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Three Ontario Mixed Member Proportional Models with Local and Regional Mpps Who All Faced the Voters, All Accountable

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Three Ontario Mixed Member Proportional Models with Local and Regional Mpps Who All Faced the Voters, All Accountable Three Ontario Mixed Member Proportional models With local and regional MPPs who all faced the voters, all accountable Personal viewpoint (Wilfred Day) Principles 1. I’m making this submission to the Ontario Citizens’ 3. Your nine principles for electoral systems are all Assembly on Electoral Reform as a former school important. You can design a voting system to meet them trustee who served on the Northumberland - Clarington all. Our present system doesn’t. Seventy-five countries, Board of Education. I was elected four times as one of including most major democracies, use proportional a pair of trustees representing Port Hope and the Town- representation systems. The goal is to maximize the ship of Hope. That school board used to be the largest by number of citizens who can help elect representatives they enrollment between Oshawa and Ottawa, and is now want: make every vote count. Polls show between 63% larger still: in 1998 it became part of the Kawartha Pine and 71% of Canadians support proportional represen- Ridge District School Board, based in Peterborough. As tation, so you shouldn’t worry too much about the a lawyer and active local citizen I’ve been involved in 60% threshold. standing up for our community over 37 years with govern- ments of all three parties, making me a bit non-partisan. 4. Most of us agree with your principles. But then we’ll ask worriedly “but how would party lists work?” Winner-take-all? While supporting the principles, most Ontarians are wary of any change which will replace single-district representa- tives with legislators elected from lists. 2. With the current system, only one MPP is elected from each riding. The only way we can gain political 5. So in my opinion a mixed member proportional representation is if we live in a riding where we happen to (MMP) system would be best. MMP is designed to allay support the most popular party. This is even worse than a these concerns. It uses lists like other PR systems, but at local council with single-member wards, because they’re the same time it retains single-member districts. Every non-partisan, while our MPP may be someone we cam- voter has both a local representative and regional paigned against. When I was a trustee for a two-mem- representatives. ber ward, voters had a choice which trustee to go to: two competing trustees. Three of a range of MMP models 6. Because the MMP system is flexible, a range of Table of Contents: good MMP models are possible. You already have three Three models and suggested improvements p. 3 professional submissions on MMP models: Women and minorities p. 6 1. One from Sean Geobey, a Ph. D. student at Thresholds and other issues p. 7 Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo. It’s on Two simulations of Ontario’s 2003 election p. 8 your website as submission number 1039. Technical options p. 12 Open list methods p. 13 2. One from Greg Morrow, a Ph. D. student in the Options, alternatives and variations p. 15 School of Public Affairs, University of California, Los Angeles, raised in rural Eastern Ontario, submission number 1122, amplified by submis- sions number 1138 and 1218. 8. As you may know already, the Mixed Member 3. One from Brian Doody, a Ph. D. Student and Proportional (MMP) system Lecturer in Political Science at University of - was recommended by the Law Commission of Western Ontario, submission number 1087. Canada in 2004. This submission expands on a presentation I made at your - British authorities in West Germany created the MMP hearing in Peterborough Dec. 5. It will say why I like system in 1946. It merged British direct elections with these three models, and show a couple of examples of European proportional systems: “personalised PR.” how you might blend them and make the result even - it balances personal accountability with party ac- better. I also have a suggestion on open list methods. countability; “the best of both worlds.” 7. With any proportional system every vote counts - It caught on across Germany, then in New Zealand, equally. With these Mixed Member Proportional Scotland, Wales and elsewhere. Quebec has been models, your Ontario Legislature can accurately working on an MMP model. reflect the popular vote, and the voter can have more - Ontario’s Students’ Assembly on Electoral Reform accountable MPPs. chose MMP in November. 2 A Voice at Queen’s Park for Ontario’s You have two votes Regions: 13. On voting day you have two votes. You cast a local 9. With a regional Mixed Member Proportional vote for your local member, as we do today, and you cast system like any of these three you can go to your local a regional vote for your choice of party and, with open list, for your regional MPP. None of these models rule out MPP or one of your regional MPPs. The core concept open list. of MMP is to respect the voter’s first choice. 10. Some MMP models in New Zealand and some MPPs will now have competition German provinces don’t tie the proportional MPPs to a region. They don’t make them personally accountable to 14. If a party wins lots of local seats, it gets few regional the electorate in natural regions. These three models MPPs. As a result, being on the regional list is no look more like Scotland’s. But with open list they’ll be guarantee of election, so that regional MPPs hope to even better: this makes Regional MPPs accountable to run locally as well as regionally next time. So, as Prof. voters, providing both effective representation and Louis Massicotte has shown, they have their own con- accountable government. stituency offices and compete with local MPPs to serve constituents. Bad for the politicians, perhaps, but Accountable Regional MPPs good for the voters. Competing MPPs: good for voters 11. Regional MPPs will make regional issues like economic development and regional health services heard at Queen’s Park. If possible, the regions should be No more wrong-winner elections consistent with District School Board boundaries. 15. Quebecers have been talking about proportional Stable government representation for decades. Action started after the 1998 election. That’s when Quebec’s Liberals won more votes 12. The German provinces all use similar models. Do than the PQ, but the PQ government won more seats and they suffer from unstable coalitions or minority govern- was re-elected. BC started action after the 1996 provincial ments? Since 1947, their total 152 parliaments have election. That’s when BC Liberals won more votes than lasted an average of 4.03 years each. MMP has produced the NDP, but the NDP government won more seats and current true majorities in Bavaria, Hesse, Thuringia, and was re-elected. In Ontario’s 1985 election the Liberals (in previous elections) many other German provinces, as won more votes than the PCs but the PCs won more well as in other jusidictions. seats. With a good proportional representation model, this cannot happen. Demographic representation and ef- But as I looked at what has happened in other jurisdic- tions and started to consider how we can actually, all of fective parties us, in all three parties, stop talking about wanting more women and actually try to produce more women from 16. Janet Ecker was Ontario’s Finance Minister, a our respective nominations and various processes, the Progressive Conservative. Here’s what she told Law Commission's recommendation about a portion of Ontario’s Select Committee on Electoral Reform, as your seats I started to find very attractive. one of the three spokeswomen for the multi-partisan group Equal Voice: “As the result of your nomination process and your election process, a political party, indeed a govern- “When I started with the group, primarily because I agree ment, may find itself with a lack of representation in that we need to have more women in our elected pro- some area, whether it's geographic, whether it's cess at all levels, I was opposed to proportional repre- gender, whether it's whatever: urban, rural, you sentation because I believe very strongly in that link to a name it. For caucus, cabinet and party discussions constituency . I still think there are a lot of strengths to to adequately assess an issue, I think you need as that system and I don't think we should lose that. much diversity in that room as you can get. Propor- tional representation provides a political party with an opportunity to round out the slate, if you will, of what Why Janet Ecker likes MMP the nomination process may well have produced for them. That is one of the reasons why I have been convinced that a portion of the seats be proportional representation.” 3 Sean Geobey’s model -- He suggests the local Riding Seats be kept much the same in the North, and almost the same in south- 17. Here’s the basics of Sean Geobey’s model: ern Ontario, where every six ridings will become five. -- He would keep 85 local MPPs and have 45 regional -- He suggests 11 regions: two smaller regions in the MPPs, bring the size of the legislature back to the 130 North, one for Toronto with 27 MPPs, and eight others we had before 1999, with 35% regional seats. in the South, typically with 12 MPPs each. Each would have two local MPPs for every regional MPP: 33% -- He has flexible options for regions. He suggests the regional MPPs. Any disproportional excess seat in local Riding Seats can be kept the same in non- any region would be adjusted by deducting a regional metropolitan regions, but “in densely populated urban seat of that party from the region in which that party areas (Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, parts of the 905- earned the lowest fraction of a seat.
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