Canada Election 2019

Politics & Elections
21

I’d be okay with ranked choice. I’m generally leery of a purely PR system, because it enshrines the Party as the fundamental basis of political authority, rather than individual MPs. Under PR, the people actually sitting in the House of Commons owe their seat more to the party leadership than they do to the voters, and so they’ll tend to be more loyal to party than country. Maybe not right away, but that’s how it will evolve. Under PR, there’s not much point in even having individual MPs, other than as a pool of people to select a cabinet from.

I’d tentatively support a mixed-member proportional system, if it wasn’t the one that they tried to push in Ontario, which used the PR portion to “correct mistakes” made in the non-PR part of the vote. The two votes should be entirely separate - you vote once for your riding (FPTP or ranked choice or some other system, whatever), and once for the PR system. The parties get the ridings they win, and then a percentage of the PR seats equal to their PR votes, no screwing around with “topping up” their seats if they didn’t win an equal percentage of the ridings.

If we were to use such a system, I’d be tempted to include some means by which voters could have an effect on who is included on the parties’ list of PR candidates, so that the parties can’t stack the lists which pure party hacks, but I’m not exactly sure how to word any legislation to control this.

22

Those all seems like reasonable compromises to me. The main thing I know is I’m tired of pure FPTP. I understand why early societies would use this voting scheme out of simplicity, but centuries later we can do better. I would like a system that encourages more people to participate in the elections. I find the trend line to be very discouraging. There was a nice jump in 2015 (nearly 70%) but that seemed to be a “vote out Harper” turnout. Hopefully we’ll get the same kind of turnout this time or better, but I have a funny feeling we’re going to be back down to ~60%. It doesn’t seem like people are energized for this election.

23

I don’t mind ranked ballots. I could live with PR but it might make decision making slower, as it has in many countries. But when put to a fair referendum, Canadian voters have been unenthusiastic. So, I think it is a lower priority issue. The environment, health care, trade policy, housing and other issues are more important to me.

24

The idea of the party list of ranked candidates worries me too. I like the fact that in practically every federal election there are some Cabinet ministers who get defeated, even if their party is returned to office. I like the idea that even the PM can lose their seat, as has happened in our system. No-one should be personally immune from the voters.

There is a way to have PR with voter control over individual candidates, but I don’t know if it’s ever been put in use anywhere.

Suppose you have a multi-member riding with 10 seats, and 100,000 voters. Each party nominates their candidates, so you can assume each party will have 10 candidates.

But here’s the twist: the parties don’t get to rank their candidates. The voters do.

When you go to the polls, you’re allowed to vote for one and only one candidate. When you cast your ballot, you’re voting for both a party and a candidate.

First, the counters count all the ballots by party. Suppose 50,000 votes were cast for the candidates for the Purple party, and 30,000 for the Lime party candidates. The Cyan and Pink parties each got 10,000 for all their candidates.

That determines the number of seats for each party. Purple gets 5 seats, Lime gets 3, and Cyan and Pink get 1 each.

That determines the allocation of seats. And now the scrutineers go back and check out the votes for each party, but this time counting them by the individual candidate.

Suppose of the 50,000 Purple votes, 15,000 were for Jones, 12,000 for Untel, 10,000 for Wong, 8,000 for Ombre, 2,000 for Blanchard, 1,000 for Robinson, and the remaining 2,000 divided amongst the other four Purple nominees.

That vote count ranks the candidates: Jones is 1, Untel is 2, Wong is 3, Ombre is 4, Blanchard is 5, Robinson is 6, followed by the other four candidates. Since there are five seats for Purple, the candidates Jones, Untel, Wong, Ombre and Blanchard are elected. Robinson at 6 loses out, as do the other four candidates for that party.

Then repeat that process to determine the top three vote-getters amongst the Lime candidates, and the #1 candidates for Cyan and Pink.

So there you go: seats per party and ranking of candidates for each party allachieved by the voters, casting a single ballot. It’s simple and doesn’t give the party control over the ranking of their candidates. They nominate them, but the voters rank them.

25

That’s a stumper.

I like the theory behind FPTP, if only that you’d get local representation at a federal level. I’ve had the privelege of having some especially colourful characters be my MP over the last few elections and I suppose I don’t want to give that up.

On the other hand, I am kind of appalled that a party could get a majority government with only 40-odd percent of the popular vote, so some manner of proportional representation suits me well. On the, uhh, third? hand, our party arrangement would result in the House of Eternal Minority governments, and while I’m not entirely opposed to that, it’d likely wind up being a Liberal+NDP coalition versus a Conservative+CPP affair anyway, leaving BQ and Greens to become kingmakers as whimsy dictates.

So my proposal, as basic as it is, is that we leave the House of Commons as-is with FPTP, but make the Senate elected with proportional representation.

The Senate is supposed to be a house of sober reflection, and its members are appointed. They’ll still be appointed but serve on electoral cycle terms, drawn from a list each federal party submits before the election. This largely frees them from the burdens of campaigning, and allows them to be sufficiently sober and reflective as the office demands.

It also allows the Senate to more accurately reflect the will of the people, at least insofar as the popular vote is concerned. Most importantly, appointment gaffes (I’m thinking of Brazeau but Fortier kind of comes to mind) could be punished in the next election if the electorate remembers long enough.

I suspect that, with the Senate more dynamically partisan, it might be used as a tool to logjam the House of Commons if their political makeups differ significantly. Nothing’s perfect, maybe it’d need to be addressed somehow if it became an issue.

26

PM will visit the GovGen this morning to have her dissolve Parliament. The writ drops and the election will be on October 21.

27

Only 6 more weeks of the National Post telling us why we should hate Trudeau. I can’t wait for Conrad (The Felon) Black telling us how he hates Trudeau. Followed by Rex (Thesaurus) Murphy telling us why he hates Trudeau in the usual polysyllabic pretentious manner.

28

Fake social media bots in Alberta vote hint at dangers in federal election: experts

29

I am very glad that we have short election cycles relative to the USA. They seem to be constantly in election mode, and I think it helps to pour fuel on the hyperpartisan issues in the USA.

I think a Liberal minority is likely.

With respect to the ongoing conversation on electoral reform, I think if we got some kind of PR system we would see a lot more parties form. In that, the existing parties would fracture. The CPoC would fracture into something like the old PC party, a social conservative party, a libertarian party and a small (hopefully) white nationalist party. The Liberals would probably lose some voters to the NDP. I know some people who vote Liberal but would rather vote NDP. Some Liberal voters would probably go Green as well. I’m not sure if the Liberal party would fracture more than that. Probably, but I just cannot think of how at the moment.

30

That’s what bothers me about fixed election dates. In the old days, there was never any campaigning before the writ was dropped. Nowadays, with an fixed election date looming, we have seen TV ads for political parties and their leaders before an election is even announced.

All we had back in the day was media speculation. “Prime Minister So-And-So would do well to call an election now,” or “If Prime Minister So-And-So isn’t careful, he will run up against the constitutional limit of five years,” or “The Government may lose a confidence vote tomorrow, triggering a general election.” And we’d have a short campaign, followed by a general election, and life would go on. That’s how a parliamentary system works. I don’t think Canada’s parliamentary system is well-served by fixed election dates, especially after looking south and seeing the clusterflop that develops, and just develops more, two years or so before one of their fixed election dates.

31

And you should note that the fixed election dates thing was pushed by the Conservatives, who, as noted above, are the one most involved in bringing in the US style hyper-partisanship activities you’d like to avoid. We joke about Alberta wanting to be Americans, but there’s some truth to this. They’d love it for Canada to be more like the US.

32

So, who’s with me on making “Nukes for Canada!” an election issue? Because there’s money in that!

33

An article on Lawfare talks about the importance of foreign policy in this election. Here are the main arguments, I think:

It’s a very informative article (to this American) and I’d be interested in hearing Canadians opinions on the subject.

34

Foreign policy certainly has not been Trudeau’s strong point. The India trip was gaffe-a-rific. But you know, these things happen.

The problem for Canada in terms of foreign policy is we have to walk a tightrope. Exports make up a very large part of our GDP, and we have certain big customers, the biggest being the USA by far. So, I think Trudeau biggest litmus test by far is how has he dealt with the USA? And the answer is. Pretty well all things considered.

The NDP saying anything about the military is laughable since they would gut the military and everybody knows it. Many people who served (like me) hate the myth of Canadian peacekeeping, and hate that the NDP latch onto it so much. Peacekeeping is a type of war fighting, but the NDP like it because it has the word “peace” in it.

Scheer’s remarks regarding China are ludicrous, and if he’s serious it shows he’s not competent enough to be prime minister. Again, Canada is in a very tough spot with the spat between the USA and China. The fact that it hasn’t completely blown up is a good thing. I think Trudeau has handled China ok, but could be better. We used to be able to put a lot of soft pressure on China with respect to human rights, but right now China does not want to hear about it. On another note, we cannot allow Huawei to build our 5G network. I am very concerned that whoever the next prime minister (Scheer or Trudeau) will allow it to happen to appease China. This would be a mistake with extreme long last repercussions.

As for Saudi Arabia, I would very much like it if Canada would tell them to go pound sand. The problem is one of real politick. They’re awful, but they’re willing to work with the West if we ignore that they’re awful. They’re like North Korea that way. If we start to criticize, then they get petulant. This extends far beyond Canada. Everybody treats them with kid’s gloves. I wish we would stop selling them arms. It is a disgrace to Canada’s good name. But again, this isn’t a Trudeau issue. It is an ongoing issue. If somebody invents fusion tomorrow, then Saudi Arabia becomes globally irrelevant, which would be awesome.

35

Well they can piss off.

36

We’ve focussed a fair bit on some of Trudeau’s gaffes, though his involvement with Aga Khan seems to have fallen off the radar at the moment. That was a moment that smelled of grift to me–usually Liberals leaders have the decency to wait a term or two before getting elbows-deep in other peoples’ money (note: no proof, just grumpy electorate whining of course).

While I generally agree with BeepKillBeep’s post, I’m going to disagree with him on the NDP plans. The NDP have a Sikh leader, the current (Liberal) defence minister is Sikh, and we had a recent incident with a Sikh (reserve) unit marching on parade with magazines in place, though the magazines were empty. I have more than a gut feeling that Jagmeet Singh’s NDPs are likely to hold up their promises regarding the military. The Mulcair NDPs sent articles to a pro-military Canadian magazine, so this isn’t a surprise about-face.

I mean, we have a military that isn’t going to be used for invading other countries, by and large. Peacekeeping exercises makes us look good and gives the troops some vague measure of actual combat experience.

I’m dismissing most everything Scheer says out of hand. As the Official Leader of the Opposition, it’s his perceived job to throw shade on the government. If the government did something good, he needs to find the bad side. If it did bad, he needs to rub their noses in it. In the House of Commons, that’s his job. Outside, with the general public, I’ll be vaguely evasive and try to not answer the question. It’s just, ultimately, you need to consider the context of his statements: His job at the moment is to get his party elected. His chief rivals are the Liberals.

China was a sticky point, frankly. We adhered to our agreements with the US in arranging to extradite the Huawei CFO, Meng Wanzhou, to have Trump openly mull using her as a bargaining chip to secure a better trade deal. China applied leverage in (vaguely arguably) counter-arrests of Canadian citizens and financial pressure in the form of banning Canadian canola. The Canadian ambassador to China started undermining the Canadian government as well.

I don’t really think there was much that could be done, frankly. Realistically, if not a bit cynically, China is a big market, we’re an export-driven economy, and it would sure be nice to sell them things. I think it’s important to show that strong-arm negotiating tactics would work, but to simultaneously avoid ticking them off further. It’s a tough one, and I think Trudeau’s done this about as well as could be expected.

Finding “like-minded democracies in the Indo-Pacific region” is, honestly, kind of a pipe-dream. Sure, they exist in various flavours of “democracy”, and quite a number of them are having some difficulties over a little misunderstanding with China’s nine-dash map and might like some friends, but they don’t represent the market China does* by far. Eschewing profitable trade for polical idealism isn’t the usual Conservative move in their governmental playbook.

Anything I’d have to say about Saudi Arabia would just largely echo BeepKillBeep at this point. They’re awful, we know they’re awful, but they want to buy our shiny toys and, ooh, those dollars really are tempting. Actually standing up to them in any form is kind of unprecedented, and would get my vote.

  • NB: I’d really rather we support countries with a proven track record of not abusing their citizens, being democratic, etc., etc. But I also understand that the first party that throws us into a recession just to spite China is the first party to never get another seat in a generation.
37

Canada was traditionally wedged between Britain and the United States, and has always been fairly cautious with regard to foreign policy. It is a country that has always traded its ample resources, more so than finished goods. It has earned some respect for its support for human rights and somewhat open immigration policies. There has been some virtue signalling under Trudeau.

Canada depends heavily on trade with the US, whose president can be capricious. Trudeau was widely seen in Canada as having done a good job of changing as little as possible. Of course, some sectors were affected more than others.

I agree with most of the above comments. The Canadian military has shrunk considerably over time as governments prioritize social spending. Equipment upgrades are less frequent, more inefficient and more political than ideal. The Canadian military is a professional force, but “peacekeeping” in dangerous areas is difficult work and the term kind of minimizes their contribution. Canada needs a stronger military to get more input at the table where decisions are made and to secure its ample borders, especially the Arctic. But realisticallly, Canada will depend on the US military for as long as this remains a practical option.

China has more to fear, economically, from America than Canada. Since it is more difficult to criticize the US, Canada has had to swallow more than its share of decisions that can seem petty. Canadian options are limited, but China does a lot of reciprocal trade with Canada and making some tougher noises might help, although also might make things worse.

A number of countries have embraced more authoritarian governments, and directed some invective at Canada. The Philippines were upset over receiving mislabelled garbage, and although they have a point, took a pretty hard line. Saudi Arabia took offence at having a female foreign minister criticize their government over Twitter. This same minister has been a vocal supporter of the Ukraine, has a personal history with Putin while spending time in Russia as a journalist, and is currently not popular with Putin.

In terms of actual foreign policy, which is more than gaffes and disagreements, Canada has made some noises about climate, Indigenous rights, human rights and gender equality which have not always gone down well, such as during trade treaty negotiations. Clearly, Canada hopes to treat Trump gently, ignore his outbursts, lobby American politicians widely, while continuing to support more traditional international institutions and make trade treaties as a backup for more tumultuous relations in North America. This has meant soft-pedalling human rights issues with some countries.

38

Some good discussion here and reasonable thoughts.

It gives me hope to read this after the black hole of newspaper comment sites, which are pretty much akin to Trump’s debate tactic of “NO YOU THE PUPPET!! YOU THE PUPPET!!”

39

Thanks so much to everyone weighing on Canada’s foreign policy.

How important to you, as a Canadian voter, is a candidate’s foreign policy proposals? How important do you think it really is to Canadian voters in general?

40

According to the CBC vote compass, not very much. I’m a bit surprised electoral reform is so low too.

https://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/votecompass/salience-wide.html