Proportional benefits

It may be an unusual call for proportional representation from an unlikely source. But Murray Mandryk's column today may well help to keep up the NDP's campaign discussion about the need to take another look at how Saskatchewan votes.

Mandryk starts off with a passage which could serve as the introduction for a strong argument in favor of a full MMP system:

(A) mere 5,569 votes that went to the Saskatchewan Party instead of the NDP -- 33 in Moose Jaw North, 37 in Meadow Lake, 61 in Prince Albert Carlton, 182 in Regina-Qu'Appelle Valley, 253 in Regina South, 270 in Saskatoon Sutherland, 302 in Saskatoon Greystone, 1,041 in Saskatchewan Rivers, 1,568 in Rosthern-Shellbrook and 1,822 in Humboldt -- are the difference between the current 38-20 Saskatchewan Party-controlled legislature and a 30-28 NDP-controlled legislature identical to the last House.

Given that the latter would have meant the Saskatchewan Party would have still have had 49.4 per cent of the vote (compared with the 50.62 that the party actually got) while the NDP would have only garnered 38.2 per cent (compared with the 37.09 per cent it actually received), we would very likely be in a huge democratic crisis right now had the NDP won.

Needless to say, if our current system was indeed that close to a genuine "democratic crisis", that would seem to make for a strong argument for a full overhaul. But Mandryk doesn't go anywhere near that far.

Instead, Mandryk suggests a far more modest change:

Isn't it now time to consider setting aside part of the Saskatchewan legislature for proportional representation? Suppose that there were 10 seats in the 58-seat legislature based on popular vote rather than first-past-the-post. And suppose, based on the recent popular vote, the Saskatchewan Party government had five more seats, the NDP four and and the Liberals one. Wouldn't that result in both better cabinets and oppositions?

Maybe we need to consider such new ideas to get the depth we need in modern-day cabinets.

Mandryk doesn't deal with the question of how the occupants of those seats would be chosen. And based on his call for the seats to be used to improve the frontlines of government and opposition after the election results are in, it would seem that he's looking for the parties to have virtually free rein in allocating those proportional seats.

Of course, it's debatable whether this would be the best option. While Mandryk seems to see the PR seats as a way of immunizing top political talent from any need to run individually, I'd tend toward an approach which still gives some immediate say to the province's voters, filling any PR-based seats with a party's candidates who came closest to winning their ridings.

Whether or not one agrees fully with his proposal, though, it's still noteworthy that one of the main drivers of Saskatchewan's conventional political wisdom is calling into question whether the current FPTP system provides the best possible representation for Saskatchewan's citizens. And hopefully that will be an early step toward real change in the province's electoral system.