On misplaced outrage

Before the rapidly-spreading outrage over John Ibbitson's article on seat redistribution goes too far, let's pause and check whether the headline and lede actually match the facts. And I'd think there's ample reason to think that most of the controversy is entirely manufactured.

Here's the area of apparent agreement, along with the parties' substantive positions:

Conservative, Liberal and New Democratic MPs and party strategists, speaking on condition that they not be named, stated this week that the bill has no chance of passage. Although all three national parties remain committed to the principle of equal representation for all Canadians in the House of Commons, in practice, the legislation that would advance that cause has virtually no hope of becoming law.
...
Minister of State for Democratic Reform Steven Fletcher’s office said the minister was not available to be interviewed. However “our government is moving forward with the Democratic Representation Act,” said spokesperson Jessica Georgakopoulos. She added that “it is anticipated” that the bill will be brought forward for debate next year.

That supposition, however, is contradicted by higher officials within the government.

Liberal Democratic Reform critic Carolyn Bennett, from Toronto, said her party was not ready to support the bill “without robust consultation with the provinces.”

“This is no way to run a federation,” she said. “Where is the consultation? Where is the first ministers’ meeting? Where is any understanding of how this country is supposed to work?”

When asked whether she was concerned about the underrepresentation of visible minorities, Dr. Bennett said it is equally important to “make the rest of Canada more inclusive for people choosing to come to Canada.”

Although NDP sources said the party was split over the bill, David Christopherson, critic for Democratic Reform, predicted his party would ultimately have voted for it.

“We were prepared to support C-12,” he said in an interview. “And if [the Conservatives] are not going to move on C-12, they should bloody well bring forward something that deals with this.” Mr. Christopherson’s seat is in Hamilton, another underrepresented Ontario city.

Now, it's first worth drawing a distinction between predictions and party intentions. It's entirely possible that all parties could rationally believe a bill would go nowhere even while planning to support it themselves: e.g. if the Cons assumed that the opposition parties would unite against it and the opposition parties didn't think the Cons would actually move it forward, it's possible for all parties to predict a bill's failure while nonetheless supporting it.

Of course, that's not exactly the case here. But the main point of dispute looks to be the Cons' claim to want to advance the bill.

After all, if Fletcher isn't merely blowing smoke about the Cons advancing the bill and putting their weight behind it, then all evidence is that it would have the votes to pass. Even a split in the NDP would seem likely to produce enough support to move the bill ahead, and the Libs' process concerns sound like they can be dealt with relatively easily.

Which means that if C-12 doesn't move forward, the obvious explanation is that the Cons have chosen not to act on it even while knowing that it's likely to pass.

In sum, then, there's absolutely no evidence of agreement that the bill shouldn't pass. And any agreement that the bill won't pass looks to be based on the likelihood that the party in power will choose not to make it a priority, rather than some grand multiparty conspiracy to undermine it.

Of course, it's also worth noting that a slight reallocation of voting influence looks to be far from the most important issue in a system that's seen massive executive power grabs and abuse of unelected authority at the expense of our elected officials - not to mention far greater distortions in the value of votes based on the preservation of a first-past-the-post electoral system. But even to the extent seat reallocation is going to be seen as a litmus test for a party's commitment to democracy, there's no reason to take a "throw them all out" line in response to a misleading bit of media spin.

Update: And having expressed skepticism about the balance of the article, I'll also note that Susan Delacourt's post on "higher" officials overruling Fletcher similarly seems to be unsubstantiated in the article. Though I'd certainly be interested to know who claims the title.

[Edit: fixed wording.]