Electoral Reform should not be undertaken lightly. The current system has some flaws and despite the well-meaning intentions of those who think they have a better system it is quite apparent that you can find flaws in those as well. The arguments that I have heard so far can not demonstrate how their replacements would be flawless or avoid the problems we all want to avoid.
Currently we have in our parliamentary system, two houses to discuss laws proposed. The logic of having two houses was that one was supposed to represent the rich elites of society (senators) and the other house was supposed to be based upon spokespeople for the rest of us commoners. This has a long historical basis all the way back to the Romans. Canada has both houses, one is elected and the other is a reward for loyal service to the Canadian community. The elected members have a system of votes where whoever has the most votes, wins (not the majority). If Individual A has 4 votes, Individual B has 3 votes, Individual C has 3 votes.... well the majority have not chosen Individual A.... yet he becomes the representative for everyone.
Many have proposed alternatives, but as I have already mentioned, I think that these alternatives will not work unless we change other aspects as well (at the same time). Here is one of the changes that we would have to do (there are more changes we should do and the transformation should be done in one immediate change, not gradual but the limitations of space in the blog limits me to speak about one of them today): We should have 3 houses to propose and discuss our laws, a tricameral system.
One house would work the same way as we are accustomed to, representation of population, the typical member of parliament. Every chunk of 100 thousand or so would have a representative. The representatives would be loyal to their constituents first and foremost (no more party loyalty). The vote would be done the same way as before, with one exception: the one who has the second most votes would become a sort of opposition critic and scrutinize the winner to make sure that the voices of the constituents are respected. Length of stay as an elected official would be about 3 years. (a House of Representatives)
One house would work similarly to how the US senate functions, representation of political territorial borders... (for Canada it would be based upon provinces).... We could modify it so that the founding member Quebec has a few extra members compared to standard provinces. We could also give a similar number of members for the first nations representation.... So lets theorize 5 per province, 7 extra for Francophones (which includes Quebec and Acadians) as one of the two founding peoples who is now a minority, 2 per territory and 10 for the original inhabitants (which means First Nations). These representatives would be voted for fixed terms of 5 years but not everyone is up for election at the same time. The ones running would have multiple rounds of votes until one gets the majority vote and this is achieved by eliminating from the competition the member who has the lowest votes. So assume Candidate A gets 4 votes, Candidate B gets 3 votes and Candidate C gets 2 votes.... well Candidate C is dropped from the race in the second round and a new vote takes place until Candidate A or B gets over 50%. Under this system where Province A has 5 seats, there would be a vote every year for different seats. Each winner serves for 5 years but each year can give them a new co-legislator. Again, these representatives are loyal to their region (the Bloc Quebecois would fit here well). You could call this a "House of Regions".
The 3rd house would be called a "House of Ideas". This is where the political party is primary. Your loyalty is based upon ideology of your political party. You would have proportional representation. If the political party gets 1% of the vote he gets 2 seats. The political party draws up a list of 200 names in order of importance, whoever is at the top of the list gets the seat. So, using the above example, the first 2 people on the list would have the seat in this house. It is obvious that the parties would vote as a block because their loyalty is not based upon the wellbeing of their community or the wellbeing of their region, but rather based upon ideology (the wellbeing of their nation). (the NDP or Green Party would fit here well). An election would be held every 7 years where everyone is up to be elected.
Now once the three houses were formed, the elected members of all three houses would vote for a Prime Minister, who could be from any of the three houses..... but the details of how this would work is the subject of another blog.... because I would also want to have the possibility of having a President as well as a Governor General (consider this to be a hybrid presidential-parliamentary system with a third member to prevent impasse between the President who answers to the people, and the Prime Minister who answers to Parliament).
Naturally these ideas are only seeds of thought, I would include the ideas that each of the three elected houses have different architectural styles to reflect the differences of each. For example, one could be more of a round-table process to psychologically insinuate the equality of each member, while another house could be built to have a platform at the end of a room where whoever proposes or debates a law has the psychological sense that this is an intellectual debate that must be respected because he is currently above everyone else while speaking/debating.... I would not want to eliminate the Westminster model of opposing factions either because, the strength of a democracy is not solely based upon consensus, but also upon fierce opposing competition. Each house would focus on a strength of democratic thinking. (our problems are that we tend to think one method of doing democracy is superior to the other: competitive ideas versus consensus-building..... both have their place, so we should include and diversify methods.
As you have noticed, I also desire to diversify methods of electoral competition. Where one political actor will excel in a proportional contest, he may not succeed in a majority contest or even in a charismatic contest.... our democracy needs to allow strengths from varying forms of intellectual processes to succeed.... not just the same old thing.... stagnation results and cynicism or apathy from a population enters the equation.
Now, I have not focused upon division of powers (law-making vs law-executing vs law-interpretation), nor have I not focused upon division of governance (FEDERALISM: where you have an over-arching governing entity and several provinces or states who have their own powers and do not answer to the federal entity VS CENTRALISM: where you have only one central governing entity and everything is answerable to the central authority). I may look into this in later blogs.... I will just note that for this to function properly, we need a much more sophisticated populace to scrutinize issues better than what they have been doing. For that, we need to have better education and more free time to be citizens.... not consumers like the extreme capitalist desires, not workers like the extreme socialist desires, but citizens: who work, consume and think in appropriate proportions.
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