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Chris Selley: Bernier's 'success' is no case against electoral reform

Most of the ideas in Bernier’s platform would be perfectly welcome within big-tent conservative parties in other countries

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One of the more puzzling revelations of the 2021 federal election campaign’s final days came via the National Post’s Tyler Dawson, who dropped by a People’s Party rally in Edmonton and introduced us to some of Maxime Bernier’s supporters and potential supporters. “One man asked about electoral reform, which would make it far easier for the PPC to get a seat in Parliament,” Dawson reported. But as it turns out, “the PPC doesn’t have a policy on that.”

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This seems like a bit of an oversight, no?

As a Conservative, Bernier once won Beauce, Que., with an astonishing 67 per cent of the vote. As leader of the PPC, he couldn’t get within 10 points of Conservative Richard Lehoux in 2019. On Monday he lost to Lehoux by 30 points. And consider the result: Under the mixed-member proportional representation systems used to populate the New Zealand Parliament and the Bundestag — often cited as potential models for Canada — the PPC’s five per cent of the popular vote might have been enough to send 17 MPs to Ottawa.

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Proportional representation fans might well be relieved: Bernier embodies the Liberal establishment’s warnings that proportional representation “gives more weight to … fringe parties,” as Justin Trudeau put it last Saturday. They might just as well be disappointed, though. Some pollsters had the PPC as high as nine per cent during the campaign. If that wasn’t enough to get Bernier behind PR, perhaps it’s because he realizes it’s probably a lost cause.

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It’s probably a lost cause, in part, because so many of PR’s proponents are so bloody terrible at stumping for it. This is a debate that causes otherwise level-headed people to say things like “Canada is not a democracy” and “the system is broken.” Post-mortems of Monday’s results feature all the usual misplaced vocabulary: the Conservatives and New Democrats are “underrepresented,” the Liberals are “overrepresented,” the makeup of the House of Commons “distorts” the will of the people.

It’s maddening. No party is “underrepresented” or “overrepresented,” and nothing is “distorted,” unless the popular vote is actually supposed to mean anything under our current system — which it isn’t. PR fans think popular vote should count, and there are good arguments for that, yet they often forget entirely to mount them — instead assuming everyone else can see that first-past-the-post is some kind of abominable accident.

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As bad as some PR proponents are at advancing their cause, though, the PPC’s “success” — which is already being weaponized by Liberal fans of the status quo — is no argument against it.

Bernier traffics in miles-over-the-top rhetoric: “Canadians who oppose the rise of tyranny and authoritarian government need a voice,” he told supporters in Saskatoon on Monday night. He attracts some objectively unsavoury supporters: conspiracy theorists of all stripes, including outright COVID-deniers, gravel-chuckers, racists and crackpots.

That said, most of the ideas in Bernier’s platform would be perfectly welcome within big-tent conservative parties in other countries. The PPC wants to cut immigration by up to two-thirds, for example; that’s more or less what British prime minister David Cameron promised in 2010. The PPC is unabashedly pro-oil sands and pro-pipeline, and doesn’t lose much sleep over climate change. Same goes for many Conservatives; they just have to tread more carefully. The PPC’s firearms policy envisions “an efficient lifetime certification system for firearms owners following mandatory vetting, safety training and testing.” A Texan Republican would call that despotism.

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Other countries cope just fine with parties like Bernier’s in their legislatures. The Bundestag currently has 88 members (of 709) from Alternative for Germany, whose policy book would chase Bernier’s up a tree. As recently as 2017, the party went to court trying to get same-sex marriage overturned. Its 2017 manifesto “demand(s) that the primary goal of abortion counselling should be concerned with the protection of unborn life”; proposes Bill 21-style restrictions on public servants’ religious garb — but only for Muslim women; and suggests outright banning the burqa and the call to prayer in public.

The PPC platform, by contrast, is much more libertarian than authoritarian.

The thing about “fringe parties” is that they come in all shapes and sizes. You might get nasty ones, but you might get useful ones too. The Dutch House of Representatives has 17 members (of 150) from Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom, but also nine from the Socialist Party and six from an animal rights party. The French National Assembly has Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement (formerly Front) National, and then it has the Socialists. Denmark’s Social Democrat government is opposed by the right-wing populist Danish People’s Party, and supported by the Socialist People’s Party.

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If Canada’s brokerage parties were getting the country’s big and intractable problems solved with a quickness, if they were a sponge for bold and brave new ideas and expert at deploying them, then it would be easier to fear the “threat” of smaller parties. But they’re demonstrably not. Canada is a country that can’t even guarantee many communities safe drinking water. It’s a country that can’t buy fighter jets or build ships to save its life.

The reasons for that are too fundamental for proportional representation to change on its own. But expanding the universe of plausible ideas beyond those circumscribed by the Liberals and Conservatives could only help. It would be a shame if proportional representation died without anyone really putting their best foot forward to advocate for it.

• Email: cselley@nationalpost.com | Twitter:

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