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While Maryam Monsef apologised several times for her Question Period comments saying that the electoral reform committee didn't do their job, I will contend that she was, in fact, right.  When you actually look at the options presented by the committee, and in particular the NDP and Green members in their "supplemental report," what was on offer were not in fact any "viable alternate voting systems to replace the first-past-the-post system."

The key takeaway, if you listen to the NDP, was a proportional system.  If you listen to the Conservatives, it was the call for a referendum.  But looking a little closer at the proportional representation recommendations, it was with the caveat that there was no appetite for party lists to fill the proportional "top-up" seats, and that the proportionality of whatever system gets chosen meets a low score on the Gallagher Index, which is a measure of the so-called "distortion" between the popular vote share and the number of seats awarded.  This creates a problem for the government because of the limited options that they are left with, and they are not great ones to consider.  For example, single transferable voting has elements of proportionality built-into the multi-member ridings that would be used, but in a country as vast and sparsely populated as Canada, multi-member ridings are only practical in the cities.  We already have single-member rural and remote ridings larger than France, and trying to make these ridings multi-member ones would create ridings so massive as to be unwieldy.

The NDP and the Greens came up with proposals that they felt met the criteria of both proportionality and not using lists, which were a mixed-member proportional system with an ever-increasing number of top-up seats added with each election cycle to continue to get toward that lower Gallagher Index number; the other is what is called a "rural-urban proportional" system, and each would use what is known as the "Baden-Württemberg" model for filling the proportional seats.  First of all, rural-urban proportional is almost certainly going to be a non-starter because it essentially creates two separate voting systems multi-member ridings in the cities and single-member ridings in the countries with top-up seats, but good luck convincing the Supreme Court of Canada that having separate systems is constitutional.  And as for this "Baden-Württemberg" model, it is based on the system used in the German state for which it is named where they don't use lists to fill proportional seats, but rather the "best runners up" in the region, so that those local candidates who didn't actually manage to get elected can still, well, get elected in order to fill out the proportional top-up seats.

This is untenable in the extreme.

Elections are not just about deciding who gets to fill seats in the upcoming parliament, it also is about deciding to reward or punish incumbents who already fill those seats, so that if that incumbent hasn't done a good job, they can be voted out and replaced with someone else.  It's one of the most fundamental aspects of accountability in our electoral system.  But with this "best runner up" model, it means that even if a riding wanted to vote someone out for poor performance, they can still get back into parliament because they require someone to fill that top-up seat and he or she is still getting some votes.  In other words, this system makes it virtually impossible to punish or vote out bad MPs.  The accountability function of elections is virtually obliterated as a result.  Worse yet, this becomes a codified system of participation medals in politics you can still get a seat even if you lose the election, just for participating.  How is this any way to run a democracy?

This inability to hold governments to account is another effect of proportional systems writ-large, which just becomes magnified under these proposals.  We've seen in PR countries like Germany that one party can be at the centre of coalition governments for decades and never leave power.  Rather, they simply shuffle their coalition partners around after elections, and continue to govern.  This is not accountability and yet, here in Canada, Elizabeth May has been on record as saying that she would prefer a system where you cannot easily toss a government so that someone else can implement their own policy agenda.  Do we really want a system where it becomes impossible to "throw the bums out"?  Where holding governments to account becomes a nigh-impossible task?  And by adding in the "best runner up" model, we would have a system where you can't vote out MPs and you can't vote out governments.  What then becomes the point?

The fixation on proportionality is becoming toxic to our system of government.  Proportionality for the sake of proportionality undermines some of the most basic tenets of Westminster democracy, both in terms of the meaning of the vote, to the agency of an MP, to the ability to hold MPs and governments to account.  In giving credence to the logical fallacy that the popular vote figure is a real thing (it's not elections are 338 separate events, not a single one), and letting sore losers whinge and cry about being treated "unfairly" because they weren't able to engage enough Canadians to win more seats, we have managed to completely distort the meaning of our system in the popular consciousness.  Lines like "why should someone with 40 percent of the votes get 100 percent of the power" completely misread and malign how parliament works, and has fuelled this sense of discontent with the system and given accusations of brokenness where none actually exists.

Ultimately this is why the committee's report fails.  It has bought into these false notions about how our system operates and presented options to replace it that we cannot in good conscience stomach.  Monsef should articulate this basic truth rather than walk on eggshells around the sensitivities of the opposition parties.  Sadly, I doubt she ever will.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.


Earlier this year, I was troubled by the notion "authenticity" was the new badge of honour in our politics.  Little did I know then what we know now: that the "authentic" candidate, no matter how deplorable, could win, and worse still for our politics, bluster and bombast could be weaponised, and "fake news" would be a virus infecting our very civic conversation.

Why was I troubled by privileging authenticity? First of all, President Barack Obama put it best, arguing this spring, "being authentic did not necessarily translate into being a good president".

But furthermore, "authenticity" isn't quite accurate as a label for what we're privileging.  The reality is, we don't value authenticity for its own sake.  We value the unvarnished, the relatable, the messy.  In other words, we value what's entertaining.

It's cliché to say Hillary Clinton is inauthentic.  She is a cautious, steady, moderate, reserved, technocratic liberal elite—that's who she is.  Much like Jeb Bush, the public's distrust didn't come from being herself; it came from trying too hard to be relatable or memorable because she knew her authentic self was too dull to capture the public's attention.

It's true the political-industrial complex has created suspicion.  But by privileging authenticity, we may have lost other worthwhile qualities, such as the circumspect candidate, the cautious person who values advice rather than mere instinct, the person who is respectful and wise.  But when you know a politician has paid thousands of dollars for poll-tested lines, of course you question sincerity—who is she a puppet for?  Are those words really his?

Donald Trump, on the other hand, discovered that you can weaponise your authenticity as a means of distraction.  It's become fashionable after Hillary lost the electoral college courtesy of 80,000 odd votes in three Rust Belt states that her campaign lacked an economic platform to appeal to blue-collar, white workers.  This is a reassuring fiction, but it's not true.  She had copious economic policies and spoke about them regularly.  But she couldn't break through the noise created by Trump, and was constantly forced by the networks into reacting to his latest eruption rather than staying on message.

The election became reality Jerry Springer.

The phenomenon isn't unique to America, either.  It's not for nothing that the winning Leave camp in the UK's Brexit debate had the more entertaining, memorable characters on its side.  We don't do boring.

For instance, no one would say former prime minister Stephen Harper was inauthentic.  He was insular and dull, reserved and the kind of guy who probably would wear a sweater vest or shake his kids' hands on the first day of school.  On the other hand, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has his own blend of authenticity.  He wears his heart on his sleeve and isn't afraid to share insights into his character on social media, aided by the exquisite photography of Adam Scotti.  In the end, Trudeau's authentic self was just more entertaining than Harper's.  I'm not saying it's why he won, but it didn't hurt.

After the election, we've seen Trump continue to exploit his distraction strategy.  His shoot-from-the-couch tweets send the press and commentariat into spasms, with his controversial missives bumping stories about his multimillion-dollar fraud settlement off of the front page.  Trudeau actually isn't so different.  He prolonged his ongoing honeymoon in part by exploiting our clickbait media culture with charming photos and antics (obviously this is a far more benign way than Trump's unbridled Twitter id).

Trump's wannabe clone in Canada, Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch, doesn't come off as authentic per se, for the simple reason that it clearly seems as if she's parroting poll-tested lines.  Nonetheless, her xenophobic, unworkable policy proposals serve a similar tactical purpose.  By being provocative, she's successfully foisted herself into the news, pushing her otherwise lacklustre candidacy to (at least) the top of the media coverage.

Whilst Leitch might not be authentic—her anti-immigrant policy came from a survey of her supporters, for crying out loud—she has succeed by styling herself as the champion of "the comment section".  Leitch is at least showing, like Trump, she will put the authenticity and unvarnished voice of her supporters ahead of political correctness and political caution.

This mastery of provocative attention-seeking is entertaining, but it's dangerous, too.

Way back in 1985, Neil Postman wrote: "When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk."

We have entered an age where the actual truth is less important than who can say it with the most entertainment value.  Politics as reality TV, as a distraction rather than a civic discourse, is alarming.

Indeed, Postman argued, referencing Brave New World, "Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance… Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture… the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny 'failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions'".

Turns out distractions can win an American election.  Canadians must be vigilant, lest it happen to us.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.