Was the election reform promise stupid or sleazy?

The prime minister came before the House of Commons Wednesday to explain why he is dropping his campaign promise to implement reform of federal elections. Those of us who have column acreage have all had our say, often several times over, about the merits of the various alternatives. They are, in essence, three in number. There is the existing system. There are systems designed to ensure more proportional party representation in the assembly. And there are alternative vote systems, predicated on making sure that each elected member has majority support from his own riding at the end of a transferable-ballot process.

You can, demonstrably, devise various monstrosities that combine features of these systems. Pick up a plate, partner, and head to the buffet.

But what the national debate over electoral reform showed is that this is really a discussion of ideals — of contending, conflicting moral principles that everybody evaluates and ranks a little differently. This realization is still sinking in, now that the Liberal inner circle has dumped election reform and is starting to open up about the conceptual difficulties that made them back away.

Pure or strongly proportional representation for parties, the Liberals now admit, is popular with the most eager reformers. Party PR is definitely more popular with hot reformers than the transferable ballot, which might make the composition of the House of Commons less proportional in other imaginable respects. But the Liberals say that party- proportion carries a clear danger of allowing bizarre or bellicose fringe beliefs to take root in the House of Commons.

One might laugh, except that this is widely and openly accepted even among the PR advocates. The New Democrats support PR as a slogan ( on the federal level only) but their official answer to the fringe- party objection, conveyed by their éminence grise Ed Broadbent and the Institute named after him, has been: “Of course we can have proportional representation! We just have to impose representation thresholds at the low end of the scale so that it’s not really proportional, because that would obviously be bad.”

This might suggest to you that “proportionality” fans are less than serious about the supposed moral principle behind their arguments. It certainly makes it a little funny that they are now accusing Trudeau of half- heartedness in pursuit of reform.

The Liberals’ elliptical national voter survey revealed that passionate election reform advocates make up a minority of the country. That ought to have been no secret, and it may not even be a big problem. But the actual discussion of reform revealed that even the subset of reformers who favour PR is split into two camps— those who really believe in it, and those who believe in a self- interested, bogus variety of it. Who wouldn’t be tempted to walk away from such an argument?

Then again, what ki nd of knucklehead would willingly start such an argument? We are having a “stupid or sleazy?” argument about Trudeau’s election promise, an argument that must have started to seem horrifyingly inevitable to him some weeks ago.

The “sleazy” case is that the “no more first- past- the- post elections” pledge was a planned piece of showmanship designed to steal votes from New Democrats and others on the earnest, reforming left.

The “stupid” case is that Trudeau and his brain trust genuinely did not foresee how hard it would be to achieve consensus and how intellectually confused, divided, and tatterdemalion the reform camp is.

Trudeau’s Wednesday appearance in the Commons was an explicit plea for “stupid.” The multiparty election reform committee that the Liberals assembled to recommend change called for weak party- proportionality — the fake kind — contingent on public endorsement in a national referendum. The Liberals liked the sound of that last part even less than they liked the idea of a “basically good for the New Democrats and nobody else” reform plan.

Referendums have a way of whipping up anti- establishment sentiment. Our most recent federal one, the 1992 plebiscite on the Charlottetown constitutional accord, unquestionably had this effect. Political scientists have 164 different opinions on election systems, but they have exactly one unanimous piece of advice for old establishment parties in Westminsterian democracies about needless referendums. It is: DON’T. BAD. NO. STOP.

So Justin Trudeau t old t he House “It would be irresponsible for us to do something that harms Canada’s stability... I am not going to do something that is wrong for Canadians just to tick off a box on an electoral platform.” Believers in the “sleazy” theory of the PM’s conduct hooted at this, seeing it as insincere.

I’m kind of leaning towards “stupid” myself. The prime minister didn’t foresee that, although many Canadians are conditioned to growl at the words “first past the post,” his own preferred alternative vote schemes are anathema to the majority even of keen reformers. He could have gotten the Conservatives on board with almost any reform scheme at the outset, but only at the unacceptable, catastrophic price of a referendum.

One even supposes he could have outflanked the New Democrats and just rammed through very pure proportional representation, exposing all our recognized mainstream, big- tent parties to the dissolving acid of personality cults, religious and ethnic movements, single- issue slates, and loons.

He chose retreat. Retreat is necessarily embarrassing, and, Lord, he should be embarrassed. But you won’t find a half- decent general, in all the annals of war, who never retreated.

I AM NOT GOING TO DO SOMETHING THAT IS WRONG FOR CANADIANS JUST TO TICK OFF A BOX ON AN ELECTORAL PLATFORM.