an attractive proposition on all sides of the political spectrum, but is frowned upon by those who simply want to impose their will on the province or the country with minority support.

In terms of public policy, MMP produces far more stability than does the present system. Under SMP, even a modest shift in the popular vote can result in massive policy changes, as one party or another acquires the necessary plurality to form a false majority (a majority of seats won with a minority of the popular vote). Under MMP, a modest shift in the popular vote simply produces an equally modest shift in the seat apportionment in the legislature.

2) MMP will allow small fringe parties to call the shots.

False. A threshold of 3% of the popular vote will keep out many of the single-issue extremists. And even if some achieve that threshold, it is far more likely that a major party will want to make coalitions with other large parties where compromise is both possible and more agreeable. There is no history of fringe parties holding the balance of power in European countries with MMP.

3) MMP will elect members who represent no one and whom no one's ever heard of.

False. Those members represent those who voted for their party. They are in the legislature because electors put them there. They are accountable to those electors as a whole.

Experience indicates that the vast majority of list members have also run in constituencies. In Germany, as Quebec scholar Louis Massicotte explains,

Typically, a list member starts out by running unsuccessfully in a constituency. To run, he or she has to become familiar with the local issues. The person tries again in the next election. If his or her party comes to power, its number of list seats will decline noticeably and the only way to get elected will likely be by running in a constituency. For this reason, such a person will remain active in the constituency during his or her term of office and give such activities almost as much effort as a “directly” elected member. . . the phenomenon is recognized in official literature for the public and some parliamentary websites even explicitly indicate the constituency in which each list member works. (Federal Parliament, provincial parliaments of North Rhine-Westphalia and Lower Saxony.) [74] For example, the 1998 federal election saw a major constituency shift. Victorious in 221 constituencies in 1994, the CDU/CSU won only 112 in 1998. Meanwhile, the SPD went from 103 to 212 direct seats. No fewer than 124 members changed category: 73 incumbent list members (all from the SPD, except 2) became constituency members, whereas 51 incumbent constituency members (all from the CDU/CSU) held their seats thanks to party lists. [76]

4) MMP is less efficient that Single Member Plurality (First-Past-The-Post)

This frequently-heard claim is really code for, "We worked the system, we got our majority, and we can do what we like until the next election." If strongman politics is preferred, then SMP/FPTP is the system for you. Governments can rule with only minority support, and impose their policies upon the unwilling majority until the next ballot, when all that is needed to keep doing what they're doing is to get another minority share of the vote.

The ruthless efficiency of a minority-supported dictatorship-between-elections is less preferable, however, than a system where nearly every elector's choice translates into seats. If these choices produce a variety of representatives, the democratic approach is to look for compromise and consensus. The latter is not make-the-trains-run-on-time efficient, but it works best in the long run, and is more conducive to citizen involvement in their governance.

5) MMP does not require parties to explain how their lists are put together.

This claim, made recently by Jason Cherniak and others, is simply wrong. The Ontario Citizens' Assembly specifically recommended that parties be required to make public their method of list creation by submitting their selection process to the non-partisan Elections Ontario, which would then publish that information widely. Electors could see, for example, if backroom party hacks or cronies of the Premier have been awarded the list positions, or if, on the other hand, the parties have a more democratic and open process, that does something, for example, about the representation of women and minorities, geographic balance, and so on.

6) MMP will make contact with your representative more difficult.

It is worth noting that at present the vast majority of citizens a) never contact their political representative, and b) vote for the party, not the candidate. But MMP will not make contacting one's MLA more difficult--indeed, the reverse is true.

For those with short memories, Ontario had 130 ridings until Mike Harris sliced that back to 103 in 1996 with the Fewer Politicians Act. The current MMP proposal would restore almost all of those seats (129). The number of ridings would be slightly reduced (to 90 from the current 107). The rest would be apportioned to create a legislature that actually reflects the way people voted.

Under MMP, citizens who want to contact their representative between elections now have a choice: to go the riding MLA, or, if that person is not to their political taste, to approach a list member from their party of choice.

7) MMP is confusing.

Wrong. What's confusing is the welter of lies, distortions and misapprehensions emanating from the special interests who oppose MMP. MMP is in fact simplicity itself: an elector gets two votes, one for the party of choice, and one for the riding candidate of choice. Once the riding contests are decided, the popular vote determines how list seats are handed out. End of story. Not rocket science, but common democratic sense.

8) MMP will produce two tiers of political representative.

Once again, this has not been the case in Germany, with its long history of MMP. As Eckhard Jesse, cited by Louis Massicotte, points out,

The assumption, that the two-vote system produces two kinds of MP, the constituency MP and the Landesliste MP, is empirically refutable. Contrary to widespread opinions, it is of absolutely no importance whether a mandate is obtained through the constituency and the Landesliste. Double candidatures are the rule. The voters do not perceive the difference at all. [61]

9) MMP is undemocratic.

"MMP gives parties too much power!" This is a bit rich, coming from those who represent parties that prefer to go on ruling with minority popular support, whose candidates can be shoehorned by the party leader into constituencies over the objections of the local riding associations, and all of whose riding candidates in any case are selected by the party.

So now the party lists will also be selected by the party--no change there. And the parties, as noted, will have to make the public aware of their process of choosing list candidates. Any Ignatieff or Anders shenanigans on a list-wide basis will almost certainly meet with elector resistance.

A system that produces majorities in Ontario that since the early 1930s have had only minority support is not democratic. A system that allows the party that gets fewer votes than their rival to form a majority government (as happened recently in New Brunswick) isn't democratic. A system that prevents political views held by a substantial number of electors from being represented in the legislature because they aren't concentrated in a handful of ridings is undemocratic. A system that produces wide swings in policy when only a minor shift in public opinion has taken place is undemocratic.

MMP, on the other hand, is a significant move in the direction of democratic governance. An elector's vote will make a difference: even in a solid Liberal riding, a vote for the Greens or the NDP will count. The legislature, as noted, will come much closer to reflecting the range and the relative strengths of the political views held by the electorate. So-called "strategic voting," in which electors are tempted to vote for a party they don't want to keep out another party they want even less, will become unnecessary, and they can vote for the party they do want, knowing that their votes will be counted. Now, that's democratic.

10) MMP is divisive.

This claim is based upon the false notion that a large number of parties will create chaos in the legislature--something not borne out by actual experience. But let's look at the divisiveness created and fostered by the present system.

First-Past-The-Post encourages a narrow regionalism rather than national or provincial consensus. In order to have a chance against an established, entrenched party like the Liberals, another party will lean towards a strategy of concentrating its riding votes by exaggerating regional differences. We have seen this clearly on the federal stage in the case of both the Reform Party and the Bloc Québécois. In the former case, a coalition came into being, but the Conservative Party of Canada still trades on Western alienation. In Ontario, we have northern vs. southern and urban vs. rural; even in Toronto we have the "905" folks vs. the "416" people.

MMP, on the other hand, will yield roughly proportional results that make riding concentration unnecessary. The efforts of political parties could be re-directed towards the actual issues and towards consensus instead of division. None of this is to say, of course, that genuine regional differences and interests will disappear--only that they will be less likely to be opportunistically used and abused by parties vying for seats.

Concluding note:

MMP is not a panacea, and will not produce a democratic utopia. There are far too many other aspects of our system of governance that would have to be looked at--for example, why should the Premier be chosen by the party instead of by the electorate? Why should the Cabinet be appointed by the Premier instead of by the legislature as a whole? How can Aboriginal interests be effectively represented in the legislature under either the current system or MMP? These are other questions, for other debates, but in the meantime MMP is clearly a step in the right direction. To let this opportunity slip through our fingers because of the deliberate prevarication of entrenched special interests would be a tragedy. Let's not let that happen.