For an election that was sometimes described as being about “nothing”, it turned out to be an important one for climate change policy and the environment.

In the weeks leading up to the federal election, hundreds of thousands of people, stirred up by teenage activist Greta Thunberg, marched through the streets in Canada in support of action on climate change. The turnout reflected the fact that public opinion polling consistently showed that the environment, and more specifically climate change, was a top issue for Canadians.

All the party leaders, except Andrew Scheer and Maxime Bernier, joined the marchers to highlight their commitments to action on climate change. The Greens may have hoped the momentum might buoy them to a strong election outcome, perhaps even official party status.

Even though the election provided the Greens with what was in some ways their best outcome ever, in the end they fell short, leaving a complicated landscape ahead.

Widespread support but not seats

The Greens obtained nearly 1.2 million votes — the greatest number in the party’s history — and 6.5 per cent of the popular vote, falling slightly short of their 2008 record.

But support for the Greens, which is widely distributed across Canada, is notoriously inefficient at being translated into seats. That reality proved true again in this election.

The Greens held onto two seats in British Columbia and beat out a Liberal incumbent in New Brunswick — their best showing yet. But three seats is not enough for official party status in the House of Commons.

Strategic voting hurts Greens, saves Liberals

The Greens have held the balance of power in British Columbia’s NDP-minority government since 2017. But with the number of Liberal and NDP seats totalling 181 at the federal level, the Greens may have only limited influence on Trudeau’s minority government.

The Greens, however, can claim success in other ways.

Their polling numbers remained consistent — around 10 per cent — until the final weekend of the campaign. This forced the other progressive parties, particularly the Liberals and the NDP, to shore up the environment and climate change dimensions of their platforms, including more ambitious climate change targets, to avoid losing potential voters to the Greens.

In Ontario, voters made last-minute decisions to back Trudeau’s government and block a potential Conservative victory. Those choices came at the expense of the NDP, and to a lesser extent the Greens, particularly in the Greater Toronto Area.

The resulting electoral map looks surprisingly similar to the outcome of the 2014 provincial election. The Liberals and NDP split northern Ontario and the cities and towns in the south, while the Conservatives were left with their traditional southern and central rural Ontario base. The outcome reinforces the argument that Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s 2018 election victory was an aberration, and one that Ontario voters didn’t want to risk repeating at the federal level.

What’s next?

The Green’s presence in the election, and particularly leader Elizabeth May’s role in the leaders’ debates, was instrumental in keeping climate change and environmental issues at the forefront of the campaign.

Some, including May, argue that outcome is more important than seat counts. It may also be, under Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system, the best the Greens can hope for for the time being.

The election again highlighted how badly the current system works for smaller parties whose support, however substantial, is widely distributed across the country. The Bloc Québécois earned 1.2 percentage points more of the popular vote than the Greens. But with its support concentrated entirely in Québec, the Bloc emerged with 32 seats compared to the Green’s three.

In an age where the regional divisions in Canada seem to be deepening, the need to move to a system that rewards support across the nation and is less favourable to parties rooted in regional grievance seems more urgent than ever.

Both major parties have emerged from this federal election thinking the existing system has worked in their favour. This makes the prospects for reform, once part of the 2015 Liberal platform, seem even further out of reach.

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It’s been a rough summer for B.C.

The worst — actually — in recorded history for wildfires, which are made worse by climate change.

And while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited B.C. last month to hold cabinet meetings and discuss climate change, the high-level talks shrouded in smoke were a poignant reminder that climate policy in this country is only as stable as the next election cycle.

In our current “first past the post” (FPTP) electoral system, there is nothing stopping reactionary parties from capturing majorities and reversing the hard-fought and sensible climate policies that represent the will of the vast majority of Canadians.

Indeed, North Americans have witnessed wild policy swings on climate in both the Trump administration and in Doug Ford’s Ontario. The U.S. has made the disastrous decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord and Ford is busily undoing policies that support a low-carbon economy. His government has, rather awkwardly, even instructed civil servants to stop using the term “climate change.”

Both leaders rule majority governments with broad powers over climate policy, and yet neither received more than half of the vote: 40.5 per cent, in the case of Ford, and 46.1 per cent of the popular vote in the U.S. presidential election, in the case of Trump.

First Past The Post is a winner-takes-all system that creates the possibility for a minority of the electorate to empower leaders who disregard existing climate policy, public will, and the burning reality of “Hot House Earth.”

Lost in the haze of the ongoing fires is the upcoming electoral reform referendum in B.C., which will run from October 22 to November 30 by mail-in ballot.

It will ask voters two questions: Whether they prefer an electoral system based on proportional representation (ProRep), and what type of proportional voting system should be used if ProRep is chosen.

The referendum is an extremely rare opportunity to advance our democracy by making it fairer, less prone to special interests and more representative.

A more democratic electoral system, in the shape of ProRep, is likely to have positive benefits for climate policy. Let us count the ways.

Limit policy whiplash

First, it would greatly reduce the likelihood of wild policy lurches that are the hallmark of majority governments. Anyone in Ontario considering the purchase of an electric vehicle will know what I mean. Reflect voters’ values Second, it would reflect the views of the average citizen, who clearly wants strong climate leadership in government, and ideally it would reduce the chance of politicians apathetic and ineffective on climate ever making it to government.

According to Abacus Data, more than 85 per cent of Canadians agree that the consequences of taking no action on climate change will be severe, very severe or catastrophic.

De-polarize our politics

Third, it would remove the logic of polarized politics and negative election campaigns, which tend to adversely impact low-carbon initiatives.

The mistaken political assumption that “we’re opposed to it because our adversaries are in favour of it” spells disaster for stabilizing the climate system in which all human beings live.

As John Ivison has shown in the National Post, the differences between Canadian federal parties on climate policy are relatively small: “But [even though the] political polarization on climate change is less than might have been supposed, […] the political parties in the U.S. and Canada are exaggerating the problem for their own gain, a classic case of the narcissism of small differences at work.”

Creating collaborative politics

Fourth, ProRep contributes to the kinds of compromises and collaborative politics that fosters long-term planning – and climate policy, by definition, requires multi-decadal plans.

In New Zealand, for example, the Green MP Gareth Hughes makes it clear that ProRep favours stability.

“When we moved to MMP [mixed-member proportional representation] in the 90s I remember the argument that New Zealand would become politically unstable if we adopted it. The reverse has been true. Our politicians learnt to talk, negotiate, and compromise,” Hughes said.  

Helen Clark, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand, recently told the CBC that ProRep made her country’s politicians more collaborative: “[It] required a lot more dialogue, a lot more give and take, a lot more transparency and a lot more consultation between the parties and with the public.”

Increase sustainability

In terms of environmental sustainability, countries such as New Zealand that have moved to ProRep score significantly higher on Yale University’s Environmental Performance Index, “which measures how well human health and ecosystems are protected.”

Academic research has shown that countries with ProRep are more willing to “pay the price of strong environmental policies, more likely to use renewable energy, and therefore produced a lower share of carbon emissions.”

As an added bonus, countries with ProRep typically elect more women and minorities to government.

Create bold action to meet B.C’s climate targets 

If B.C. votes in favour of ProRep, it could be the first jurisdiction in Canada to implement such a system.

It’s not guaranteed. The switch to Pro-Rep on Prince Edward Island, which passed in a 2016 referendum, has been tabled due to low voter turnout, and of course, Justin Trudeau abandoned his promise of ProRep after the last federal election. Also, Quebec might beat us to the punch.

A switch to ProRep would almost undoubtedly maintain and strengthen the current government’s climate leadership, which this province, and our planet, desperately needs.

Although Canada has committed to the Paris Climate Accord, our progress has been rather slow in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Even though Canada is supposed to reduce emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, our nationwide emissions have fallen by only 0.9 per cent in the past five years, and Canada still emits 3.2 times the wold average of GHGs per capita — more than twice that of China.

In B.C., things look only slightly better, where emissions have dropped a mere 2 per cent since 2007.

The B.C. government created new intermediate reductions targets — 40 per cent by 2030 and 60 per cent by 2040 — in order to achieve the 80 per cent reductions by 2050, but few existing policy decisions are likely to result in such drastic emissions cuts.

By 2050, B.C. will be allowed to emit only 13 megatonnes of carbon dioxide, which means that emissions need to drop by 4.22 per cent per year starting in 2019.

Making the kinds of changes that give our province a realistic chance of 80 per cent emissions reductions — 100 per cent renewables by 2040, banning of new gas and diesel vehicles by 2030 (not 2040), zero carbon buildings by 2024, and so on — will require bold climate leadership and stable, collaborative politics.

ProRep gives our province hope on the climate front, and would greatly reduce anxieties about a Ford-style reversal on climate progress.

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Last week, the Ontario Progressive Conservatives won a majority government, receiving 40.5 per cent of the vote, 61.3 per cent of the seats and 100 per cent of the power.

It was a classic example of a first-past-the-post victory: the last two federal elections also saw majority governments emerging from receiving just shy of 40 per cent of the vote.

The result has launched a familiar round of consternation about the urgent need to reform the electoral system to more accurately represent the desires of voters (something that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blithely promised to do but, well, we all know how that ended).

But this fall, British Columbians will actually have a shot at channelling such frustrations through a referendum that could radically overhaul how provincial elections are won and lost.

“We have an appetite for change, with Justin Trudeau outright lying to the public by saying ‘we want to make sure every vote counts’ and then not following through on that,” Keith Poore, president of Fair Vote Vancouver, told The Narwhal.

With such wild swings between governments in B.C., Poore said, there’s a growing appetite to strike a better electoral balance.

B.C. NDP-Green agreement a foretaste of proportional representation

Poore is right: B.C. has been having weird elections.

The most recent election saw the BC Liberal party actually gain a fraction more votes than the NDP, leading the NDP to strike an agreement with the province’s three elected Green MLAs to form government — an outcome far more reminiscent of an election using proportional representation, which creates more opportunities for minority governments, alliances and compromise.

In the 1996 election, the NDP under Glen Clark actually won a majority while receiving less votes than the BC Liberals. A few years later, in 2001, the NDP was dramatically reduced to just two seats in B.C.’s parliament.

That 2001 election represented the only B.C. election in the last 50 years where a party received 50 per cent or more of the vote, Laurel Collins, political sociology instructor at the University of Victoria, told The Narwhal.

“[This] means for every other election more than half the people who voted did not want the party in power to govern,” Collins, co-host of ShawTV’s program BC Referendum 2018: Are You Voting for Change, said.

“The B.C. NDP and the B.C. Greens have been demonstrating that effective governance is not only feasible in a minority government, but that better policy emerges when parties have to come to the table together.”

Seth Klein, the B.C. director of the Canadian Centre of Policy Alternatives, said critics like to say this collaborate nature of proportional representation creates unsteady politics.

“There’s this narrative among the naysayers of proportional representation that it’ll always result in minority governments and they’re inherently unstable and they can’t get anything done,” Klein said.

“Well, I actually think most British Columbians are looking at this minority experience and thinking it’s pretty good.”

Proportional systems are used in more than 90 countries, Collins said, pointing out more than 80 per cent of OECD countries, including Germany, New Zealand, Sweden and Denmark, use some form of proportional representation.

Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. are the main holdouts, she said.

Under B.C.’s current first-past-the-post system, voters in 87 voting districts across the province elect a single representative from one party to represent them in the legislature.

“A proportional system would mean that the percentage of seats a party has in the legislature would reflect the percentage of the vote that that party got in the election,” Collins said.

“Right now our current electoral system tends to give parties who win with less than 50 per cent of the overall vote 100 per cent of the power. In a proportional system if you win 40 per cent of the votes you get 40 per cent of the seats.”

But there’s more than one way to do proportional representation — it’s essentially a family that contains an assortment of systems with unsexy, multi-letter acronyms like Single Transferable Vote (STV), Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) and List PR.

In B.C.’s upcoming referendum, you get to pick your flavour of proportional representation, which means it’s like a choose your own adventure brought to life.

You choose: Three customized proportional systems for B.C.

Recently, B.C.’s attorney general David Eby released his report on how the proportional representation referendum ought to be handled. It was the first glimpse at how government is likely to put the electoral reform question to the public.

Eby recommended voters be asked two questions.

The first question will ask the base question of whether voters want to stick with first-past-the-post or move to a proportional representation system.

A second question will ask those in favour of proportional representation to pick one of three potential systems.

There will be mixed member proportional (used in Germany, New Zealand and Scotland), rural-urban proportional (which combines single transferable vote in the cities and towns with mixed member proportional in the rural areas to maintain local representation) and dual member proportional (a curious system that hasn’t been implemented anywhere and many experts haven’t even heard of).

While there are differences between the three, with the rural-urban proportional working harder to ensure that northern B.C. ridings don’t get too large, they all feature the same basic principle: making every vote count equally.

“All three of these systems are going to lead to broadly similar results,” UBC political science professor Stewart Prest said. “The distinction between that and first-past-the-post is much greater.”

The pros and cons of first-past-the-post

The main message that you’ll find electoral reform experts emphasizing again and again (and again) is that each electoral system comes with trade offs.

Many are aware of the downsides of “majoritarian” systems like first-past-the-post or instant runoff voting: it creates “false majorities,” prevents smaller parties from gaining traction and can breed resentment and alienation amongst the populace if they feel their voice isn’t being heard and their votes don’t actually count.

But Daniel Westlake, political science professor at the University of Victoria, told The Narwhal that such systems do come with upsides as well.

For one, they can provide what he called “very clean lines of accountability” in which voters know which party to blame or reward for policy decisions. In the current B.C. situation, the NDP can always blame the Greens for failures, while the Greens can similarly blame the NDP.

Another potential incidental benefit of a system like first-past-the-post is that it increases the influence of any group that’s geographically concentrated in one area. Westlake said that ethnic minorities and immigrants tend to be concentrated in particular ridings. (This of course depends on how the ridings are actually drawn up, which raises the risk of gerrymandering.)

“There’s strong incentive in that kind of system for parties to pay careful attention to what immigrants and ethnic minorities want,” Westlake said. “In a proportional system, you don’t have particular ridings that you need to win in order to win government.”

Of course, there are a wide range of political attitudes among minority communities that one can’t easily homogenize.

But by benefitting geographically concentrated groups, a system like first-past-the-post decreases the influence of groups that aren’t concentrated. Think of supporters of strong environmental policies or gender equality or residents in what Prest called “yellow dog ridings” — places so politically monolithic a party could literally run a yellow dog and win.

“There are certain parts of the province where elections are effectively fought and large portions of the province where there are a diversity of opinions and we just don’t see the political debate take place,” he said. “The bus or the plane never stops there. Politics becomes a spectator sport for a portion of the population.”

“Fundamentally, from a civic participation point of view in having everyone feel like they’re part of their democracy, I don’t think that’s ideal,” he added.

Collins said a change in the way B.C. conducts elections has the potential to reinvigorate the voting public’s interest in politics.

“In proportional systems, no matter what your vote counts towards electing someone from a party that represents your values and priorities,” she said.

“In our current system, close to half of all voters cast their votes and those votes elect no one. Especially for people who might want to vote for smaller parties, whose support is not geographically concentrated, proportional representation gives them a reason to take part in electoral politics.”

Proportional representation reflects northern tendency to collaborate

Shannon McPhail, executive director of the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition, said she’s a supporter of proportional representation primarily because it forces parties to work together.

“That is something in the north that we have to do all the time,” McPhail told The Narwhal. “The reason we have to collaborate all the time is because in small communities, you don’t get to ignore the people you have issues with. They’re your doctor or your nurse or your child’s teacher or your mechanic. We have to work things out.”

Compare that to a majority government in a first-past-the-post system, in which parties can launch a policy blitz for four years without any concern for what other parties think.

Klein of the CCPA suggested this often results in policy lurches from government to government: think of Ontario premier-delegate Doug Ford’s announcement to cancel the carbon pricing system that was only introduced in 2013.

Prest said a shift to proportional representation would also impact campaigns, with parties spending less time slamming each other and exaggerating minor difference.

With all that said, B.C. has already had two electoral reform referendums in recent years — and both failed.

The first one, in 2005, actually had majority support but fell just short of the 60 per cent threshold (this time, the threshold is a simple majority).

The second one, in 2009, fared far worse and only garnered 39 per cent of the vote — something which experts suggests was associated with a lack of non-partisan educational efforts.

But with the Ontario election fresh in everyone’s mind and a B.C. government actively forced to collaborate, advocates of proportional representation are feeling hopeful that this third time will be the charm.

Collins said governments elected under proportional systems on average out perform winner-take-all systems when it comes to environmental performance. They also decrease income inequality and result in higher voter turnout, higher satisfaction with democracy and more women elected.

“Switching to a more proportional system could have profound effects on how our government makes decisions, including about natural resource projects,” she said.

McPhail said she believes a re-engagement in the political system will actually benefit the work of conservation groups.

“We believe that when people are healthy and wealthy enough to make a living and pay their bills, the environment wins,” McPhail said. “Let’s develop the kind of economy that we can all be proud of — and that happens when governments and citizens collaborate.”

With files from Carol Linnitt.

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The Liberal party and incoming Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made some big promises on the campaign trail. On election night we outlined how those promises relate to climate, environment, science and transparency in Canada.

But Trudeau also promised to make sweeping electoral reforms that would make the 2015 election the last of its kind.

Under a grand “Restore Democracy in Canada” 32-point plan, Trudeau promised to end Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system and overhaul the electoral system within 18 months of being elected. 

The Liberal party platform promised to establish an all-party committee that will 'fairly study and consider' proportional representation, mandatory voting, online voting and preferential or ranked ballots.

What are Proportional Representation and Ranked Ballots?

Under the current first-past-the-post system, the country is divided into 338 ridings. Within those ridings, which hold a roughly equal number of people, voters select one Member of Parliament to represent them.

“It’s a ‘winner takes all’ system,” Wilfred Day, electoral expert from Fair Vote Canada, told DeSmog Canada.

This means that even if a fairly large proportion of the popular vote goes to any given party, they may not win representation in parliament. Take the Green Party, for instance, which earned 3.5 per cent of the popular vote this election, but only one seat in the House of Commons. If seats were divvied up proportionally based on popular vote, they'd have earned 11 seats — not to mention the fact that if every vote counted, far more people would be likely to vote and vote their conscience.

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“Look at Alberta, where unless you’re voting Conservative, you’re wasting your time; you may as well stay home," Day said.

In the Calgary Bow River riding, for example, Conservative candidate Martin Shields won with 77.4 per cent of the vote. In the Battle River-Crowfoot riding next door, Conservative candidate Kevin Sorenson won with 81 per cent.

In a very different situation, the Quebec riding of Montmagny-L'islet-Kamouraska-Rivière-Du-Loup saw a near four-way split between Conservative candidate Bernard Généroux with 29 per cent of the vote, Liberal candidate Marie-Josée Normand with 28.5 per cent of the vote and NDP candidate François Lapointe with 24.2 per cent. Bloc Québécois candidate Louis Gagnon trailed closely behind with 16.1 per cent of the vote.

Source: CBC

“Fifty-one per cent of votes cast yesterday did not help elect anybody. That’s what happens every election in Canada and that happened again yesterday,” Day said.

“It’s never a waste to cast your ballot but in this system your vote is disregarded."

Proportional representation, on the other hand, would represent constituents in Parliament in a way that proportionally mirrors how they voted.

Rather than ridings being represented by a single MP, who may have been elected with less than 50 per cent of the vote, geographical regions would be represented by a number of MPs that directly reflect how voters in that area cast their ballots.

Every vote, in essence, would count.

Fair Vote Canada gives a detailed outline of different varieties of proportional representation used around the world. 

Ranked ballots, also called preferential ballots or alternative voting, allow voters to rank candidates according to preference. The candidate that secures the majority (over 50 per cent) of the first-place votes wins. In the case that no candidate receives more than 50 per cent of the votes, the candidate with the lowest first-place votes is eliminated from the running, with their second-place votes being added to the totals of the candidates still in the running. This happens until a candidate gets more than 50 per cent of the vote. 

Ranked ballots are used in many jurisdictions around the world and have been used internally in both the NDP and Liberal parties to select party leaders. Ranked ballots have also been at the centre of some controversy in Toronto with city councillors going back and forth on the issue. 

The CBC reported in 2013 that Justin Trudeau supported ranked ballots, although the Liberal party platform did not indicate a strong preference for or against ranked ballots. In a statement to Fair Vote Canada, the Liberal party said on the general issue of electoral reform "a study must be undertaken without any preconceived notions of what the best solution would be."

Day said he doubts the Liberals will push for ranked ballots because the change could appear self serving. He said ranking systems tend to benefit centrist parties, or second-choice parties, rather than marginal parties. So preferential voting would be great for the Liberals, not so great for the Greens.

"A preferential ballot…is the same system as today — winner takes all," he said.

"I’m doubtful the Liberals will try to go for the preferential ballot because it’s too obviously a partisan fix rather than a democratic reform. A democratic reform, of course, is to make every vote count equally." 

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If Canada had proportional representation

This is what would have happened if Monday's election was carried out under a proportional representation system www.cbcnews.ca/canadavotes

Posted by CBC News on Tuesday, October 20, 2015

How Would Proportional Representation Have Changed Last Night’s Results?

Critics of our current system say that the first-past-the-post metric distorts election results.

Last night’s election won the Liberal party 184 seats in the House of Commons, a solid majority given only 170 seats are needed to form government — yet the Liberal party only earned 39.5 per cent of the national vote.

Similarly the Conservative party in the 2011 federal election won only 39.62 per cent of the vote but won a majority with 166 seats (less seats were required then when only 308 total seats existed compared to our current 338).

In this election, the Conservative party won 99 seats, the NDP 44, the Bloc Party 10 and the Green party one. If proportional representation were in effect, the results would have been drastically different.

In Atlantic Canada, for example, where the “crimson tide” first appeared, the Liberals won every single seat.

If votes were represented in proportion to how they were cast, the NDP would have won six seats and the Conservative party seven seats. If proportional representation were in effect, it is likely one Green MP would have been elected in New Brunswick.*

Nationally, under proportional representation (presuming voting stayed the same, which would be unlikely), the election would have resulted in 135 seats for the Liberal party, 109 for the Conservatives, 68 for the NDP, 15 for the Bloc and 11 for the Greens.

That would mean the Liberals would need either the Conservatives or the NDP to pass a bill, and Justin Trudeau would be the Prime Minister with a minority government.

How Could Proportional Representation Change Canadian Politics?

Proponents of proportional representation argue this kind of electoral reform could reinvigorate Canadian democracy.

Importantly, the system would give voters a sense that their votes actually meant something.

“The difference is that if every vote counts equally everyone is represented in Parliament equally,” Day said. “This gives the majority of voters a voice. The government actually represents the majority of voters.”

Day said under proportional representation this election would have resulted in a majority coalition, where representatives from all parties would be able to represent their constituents.

Parties and MPs would need to work on legislation that is palatable to a larger cross-section of society. Rather than appealing to one sector of society, say oil and gas under the Conservatives, bills would be required to serve the interests of local communities in addition to businesses.

Under proportional representation “you could potentially have a strong, stable majority coalition government that represented the majority of voters,” Day said.

“That’s what a lot of people were hoping would happen this time. But instead you get another majority government with 39.5 per cent of the votes.”

Day concluded: “The Conservatives have engaged in all sorts of voter suppression techniques. But the winner takes all voting system is the ultimate voter suppression scheme: it throws 51 per cent of the votes in the garbage.”

Want more details on proportional representation? Check out this Fair Vote Canada video featuring York University associate professor of political science Dennis Pilon:

* These figures have been updated.

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