| Law Society/ Equal Voice conference on different
models for Proportional Representation in Ontario
 My
background is in journalism, and my academic qualification—a
Ph.D in history, is really of little use for today’s critique
of voting models. I have spent some dozen years in the Ontario
Press Gallery and another ten in the National Gallery in Ottawa.
So I am going to approach today’s topic from the personal
point of view of a journalist who has seen a lot of politics. And
also from the practical point of view of my women-in-politics organization
Equal Voice, which is made up of elected members and political
activists, mostly women but some men too, from all major parties.
In Equal Voice we have argued, across party lines, about ways to
increase the numbers of women in elected office.Today, I am expressing
my opinion only, as I have not talked to Equal Voice’s executive.
If I could, I’d like to transport you all from this university
hall, to sit for a moment in one of the Galleries of the 103-seat
Ontario Legislature. You’d find yourself, even today, looking
down on a sea of men, with a sprinkling of women, none of those
women, mind you, in a leader’s seat.
I find that without that birds-eye view many Canadians have no
idea how huge is the gender gap in elected politics, or how pervasive
the discrimination.
It is the same story federally—women are 20.7 per cent of the House of
Commons—and it is the same one-fifth in all the Legislatures across the
country except Quebec, and the same on our municipal councils. It is, in fact,
a North American problem. In the United States only 15 per cent of Congressional
seats are held by women. The two largest, arguably among the richest and most
advanced countries in the world, and in this respect—equality for women
at the top where it matters most—we are somewhere back in the last century.
Some of you, like June, will have seen these photographs before,
but it is another way for me to drive home the point about who
runs this country. Prime minister
and premiers and territorial leaders. Mayors of largest cities. If what I am
saying, and the photos I am displaying, seems a bit like kindergarten to an audience
used to arguing about arithmetical intricacies of equalizing votes, forgive me.
I do recognize and congratulate Fair Vote Canada for its success in putting voting
reform on the national agenda, and for encouraging us to think about just how
we’d go about it. Still I have to say, that in the models before us today—I
think we are overlooking the OBVIOUS.
Electing more women IS an issue in this province, and as you go
about advising the government on electoral reform, I suggest
you not ignore it. We know from
the poll done last year by Environics Research for the Centre for Research and
Information on Canada that when Canadians were asked their highest priority for
electoral reform, NINETY per cent chose increasing the number of women in elected
office. The minister now responsible for democratic renewal—the Hon. Marie
Boutrogianni—is concerned about the low level of women in the Legislature,
and I’m pretty sure she will have fair representation for women as one
of her priorities.
So I’d like to suggest to you, when considering new voting models for Ontario,
that you start from the premise that just about the biggest issue before you
is creating a provincial parliament that better reflects the actual makeup—and
perspectives—of the WHOLE population. I think, by the way, that designing
a voting system that lowers barriers to women’s candidacies will help other
under-represented groups as well.
Looking around the world, I find very few voting systems that—by themselves—produce
more elected women. PR in almost any form is said by its proponents to improve
the chances of women being elected. But, in nearly every case, and certainly
in the top ten of countries with the most women in their national legislatures,
what really made the difference were special provisions—quotas, zippers,
party targets, twinning or financial incentives.
In general, developing countries, such as Rwanda, Afghanistan,
South Africa, some South American nations, are using quotas to
get women into government. In
older democracies, such as Sweden, parties zipper their lists—alternating
male and female candidates—and one brand new assembly Wales, has actually
reached 50-50 gender parity because the political parties either twinned ridings
to nominate one man and one woman for each twin, or used other affirmative action
measures.
So where can we find a method that works without quotas or any
other kinds of “preferential
treatment”?
I think the one thing that works is media scrutiny—public scrutiny—of
the slates being put up by the political parties. Under our first-past-the-post
system, candidates are chosen by local riding associations with little regard
for balance of representation until nominations close, when it is too late. And
inevitably nearly 80 per cent of those riding associations have decided a male
professional with two children is most “Winnable”
In contrast, any form of PR that involves party lists would give
the media, and public, a chance to judge party slates advance.
The balance of the list would
be one of a party’s electoral assets, and therefore would likely include
women and candidates from visible minorities to attract voters from those constituencies.
But the lists won’t be much better than our present riding-based nominations
unless they are large lists, easy to judge. I’m not being skeptical about
the media, or the public’s sophistication. It is simply too much to expect
people to match and judge 15 or 20 little regional lists, one list for each party
with candidates in each region—maybe 40 lists in all . They won’t
do it.
I’d like really long lists, to keep scrutiny simple, the longer the lists
the better. So called “closed” lists drawn up by party brass are
said to be best for women, because female candidates can’t be bumped down
the lists by male “stars”. But I’d like to think it would be
possible for party members to nominate who should be on the lists and elect them
at province-wide party conventions.
That would lead to pressure on the parties to adopt methods such
as those used by the NDP. New Democrat party leaders freeze nominations
until riding associations
can show a genuine search was made for a woman or representative of a minority
group to be in the nomination race. This is not a quota— the so called
affirmative action candidates have to win a nomination just like anyone else.
But the freeze forces party associations to reach out beyond the ususal male
suspects. The NDP nominates a lot of women. So it works.
Unfortunately, in the three models before me, I don’t see a reflection
of the need to elect more women. I had hopes of Lawrence LeDuc and Azin Ghatreh
Samani’s paper because it is a List-PR model for Ontario, and List-PR encourages
parties to put women candidates near the top and has proven favorable to the
election of a “ critical mass” of women representatives in Scandanavia
and elsewhere.
However, the pre-occupations of Leduc and Samani are highly proportional results
between parties, geographical communities of interest, and a Legislature little
bigger than the present 103 seats. I think there is a mention of diversity at
some point, but nothing about electing women. And frankly, I do not see anything
in the model, based as it is on districts ranging from three to eleven members,
that would make much difference for women.
The Mixed Member Proportional Model proposed by Sean Geobey and
Brian Tanguay,
at least proposes large districts—five for Ontario—for the election
of the PR seats. The preoccupations in this model are local representation through
the fptp seats, recognizing natural geographic regions, and proportionality between
parties and equality of votes. No mention is made of electing more women or diversity.
The larger districts for the PR seats should lead to that. I couldn’t tell.
Wilf Day’s model—also a Mixed Member Proportional Model—is
aimed he says at “proportionality, accountability and fair representation
of women and minorities.” So at least the fair representation issue is
considered. But I find that his plan for 85 local riding MPPs and 54 regional “top-up” MPPs
puts so much emphasis on “local accountability” for BOTH tiers of
elected members that fair representation for women gets lost.
I could say a lot about why I think all this concern for “local accountability” of
Members to their voters is nonsense—a small factor in election and re-election—but
that is a separate argument. Let’s concentrate on why I oppose shorter
lists.
Mr. Day will say most of his regions will have 11-member lists
and those are long enough to elect more women. That is based,
I think, on studies in Australia
that showed women did better on lists that had seven names or more. But the
Australian example is confused by the fact that the Australian
Labor Party set its own internal
quotes—40 per cent—for the number of women candidates—and
anyway Australia is hardly a world beater in electing women. Better than Canada
with
its 45th place ranking at electing women. But at 30th place Australia has a
way to to too.
I just don’t think you can expect the media, and voters, to judge the gender
balance on all the party lists in Mr. Day’s 13 different regions. That
means we’d lose the public scrutiny that may be the strongest quarantee
for electing more women in North America.
Of course, I know that gender fairness
is not the only issue when building electoral reform models—that reflecting
the popular party vote is very important, and ensuring workable government,
--and if I may add another value you haven’t mentioned, a sense of
Ontarians pulling together rather than apart. I think in all three models,
geographic
representation has trumped the other values, including electing more women.
So I would say,
with all due respect for three impressive efforts, we need to go back to
the drawing board.
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