Worthwhile Canadian initiative rejected!

So the Trudeau government just gave supporters their first big disappointment: no election reform in this parliament. The stated reason is twofold. First, the Liberals feared that proportional representation might lead to the rise of fringe alt-right parties. Second, the government worried that a referendum decided by a simple majority would set a worrisome precedent for future secessionists, while a referendum with a bigger threshold would be impossible to win.

Neither objection is convincing. First, the Liberals could have gone for an Australian-style preferential voting system, which disadvantages small parties. Second, they could have designed a P.R. system to prevent small parties. (Either via a minimum threshold or holding elections in multi-member districts with only four or five representatives.) Finally, they could have gone with the higher referendum threshold with a clear statement that Canadians were voting only on the reform and that the government would not resign in the advent of a defeat. 

So what is the real reason? Well, the real reason is that the Liberals managed to turn 40% of the popular vote into 54% of the seats. That seems to have killed the desire for reform. But they are making a big mistake.

The below figure graphs Canadian vote shares since the turn of the last century. The parties are ordered (roughly) from most conservative at the top to most liberal at the bottom. The Bloc Québécois is much more left than the New Democrats, but due to their unique nature I have put them in the middle.*

And what does the figure show? Well, since 1945 the Conservative Party has been in power for 27 years but conservative parties only won a majority twice: 1958 and 1984. 

Proportional representation or preference ballots might be bad for the Liberal Party. They are unlikely to be bad for liberalism. To all extents and purpose, the New Democrats and the Greens are just slightly more left-wing versions of the Liberals. (See here if you do not believe me.) 

In other words, abandoning electoral reform seems like a very shortsighted move on the part of the Liberals. Is there something I am missing?

* Yes, I am aware that there is at least one Canadian reader out there prepared to be pedantic. Therefore, to clarify: I know that the New Democrats were called the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation before 1958, Social Credit ran under the name “New Democracy” in 1940 and split into two parties for the ‘65 and ‘68 elections, Conservatives were Progressive between 1942 and 2003, and the Reform Party was CRAP in 2000.

Comments

[x]

Or the Liberals feared the rise of actual-left parties. Which would actually be a threat to them. Fascist fringe would draw from their opponents.

[Noel Maurer]

That's almost certainly part of the calculation, but it's just a subset of caring about the Liberals rather than liberalism, no? Unless they're worried about the rise of unpalatable left parties, sort of like Die Linke in Germany.

That's certainly plausible, but it didn't happen in New Zealand. The Liberals and NDP are pretty left-wing --- Bernie Sanders would be smack in the mainstream of either --- and I'm not sure that there's a whole lot of demand for parties further to the left.

In theory the rise of smaller fringe parties could have the result of shifting politics to the right, by making Conservative-Liberal grand coalitions more common.

That didn't happen in New Zealand either, however, and Canada could head it off with a system of multi-member constituencies. The result would be a system a bit like Spain. There two giant new parties have been able to disrupt the party system, but smaller fringe parties aren't really relevant.

[Richard Gadsden]

Individual Liberal MPs would have to vote for it. The single interest group most badly affected is low-ranking Liberal MPs, as the bottom 10% are absolutely guaranteed not to have a job.

This killed the prospects for PR under Labour in the UK.

[Dave K]

There is a path where the Liberals and the Conservatives would both have an incentive to pass PR. If it appeared possible a radical fringe party could control the government with a plurality, all other parties would have an incentive to require majority coalitions.

My understanding is that was the historical motivation for many mainstream European parties supporting PR.

[Matt McIrvin]

Having fringe alt-right parties is far preferable to letting the fringe alt-right take over a major party, which is what we got in the US. Either way you could get a coalition between fascists and mainstream conservatives (see Weimar Germany), but at least in the latter case everyone can see what is going on.