The wrong reform

William Neville tears into the Cons for focusing their democratic-reform efforts on tweaking Canada's less-relevant house of Parliament while ignoring the chamber where meaningful change is actually possible:

If democratization is a serious concern, it makes far more sense to look at democratic legitimacy in the House of Commons. Consider some recent general election results. In the federal election of 1997, the Liberals, with 49.5 per cent of the popular vote, won 99 per cent of Ontario’s 103 seats; in 2004, with 51.5 per cent of the vote, they won 100 per cent of those seats. Similarly, in 2004 the Conservatives with 61.7 per cent of the votes in Alberta won 92 per cent of the seats and in 2006, with 65 per cent of the vote won 100 per cent of the seats. If one is truly interested in democratic legitimacy, shouldn’t one be concerned that large numbers of voters are systematically under-represented — or completely unrepresented — in the House of Commons?

If Harper were genuinely interested in promoting Canadian democracy, he would be seizing the moment in this minority Parliament to introduce some measure of electoral reform for parliamentary elections. Don’t hold your breath. Yet, is it not fascinating how Bush preaches democracy for Iraq and Harper preaches it for the Senate, but neither shows any interest in the undemocratic features of the House of Representatives there and the House of Commons here? And Harper has less excuse because the Parliament of which he is a member can reform itself.

As Neville notes (and many of us have pointed out), there's little reason to think the Cons actually will want to change the Commons system since it offers them the prospect of imposing their ideology on Canada based on the votes of scarcely over a third of all those who go to the polls.

But while the Cons' current direction certainly makes sense from the standpoint of their party's interests, it couldn't be much further from a stance genuinely intended to reflect the expressed will of Canadian citizens. And the more voters become aware of that fact, the less likely PMS is to ever win the majority that would let him test just how undemocratic a Canadian government can become.