During the triumphant national Conservative Party convention in Ottawa in mid-June, a defeated British Columbia candidate raised an issue that bedeviled many Conservatives running against strong New Democrat opponents.
“How do we fight against NDP (and Green Party) arguments that the existing first-past-the-post electoral system is illegitimate, that only proportional representation is fair?” he asked Reform Party founder Preston Manning. It was an issue in his riding.
In a PR system representing true voter intentions, the Conservatives with less than 40 percent of the vote would hold a minority 123 seats instead of the majority 166 seats they won May 2. The NDP also would lose a few seats while the Liberals and Greens would gain.
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Manning offered a smart answer.
If electoral reform is such a strong NDP principle and goal, why has no provincial NDP government in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario or Nova Scotia elected with a minority of votes in a first-past-the-post election ever changed the provincial electoral system?
The answer, of course, is simple.
Minority parties that can win majority governments in the existing system have no interest in a system that would guarantee them no more than a minority.
Still, in opposition it is a good virtuous issue to promote.
In the first House of Commons Question Period of the new session June 6, opposition leader Jack Layton drove the point home.
He said prime minister Stephen Harper has an obligation to work with opposition parties because after all, despite his majority, he is a minority prime minister.
“I would like to take this opportunity to remind the Conservatives that 60 percent of Canadian voters did not vote for them,” said the NDP leader.
The clear implication was that Harper’s majority is somehow tainted.
But Manning had it right.
First –past-the-post is the system and with almost no governments ever winning 50 percent of the vote, a government elected under the current system has little stomach to change it.
Layton should also remember that in 1975, Saskatchewan NDP premier Allan Blakeney, one of his political heroes, won majority re-election with less than 39 percent of the popular vote.
And then he went on to impose an icon of NDP mythology — nationalization of the potash industry.
There was no consultation or offer of compromise with the hostile Liberal and Progressive Conservative opposition.
You do what you can with the political hand you are dealt.
