The government would like nothing more than a channel-changer on foreign interference investigations. Even if the Liberals succeed, with the appointment of a special rapporteur and multiple committees, all eyes are still on government foibles. 

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on March 13, 2023.

OTTAWA—In one month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will celebrate 10 years as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

That celebration will be fêted in early May at the party’s national convention in Ottawa.

There will be much to celebrate. Back in 2013, pundits were writing off the Trudeau leadership.

He was leading a third party that was supposed to be on the verge of extinction.

Then came the blockbuster campaign of 2015, in which he was able to ignite the youth vote and encourage many non-Liberals to swing over to support the prime minister’s vision, including the legalization of marijuana and a commitment to end the current first-past-the-post voting system.

Back in 2015, Liberals moved ahead with their promise to legalize marijuana, but shelved their promise to change the voting system.

One out of two ain’t bad.

But in the lead-up to a potential election later this year, a 50 per cent success rate won’t help the government attract more swing voters.

Some say the Liberals promised to bring in proportional voting. But that is not accurate. In the prime minister’s mind, he was looking at the possibility of a weighted vote, with Canadians choosing to rank their choices in every local election.

Whatever Trudeau’s vision, the change was not accomplished and that failure is one of the issues that will affect the next election.

The promise to change the voting system appealed to those in smaller parties, like the New Democrats and the Green Party, as neither realistically hoped to form government.

Instead, they would be satisfied to have direct influence in shaping government policy.

Minority government has given them that opportunity. The New Democrats have been key to the introduction of dental care and potential pharmacare.

But whether the third party will be rewarded by the electorate for promoting these initiatives remains to be seen.

New Democrat supporters who switched to the Liberals in 2015, left in 2019 and did not return in 2021.

Green Party voters may make a switch as their party’s internal challenges have definitely damaged their credibility.

Looking forward, voters can be expected to make decisions on what parties will do in the future, not what they promised in the past.

Liberals will be particularly challenged since, as government, the party has been in power for eight years, and politics is the only job where the more experience you have, the more voters want to dump you.

Trudeau hopes to make history as only the second prime minister in Canada to be elected four times in a row.

He would follow in Liberal Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s footsteps by pulling off a four-peat.

But it is a daunting task.

The government is working hard to put some successes in the window. The recent health-care agreement is a great win.

It will help assuage Canadians’ fears about access to health care: from primary providers through to mental health and continuing care.

The next election will not be fought on political successes.

Public attention is focused on allegations of foreign interference in elections, in particular from the Chinese government.

Most Canadians don’t follow the allegations closely. They will be aware that the heated political temperature in Ottawa is putting pressure on the current government.

Trudeau stepped up earlier last week with a series of measures to respond to the allegations, but whether that is enough to cool things down remains to be seen.

If not, the Liberals may be positioning to move to an election sooner rather than later.

The official opposition has been searingly critical in recent exchanges in the House of Commons. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has been clear and concise in his attacks, and is obviously trying to keep the issue front and centre in the public mind.

The Liberal hope is to dampen down the heat and move the issue to the back burner.

Conservative MP Michael Cooper may have inadvertently helped the Liberals when he made a clearly sexist attack at Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly while she appeared before committee.

Even New Democrats demanded an apology.

The government would like nothing more than a channel-changer on foreign interference investigations.

Even if they succeed, with the appointment of a special rapporteur and multiple committees, all eyes are still on government foibles.

With that in mind, a successful Liberal convention in May and a summer spent travelling and rolling out budget announcements may mean we are heading for a fall election.

That could be the only way to douse the parliamentary fires.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

The in-house method of choosing the Speaker is of little interest to the broad Canadian public. That’s a pity because the ranked preferential ballot could fix one of the major problems in Canada’s modern, fragmented democracy.

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on December 9, 2019.

OTTAWA—The ranked preferential ballot is how we ended up with a new House Speaker last week.

Many arcane processes surrounding the opening of a new Parliament are obscured by the subject matter of the Throne Speech. Political parties, especially in a minority, are most interested in discerning whether their political wish lists are included in what constitutes the government’s broad-brush agenda.

Interest groups focus on whether their specific area of expertise gets a mention in the Speech from the Throne. If it does, even minus any details of budget and timing, that constitutes a win.

But the in-house method of choosing the Speaker is of little interest to the broad Canadian public. That’s a pity because the ranked preferential ballot could fix one of the major problems in Canada’s modern, fragmented democracy.

With five political parties represented in Parliament, Canadians can arguably claim that there is no party with clear support from across the country. The Liberals managed to form a robust minority with the support of only 33.7 per cent of the population. The seat count for the Liberals was much higher than the Conservatives, even though the Tories got a bigger popular vote, because of the efficiency of their vote.

But the Conservatives still have bragging rights for securing the largest popular vote, with 34.41 per cent, bumped up by hyper majorities in the Prairie provinces.

And the other national parties in this minority Parliament have electoral reform on their wish list for a productive political agenda. The Bloc is not particularly interested in changing the current voting system because the first-past-the-post system has served them well. They have only one province to promote in their political agenda and with the huge increase in numbers in this past election, they are not going to be calling for an electoral change.

But both the New Democratic Party and the Green Party have made electoral reform an element of their political wish lists.

Political experts can make a compelling argument about how the current composition of Parliament misrepresents the views of Canadian voters when a party with less than 32 per cent of the popular vote can form government.

But the Greens and the NDP falsely claim that the only alternative system to fully represent the views of Canadians is that of mixed-member proportional representation. The problem with that claim is that their proposed system takes power away from ordinary voters to give it to political parties. In the PR system, even when it is mixed, some Members of Parliament are chosen by their own party based on a ranked list. In order to succeed in Ottawa, the focus of a listed Member of Parliament is to keep their party happy.

It doesn’t matter whether Canadians are satisfied with your work because they don’t vote for you. PR supporters dispute that claim because in the mixed-member proportional system, citizens vote twice, once for a local member and another for a party list choice.

Nonetheless, in three provincial referendums, citizens have voted the system down. But instead of going back to the drawing board and reviewing other systems that could achieve fairer representation, PR supporters restart their campaign after every election.

The new iteration of recycled PR supporters has just launched an organization called Unlock Democracy, raising money and promoting their message through social media. Their website claims the current system leads to a “hostile and polarized insiders’ game” and claiming that their system would deliver elections that are “fair, friendly, inclusive and diverse.”

The government of Israel has been in crisis for the last several months, because in their system, a party with eight members in the 120-seat Knesset currently wields the balance of power. The Parliament also includes more than 25 political parties, with a fragmentation that makes the country almost ungovernable.

Even though the PR system has been rejected by three different provincial referenda, across the country, proponents appear unwilling to consider any available alternative.

The best alternative is a preferential ballot. Your vote is efficient. Like that of the new House Speaker’s vote last week, voters rank their preferences from first to last. So, the winner needs to reach out to everyone. In that circumstance, the candidate who is everyone’s second choice, could beat out the frontrunner.

The key element in voting under a ranked ballot is that the person who has the most support from all sides wins.

Not a bad model to consider if we truly want to elect a government supported by the majority of Canadians.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.