Illustration by Matt Daley

Why the Canadian government needs to hit refresh on its digital strategies

When former Public Safety Minister Vic Toews stood in the House of Commons and proclaimed that anyone who didn’t support the government’s new Lawful Access legislation was standing with the child pornographers, the Internet collectively decided he was being ridiculous. When MP Dean Del Mastro compared ripping a CD to buying socks and then stealing shoes (because, you know, feet), the Internet collectively decided he was being profoundly stupid.

The Internet wasn’t wrong.

And it’s not that Toews is a ridiculous guy or that Del Mastro is actually stupid, but there’s a disconnect between the digital policies they’re advocating and the way people actually use digital technology. Wanting privacy doesn’t mean you support molesting children and converting your music collection doesn’t make you a thief. Obviously.

This isn’t strictly an attack on the current Conservative government. Previous governments didn’t really have to deal with these issues. Consider how far we’ve come since Stephen Harper first came to power in 2006, before the iPhone was a thing or the words “big” and “data” had collided in a sentence. But newness doesn’t excuse the tenuous grasp elected officials like Toews and Del Mastro have on both the technical and cultural aspects of modern technology. Either they aren’t the right people to be working on these policies or, more frightening, it’s a problem that permeates the entire House of Commons—a group whose average age is 53, with only a handful of millennials (the only generation with the opportunity to have internalized so many digital issues) who all belong to the minority opposition.

Whether it’s age or politics, the sitting government has already repeatedly whiffed on digital policy. Most disappointing was when Industry Minister James Moore introduced Digital Canada 150 in April, a strategy document designed to put digital priorities front and centre, but was  panned for lacking any sort of real vision or concrete plans (Michael Geist called it a strategy document lacking much in way of actual strategy). It was a document that took a staggering four years to produce, which means much of the data used pre-dates the iPad and Netflix streaming and a lot of other things we take for granted today.

The shortcomings of Digital Canada 150 became apparent with subsequent legislation. Bill C-13, officially the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, was supposed to be a huge step toward combatting cyberbullying. Unfortunately, it also includes a pile of provisions that have nothing to do with cyberbullying, and has been strongly criticized for allowing investigative overreach without judicial oversight, while stripping away the privacy protections many Canadians assume they have. It’s a wide-reaching bill that was heavily scrutinized by a small group of people who enjoy heavily scrutinizing these things, but was largely sold to the general public as something that would save our kids from the scourge of bullies on the Internet. In short, C-13 has never received the public discussion it deserves and, while not straight out of 1984, does have an Orwellian feel to it.

More curious than sinister was Bill C-23, the much discussed Fair Elections Act. In a world where we can pay bills, buy groceries, and file taxes online, C-23 offers substantial electoral reform without ever broaching the subject of online voting. In fact, the infrastructure needed to make online voting a reality isn’t really on anyone’s roadmap, which is crazy if you really think about it. (This isn’t just a Canadian problem and, oddly, it’s Estonia that leads the way with a comprehensive digital identification program that’s required at every level of government.)

Technology touches everything—justice, privacy, resources, copyright, access to information, entertainment, democracy itself—so robust and complex digital policies are necessary. It’s not just enough that our politicians understand this stuff, which they mostly don’t (if you don’t believe me, you haven’t listened to an MP try to clearly and accurately define “metadata” or “net neutrality”), they need to ensure we understand it, too. Balance on these issues is important: balance between companies and consumers, law enforcement and citizens, government and taxpayers. But keep in mind that half of all of those equations is people—we are the consumers and citizens and taxpayers. And, generally speaking, when an issue isn’t being widely discussed and properly understood, it’s the people that are getting screwed.

Woodworth, a Conservative backbencher, recently proposed a private members motion to reopen the conversation on Section 223(1) of the Criminal Code, which states a child does not become a human being until it has “completely proceeded” from the mother’s body. The motion was quickly denounced by the opposition as well as the Prime Minister.

Stephen Harper said in a recent question period that he does not want the abortion debate reopened and he would vote against any move to do so. Many of Harper’s supporters at the rally were frustrated with his recent remarks and disappointed that a Conservative PM supposedly has no intention of supporting a bill that would restrict abortions.

Any time the word abortion enters into conversation in the media, or really anywhere, very strong public opinions—both for and against—come along with it.

I am not pro-abortion, but I am pro-choice. The anti-abortion rhetoric, to me, is a violation against women’s rights. If this country were ever to allow restrictions to be implemented on a women’s choice over her own body, we would be taking one giant leap backwards.

However, debate today is greatly different than in 1988, when the Supreme Court ruled to not put any legal restrictions on abortions. At that time, the Supreme Court’s ruling of Regina v. Morgentaler, found the Criminal Code of Canada was unconstitutional, because it violated women’s rights under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. With advancements in medical screenings the debate is no longer just a yay or nay discussion; it has become much more complex.

Major advances in science and maternal healthcare means genetic counselling is now a growing medical field. Through screening and family history, doctors are more capable than ever when it comes to determining if a child may be born with Down syndrome or have a predisposition to a variety of illnesses. What happens when we reach the point when we can find out with certainty that a child will grow up to have Parkinson, ALS or Alzheimer’s? Is it humane to let the fetus survive only to live a life of unspeakable pain and suffering? Female feticide is a regular occurrence in  China and India where boys are the preferred sex—and is now occurring in North America. Should parents be allowed to choose the sex of their child?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions. Nobody does. But based on our advances in science and technology the abortion debate will only become more difficult as we move forward—new science-made options in family planning have generated a whole new avenue for heated argument.

The ongoing debate around not having the abortion debate within the House of Commons only confuses matters. The conversation needs to be reborn. We currently have no laws around abortions and it’s about time we enacted policy to officially protect women’s rights.

As Andrew Coyne wrote in his April 27th column for the National Post: “Possibly, after a full and open debate, we might decide we wished to continue to have no abortion law—by policy, rather than by default. That is how a democracy decides such questions. It does not leave them to a tie vote of the Senate.”

We live in a democratic society where issues are openly discussed and voted on by the individuals we have elected into power. Would it be wrong or dangerous to reopen the discussion? I strongly doubt it.  It would be wrong and dangerous not to reopen the debate in a democratic nation. By not allowing this to be discussed within the House of Commons, it would sent a precedent that could prevent other major issues from seeing the floor. We live in a progressive country, a country where church and state are separated, and I think there are enough sound minded individuals who can make the right decision.

Pierre-Luc Dusseault, 20 (Sherbrooke)

@PLDusseault — Canada’s youngest-ever MP, Dusseault, a self-professed “political junkie” who turned 20 on May 31, recently completed his first year in applied politics at l’Université de Sherbrooke. Dusseault campaigned actively and debated Liberal MP Denis Coderre and former-Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe over Twitter. Standing up in the House may be different, but Dusseault is confident. “Maybe some won’t take me seriously in the beginning,” he told Canadian Press, “but I’m ready to work hard and earn my spot.”

Mylène Freeman, 22 (Argenteuil/Papineau/Mirabel)

@MyleneFreeman — This soon-to-be McGill University grad started her political resume working on Thomas Mulclair’s 2008 campaign, and then running for councillor in Montreal’s 2009 municipal election. Fully bilingual, Freeman has worked to engage youth and women in politics. She is the former coordinator of McGill’s “Women in House” program, where young women shadow female MPs in Ottawa for two days.

Matthew Dubé, 22 (Chambly/Borduas)

@MattDube — Co-president of McGill’s NDP group alongside fellow MP-elect Charmaine Borg. The political science student has said he wants to increase federal funding for post-secondary education, especially given Quebec’s announced annual tuition increases of $325 through 2017. On the NDP’s electoral success, he told the McGill Daily: “A lot has been made of the different backgrounds [of the rookie MPs], that we’re somehow less competent. The whole point of democracy is to be representative. People don’t want to elect 308 lawyers.”

Laurin Liu, 20 (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles)

@LaurinLiu — Liu is a history and cultural studies undergrad at McGill. While she did not visit her Rivière-des-Mille-Îles riding during the campaign, she says strengthening connections to her constituents is now top priority. Liu has already criticized the media for ignoring how much energy youth bring to politics, and nailed them for hypocrisy. Why bemoan the dearth of youth in politics, she asked, and then ridicule them when they are elected to Parliament?

Alison Loat. Photo courtesy Samara Canada.

Canadians are giving up on their political system. Voting participation is at historic lows; the number of people who vote for the winning party is now routinely outpaced by the number who don’t vote at all. Most young people don’t vote—63 percent of people under age 24 didn’t cast a ballot in 2008—and that bodes ill for the future of Canadian democracy.

Alison Loat, director and co-founder of Samara Canada, is determined to get to the bottom of this increasing political disengagement.

Samara, based in Toronto, was founded in 2008 and has since been dedicated to the study of how Canadian citizens engage, or don’t, with their democracy. Their most attention-grabbing project so far was a series of “exit interviews” with former members of parliament, which uncovered a wide variation in what, exactly, MPs think their jobs are. The foundation has also hosted a series of talks on the future of journalism, and the role it plays in shaping civic life.

“The hope is to create a bit of a community,” Loat says, to “tell the stories of Canada in a compelling way so that citizens will engage with them.”

Loat is currently developing Samara’s next project, the Democracy Index, a report card on the health of Canadian politics and civil society. Expect a few “Needs Improvement” marks—dismal youth voter turnout, for instance—but Loat says the purpose of the index is also to highlight the things that are working well. The point, in the end, is to get citizens talking about the democratic system of which they are a part. “Any way that I can creatively influence and help the development of this country,” Loat says she’ll do it. “Because I think it’s a great place to live.”

— Victoria Salvas

One curious gap in this mosaic became clear as the final list emerged: not one of our alumni had chosen a politician or elected official—and that says something troubling about the state of Canadian civil society. Political cynicism, never in short supply at the best of times, appears to have reached a crisis point. When even highly engaged, enfranchised, politically aware and active people turn their backs on the formal legislative process—believing it to be futile, vulgar, idiotic, glacial, all common gripes—there is danger. We need bright and hard-working people tending the grassroots, marching the streets, and storming the gates (many appear in this special issue); but we need them inside the House of Commons, too— writing the laws, holding the government to account, and yes, even engaging in a little partisan sniping from time to time.

Megan Leslie, member of parliament for Halifax. Photo by Robin Hart Hiltz.

So I would like to start this list with a brief nod to a young MP who looks poised for an important career as a real, honest-to-goodness elected legislator.

Megan Leslie was first elected as the member of parliament for Halifax in 2008, aged 35, and has quickly emerged as a respected, diligent, and charismatic force for good in the House. As the NDP health critic, she’s used her prior years of experience as an anti-poverty activist to articulately critique Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, and connects the dots between disenfranchisement, poverty, and health in a way that the government has never adequately grasped. She is the chief architect of the NDP’s national pharmacare proposal, which would bring some badly needed coherence to a health care sector that will be increasingly important in the coming years.

Leslie’s peers have taken notice: she was named the top “Up and Comer” by a large margin in a Hill Times survey of all MPs. Even on that honour, however, she had an incisive comment for the Times, remarking: “we have always seen women in up-and-coming categories because women who are up-and-comers are not threatening, right? So I think we still need to have a gendered lens when we’re looking at these kinds of polls. It doesn’t mean we’ve broken through.”

No it doesn’t. But having an elected MP in office who not only has a nuanced view of gender privilege, but also rejects the trite girl-power bromides that politicians and media alike love giving lip service to, is exactly the kind of politician we need now. We need more like Megan Leslie. And we need to find a way to make capital-P Politics—the difficult and crucial exercise of democratic franchise—hospitable to smart, industrious, and compassionate people who otherwise turn away.

We believe this list of 45 people and organizations represents an exciting portrait of the Canada of tomorrow. We hope you’ll enjoy reading about these rebels, visionaries, troublemakers, and world-changers, and share your thoughts with us. Enjoy.

Over the years, governments have tinkered with the parliamentary rules set by the Charlottetown conference, pictured here.

The Harper government has placed a bill before Parliament that would alter the formula for how seats are redistributed following the census. It would give Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia more seats in the House of Commons; naturally, Quebec and the Atlantic Canadian provinces are upset with this change as it diminishes their relative influence in Parliament.

Originally, Ontario was upset with the plan because it wanted the Commons to be even closer to representation by population. So vocal was Premier Dalton McGuinty in his opposition that the Harper government was forced to increase its offer to 18 new seats for Ontario after the next census, instead of the four additional seats as planned. Alberta will now get five instead of one, and B.C. seven instead of two. The increase and redistribution of parliamentary seats will provide some necessary repairs—greater representation for large, currently underserved, immigrant populations in the suburbs around Toronto, for instance—but it opens the door to bigger problems in the future.

Federalism is adopted by countries where there are strong regional identities or linguistic differences, in order to protect these minorities from the tyranny of the majority. A bicameral legislature—literally, “two chambers,” the house and the senate—then allows for two different approaches to representation: the lower chamber represents the majority of the population, while the upper chamber provides minority and regional counterbalance.

The Fathers of Confederation adopted this model in 1867, and established a House of Commons that would be largely “rep-by-pop”—on the condition that the French Canadian partners would receive equal representation in the Senate, and the creation of their own province in which French Canadians would be the majority.

Canada’s first Parliament in 1867 had 181 seats in the Commons: 82 for Ontario, 65 for Quebec, 19 for Nova Scotia, and 15 for New Brunswick. The Senate had 75 seats, divided equally between Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes. But it soon became clear that the Senate had no capacity to represent regional, sectional and provincial interests as was intended. This is, in part, because senators are appointed by the prime minister and so are federally oriented; it’s also because over time unelected representatives have lost the credibility they need to participate in the legislative process.

The result is that the Senate has withered in its authority and importance, mostly rubber-stamping the laws that the House of Commons writes. This has forced the distribution of seats in the Commons—and thus the distribution of political power—to move away from representation by population in order to ensure regional and provincial demands can also be met. A 1974 constitutional provision passed by Parliament dictated that a province can never lose seats—which means the only way to balance things out is to add more.

So why tinker with the formula now? The obvious answer is there are votes to be won in these new seats, and these are voters the Conservatives have long been courting: suburban voters around Toronto and in the big western Canadian cities.

The other answer is that the Harper government has a democratic reform agenda. This agenda involves making the Senate elected on eight year terms and holding Commons elections every four years, with ridings distributed equally by population. Part of the Senate would be standing for election with the Commoners every four years. Sound familiar? This model is not from Westminster—it’s from Washington, D.C.

Most observers won’t know that, because each of these changes is contained in a separate piece of legislation. This is so the Supreme Court does not strike it down— which they surely would, given how radically it would alter the contract found in the constitution.

The problem with a piecemeal approach is that not everything will pass, and half-measures could mean trouble. It is quite possible that the only plank of the new system that will get adopted is the transition closer to representation by population for the House of Commons: more seats for B.C., Alberta and Ontario—at the expense of everyone else.

All of the eastern Canadian provinces would be diminished, but the prospects are most serious for Quebec. Without a reformed Senate, the protection Quebec was guaranteed at Confederation will be severely diminished. Undoubtedly there will be separatists in Quebec who will point out their weakened standing in the House of Commons, a trend that will continue to get worse based on current population projections. In such a scenario, separatists could argue the only political body that can be trusted to represent Quebec’s interest is the National Assembly—and it might be best to go it alone.

Proportional representation comes in, well, not quite 31 flavours, but it’s a lot. There’s more than one way to elect an MP!

Party List System

In list systems, parties put forward a list of candidates, and voters cast a ballot for one party and its slate of individuals. Seats are allocated to parties based on percentage of the popular vote. However many seats the party gets, it fills them with candidates starting at the top of the list and working down. in “closed list” systems, parties supply the lists; in “open list” systems, voters can influence the party lists.

YAY: Simple to understand.

BOO: Voters may not have an MP directly answerable to them; entrenches powerful senior party officials.

IN USE BY: Austria, Denmark, Israel, Norway, Sweden.

Mixed Member Proportional

In MMP, each voter gets two votes: one for their local representative and one for a party. Parliamentary seats are allocated based on the proportional party votes, but are filled by local reps. Parties that get more of the popular vote than individual candidates elected are “topped up” from their own internal list of candidates.

YAY: MMP promotes proportionality in party representation, but voters are also ensured a local MP.

BOO: Party lists can mean reps who aren’t directly elected by the public.

IN USE BY: Germany, New Zealand.

Single Transferable Vote

In STV, each voter ranks the running candidates in order of preference. an equation based on the number of votes and number of seats determines a “quota” number of votes that candidates must receive to be elected. if they meet the quota, the candidate is elected, and voters’ second-choice candidates receive the remainder of the votes. Votes trickle down until the seats are filled.

YAY: individual voters’ ballots aren’t “wasted” if their first-choice candidate loses; their second choice still influences the result.

BOO: Complex behind-the-scenes counting systems can confuse.

IN USE BY: Australia, Ireland

Illustration by Antony Hare

The recent U.K. election has raised the issue of electoral reform there, as the Liberal Democratic party made it a condition for propping up the Conservative government. This spoke to social activist Judy Rebick, who is a member of Fair Vote Canada, about her group’s campaign to bring some form of proportional representation to Canada.

This: What’s wrong with our current system?

Judy Rebick: Canada has one of the least democratic systems of election and governance in the democratic world. A party can win, and almost always does, a majority of seats with a minority of votes. Which means that a majority of our votes don’t count. Because it’s a winner-take-all system, if you vote for a person who comes in second, even if there are only 20 votes between them, your vote doesn’t matter. For example, we have a very radical right-wing government that only about 33 percent of the people voted for.

This: How would PR work?

Judy Rebick: There are several different forms of it, so it depends on which one you’re talking about.

This: Ontario had a referendum in 2007 that was defeated. It was on mixed member proportional reform (MMP). What’s that?

Judy Rebick: It can be confusing and there can be variations on how it works. To keep it simple let’s say you get two votes: one for your riding MP and one for the party you support. For argument’s sake let’s also say 50 percent would still be elected by first-past-the-post and 50 percent would be elected by PR.

This: How would the PR members be chosen?

Judy Rebick: You’d likely have to have fewer ridings, maybe double the size right now. And they’d be bigger. And the parties would choose who they appoint to the PR seats they have allotted to them.

This: So in the last federal election, for example, the Green party, which received 940,000 votes and didn’t get any seats, would have some members in Parliament.

Judy Rebick: That’s right.

This: And the Conservatives, who got a quarter million votes in Toronto but no seats would also get some there.

Judy Rebick: Likely. The Tories would have put their own list up and whether they had people in Toronto on the list would have been up to them.

This: Why was the referendum defeated?

Judy Rebick: The government in power is against change.

This: But the Liberals set up the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform.

Judy Rebick: And then they sabotaged it. There’s no other way to describe it. It was an excellent assembly. But when the assembly decided to go for MMP they completely cut off its resources. They refused any government financing for the campaign, either for or against. And many of the policy wonks, who supported other purer forms of PR, fought against it because their system wasn’t on the ballot. They said, I’m for PR but against MMP because it gives too much power to the parties, so we should go with STV (single transferable vote), which it was in B.C. But in B.C. they said STV takes away too much power from the party.

This: There are a lot of acronyms. How does STV work?

Judy Rebick: Basically, voters rank candidates in their order of preference by numbering the candidates on the ballot. The candidates with the highest preferences are elected. The idea is to eliminate any wasted votes. It’s used in Australia, for example.

This: But it was defeated in B.C.

Judy Rebick: Barely. It received 57 percent of the vote but the government said it had to get 60 percent. It was insane to ask for 60 percent. Who does that? That was stupid and undemocratic.

This: What do you support?

Judy Rebick: I like MMP. I think our culture and traditions are such that we need to have an MP that we have elected. But what I really think should happen is that we have a referendum on PR and then work out the details after.

This: How do you assess the media’s coverage of this issue?

Judy Rebick: The media is notoriously against having any discussion of democracy. It’s really quite extraordinary. That I don’t understand. It does very little explaining of the different systems and what’s involved in each.

This: Do you think there will be electoral reform in the U.K.?

Judy Rebick: I hope so, but I wouldn’t hold my breath because it’s so hard to make these changes.

This: Will what’s happening in the U.K. help the electoral reform movement in Canada?

Judy Rebick: It’s been discouraging. The proponents of PR in Canada, with the exception of in B.C., have not done a good job of explaining it to the public. I first started supporting PR in 1992 and was one of the first people on a public level to argue for it. Certainly there’s a lot more awareness and support of it now. But it’s just not turned into a grassroots movement. I hope it will soon but I’m just not sure.

One Thursday last spring, an Angolan MP named Faustina Fernandes Inglês de Almeida Alves addressed an assembly at United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Those present—members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the UN Division for the Advancement of Women, professors, commissioners, Parliamentarians, and observers from more than 40 countries— had gathered to discuss the role of Parliaments in the advancement of women’s rights. It had been 15 years since the Beijing Declaration, adopted during the Fourth World Conference on Women, promised to achieve greater equality for women. It was time to take stock of how the world was progressing.

While the five women representing Canada sat nearby, Alves spoke of her government’s push to increase the number of women in the National Assembly. “This action allowed, from 1992 [the year of Angola’s first general election], the number of Parliamentarian women to rise [from] 26 to 86, in 2008” she announced. By 2008, women accounted for 38 percent of Angola’s main legislative body. This means that Angola—a country where securing basic human rights for women remains a major concern—elects far more women than we do.

Canada ranks 50th on the IPU’s annual list of women’s representation in world Parliaments. Iraq—a place not renowned for its achievements in gender equity—ranks higher. This isn’t because the women’s rights movement in Iraq is particularly advanced; it’s because of the Iraqi electoral system. The first-past-the-post system—used in Canada, the U.S., the U.K., and virtually nowhere else— does not help women get into power. In fact, it impedes their chances. Doris Anderson, always ahead of her time, knew this 50 years ago. As editor-in-chief of Chatelaine from 1957 to 1977, she introduced a generation of Canadians to women’s rights issues many hadn’t known existed: abortion, pay equity, female sexuality. But one of her greatest passions was equality in government. Anderson believed that women lawmakers made women-friendly laws. You need only look to Denmark, Germany, Sweden or Spain, each one a top-20 country on the IPU’s list, to know that this still holds today.

Anderson was a fierce proponent of proportional representation, the electoral system used by nearly every Western country and emerging democracy. Under PR, if one party receives 60 percent of the public’s support and another receives 40 percent, those two parties get 60 and 40 percent of the legislative seats, a close approximation of voter sentiment. In addition to being a more accurate reflection of the electorate’s will, PR has also proven to open up legislative bodies to women and minorities. In other words, it produces governments that look more like the populations they serve.

Ten years ago, Larry Gordon, a political activist who had lately become concerned about the future of democracy, approached Doris Anderson and asked if she would join Fair Vote Canada, his new campaign for electoral reform. “At the time she was, like, 80 years old,” Gordon remembers. “She was amazing. She was writing in the mid-50s on things that were considered controversial in the U.S. women’s movement in the mid-60s, and getting death threats.” Anderson quickly agreed to become a founding director of Fair Vote Canada, the final endorsement Gordon had been seeking.

His citizens’ campaign has since become the strongest voice advocating for electoral reform in Canada. It operates 21 chapters in eight provinces, has thousands of members across the country, and its advisory board includes such luminaries as Maude Barlow, Ed Broadbent, and David Suzuki. In May, the group held its 10th annual conference at the University of Ottawa. The lecture hall was packed with people: old, young, veterans of 60s activism, and fans of Bill Maher’s page on Facebook. Most of them had paid $35 to be there, thrilled at the chance to spend nine hours pondering a favourite subject, one usually shunted to the spidery back corners of political debate.

The speakers program progressed from Judy Rebick (“Grassroots Mobilization”) to Walter Robinson (“Reaching Conservatives on Electoral Reform”), and on to Mercédez Roberge after lunch (“Electoral Reform Developments in Quebec”). One by one, they were greeted by applause and rapt attention—the left-wing journalist, the Conservative tax consultant, the Québecoise activist—though it was unclear what, at the end of the day, the crowd would be putting its energy into, aside from remaining optimistic. In the past ten years, Fair Vote Canada has seen the failure of three provincial referendums on voting reform, and there’s nothing on the horizon to indicate another shot. A decade in, the group is no closer to its goal.

Gordon insists that “things are happening,” but his unabated zeal for the project has an air of the religious—he believes so strongly in the mission that its actual feasibility is unimportant. Because it is right, its success is assured, the team cheer seems to go. Someday, we shall overcome.

Larry Gordon has no hair to speak of and wears thin wire-frame glasses that nearly disappear into his ruddy face. He is the kind of person you wish could always come to family dinner— a fantastic storyteller, with the permanent grin and the quick, unfaltering speech of a seasoned professor (or salesman). At 60 years old, he has worked in the nonprofit sector his entire adult life, beginning his career at the Grindstone Island peace and justice centre, a nowdefunct co-operative in the Rideau Lakes. (“It was fabulous,” he says. “A 12-acre island overrun by hippies.”) It was the 1970s, and Gordon had shed the vestiges of his conservative, pro-Reagan Cincinnati upbringing with great success. He worked at Grindstone every summer before moving to Toronto permanently.

Around 1999, he says, after peddling the idea of economic democracy (e.g., worker-controlled production) for 20 years, it occurred to him that he’d never read a single book on democracy and wasn’t really sure what it meant. He picked up On Democracy, by Yale political scientist Robert Dahl. “I had gone into reading that book thinking, well, we’ve got democracy in the Western world, we’ve done that.” But Dahl turned out to be more concerned about reforming democracy in the U.S., Britain, and Canada than exporting it elsewhere, and believed proportional representation was critical to democracy’s survival in the 21st century. “All of a sudden it was like a big light bulb going off,” Gordon says. Canada’s population was not properly represented in Parliament. Democracy in this country was manifestly sick. (Everyone I spoke with from Fair Vote used the same light bulb analogy. Scrutinizing our electoral system, it seems, is good for producing epiphanies.)

Between 1970 and 1993, Western countries using proportional representation saw the proportion of women MPs rise by 14 percent; in first-past-the-post countries, it increased by 7 percent. Germany uses first-past-the-post to populate half of the Bundestag and proportional representation to populate the other; the latter contributes twice as many women. New Zealand’s parliament used to be 21 percent female; in 1993 they switched to proportional representation, and by 2008 it was 33 female. PR was finally ushering women into legislative roles and improving the representation of other minorities, too.

It’s delightfully simple. So why are governments ignoring it?

The Canadian government would say they’re not. There have been three provincial referendums on voting reform since 2005. None of them passed.

Wendy Bergerud sat on the citizen’s assembly that preceded the first: a group of 160 randomly selected B.C. residents, most of whom had no deep political ties and very little knowledge of voting systems. They had been charged by Premier Gordon Campbell with investigating the current system and possible alternatives. For seven months, they heard experts and laymen speak on different voting systems; they learned what was used in different countries around the world, and the effects that various systems had on political bodies. Then, for one month, they deliberated on the recommendation they would make to the B.C. legislature. In October 2004, they submitted their final report. They had decided, almost unanimously, to propose a change from first-past-the-post to a form of proportional representation called single transferable vote. Bergerud, a recently retired Ministry of Forests employee, had no previous interest in voting systems; she is now a member of Fair Vote’s national council, the president of its Victoria chapter, and a member of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The experience turned her into an activist.

“I think a lot of people were really surprised that the assembly worked together and came up with such a high consensus on the recommendation,” she tells me over the phone from her home in Victoria. Her voice is gruff, though she laughs easily. She answers my questions without pausing to think. “I’ve come across people who expected us to fight like our political parties. But most of us in the assembly were committed to the common good, the public good. We were very serious about communicating on what would work for most people. It seemed, as we learned more about voting systems, that a PR system was going to give parties a number of seats in the House that closely matched their support and that that would change quite a bit how the parties behaved. Another thing we learned is that an awful lot of countries use PR. Here in North America we live in this little hole that doesn’t know much about the rest of the world. We don’t realize that most countries in Europe use one form or another of PR.

“No new country chooses first-past-thepost,” she continues. “Whenever anyone sits down and says, ‘We’re forming a country here, what should we use?’ They always choose some form of PR.”

After their recommendation, Bergerud and other assembly members grew concerned: the government was going to include a referendum on electoral reform with its provincial election in May, but it didn’t look like they were going to do anything to educate the public about the choices that would be placed before them. If voters didn’t understand their options, surely they’d vote to stick with the status quo. Impassioned by everything they had learned, assembly alumni began a massive educational campaign. Bergerud estimates that between them, they gave 800 presentations leading up to the referendum, and on May 17, 2005, the “Yes” side won almost 58 percent of the vote. But it wasn’t enough—the threshold had been set at 60 percent.

“Fundamentally, we won that one,” Bergerud says. “Something that’s annoyed me for a long time is that the press will say, ‘It was rejected here in B.C.,’ and I go, ‘well, 57.8 percent isn’t rejection.’ New Zealand changed into the new voting system with something like 53 percent and Ireland didn’t change with something like 57 percent [against]—so everyone else in the world used 50 percent.” She wonders why the Liberal government would have initiated the assembly process if it was not going to follow through. I ask her if she thinks it was all for show. “Oh, I think it’s highly likely,” she says.

Electoral reform is not a partisan issue: Doris Anderson and Troy Lanigan, the president of the right-wing Canadian Taxpayers Federation, sat next to each other on Fair Vote’s founding board, agreeing on nothing except the need for voting reform. The problem with changing the electoral system is that parties in power—regardless of ideology—never want to do it. Larry Gordon learned this early on in his campaign, and has re-learned it repeatedly over the past decade. “I very naively thought that all left-ofcentre people, all left-of-centre parties would obviously support this, until I discovered that NDP governments, provincially, relate to this just the same way that Conservative governments or Liberal governments do: ‘If first-past-the-post puts us in power, we’re not going to reform anything. If we’ve been really badly screwed by first-past-thepost, we’re all in favour of reform.’ The NDP is 100 percent on board for proportional representation—because everybody should be equal, it’s atrocious that the voting system distorts results, we need democratic equality in this country—except in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, British Columbia or Nova Scotia when they’re in power.” Doesn’t that make him angry? I ask. “Oh, very angry, yeah,” he says, smiling.

In two later referendums, one in B.C. and another in Ontario, the governments in power again dragged their heels and did little to educate voters on the choice they were facing. Consequently, the 2007 referendum in Ontario lost with 36.9 percent of the vote; last year’s in British Columbia lost with 38.2 percent.

June Macdonald, chair of Fair Vote Canada’s Women for Fair Voting committee, echoes Gordon’s anger. “The major parties—the Conservatives and the Liberals—stand to win big under our system. They can parlay a minority popular vote into a majority of seats. They don’t want to give that up.”

Fair Vote’s inaugural conference, on March 30, 2001, took place in Ottawa. There were around a hundred attendees and a single reporter, who, Gordon says, had a single question: “You people don’t think this will ever really happen, do you?”

Ten years and several close calls later, the group remains convinced that it will. Gordon thinks that the current era of minority government, with all of its dramas and public dysfunction, may present Fair Vote with its moment. Proportional representation forces parties to work together; when no one can win an outright majority, the major concern shifts from gaining an edge over the opposition to determining allies and how best to cooperate.

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives would have us believe that coalitions don’t work: the governments of Israel and Italy, which suffer the strains of shifty and ill-advised allegiances and powerful extremist factions, are held up in terrifying example. But you could just as easily blame the dysfunctional politics of Zimbabwe on their firstpast-the-post electoral system, and it would be equally specious. The political culture of a country is not soley a product of the voting system it uses.

In Canada, meanwhile, it’s become very obvious that our parties would rather one-up each other than work together for the public good. The current system compels combative behaviour, a problem that, war-ravaged and corrupt countries aside, proportional representation naturally amends by encouraging cooperation. The prime minister has presented coalitions as undemocratic, says Bergerud, but what many people don’t understand is that “it is quite legitimate and proper for parties to work together to form a government, and that it happens on a regular basis in Europe.”

In April, Environics released the results of a poll on public support for proportional representation, showing that 62 percent of Canadians are in favour of adopting the system for elections. “On the idea of fair voting, Canadians are there, always have been there, will be there,” says Gordon forcefully.

Fine—but getting the issue on the political agenda is another matter. I ask how he sees it happening. He lists several possibilities, but then slowly qualifies each one in turn: the NDP could demand it in exchange for supporting the Liberals in government (but that won’t happen with the current configuration of seats); Britain could reform, thus paving the way for Canada to do the same (but the movement there is very much up in the air); the Supreme Court of Canada could rule first-past-the-post unconstitutional—a Quebec court case to that effect is currently winding its way through the courts (but it’s a long shot).

Gordon pauses. His voice has grown progressively shakier. He knows how it sounds and what he’s up against. In the end, he speaks of serendipity. Large-scale social change, he says, is ultimately effected only when “unexpected events, completely outside of your control, come together at a particular moment in history and allow big change to happen.”

In other words, he’s waiting on a miracle. He acknowledges that it’s a hard thing to mobilize people around.

Whether or not electoral reform ever comes to this country, the fact is that democracy is a people’s concern. The government has proven its lack of interest. Canadians will have to demand it—and Gordon believes that they will, once they understand what they stand to gain. We are living with a system under which 900,000 people can vote for the Green Party and get no representation, but 800,000 Conservatives in Alberta alone can elect 27 Conservative MPs. That’s not a truly representative democracy, and Fair Vote wants to make sure we know that, at the very least.

“Fair Vote Canada is going to continue to do what it’s always done,” Gordon says, rallying: “outreach, trying to mobilize as many people as possible from all points on the political spectrum to appreciate how fundamentally important it is for the issues that you’re passionate about, and for your own quality of life, the community, the quality of environmental life, how fundamentally important it is to you to make sure that we have a democratically elected Parliament.”

He pauses, and then twists the knife. “Which you’ve probably never experienced.”

G8 Leaders meet in L'Aquila, Italy, July 8, 2009.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced on January 26 that he was going to use Canada’s Group of Eight presidency to push for an annual G8 summit agenda focused on women’s and children’s health. Former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis said it best when he called the announcement an act of “chutzpah.”

First of all, Canada lacks credibility on this issue internationally, having consistently failed to meet our own humanitarian aid targets for decades. Secondly, and even more galling, we lack credibility in our own backyard. Consider that aboriginal infant mortality is markedly higher than the general population—Inuit infants are three times less likely to make it to their first birthdays. Among 17 peer countries, one study found, Canada is tied for second-last place when it comes to infant mortality (only the U.S. level is higher). Consider this is the same government that cut funding to the Court Challenges Program, the legal fund that since 1978 had supported legal challenges by minorities, including women. And the same government that heavily cut funding to Status of Women Canada, closing many of its offices across the country. The same government whose pay-equity legislation disappointingly maintains the status quo by encouraging public employers to consider “market demand” when determining wages (the same demand that caused the inequity in the first place). And this is the government that replaced a popular national childcare program with clumsy $100-per-month cash payments to parents. The resulting system isn’t just functionally inept, it’s ideologically offensive: it needlessly tops up budgets for families who can already afford quality childcare, and squeezes the ones who can’t. Since $100 won’t realistically cover the actual cost of quality childcare, the options become choosing not to work—the Ozzie-and-Harriet fantasy that social conservatives prefer, which is only available, of course, to two-parent families with one earning a sufficient living—or covering the difference between the government’s payment and the actual cost.

In other words, the prime minister’s call for the G8 to boost human rights and development for women and children around the world fits both dictionary definitions of chutzpah: unbelievable impertinence and worthy audacity. No one doubts that urgent action is needed to prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths among women and children worldwide, and if the G8 and G20 listen to the PM when they meet in Muskoka and Toronto in June—and more importantly, take real action that will save real lives— then it will be a great accomplishment, domestic criticisms aside.

But given the G8’s stunningly poor record on exactly these issues, there’s no reason to expect that’s how it will go. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development recently announced that the collective aid pledges the G8 nations made at their 2005 Gleneagles summit remain unmet five years later—by the outrageous margin of more than $20 billion. If the prime minister really wants to make a splash at this year’s summit, he should leave his platitudinous speech at home and show up with a signed cheque instead.