unimaginative2
Senior Member
Why I'm voting against MMP
Sep 28, 2007 04:30 AM
Ian Urquhart
Electoral reform has support from across the political spectrum, but in Ontario, at least, the push is coming primarily from the left.
The motivation springs from the election of the Mike Harris government in 1995. Harris's Conservatives won a majority in the Legislature with less than half the popular vote (45 per cent, to be exact).
That is not unusual in Ontario, which has a mature three-party system; indeed, it has been six decades since any party here won more than 50 per cent of the popular vote in a provincial election.
What was unusual about the Harris regime was that it departed from the incrementalist approach of past Ontario governments and began implementing a radical agenda, known as the "common sense revolution." Taxes and welfare rates were cut, civil servants were laid off, labour laws were gutted, and cities were amalgamated against their will.
To ensure that never happened again, Harris's opponents latched on to electoral reform. Specifically, they began campaigning for a form of proportional representation, where seats in the Legislature are allocated according to a party's share of the popular vote.
With proportional representation, as Linda McQuaig argued in the Star earlier this month, "Mike Harris never would have won a majority government." Accordingly, the Conservatives would have been outnumbered by the combined total of Liberal and NDP MPPs, and Harris could not have proceeded with his agenda.
The problem with this sort of conclusion is that it relies on a static analysis that looks backward at election results arising from our three-party system. A more dynamic, forward-looking analysis suggests the number of parties in the Legislature would multiply with proportional representation and the political consequences would be quite unpredictable.
Take New Zealand, for example. It used to have an electoral system just like ours, with two parties (Labour and National) trading places at the top and a third party occasionally winning a seat or two.
But in 1993 New Zealand switched to a new system – mixed-member proportional, or MMP, which is the same system on the referendum ballot in Ontario.
Now New Zealand has eight different parties in its parliament, including a Maori party, one that opposes more Asian immigration, and another that wants a hard cap on government spending.
New Zealand is a relatively homogenous place compared to Ontario. Here, if MMP were adopted as our electoral system, one could easily envisage the emergence of parties based on ethnicity or on geography (a Toronto secessionist party, say, or a northern party).
Under the MMP model recommended by the citizens' assembly in Ontario, these parties would need just 3 per cent of the popular vote – about 150,000 votes – to gain four seats in the Legislature.
And, of course, existing fringe parties like the Greens (quirky environmentalists), the Freedom Party (for abolition of income and property taxes and introduction of two-tier medicare), and the Family Coalition Party (pro-life and anti-gay marriage) could also meet that threshold. Then, after the election, the major parties would have to bargain with some or all of these lesser parties for support in order to form a government.
So we might end up with another Mike Harris who becomes premier with the support of a pro-life party and/or a northern party that is against gun control and for logging in provincial parks.
That's why I'll be voting against MMP in the referendum.
Ian Urquhart's provincial affairs column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: iurquha@thestar.ca
Sep 28, 2007 04:30 AM
Ian Urquhart
Electoral reform has support from across the political spectrum, but in Ontario, at least, the push is coming primarily from the left.
The motivation springs from the election of the Mike Harris government in 1995. Harris's Conservatives won a majority in the Legislature with less than half the popular vote (45 per cent, to be exact).
That is not unusual in Ontario, which has a mature three-party system; indeed, it has been six decades since any party here won more than 50 per cent of the popular vote in a provincial election.
What was unusual about the Harris regime was that it departed from the incrementalist approach of past Ontario governments and began implementing a radical agenda, known as the "common sense revolution." Taxes and welfare rates were cut, civil servants were laid off, labour laws were gutted, and cities were amalgamated against their will.
To ensure that never happened again, Harris's opponents latched on to electoral reform. Specifically, they began campaigning for a form of proportional representation, where seats in the Legislature are allocated according to a party's share of the popular vote.
With proportional representation, as Linda McQuaig argued in the Star earlier this month, "Mike Harris never would have won a majority government." Accordingly, the Conservatives would have been outnumbered by the combined total of Liberal and NDP MPPs, and Harris could not have proceeded with his agenda.
The problem with this sort of conclusion is that it relies on a static analysis that looks backward at election results arising from our three-party system. A more dynamic, forward-looking analysis suggests the number of parties in the Legislature would multiply with proportional representation and the political consequences would be quite unpredictable.
Take New Zealand, for example. It used to have an electoral system just like ours, with two parties (Labour and National) trading places at the top and a third party occasionally winning a seat or two.
But in 1993 New Zealand switched to a new system – mixed-member proportional, or MMP, which is the same system on the referendum ballot in Ontario.
Now New Zealand has eight different parties in its parliament, including a Maori party, one that opposes more Asian immigration, and another that wants a hard cap on government spending.
New Zealand is a relatively homogenous place compared to Ontario. Here, if MMP were adopted as our electoral system, one could easily envisage the emergence of parties based on ethnicity or on geography (a Toronto secessionist party, say, or a northern party).
Under the MMP model recommended by the citizens' assembly in Ontario, these parties would need just 3 per cent of the popular vote – about 150,000 votes – to gain four seats in the Legislature.
And, of course, existing fringe parties like the Greens (quirky environmentalists), the Freedom Party (for abolition of income and property taxes and introduction of two-tier medicare), and the Family Coalition Party (pro-life and anti-gay marriage) could also meet that threshold. Then, after the election, the major parties would have to bargain with some or all of these lesser parties for support in order to form a government.
So we might end up with another Mike Harris who becomes premier with the support of a pro-life party and/or a northern party that is against gun control and for logging in provincial parks.
That's why I'll be voting against MMP in the referendum.
Ian Urquhart's provincial affairs column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: iurquha@thestar.ca
