Mixed Member Proportional Representation

MEECH LIVES!

The Proposed New Mixed-Member Proportional System

Vincent J. Curtis                                                                          19 September 2007

            The impulse that led to the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords is not dead.  The elites are tinkering with the constitution, again.  In the upcoming provincial election, Ontarians will be asked to approve a new method for selecting members to the provincial legislature that is claimed to be more representative, but is less so and creates more politicians besides.  Meech lives!

            Presently, Ontarians select a person to represent them in the provincial legislature by a process that has been perfected over eight hundred years.  The person standing for office with the most votes wins the election.  But for the elites, this is unfair.

This method, so common-sensible that it has no name, is derided by the elites as the “first past the post system.”  They deride method of choosing a representative as unrepresentative because the winner sometimes gets a plurality of less than half the total number of votes.  As if we didn’t know that already.

              To make the system more to their taste, it has to be made fairer.  To the political parties.  To achieve this fairness, the new system, if enacted, will enable the party bosses to appoint people to the legislature in proportion to the number of votes the party gets at the election.  They think political parties are “entitled” (their words) to representation in the legislature also.  If you are an independent, forget it.

            Here’s how its going to work.  If enacted, mixed-proportional representation will reduce the number of members of the legislature that are elected directly by the people from 107 to 90.  An additional 39 members will be added to the legislature from lists provided by the political parties.  Each party will be granted a proportion of those 39 seats in the legislature based on the proportion of the total vote the party got province-wide.  These party-based members of the legislature represent no riding, and are members of the legislature due to their standing within the party that listed them.

            Thus there will be two classes of members of the Ontario legislature: those that represent the people, and those that represent the party.  Since the political elites are all wedded to one party or another, they think that’s fair.  The fact that the legislature seems to function well enough as it is, and does not require parties at all, only a steering committee that has the confidence of the majority of members, doesn’t matter.  Political parties demand fairness!

            Except elections are not about them.  Elections are about us, the people.  We decide who is going to represent us, and it is only our representatives who have the historic, moral, and the constitutional right to tax us.  The power of the purse lay in the hands of the common folk, even 800 years ago, because even in feudal times, a man’s money belonged to him.  The common folk had to consent to giving their money to the executive government, the King.  The King had to persuade the people’s representatives that the money would be spent for the benefit of the kingdom as a whole.  Because running the government got so expensive, that the power of the purse eventually wrested the real power of executive government from the king personally, and from the aristocracy.

Mixed proportional representation proposes to imbed a new kind of aristocracy - within the people’s house.  Party appointees are going to put into the house that has the power to tax.

Each party can be nearly certain that the top seven people on their list will be guaranteed membership in the legislature, a security to those stalwarts nearly as good as a Senate appointment.

            We know proportional representation makes for bad government.  Israel has a legislature chosen entirely by proportional representation from party lists.  This practically guarantees that no party has a majority in the Knesset, and quivering coalitions constantly shift about.  This method of selection is certainly fair to the parties, but what does that matter compared to the quality of government for the people and country as a whole?

            The British-Canadian constitutional practice by which the people select their representatives to parliament has been perfected over 800 years.  We know it works, we understand how it works, and we think it’s fair, except when the elite tell us we’re wrong.  This new method, which will add representatives beholding to the party elites to the people’s house, confuses constitutional principles in a way no one has thought about: can an appointee “cross the floor,” what happens upon the death of an appointed member, can an appointed member step aside for someone else, like a party leader?  No one has thought these matters through.

            If the elites really want to add a party voice to Ontario’s parliament, they should propose a second chamber, similar to a Senate, to which the parties could appoint members.  That way it is clear that there are two classes of members: those that represent the people and are elected, and those that are appointed and represent the political parties they are beholden to.

                                                                        -XXX-

Vincent J. Curtis is a freelance writer and wrote on the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords.

This piece was published in the Hamilton Spectator in the run up to the provincial election of that year.  This article started the ball rolling against the elites, and the MMPR proposition went down to defeat 60 % to 40 %.  The MMPR supporters wanted to win by 60 % to demonstrate the depth of support for the proposal, but instead it went down to defeat by that margin.

Shamelessly, the Ontario Liberals in 2016 foisted ranked balloting on Ontario and the Federal Liberals are now actively trying to sneak in proportional representation by party in the House of Commons.  There isn't anything safe from progressivist meddling.