Country Notebook | The price of partisanship

I deeply believe in democracy.

Admit that it’s still fantastic: we have the opportunity to make a collective decision by expressing our individual preference. There are still too many countries and states in the world that cannot say the same.

Despite this, we must admit that our system is not perfect and it probably never will be. However, this is not a reason to refrain from improving it.

One of its great weaknesses is partisanship.

You know the principle: the party having elected the most deputies forms the government, the leader becoming Prime Minister, while the other parties form the opposition, in separate parliamentary groups.

All political parties exist because their founders – and the members who join them – consider that they have a unique offer to present to the population, that they are different, and obviously better than other parties.

All political parties have the same objective: to elect as many candidates as possible, in order to bring their unique message to the National Assembly in large numbers.

There are many advantages to being a candidate under the banner of a political party: a team, financial means, visibility, the ripple effect, a leader who takes the bullets in our place, the possibility of to be a minister…

A person who decides to get involved with a political party does not necessarily adhere to all the ideas, all the positions and all the proposals of his party. But presenting yourself under the banner of a party means choosing to claim, at least publicly, that you support everything.

The consequence of this is that the ideas of other parties are automatically bad. Even if it’s a good idea and we would have liked to have thought of it before. Since it does not come from us, it is bad.

That’s partisanship: rejecting what doesn’t come from our party and defending tooth and nail everything that does.

Result: good ideas will rarely make their way because they were not thought of at the right time by the right people. And bad ideas go forward, for the opposite reason.

Who pays the price? Quebec as a whole.

Fortunately, we had a glimmer of hope with medical assistance in dying and the specialized court for sexual assaults, where partisanship was put aside.

I believe that part of the solution is there: that the parties work together, in a common goal.

It seems easy to say like that, but when we are not in the presence of a unifying subject, how can we get there?

Here is a proposal: proportional representation.

And yes, a reform of the voting system!

This is a first step towards deconstructing a partisan mechanism that only harms Quebec.

It is essential that all currents of thought be represented in the National Assembly and the only way this can be fair is in the same proportion as the number of votes obtained at the time of the last general election.

Our system ensures that at this time, a vote cast in riding X is worth more than a vote cast for the same party in riding Y.

If every vote really counted, it would certainly bring people back to the polls.

I want to clarify that this is not a criticism of the CAQ. Her first term was severely curtailed by the pandemic and she is not responsible for decades of procrastination by other parties that have been in power before her.

In 2005, I represented the Action Démocratique du Québec (ADQ) before the parliamentary committee that was considering the reform of the voting system. We then proposed a mixed proportional representation by maintaining 75 constituencies, where candidates are directly elected, and 50 seats dedicated to honoring the percentages of votes obtained by each party.

These seats would be filled from a list of candidates that each party would submit, where the alternation between women and men would be compulsory.

The figures are not the most precise, because it is impossible to assess the mix, but it gives us a good idea. We therefore see that the CAQ would still be in power, but at the head of a minority government.

It seems difficult to run a minority government. And then, if this is what best represents the will of Quebecers? Good ideas, regardless of which party they come from, could then finally make their way, without partisanship.

But who will have the courage to sacrifice their majority in the name of the common good?