[fvc-wat-disc] Multi-cultural festival thoughts - part 2 - the parties

[Jay Judkowitz]

Hi all,

*** Please don't forward this mail around.  I don't want to embarrass any
of the people who were kind enough to speak with me, nor do I want to take
on the responsibility of being their spokespeople outside this group  ***

     Second of two messages on the weekend.  After our booth, I went and
bothered three of the parties.  Here were the conversation results.  All
pretty interesting.  And, I'm sorry this mail is so darn long.

*Liberals*:

   - Spoke with president of the riding association, Brenden Sherratt
   - He said that electoral reform was important to him personally and that
   he was working it from the inside.  He encouraged me to join the party if I
   wanted to help :-)
   - I shared my oft repeated concern that Canada's Trump, if he/she ever
   comes, will come because of lack of PR.  Brenden saw the point and seemed
   to share some of that concern.  If 39% of votes get you 100% of the power,
   what happens when it's the wrong 39%?
   - I asked when he thought the Liberals would take up the mantle and
   slipped and sarcastically added, "... after the conservatives win again?".
   Brenden was not that amused but another volunteer laughed pretty loud.  The
   rest of the conversation, I was much better behaved...
   - Brendan confided that he wished that the Liberals had run on "AV" and
   not "electoral reform".  The broader promise got lots of folks (like us)
   excited and won them more votes, but the more narrow promise would have
   been more honest and, if the Liberals were elected anyway, they could have
   claimed a mandate and just done AV without any studies like ERRE.
   - So, in Brendan's world, breaking the promise was a good thing.  With
   over 50% of the seats, the Liberals could have pushed AV through.  They did
   not push AV because ERRE was solidly against it and they did not push PR
   because the Liberals themselves were against it.  He felt they should only
   push something if there was a real mandate for it.  He's sort of right on
   this, actually - Trudeau did show some restraint by calling for the report
   and not just cramming AV down the country's throat.  It was nice having
   another perspective to humanize the Liberal leadership and not just looking
   at them as cynical promise breakers.
   - In the end, Brenden was really encouraging.  He said that we should
   keep doing what we're doing.  The more minds we change at the grass roots
   level, the more the change becomes inevitable.

*NDP:*

   - Spoke with Laura Mae Lindo, the new MPP candidate for Kitchener Centre
   - I told her that I understood that the NDP was for PR but that I was
   disappointed in their performance on the May vote.  Only Nathan Cullen
   seemed really invested in this.  What I would have hoped to see was a joint
   press conference of all the leadership candidates saying how united they
   were in PR and what an important vote it was.  Even if it did not change
   the result, it would have shone a spotlight on the matter.  She thought
   that was an interesting idea and wrote it down as something to share up the
   ladder even though it was too late for this time.
   - I asked her when PR would be in the NDP platform.  She thought it
   already was.  But, she admitted that she was just appointed as the local
   MPP candidate and the handbook with the official NDP positions was still in
   the mail.
   - I asked her which NDP leadership candidate was going to be the
   strongest supporter and she said that Niki Ashton had some things to say
   for PR recently.
   - Long story short, it seems that PR is not a really big, urgent, high
   priority item for the local NDP right now.  My guess is that they are
   concerned with more short term achievable policy objectives.

*Conservative:*

   - I grabbed a random guy at the very lonely Conservative booth.  It
   happened to be ex-MP, Stephen Woodworth, which was pretty cool for me.  In
   the US, you don't just run into federal legislators, current or past.
   - I asked the party's position and he said they were for a referendum
   and if it won, they would dutifully implement it.
   - But, without being asked, he offered that he was against PR himself.
   His position is that PR solves the wrong problem.  Being a right of center
   person, he's all about the individual and his big problem is that
   individual MPs have their arms twisted to vote with the party and that if
   MPs had independence, they would represent their constituents better
   regardless of party.  He feels that PR forces people to think about party
   as if all people in the party are one in the same.  He wants elections of
   people and not parties.
   - Personally, I found his opinion naive in today's world of centralized
   opinion making, but it does speak to my own ideals.  It took me years to
   get converted to PR because of this ideal specifically.  I do wonder if
   there is a broader non-partisan good governance movement here - one that
   could encompass both party fairness and individual agency in MPs.  One
   would think that MP candidates of all parties would like some more freedom
   to vote their consciences and their constituents interests.  Maybe there is
   a way to work with some Conservatives on this.
   - He had arguments for everything I had to say except on the point about
   Greens not getting any seats with 1 million votes but the Bloc getting 49
   seats with 1.3 million votes.  I asked why an interest should be punished
   for being diffuse rather than concentrated.  He changed the subject rather
   than admit to this problem.  So, this is a powerful argument that maybe we
   should invoke more.  Instead of the specter of party power, we can talk
   about national interests and making sure all the interests are represented
   in proportion to their adherents regardless of how closely together or far
   away they live.
   - The argument he gave that really upset me and that I defeated handily
   by bringing up the Federalist Papers (of all things) was the one of
   accountability.  He feels that a party that comes to power with >50% of the
   seats is accountable for their promises (and he loves bringing up Trudeau's
   broken promises).  But, if you have multiple minority parties you get
   horsetrading and compromise (as if that's a bad thing!?!) that leads to
   unpredictability and an unaccountable legislature.  Besides being silly
   (politics without compromise?) it undercuts his point from before that MPs
   should be independent.  Majority parties only have the accountability he
   talks about if the MPs vote in lockstep.
   - So, either way, I found him to be a bit disingenuous.  Either his
   reasoning for being anti-PR is MP independence or party accountability.  It
   can't be both.  The cynic in me says that Conservatives are against it
   because they are the #2 size party and can only win power with a "3rd party
   spoiler".  The would rather have complete control every now and then rather
   than being a large minority isolated right of the center 100% of the time.
   - That said, like I said before, maybe there is a non-partisan good
   governance angle we could work to find common ground with the personal
   accountability people from the Conservative party.

Best regards,
Jay
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