Earlier this week, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh made a bunch of silly suggestions to the media about how our current electoral system of single-member plurality known colloquially as "First Past the Post" was responsible for electing Doug Ford. He made a list of other ridiculous suggestions and posted a number of other straw men based on a hilarious understanding of the way in which we elect our MPs citing not only Ford's election, but his use of the Notwithstanding Clause, Maxime Bernier's creation of an anti-immigrant party, or Andrew Scheer appointing a former board member of Rebel Media as his campaign director.
Of course, any and all of these would happen under some other electoral system. In fact, it's just as likely that any or all of these things would be more likely to happen under proportional representation populist leaders are certainly on the rise in PR-based countries in Europe, fringe parties are created under PR systems all the time, and I'm boggled to find how a leader's staffing decisions would be different under any other electoral system. So well done with your logic there.
Of course, if we're going to be honest about how electoral systems work, you can't deny that our current system has largely prevented radical parties and leaders from gaining a foothold. Regional or somewhat extreme parties may show up for an election cycle or two, but quickly lose traction and fade to obscurity because one of the biggest strengths of our system is that it forces parties to have big tents in order to get a broad enough cross-section of the country to win enough seats to form a government. That tends to force internal consensus, and waters down most of the radical elements within them. Contrast this with PR-based countries where small radical parties can gain outsized influence when they form coalitions with more moderate parties and turn their positions more to the fringes in order to give them the votes they need to keep confidence. Of course, Singh appears to be operating under the "nice coalitions in perpetuity" fallacy that many leftists in this country seem to think that PR would engender, despite all evidence to the contrary.
That's not to say that we don't have a problem with our system right now, because we absolutely do. It's just that the real problem is not how we elect our MPs, but rather, how we choose party leaders and that's what has given us Ford, and yes, given us Singh as well. By moving away from a system of caucus selection and removal, where the party leaders are a member of the caucus and who answer to their fellow members, and instead moving toward a system where they are elected by a group of rented party members, has led to a rise in unaccountable leaders and an opening to populists who would be unelectable in most other circumstances. But because it's possible to stack a leadership contest in the way you can't stack a caucus vote as Singh well knows, given how his own leadership was won we've created an opening for politicians like Ford to gain positions of power that should be unimaginable.
Why does this matter when it comes to dealing with a Ford-like personality? Because caucus selection and removal could keep a leader in check. If he or she got too out of hand and invoking the Notwithstanding Clause to exact some petty revenge is a pretty good standard for "out of hand" you could have the caucus apply real pressure to get him or her to back down. But because the caucus didn't select the leader, they are largely being held to the whims of that leader who can and will lord over them the "democratic legitimacy" of their position thanks to the number of votes they received from the membership (however temporary those members are). This can insulate bad leaders from criticism because the urge to show solidarity in a party particularly one that has both been recently elected, and one that has recently suffered a traumatic ouster of its former leader, like the Ontario PCs have can stifle criticism in ways that go beyond how our system should work. Even if there is pushback behind the caucus room doors, these caucus members have insufficient leverage to force the leader to back down, and that's the biggest problem in our system.
Of course, the leadership selection system is also responsible for many of Singh's party's woes as well. Remember that when the membership decided to oust Thomas Mulcair for his poor election performance (though, it needs to be said, that he didn't exactly campaign to keep his job during the leadership review), they also decided to keep him on board during a two-year leadership campaign, during which he simply grew bitter and didn't do any fundraising or outreach, which allowed the party to basically stagnate. I know the thinking was that the leadership contest would generate excitement and fundraising (because the party would take a cut of all donations), but it didn't work out that way quite the opposite in fact, and they wound up with a leader who didn't have a seat, who decided he didn't need one, and who became an invisible figure for months before he realized the gravity of his mistake meanwhile the party's finances plummeted and they remain in the red and unable to raise enough funds to fight the next election if they can't come up with some new capital on the double. If they'd chosen a new leader from caucus immediately, none of this would have happened, and they would be in a stronger position now than they are.
Our electoral system is not the problem, and never has been. If we had a functioning leadership system, where party leaders were actually held accountable and who had the fear of their own caucus losing patience with their antics over them at all times, I suspect you'd find that many of the problems we're seeing right now would be vastly minimized. But that would mean we'd have to question the basis of the leadership system that we've allowed to grow into a monster before our eyes while insisting that it's "more democratic." But "more democratic" can very quickly mean "less accountable," which is why we're in the mess we're in.
Photo Credit: TVO
