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Thinking Critically - Vote no to referendum on voting

“Many of Canada’s problems stem from a winner-take-all style of politics that allows governments in Ottawa to impose measures abhorred by large areas of the country.

“Many of Canada’s problems stem from a winner-take-all style of politics that allows governments in Ottawa to impose measures abhorred by large areas of the country. The political system still reverberates from shock waves from Pierre Trudeau’s imposition of the National Energy Program upon the West and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms upon Quebec. Modernizing Canadian politics would not only be good for conservatism, it might be the key to Canada’s survival as a nation.”

The jaw-dropping irony of that quote taken from a paper by Stephen Harper and Tom Flanagan advocating proportional representation in 1997 cannot be lost on even casual observers of Canadian politics.

Apparently, that was before Harper discovered the intoxicating allure of imposing measures abhorred by large areas of the country and a large majority of the population by using his winner-take-all majority government elected by just 37.65 per cent of voters.

In that same paper, Harper argued for coalition governments, a boogeyman he would later invoke, along with proroguing Parliament, to cling to power when a proposed coalition threatened to bring down his minority government.

“Only in politics do we still entrust power to a single faction expected to prevail every time over the opposition by sheer force of numbers,” he wrote. “Even more anachronistically, we persist in structuring the governing team like a military regiment under a single commander with almost total power to appoint, discipline and expel subordinates.”

I don’t even know how to process the level of irony in that statement.

Of course, that was before he had the opportunity to abuse four years of total power to ram through egregious legislation the shock waves of which will reverberate through the political system for decades to come.

Even in the late 1990s and early 2000s I didn’t like most of the Reform Party’s platform, but Stephen Harper was absolutely right about electoral reform. I agreed with him then and I agree with 1997-Harper now.

So does our current prime minister. Finally, we have a party in power determined to do precisely what Harper once correctly wanted and his party, the Reform-Con alliance he built, wants to throw a monkey wrench in it. Maybe they don’t realize it, but being the Opposition does not mean you have to automatically oppose anything the government does. This issue transcends partisanship and the committee set up to design the new system is uniquely configured on a proportional basis.

“In today’s democratic societies, organizations share power,” Harper and Flanagan wrote. “Corporations, churches, universities, hospitals, even public sector bureaucracies make decisions through consultation, committees and consensus-building techniques.”

But instead of doing that, an opportunity presented by the way Parliament is dealing with the file, the Conservatives are out campaigning for a referendum. They would have us believe they simply want voters to decide on a very important issue, but if you look at the campaign it is distinctly oriented to preserving first-past-the-post. Besides, voters will have their say because that is part of the consultation process.

It is very interesting to note that when Margaret Thatcher (as right-wing a prime minister as Britain has ever had) said in a 1975 debate over EU membership that referendums were “a splendid tool for demagogues and dictators” she was paraphrasing Clement Atlee (as left-wing a prime minister as Britain ever had).

I am not going to rehash here all the reasons why referendums are bad because we already had the referendum on electoral reform. It was called the 2015 General Election in which 67.4 per cent of voters favoured parties who are determined to eliminate the archaic, unfair and unrepresentative first-past-the-post system.

Trudeau campaigned that 2015 would be the last federal election decided that way if he was elected. He was. With a majority. With a majority based on just 39.47 per cent of the popular vote, a point the Conservatives are hypocritically using to argue for their referendum.

Maybe they should take a look at history. Nobody has benefited more from first-past-the-post than Liberals. That is one of the reasons Stephen Harper wrote the aforementioned paper making the case for proportional representation. In fact, if the last election had been decided on proportional representation, it would almost certainly have resulted in a Liberal minority with an even stronger Conservative opposition.

Trudeau must not back down and agree to a referendum on this issue. We need electoral reform. We’ve needed it for a long time. Everybody knows it and if the Conservatives actually care about anything other than themselves they will get to work collaborating on the design of the new system for the good of the nation.

Stephen Harper and Tom Flanagan were correct, Justin Trudeau, Tom Mulcair and Elizabeth May are correct; we need electoral reform.

Margaret Thatcher and Clement Atlee were correct; a referendum is not the way to get there.

Voters of Yorkton-Melville, whatever your politics, please call Cathay Wagantall and tell her that.