Tory stance on Caledonia crisis is `hypocritical'

Toronto Star

Aug. 31, 2006

PAUL MCKEEVER

Premier Dalton McGuinty’s decision to refrain from direct involvement in the Caledonia standoff offers a glaring opportunity to challenge his leadership. The Ontario Provincial Police have refused to remove occupiers from the disputed land, and many voters in Caledonia want McGuinty to demand that the police enforce the law.

McGuinty rightly fears that his direct involvement could result in Liberals being blamed for an Ipperwash-like tragedy, and he has responded by asserting that he has no constitutional authority to require the police to take action.

However, legal experts researching that issue for the Ipperwash Inquiry have explained that there exist good legal arguments that a premier can direct police to enforce the law.

With those arguments, one could justifiably assert that McGuinty’s excuse for inaction is flimsy and that his leadership is lacking.

Given this rare opportunity to so clearly distinguish one’s leadership qualities from those of the premier, one might expect John Tory to demand that McGuinty direct police to remove occupants at Caledonia.

Indeed, Tory has submitted that negotiations must stop until the rule of law is restored at Caledonia, and he has condemned McGuinty for not getting involved directly. Yet Tory has also stated: “(I)t’s not the decision of the government as to when the police move in to enforce a court order … it is not my job, or Mr. McGuinty’s for that matter, to order the police to do anything.”

Moreover, Tory’s supposedly “hard line” that negotiations should cease until the rule of law is restored is, in truth, hypocritical bafflegab: He proposes that McGuinty restore the rule of law by sitting down with First Nations leaders and working out a way in which to restore the rule of law. Now, I’m just a lawyer, but I would call that a form of negotiation. So why won’t Tory “order the police to do anything?”

For decades prior to 1993, the PCs billed themselves as a management party. However, feeling threatened when the emergence of the Reform party contributed to the electoral wipeout of the federal PC party, the Ontario Conservatives defensively dropped its traditional role as manager. Under Mike Harris, it adopted a Reform-like, activist agenda of tax cuts, spending cuts and balanced budgets. It became a party of change.

That transformation helped the party to win a majority in Ontario’s 1995 election. However, proponents of the big- government status quo — both within and outside of the PC party — have had some success in establishing an emotional connection between Harris’s agenda for change, and the 1995 killing of Dudley George at Ipperwash Provincial Park.

When Harris resigned in 2002, the old guard of the Progressive Conservative membership decided that, with Reform now out of the picture, the party should stop being a party of change and return to being what it had been prior to 1993: a party that manages the status quo.

To convince the public that the party has gone back to being a management party, the PCs have elected party leaders who have implicitly or explicitly distanced the party from both Harris and his Common Sense Revolution.

Essentially, the party figures that if it can’t beat the Harris bashers, it should apologize and seek forgiveness from the public by joining Harris bashers in their condemnation of the former premier and his revolution.

Tory cannot say that the premier should direct police to enforce the law. Doing so would suggest that, if Harris did direct the police at Ipperwash, he was right to do so.

Tory’s only option is to concur with McGuinty that a premier cannot direct the police to take action. Doing so serves as an excuse for Tory’s failure to advocate police intervention. However, more importantly, as an implicit condemnation of Harris’s alleged intervention at Ipperwash, Tory’s concurrence with McGuinty serves the party’s sacrificial strategy to obtain forgiveness.

Does it matter that the PCs’ strategy hampers Tory’s efforts to look like a better leader? To the PCs yes, but to the voter who wants change, no.

Management parties do not propose significant changes to large government programs; they propose only to “repair” and to “manage” them better. Accordingly, the only way for the PCs now to distinguish themselves from the Liberals is by demonstrating that Tory’s “leadership” is somehow better than McGuinty’s. That effort will fail so long as the party’s strategy requires Tory to tow McGuinty’s line in response to crises like that at Caledonia.

To informed voters who want change, Tory’s alleged leadership is largely irrelevant. It will neither fill their bellies nor restore order. Such voters will prefer a party that offers changed government policy to a party that offers doubtfully better management of the status quo.

Testimony to Ontario's Select Committee on Electoral Reform

The committee met at 1032 in room 151.

FREEDOM PARTY OF ONTARIO

The Chair (Ms. Caroline Di Cocco): I’d like to call the meeting to order, if everyone would like to take their seats. Welcome back to the select committee on electoral reform.
I welcome Paul McKeever, the leader of the Freedom Party of Ontario. Mr. McKeever, you have the floor.

Mr. Paul McKeever: I’ll just begin by thanking you for honouring my request to have all registered political parties invited to give their two bits on this adventure you’re on.
The rhetoric surrounding the issue of electoral reform is often couched in terms like “democratic deficits” or “making things more democratic.” I would urge the committee to consider that electoral reform has little to do with democracy per se, and much more to do with how government makes decisions.

Let me begin by addressing the first part of that assertion. Elections and voting are not, per se, democracy. “Democracy” is a term derived from the Greek word “d?mos,” meaning “people,” and “kratos,” meaning “power,” not “rule.” History is filled with examples of democracies that differed wildly in terms of who was permitted to vote or how they voted, but all of those systems have something in common. Properly understood, democracy, or “people power,” is the belief that government gets its authority from the governed. The meaning of the term “democracy” is probably best understood by juxtaposing it with the term that describes democracy’s most common competitors on this globe: “theocracy,” meaning “god power,” and “autocracy,” meaning “self-power.” In a theocracy, the prevailing belief is that government gets its power from God, whereas in an autocracy, the prevailing belief is that government is the source of its own power.

Democracy tends to be most compatible with, and defensive of, individual freedom. The reason is simple: An individual in a democracy cannot give his ruler or government more authority than the individual himself has to give. Thus while, and only while, the people in a democratic society respect individual freedom, the ruler or government in that democratic society will lack the authority to violate life, liberty or property rights of the governed. In a democracy, so long as it is wrong for an individual to murder an individual, or to offensively restrain another’s liberty, or to take another person’s property against their will, it is also wrong for the government to do so.

Because one frequently finds lawmakers to be chosen by way of elections in alleged democracies, and because candidates win elections only by winning more votes than their competitors, elections and voting widely have been confused as being synonymous with democracy. However, in truth, elections themselves are not democracy; rather, they are a very effective tool for the defence of democracy. Specifically, by removing law-making authority from the lawmakers at regular intervals, and by requiring would-be lawmakers to obtain law-making authority from the people, elections continually and effectively remind everyone that the authority to make laws comes from the people. Put another way, elections remind the people that government answers neither to God nor to itself, but to the people it governs. Elections remind us that we believe in democracy.

To illustrate my point about the difference between democracy and elections, consider that a country need not be democratic in order to have elections. Democracy exists, first and foremost, in the minds of the people and not at polling stations. Before elections can defend democracy, the people have to hold the belief that they, not God, for example, are the source of their government’s power. If one were to use tanks and guns to bring elections to a country whose people believe that God is the source of a government’s authority, the result would not be democracy. Put another way, you can export elections to Iraq but you cannot export democracy to Iraq, at least not at the present time.

The relevance of this to electoral reform should be noted. Different electoral systems may differ in how effectively they “kick the bums out,” but it would be utterly false to suggest that one electoral system is itself more or less democratic than any other electoral system. Just as elections are not democracy, electoral systems do not differ in how democratic they are. As this committee drafts its final report, I would urge it to keep one thing in mind: Do not let your endorsement of one electoral system over another be based on the false notion that the electoral reform will lead to “greater democracy” or the elimination of a “democratic deficit.” Though it may lead to a better or worse defence of democracy, it will not lead to more or less democracy.
Having made that point, let me move on to my second one, that electoral reform has more to do with how a government arrives at its decisions. Specifically, I am referring to majority versus minority governments and to single-party government versus government by a coalition of parties. On this issue, the implications of electoral reform are truly immense.

As you know, the term proportional representation, or PR, is a reference to a situation in which the percentage of seats in the Legislature have been distributed among political parties roughly in proportion to the popular vote received by each party’s candidates. PR is a reference to an electoral outcome, not to any given electoral system. It is generally acknowledged that whereas the single transferable vote, the multi-member plurality, and list PR all lead to PR outcomes, our current single-member plurality system does not lead to PR outcomes.

Among the most common arguments made by proponents of PR — any of those versions: STV, AV, list PR — is that PR reduces the influence of political parties by making minority or coalition governments the norm, and majority governments the exception. Instead of a party doing what it believes is right for the province, the party is required to negotiate with other parties, so as to build sufficient numerical support for a given legislative change. This, the advocates of PR tell us, will make government more democratic and will cure a supposed democratic deficit. Their theory is that with PR, the decisions made by government are more reflective of the wants of the governed. However, the point has been put more forcefully and honestly by others who have said that PR is more likely to facilitate majority rule or majoritarianism, and they actively campaign on that basis sometimes.

This panel may well remember Canadian comedian Rick Mercer’s humorous Internet poll, in which he asked Canadian viewers to vote on whether to change Stockwell Day’s first name to Doris. Mr. Mercer’s point, made in the form of comedy, should not be overlooked. Specifically, he was making the point that a true majority rule is a system in which anything goes, and in which freedom can be trampled beneath the feet of the whims of the majority. I think, in fact, the vote was in favour of changing his name to Doris, by the way. The reason is simple enough. For the whims of the majority always to be obeyed by government, it is necessary that government’s authority be completely and utterly unbridled. It is for this reason that many advocates of PR are among the harshest critics, by the way, of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which they find to be a horrible obstacle to their wishes. In a true system of majority rule, there could be no right that would protect the individual from the whims of the majority. If you could force a man to change his name to Doris, you could, by the same logical and horrifying extension, force a woman to have an abortion or not to have an abortion.

In completing its report, I would recommend that the committee not fall into the trap of equating majority rule with democracy. Indeed, majority rule can be very anti-democratic. To revisit the light-hearted example, in our society no individual has the right to force Stockwell Day to change his name to Doris. Hence, if our society is truly democratic, we cannot give government the power to change Stockwell Day’s name to Doris. We don’t have that power to give to the government. If we move to an electoral system which, by design, subjects individual freedom to the pressure of unbridled majority rule — and make no mistake, that’s what a lot of people want you to recommend — we have done something that is not only anti-freedom, but potentially anti-democratic as well.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I’d like to address one other point relating to electoral reform and how government makes decisions under each system. I’d urge this committee to view the results of elections that use electoral systems other than the system we currently have, the single-member plurality system. Australia, for example, uses alternative vote, and the results there have consistently been, with the odd exception, that coalition governments are formed, not majority governments. The same can be found with the single transferable vote in Ireland. Of course, in those countries that use list PR, again, majority governments are the exception, not the rule. If Ontario moves from the current system to almost any other system, majority governments will become much more rare.

Therefore, in endorsing one electoral system over another, I would encourage the committee to give deep consideration to the implications of majority versus minority government. That, ultimately, is the most powerful effect that any electoral reform will have. In a majority government, the party in power has the opportunity to govern by doing what it believes is right, even when it’s unpopular for it to do so. In a minority or coalition government, the process is almost entirely different. The issue is not one of right and wrong, but of compromise and negotiation. On its face, that sounds very friendly and up-with-people. But in reality, the difference between majority government and minority or coalition government is dramatic. Specifically, when we replace majority governments with minority or coalition governments, we move from a system that accommodates ethical decision-making to a system based on the rejection of ethics and the substitution of whims and numbers — ballot-counting, or hand-counting, if you’re talking about the Legislature. We move from a government guided by reason to one guided by emotion; to one guided not by what’s right, but simply by what you want.

I’d urge the committee to consider the words of author-philosopher Ayn Rand, who wrote, in 1965,

“If some demagogue were to offer us, as a guiding creed, the following tenets: that statistics should be substituted for truth, vote-counting for principles, numbers for rights, and public polls for morality — that pragmatic, range-of-the-moment political expediency should be the criterion of a country’s interests, and that the number of its adherents should be the criterion of an idea’s truth or falsehood — that any desire of any nature whatsoever should be accepted as a valid claim, provided it is held by a sufficient number of people — that a majority may do anything it pleases to a minority — in short, gang rule and mob rule — if a demagogue were to offer it, he would not get very far. Yet all of it is contained in — and camouflaged by — the notion of `government by consensus.'”

Ms. Rand’s point applies with equal force to electoral reform. Only majority government is capable of facilitating government decision-making on the basis of ethical considerations, as opposed to numerical ones; a minority or coalition government simply cannot do so. All negotiations on matters of right and wrong are, by their very nature, clashes of implicit or explicit ethical codes. Therefore, to the extent that opposing negotiators have both compromised their stance on an important matter of government policy, they have both acted contrary to their own ethical codes. Therefore, to the extent that opposing negotiators have both compromised their stance on an important matter of government policy, they have both acted contrary to their own ethical codes.

In closing, I would urge the committee, in making its report, to be cognizant of the fact that it is not truly dealing with the issue of democracy. It is dealing with the issue of right versus might, with the issue of ethical rule versus majority rule, with the issue of individual freedom versus tyranny of majorities. If we are to protect democracy, we can do nothing more important than ensure that ethical limits be placed on government authority. Those limits, I submit, are facilitated only by an electoral system that makes majority governments the rule rather than the exception. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. McKeever. You certainly provided to us 15 minutes of interesting discussion. Thank you very much for your input. Unfortunately, we don’t have time for questions and answers at this point in time, because the time has expired, but I thank you very much for your very valuable input, which we’ll certainly consider in our deliberations.

Mr. McKeever: Thank you very much.

"Flat" Taxes

On September 12, 2005, the National Post ran an editorial that endorsed the idea of replacing progressive rates of income tax with a single rate: the so-called “flat” tax. In support of the flat tax, the paper essentially argued that a single-rate income tax works well for lower-income individuals because they can be provided with a large personal exemption: the Post impliedly endorsed Alberta’s $15,000.00 personal exemption as an example.

I will not suggest that income taxes are good things: they are not. The point here, however, is that a large personal exemption only adds insult to an already injurious tax.

In a country that taxes the populace, representation without taxation is as bad as taxation without representation. A personal exemption from taxation turns a proponent of low taxes and limited government into an opponent of both. The higher the exemption, the greater the popular opposition to limited taxation and government.

The quickest way for all citizens to be crushed by a government is to relieve some citizens of the burden of carrying its weight.

Murder, and its Perpetuation

On August 29, 2005, the National Post ran a column written by Ontario Progressive Conservative party leader John Tory. In it, Mr. Tory continued not only to advocate measures that will not give us safer streets, but to side-step the cause of the violence.

Mr. Tory said he wants to “send a strong message to criminals that gun crimes mean serious jail time” and that “that’s why” he is urging tougher sentencing for “gun” crimes. Two things. First, consider that 50% of murders in gun-controlled Britain (which does not share a border with the USA) are committed with kitchen knives. Murder, not weapons, is the issue. Second, the murderers walking our streets are not deterred by longer sentences: they do not expect to live into their 30s. In fact, the “I’m livin’ hard and dying young” attitude is a huge part of their tough-guy image.

Mr. Tory suggested that if we “beef up” our border security, we can “make a difference”. Yet, according to a 2001 publication by MP Garry Breitkreuz, there are an estimated 7,000,000 to 11,000,000 firearms in Canada already. If it were even remotely possible that tougher border security would stop murderers from importing guns, the only difference we could rationally expect would be slower border crossings that will harm Ontario’s economy.

Mr. Tory called for better organized youth “programs” to “prevent crime”. This is a vague reference to the notion that recreation centres and basket ball courts for the poor prevent murder by keeping would-be murderers from getting bored. Boredom and poverty are not the causes of murder. Almost all human beings will be bored many times in their life: almost none of them will murder someone. To imply that poverty makes one a murderer is to slander and marginalize the poor, almost all of whom will never murder anyone.

The single problem that lies at the root of all of these murders is that the murderers among us view themselves as being beyond good and evil. As they see it, civil society is weak because it distinguishes between good and evil. Civil society is, for them, a sucker; a host to be occupied, intimidated and looted by armed, anti-moral macho men.

It might play well in the pages of the National Post, but those who cast these animals as the victims of a society that did not build them enough entertainment centres; those who share the murder’s twisted philosophy that guns, not people, commit murders; are excusing – even justifying – murder. The murderers of tomorrow hear those justifications loud and clear as they load their pistols and clear their minds of any vague ethical doubts about the acts they are about to commit.

To stop the murders, we must strictly enforce even minor laws so as to imprison murderers and would-be murderers alike. Period.

Electoral Reform

What are the alleged problems with Canada’s Single Member Plurality (“SMP”) system (often referred to as the “first past the post” system)? What are the proposed solutions?

Different alternative electoral systems address different problems, but several very different systems are being debated at present as though they address the same alleged problems. This brief primer describes the main electoral systems, and explains the alleged problems that each alternative to the SMP is designed to address.

1. SMP: Description

In the SMP system, one legislative seat is allocated to each geographically-defined electoral district. Federally, there are currently 308 electoral districts (a.k.a. “ridings”).

In the SMP system, the ballot in each riding contains a list of the candidates running in that riding. Voters entitled to vote in that riding mark ONE of the candidates’ names with an X. After the polls are closed, the candidate whose name was Xed on the greatest number of valid ballots wins the seat in that riding.

2. SMP: ALLEGED PROBLEMS AND PROPOSED SOLUTIONS

(a) The “Wasted Vote”

When there are only two candidates on a ballot (e.g., in a two-party system), one casts ones vote for the candidate one most wants to win: ones vote is not “wasted” in any sense. However, when three or more candidates are on a ballot, a voter may feel that his favourite candidate has little chance of winning. Under the SMP, such a voter may decide to vote strategically: he may decide to vote only for one of the subset of candidates who he thinks stand a chance of winning. This way, he thinks, he will not be “wasting” his vote. The problem, however, is that by strategically voting, the voter might get the legislator he voted for, but not the legislator he actually wanted most. The primary solution to the wasted vote involves using a “preferential ballot” in conjunction with an alternative vote-counting system

Preferential Ballot Systems

On a preferential ballot, voters rank some or all of the candidates, rather than just choosing one. When used in conjunction with an appropriate vote-counting system, a preferential ballot solves the “wasted vote” phenomenon.

There are two main electoral systems that use a preferential ballot: the Alternative Vote (“AV”) system, and the Single Transferable Vote (“STV”) system. However, counting of the ballots differs between the AV and the STV. Here’s a comparison of the two systems, quoted from an as yet unpublished paper I am working on:

“In the AV system, like in the SMP system, one individual is selected from each electoral district. If at least fifty percent plus one of the ballots all rank a given candidate as their first preference, the candidate is immediately elected. However, if fewer than fifty percent plus one of the ballots rank a given candidate as their first preference, the candidate with the lowest number of first preferences is “eliminated” from the count. The ballots that gave first preference to the eliminated candidate are then assigned to the remaining candidates according to the second preferences indicated on those ballots. The process of eliminating last-place candidate and redistributing their ballots process is repeated until one candidate has at least fifty percent plus one of the ballots.

The STV system differs from the AV system in two key ways. First, in the STV system, electoral districts are bigger, and voters select more than one individual to become law-makers. Second, the STV tallies the ballots in a way that tends to result in “proportional representation” (discussed below). Specifically, in the STV system, the greater the number of seats that are allocated to an electoral district, the smaller is the number of votes that a candidate must receive to win a seat (for convenience, I will hereinafter refer to that number as the “Threshold”). Specifically, in the STV system, the Threshold is equal to 1 + [total number of votes cast] / [number of seats + 1]. As in the AV system, last-placed candidates are eliminated and their ballots are redistributed to the remaining candidates until the number of votes received by a candidate meets or exceeds the Threshold and he wins a seat. However, unlike in the AV system, if a candidate who has won a seat received more than enough votes to meet the Threshhold, his “Surplus” ballots continue are transferred to the remaining candidates according to the next preference on those ballots. In fact, all of his ballots are added, not just the a number of ballots equal to the Surplus, but the value of the votes on those ballots is reduced so that the total value of the votes on those ballots is equal to the number of Surplus votes: each ballot adds a fraction of a vote equal to the number of Surplus votes divided by the Threshold. If, after transfering all of the Surplus votes, the remaining candidates still lack enough votes to win a seat, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and his ballots are redistributed among the remaining candidates according to the next preference indicated on each ballot. The process of eliminating candidates and redistributing the votes of candidates who win seats or who are eliminated continues until all of the seats for that electoral district are filled.

Both the AV system and the STV system eliminate the fear of the wasted vote. Because both use a preferential ballot, voters can rank their preferences. Because, in each system, a ballot is counted even if its first-ranked candidate loses, voters do not have to fear that their vote will be wasted if they give their highest rank to a candidate who is unlikely to win. The voter, in the AV and STV systems, is not cowed, by polls, media opinion, or next-door neighbours into caring whether or not his favoured candidate is likely to win. Strategic voting is forced to take a back seat to the voter’s conscience. The voter does not need to compromise his beliefs and commitments. The voter can, with the AV and STV systems, respect and value elections.”

(b) Minority Rule / Forcing Compromises

Under the SMP system, a the winning candidate is the candidate that received more votes than any other candidate on the ballot. When there are only two candidates on the ballot, the winner needs 50% + 1 of the votes. But the number of votes needed to win decreases with each increase in the number of candidates. Specifically, the minimum percentage of the vote required to win in the SMP system can be as low as (100 / #of candidates) + 1. So, for example, if there are 10 candidates on the ballot then, if the votes are evenly distributed among the candidates, the winner might win with as little as 10% plus one of the votes.

There are those who dislike this aspect of SMP. The most common argument is that the SMP allows a minority of voters to win a majority of seats in the legislature. Equating the voters’ winning of seats with the voters’ control of the legislature (which, I would submit, is a laughable conclusion), those who oppose this aspect of the SMP say that it violates the principle of “majority rule”: the idea that government should do what the majority of VOTERS want it to do.

However, there is another argument raised against SMP. Specifically, it is said that majority governments are bad because they discourage compromise and collaboration. These advocates prefer perpetual minority governments so that, in effect, radical agendas cannot prevail. Another way to put this, bluntly, is that the left doesn’t want a principled party to win a majority and then not compromise its agenda with those who are opposed to the winning party’s principles.

There are two main electoral systems proposed to “solve” the lack of PR that can occur with the SMP in a multi-party system. Both cause PR electoral outcomes, and both make majority governments the exception instead of the rule: the STV and List Systems

The STV

I have described the STV, above. The key thing to remember when comparing the STV with a List system is that, under the STV, the voter votes for his local candidates, not for parties.

List Systems

List systems are sometimes referred to as “pure PR” systems. In list systems, the voter votes for a party (in some versions of the List system, they also get to indicate a preference of candidates within that party). Each party then is given a percentage of seats roughly equal to the percentage of votes received by the party.

The key difference between the STV and List systems is that List systems give parties the power to decide who will fill each of the seats won by the party. The NDP and Green parties, in Canada, have said that they prefer the List systems because they want to allocate the seats they win on the basis of such things as sex and race: they want to use “affirmative action” (i.e., discrimination) in the selection of MPs. Because the STV provides a PR outcome without allowing parties to choose the candidates, the Greens and NDP oppose the STV.

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