Ian Jackson

Speech! Speech! | Organizer Jennie Dailey-O’Cain, centre, says that if STV is defeated in B.C., Albertans may never get a chance to vote on it.

SEE news editor Angela Brunschot looks at emerging ideas around democratic and party reform in Alberta. This week, she talks with members of Fair Vote Alberta about proportional representation. Watch for more installments in future issues.

With a surprise spring snowfall glittering sporadically outside the windows of a small white house off Whyte Avenue, a group of 15 democratic reformers keep warm with red wine and a vigourous discussion about proportional representation.

On a small laptop in the corner, video pops up randomly from several parties in Ontario and the main party in Vancouver. The Edmonton gathering is also transmitted to Vancouver, where on May 12, citizens will vote, for the second time, on proportional representation and the British Columbia Single Transferable Vote (BC-STV).

The conversation shifts from countries like Ireland and Scotland, which already have forms of proportional representation, to the controversial 2000 election of George W. Bush.

Former Green Party candidate Bruce Sinclair declares that he wants proportional representation so that the Green Party will finally get a seat in government, but he’s greeted with a sharp rebuke from organizer Jennie Dailey-O’Cain: “It’s not about the Green Party, it’s about the people who voted.”

The 39-year-old modern languages professor at the University of Alberta is rabidly anti-partisan when it comes to proportional representation, and repeats throughout the evening that it doesn’t matter which parties benefit from a new electoral system, only that election results more closely mirror the intentions of voters, and gets more people out to the polls.

Proportional representation is a system of electing governments that takes into account how many people voted for a party, or voters’ second, third, fourth, or even fifth choices, depending on the legislation set by each jurisdiction. That’s very different from our current “one vote, one winner” system.

In the BC-STV system, voters choose between a number of candidates, including more than one from each party. Voters place a one, two, three, etc., beside candidates according to their preferences. If a voter’s first choice is knocked out of the running in the first count, the vote goes towards the second choice candidate, and so on. Sometimes the vote will be split between a first and second choice.

Depending on the population of a riding, up to seven MLAs would represent each area.

The 2005 referendum on BC-STV was narrowly rejected. Ontario’s vote on the slightly different Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system, in which candidates are elected by geographic region as well as off a list created by each political party, was soundly defeated by a margin of about two to one. If the second B.C. vote fails to pass, it’s unlikely any province will take up the project for decades.

“This may be our last chance to get proportional representation in a Canadian province,” Dailey-O’Cain says. “If we don’t win in B.C., I don’t know where the movement is going to be.”

Here in Alberta, both the Liberals and NDP support electoral reform and some form of proportional representation, but the lefties are not the only ones looking for change. The Alberta Taxpayers Federation has endorsed the BC-STV model, because it’s one of the few ways of making governments more accountable, says Scott Hennig, the Alberta director.

“It’s important to have groups that are not partisan out talking about these things,” Hennig says. “The citizens’ assembly is the best model to debate [reforms], outside of politician’s interests. You can’t ask them these questions.… If they sit in the majority, why would they change?”

J.D. Crookshanks, a PhD candidate at the U of A and the de facto spokesperson for Fair Vote Alberta, the provincial chapter of the national group pushing for electoral reform, agrees the Alberta Tories are their main obstacle. “It’s not in the interests of any party that benefits from the current system,” he says. “That being said, we are still hoping that there are conservatives that respect the idea that the current system just doesn’t work.… We are looking at talking to some former MLAs, some of the old Reform people who are behind electoral reform.”

Dailey-O’Cain says parties of all stripes could benefit from proportional representation. Imagine, for example, if both Rahim Jaffer and Linda Duncan were elected in the federal riding of Edmonton-Strathcona. Then both the left- and right-leaning constituents would have an MP they felt comfortable speaking with. (Under the B.C. model, ridings are expanded so the number of MLAs or MPs does not increase.)

But wouldn’t Jaffer and Duncan have a hard time running the riding together? Not to mention how they’d get along on Parliament Hill.

Not at all, responds Dailey-O’Cain. Proportional representation would force a more consensus approach to government. And if there are still kinks in the system, there’s nothing saying that some tinkering couldn’t be done after it’s implemented.

The other major criticism lobbed at proportional representation is that it will weaken a politician’s connection to a certain geographical area, and therefore their accountability. “Those lists could be manipulated,” says Hennig, referring to the Ontario-style MMP system. “So the leader’s brother-in-law can be put somewhere on a list because of who he is rather than because he has some kind of support from the community.”

Hennig prefers the B.C.-style single transferable vote because of the local accountability, but Harold Jansen, a political scientist at the University of Alberta, says current notions of politicians’ accountability to a certain geographical area is overblown. “The reality,” he says, “is that under our current system, the majority of people can’t name their MP and fewer can name their MLA. Maybe that local connection isn’t as important as we sometimes think it is.”

Under MMP, political parties do decide on who makes their list of candidates to be elected at large. But that’s not much different from what happens now, Jansen says. If you win the Progressive Conservative party nomination in Alberta, for example, then you have a pretty good chance of getting elected, which means that the candidate is accountable to the party, not the people.

According to Jansen, Alberta is one of the best places to try out proportional representation because of the huge majorities elected here.

Alberta is also one of the only provinces that has experience with the system. From 1926 to 1955, Edmonton and Calgary used preferential voting systems as a form of proportional representation in the provincial elections. The system involved citizens ranking their choices on a ballot. The candidates consistently ranked at the top were elected.

But a debate on which form of representation is best for Alberta is far in the future. Crookshanks says Fair Vote Alberta is currently circulating a petition calling on the provincial government to form a citizens’ assembly to look into our electoral system, but are not asking for any particular reform.

“Politicians, if they want to look like they respect the democratic process,” he says, “are going to have to ante up and start talking about a citizens’ assembly.”