Half hearted reforms

Editorial By- Sukhpreet Giani

Last week the Federal Liberal Government moved a bill to allow the right to vote to the citizens that have lived out of the country for more than five years, thus making an attempt to fulfill yet another promise of electoral reforms made by the Liberal party during its campaign for the elections.

Liberals want better participation by the Canadians and the government intends to allow voter information cards to be used as identification at the pools. The bill introduced by Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef, even wants to go further than this. The bill if passed would allow a voter to vouch for someone else without ID in order to improve voter participation.

The Liberals promised during the 2015 election campaign that it would be the last held under Canada’s traditional first-past-the-post voting system.

With Liberal government having a comfortable majority in the House of Commons, the bill is likely not to have much difficulty in getting passed. Minister Monsef while introducing the bill said, “Canadianstold us that making it easier for eligible Canadians to vote will build a stronger democracy. If passed, our legislation would do just that.” Allowing Canadians living abroad the right to vote may call for amendments by the opposition parties specially the Conservatives. And expecting the same, Minister Monsef stated, “The move to allow expatriates to vote will affect more than 1 million Canadian citizens living abroad, the government said. Canadians will still be required to have lived in the country at some point.”

As per report, for over six months, the minister have been adopting a collective decision making approach by inviting guest at the town halls across Canada-from coast to coast. She has adopted an approach to gather opinion, study and consult and draft a bill that would recommend a new voting system.

However, Liberals have resisted calls for a national referendum on any fundamental change, such as switch to a form of proportional representation. Off late Canada has witnessed a strong surge in feeling for having proportional representation in which a party’s share of MPs in the Commons more closely matched to its share of the popular vote. The feeling has been expressed more so after the presidential election in United States, that left many surprised.  Hillary Clinton had more people voting for her than Donald Trump did, since just like Canada, USA too has a first-past-the-post system.  It’s ironical that countries that have had strong democracies have not yet discovered proportional representation is a much better way of voting.

The contrary result of the presidential election in US is further evidence that Canada must move to proportional representation before it is too late.  A sentiment towards the same seems to be brewing specially in the light of the fact that Canada’s parliamentary democracy was at risk  during the period 2011-15, majority government supported by 24 per cent of the electorate (or 39 per cent of votes cast) ran the parliament. Those favoring the proportional representation believe that if a political party obtains 40 percent of the popularvote, that party’s members of Parliament should have 40 percent off the seats in the House of the Commons. However as suggested by the departing chief electoral officer, Marc Maryland that such a change would call for a referendum that may take six months. The problem gets further complicated as it might also require a change in the Referendum Act which currently applies only to constitutional matters.

Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef needs to analyze if all the aspects of the electoral reform are being addressed in the new bill.