Liberal MPs who voted NO to electoral reform May 31 2017

h/t Anita Nickerson for above graphic 

It was a bid by NDP Nathan Cullen to put pressure on Trudeau to put electoral reform back on the table.

All Liberals but two, and the ones listed below who didn't vote, voted NO to accepting the final ERRE report, including the Liberal MPs on the ERRE committee. 
The NDP, Bloc, CPC, and Green voted in favour.

Two Liberals who kept their promise, Nathaniel Erskine-Smith @beynate  and Sean Casey @SeanCaseyLPC , deserve our thanks.

Vote details : "That the Third Report of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform, presented on Thursday, December 1, 2016, be concurred in."

The ERRE Report in question.

21 Liberal MPs did not vote : 

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4 consrvatives did not vote:
Mel Arnold North - Okanagan — Shuswap
Blaine Calkins  - Red Deer — Lacombe
Ed Fast ~ Conservative - Abbotsford
Randy Hoback - Conservative ~ Prince Albert 

5 NDP did not vote:

Niki Ashton - Churchill — Keewatinook Aski
Fin Donnelly - Port Moody — Coquitlam
Peter Julian - New Westminster — Burnaby

Pierre Nantel - Longueuil — Saint-Hubert
Tracey Ramsey - Essex

Bloc Rheal Fortin and Independent Hunter Tantoo also did not vote.

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So this was a *free vote* then, was it?

From the Liberal Party Platform:

For members of the Liberal Caucus, all votes will be free votes with the exception of:

• those that implement the Liberal electoral platform;

• traditional confidence matters, like the budget; and 

• those that address our shared values and the protections guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Unless you'd like to argue that *not* implementing anything *is* the Liberal electoral platform.

So which argument from Trudeau was so compelling that all 173 Liberal members in the HoC voted No? 
The first one where we could not have electoral reform because there was no consensus among Canadians? 
Or the second one where we could not have electoral reform because there was too much consensus for an electoral reform you didn't like because a party like the one which just held power for the last 10 years might win a couple of seats?

Which argument really sold all 173 of you to vote NO and then send out letters explaining how really really disappointed you all were with the way things turned out?

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See, first-past-the-post is working again now

In June 2015 the Liberal Party released a position paper :

“We are committed to ensuring that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system.”

and Justin Trudeau took that campaign promise on the road.

At the time the Liberals were 3rd in the polls :

NDP - 32.6%    CPC - 28.6%   LPC - 26.3%

The Liberal majority now rests on 43 MPs whose margin of victory is less than 5%.

Before the election Fair Vote Canada asked all MPs to pledge that campaign promise. NDP did because it is part of party policy; CPC did not because it is not.

The following list of Liberal MPs, some of whom campaigned aggressively on that issue, answered ‘Yes’ when asked before the election if they feel :

"the number of MPs elected to Parliament from each party should be roughly proportional to the number of votes cast for that party’s candidates.":

Cabinet ministers in bold: 

Candidate                            Riding                                         % Margin of victory 

BC

John Aldag                        Cloverdale-Langley City, B.C.          10.7

Terry Beech                       Burnaby North-Seymour, B.C.          6.5

Ken Hardie                         Fleetwood-Port Kells, B.C.              17.6

Joyce Murray                     Vancouver-Quadra, B.C.                  32.9

Carla Qualtrough              Delta, B.C.                                       16.3

Harjit Sajjan                      Vancouver-South, B.C.                    14.9

Jonathan Wilkinson            North Vancouver, B.C.                     29.8 

Jody Wilson-Raybould     Vancouver-Granville, B.C.               17.0

Ontario

Omar Alghabra                    Mississauga, Ont.                           21.1

Leon Alleslev                       Aurora-Richmond Hill, Ont.              2.1

Shaun Chen                         Scarborough North, Ont.                20.8

Neil Ellis                               Bay of Quinte, Ont.                         16.4

Nathaniel Erskine Smith      Beaches-East York, Ont.                 18.6

Karina Gould                      Burlington, Ont.                                3.5

Patty Hajdu                         Thunder Bay-Sup North, Ont.         21.8

Andrew Leslie                      Orléans, Ont.                                   28.8

Lloyd Longfield                    Guelph, Ont.                                    22.8

Karen McCrimmon              Kanata-Carleton, Ont.                     12.1

David McGuinty                   Ottawa South, Ont.                         48.5

John McKay                         Scarborough-Guildwood, Ont.       33.5

Catherine McKenna           Ottawa-Centre, Ont.                         4.2

Maryam Monsef                 Peterborough-Kawartha, Ont.          8.7

Jennifer O’Connell               Pickering-Uxbridge, Ont.                12.1

Rob Oliphant                        Don Valley West, Ont.                     16.2

John Oliver                           Oakville, Ont.                                    6.9

Anthony Rota                       Nippissing-Timiskaming, Ont.         22.6

Kim Rudd                             Peterborough South, Ont.                 2.9

Raj Saini                               Kitchener Centre, Ont.                    18.4

Sonia Sidhu                         Brampton South, Ont.                     17.1

Marwan Tabbara                  Kitchener South-Hespeler, Ont.        5.6

Anita Vandenbeld                Ottawa West-Nepean, Ont.             25.9

Arif Virani                             Parkdale-High Park, Ont.                  1.8

Quebec

David Lametti                      LaSalle-Émard-Verdun, Que.          14.9

Alexandra Mendès              Brossard-Saint-Lambert, Que.        25.7

Greg Fergus                        Hull-Aylmer, Que.                            19.9

PEI

Wayne Easter                      Malpeque, P.E.I.                               44.5

Lawrence MacAulay          Cardigan, P.E.I.                                48.8

Bobby Morrissey                 Egmont, P.E.I.                                  20.3

Amarjeet Sohi                     Edmonton Mill Woods, Alta.             0.1

Robert-Falcon Ouellette      Winnipeg Centre, Man.                    26.5

Jim Carr                              Winnipeg South Centre, Man.         31.5

Matt DeCourcey                  Fredericton, N.B.                              20.9

Darrell Samson                    Sackville-Chezzetcook, N.S.           13.6

Ironically, it is first-past-the-post that allows these MPs to now ignore that campaign promise.

h/t Anita Nickerson and Kelly Carmichael at FairVote for poster and stats respectively.

Hill Times : Liberal MPs concerned about PMO’s handling of electoral reform and cash-for-access issues, say Grit sources

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National Day of Action for a Democracy

NATIONAL : 

https://www.facebook.com/events/885031191552272/

ANTIGONISH :
https://www.facebook.com/events/977908325676436/

*CALGARY:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1646785405622746/

*EDMONTON:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1195527620565628/

*GUELPH:
https://www.facebook.com/events/590534384481465/

KINGSTON:
https://www.facebook.com/events/252491181828723/

MONTRÉAL :
https://www.facebook.com/events/1022111041266543/

NELSON:
https://tinyurl.com/Nelson-Rally

ORILLIA:
https://www.facebook.com/events/361765157513349/

OTTAWA:
https://www.facebook.com/events/459836840807249/

TORONTO:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1406689206008564/

ST JOHN’S:
https://www.facebook.com/events/283647058718248/

VICTORIA:
https://www.facebook.com/events/431527190572187/

*WOLFVILLE:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1398537953513313/

*WATERLOO REGION (Kitchener)https://www.facebook.com/events/1371976016188409/

February 26, 2017 / le 26 février 2017
VANCOUVER: https://www.facebook.com/events/232194567241043/

And for all you non-facebookies, : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c9AR6iLPH_zqH8N81iBhaqpeZJ5fkNlH-GbWIqpXVF8/edit.
and : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iFymcYgyrU14QjyhOyewwLq1X0C6gwmg0hs5FcSVHj0/edit

Hashtags : #SeeYouSaturday   #NotSoTrueDeau  
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The Emperor has no shirt

Today, after sending out his new rookie Minister of Democratic Institutions to deliver the news his electoral reform promise was officially dead , Justin Trudeau stood in the HoC and said: 

 "As people in this House know, I have long preferred preferential ballot..."

Yes. Here he is in 2014 explaining that preference at length. Jump to the 24:09 mark.



Excerpted : 

"First of all on first-past-the-post, you’re absolutely right that it doesn’t matter if someone gets 31 percent of the vote, and the other parties only get you know 26 and 20 percent, and it’s all divided up, then they get to represent one 100 percent of the community, and that’s why I entirely agree that it has to move beyond first past the post.

“But how we do that is very important. I personally and the Liberal Party has adopted a format of a preferential ballot, where the person who would be elected gets more than 50 percent of the vote in the community, so they represent the majority of the community.

I think that a ranked ballot, a preferential ballot, is a strong way of changing our electoral system that I’ve been pushing and I’ve committed to look at once we form government.”

The problem with preferential or ranked ballot, also known as Alternative Vote, is that it's the only electoral system worse for voters than what we have now. As the second party of choice for supporters of the Cons, NDP, and Greens, the Liberal Party would be the obvious benefactor of a ranked ballot in a single member riding and would likely form the government in perpetuity. This point was driven home by expert after expert to the ERRE committee, some 88% of them, despite hopeful entreaties by the Liberal MPs to the 4% of experts they could cobble together in support of it.

We had some earlier inkling the choice would be between preferential ballot or nothing.

On December 1 2016 after Monsef's math meltdown, the four Liberal MPs on the ERRE committee announced at their presser that they believed any change to our electoral system would be too "radical". Liberal Chair Francis Scarpaleggia explained :

"Perhaps if we chose preferential ranked ballot we could do that tomorrow. 

Yes, the PM made that commitment but a lot of people thought he was talking about a ranked ballot. You could do a ranked ballot like that. [Snaps fingers] Nobody wants ranked ballot, so what does that leave us?" 

Apparently nothing.

Two weeks later on December 13 2016, an ERRE motion was up for a vote in the House. Approved by Scarpaleggia, it proposed to add the committee's own previous electoral reform e-consultation, which included specific questions on voting systems preferences including proportional representation, on to the Liberals absurdly vague and misdirecting MyDemocracy VoxPops quiz : 

That, in relation to the questions on democratic values that the Minister of Democratic Institution intends to make available for Canadians' response on the websitemydemocracy.ca, the Committee encourages the Minister to reproduce and include in its entirety the questions within this Committee's e-consultation survey, either as a replacement for the other planned questions, or in addition to any other questions that the Minister wishes to include; 

Five minutes later, all 173 Liberal MPs in the House had unanimously voted it down, including the four Liberals on the ERRE committee - Ruby Sahota, John Aldag, Matt DeCourcey, and Sherry Romanado, plus the Liberal Chair Francis Scarpaleggia - while the Cons, NDP, Bloc, and Green all voted in favour.
Final vote : 173 No to 131 Yea.    Justin Trudeau was not present.

Yet out on the hustings the past few weeks, he continued to reassure us that he had stated in 2015 that "our electoral system is broken", alongside a promise to make that election the last one under First Past the Post, and he was fully committed to keeping that promise.

So it looks like this was just a vote-grabbing campaign promise borrowed from the NDP and Green platforms to outflank them when the Libs were the third party in the House. 
Vote strategically for us this one last time, they said, and we'll make sure you never have to vote strategically again. Desperate to ditch Harper and excited at the prospect of an end to cynical party politics, Canadians did.
When the Liberals got a majority in 2015, it looked like they could both keep that promise and control of parliament as long as electoral reform was restricted to their preferred preferential or ranked ballot option, but when that was no longer a credible choice, they scuttled the whole thing.

I wonder if they'll promise it all over again in 2019. This page below is still up on the Liberal Party website.

Excellent satire piece from Andrew Coyne: It’s not the Liberals’ fault for lying about electoral reform, it’s yours for believing them.

Liberal’s abandoned electoral reform

Fears Of Alt-Right, Divisive Referendum Behind Liberal Electoral Reform Reversal: Insiders

And congrats to Liberal ERRE committee obstructionists Matt DeCourcey and Sherry Romanado on your recent appointments as parliamentary secretaries at an additional $16,800 a year.

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JT's "fun little questionnaire"

VoxPopLabs, the same folks who brought you Vote Compass, has taken something of a beating in public opinion for their electoral reform quiz mydemocracy.ca. 

Originally introduced by Justin Trudeau as "a fun little questionnaire that gets into values rather than models", Andrew Coyne referred to it as "a dippy pop quiz or botched push-poll", soundly mocked for the obvious slant of the questions with "two thirds of the “values” questions and over half of those probing respondents’ “preferences” having nothing to do with electoral reform". 

Or as I like to call it, a 'what kind of animal are you?' quiz.

Asked about this on CBC, Mark Holland was at pains to point out that the government didn't pick the questions. 

No, but you did choose the parameter of the questions; VoxPops merely did the job you asked them to do.

From the government tender awarding the contract to VoxPopLabs in September :

"The key tasks include:

Provide a draft of questions for review by the Project Authority;"

The Project Authority here is presumably the Privy Council Office, described in the bid as the "End user entity".

"Conduct a robust scientific survey in advance of the launch of the interactive online application in order to identify key themes and develop classifications based on responses;

.... determine segments and develop narratives for each cluster based on the profiles that emerge from the survey; 

VoxPopLabs says they developed a large survey, field-tested it, and then asked a panel of 3,000 Canadians "the remaining questions and used their responses to generate a cluster analysis".
This is where those five much-mocked archetype categories come from.

Develop a robust model ...  to instantaneously classify participants to the interactive online digital consultation platform into segments uncovered in the survey

Ok, so your answers slot you into one of the five predetermined archetype categories.

My complaint with the above approach is that the archetypes were built on different questions asked than those asked in the final survey, and that of the five, there is no category for people who are both in favour of some version of proportional representation but against online voting. And did we really need five direct questions about online voting and mandatory voting but none on proportional representation?

So what will the Project Authority learn from all this?

Provide categories of customized user feedback and data visualization for review by the Project Authority;

This is, I grant you, more scientific than the five categories of Heathers and Zoes and Dougies and Steves and Eunices that conservative strategist Patrick Muttart categorized Canadians into for Stephen Harper back in 2005, but I don't see it getting us any closer to electoral reform. 

Not completing the survey will result in a repeat of the ERRE Liberal MPs' contention that no one is interested. However if you do the survey, game the questions by figuring out which ones give a glimmer of support to the idea of proportional representation and mark them "strongly agree", you possibly run the risk of being disqualified because, as the ERRE Liberals also complained, everyone who showed up to townhalls or answered the much superior ERRE survey was self-selective and already had an opinion.

Filling in this survey is quite a bit like strategic voting, a reason many of us want rid of FPtP in the first place. FairVote has provided a guide to answering it.
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Fun fact : VoxPopLabs mydemocracy survey cost $326K. 
The entire budget for the now disbanded ERRE committee, their five months of witness testimony, their travels across Canada, and their online survey on electoral reform systems, was $300K.
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Monsef "very very sorry" she cannot advocate for PR

Tweets like the above appeared today following Minister Monsef's Q&A at her Victoria BC electoral reform public consultation. Her remarks echo those of Justin Trudeau earlier this week, giving rise to the fear that the Liberals are backtracking on implementing electoral reform and their campaign promise that 2011 would be "the last election under FPtP".
I've transcribed her responses to the two relevant questions from the audience in full below so you can judge for yourself. 

Shorter : She repeated Trudeau's recent remarks about people no longer clamouring for change under the new government, that implementing electoral reform depends on a broad consensus from Canadians and the ERRE committee, and that she's "very, very sorry" but she cannot advocate for proportional representation because 1) she has not heard PR asked for from "an overwhelming majority across the country" and 2) "political realities".. 


A refugee from Iran made a heartfelt plea to Mosef, refugee to refugee as he said, to bring in proportional representation, PR, and not to water it down, to repay the debt to this country.  "That will your legacy to this country."  Huge applause.

Transcript of Monsef's response : 

"To my Iranian-Canadian friend : I agree with you we didn't come here for the natural resources in this country; we came here so that we can be whoever we want to be; we came here so that we can have choice, and choices, and we have that because our democratic institutions have provided us with opportunities, means, and liberties.  

So where I think your argument kind of lost me is you went from like the only way to do this is through proportional representation. In this room, there is a lot of appetite for moving towards PR. My job isn't to advocate for PR specifically; my job has been to go across the country and hear from a diverse range of perspectives. And most rooms are different - there hasn't been a consensus on any specific system. And that actually makes my job very very difficult. It puts more emphasis on the work of the committee because now they have to find the consensus that they couldn't find in the country. 

It's why conversations and you ranking these principles is important because maybe it's not a pure proportional system, maybe it's not MMP, maybe it's a system that's never existed, maybe it's a hybrid that makes sense for Canada. I haven't arrived at that conclusion because there is no consensus. But what I am hearing is how much Canadians cherish that local representation, how much they want a more legitimate and effective system, how important inclusion and accessibility is.  These are basic pieces that are really helpful. 

So I can't promise you that I'll be advocating for PR because I haven't heard that from an overwhelming majority across the country.  

But what I can promise you is that I'm hustling with my parliamentary secretary and we are advocating hard for reform, for reform that means improvement, that sets the stage for the next generation of leaders to come in and make the system better and I think that is my responsibility. And you're right I do have a great deal of debt to repay to this country - that's why I'm doing this and sometimes especially over the last month things have gotten a little bit crazy and absurd. Over the last month I have asked myself a few times - why are you doing this? You had a good job; people liked you; you got to make a difference and you got paid, you got to stay in Peterborough, evenings and weekends to yourself - what were you thinking? But it is true I have all these privileges because a lot of people have made it possible for me. I do have a significant debt to pay back and I intend to pay it back so I can get on with the rest of my life where I have maybe a bit more privacy and sanity, but I promise you that I'm doing this for the right reasons and at the end of the day, I want to make things a little bit better so more people feel involved to be a part of this process so that those silly pieces like the older woman in my riding what she had to deal with and went through - we can fix those things.  

So I'm looking for that consensus - I haven't seen it across the country and now I'm waiting on the committee. I can't make you a promise. I'm very very sorry."            

Question from audience : How can you possibly quell out fears about what Trudeau said about not needing a change in the election system? Those of us engaged in this process for months and months were really upset.

Monsef :

"So it's a little bit frustrating in some ways because literally since May I've been saying what the Prime Minister has been saying. We want things to be better, we want reform. We're inspired by what we're hearing from Canadians like you. But we're not going to move ahead with reform unless we have that broad support from Canadians. We have a majority, sure we could ram through whatever we want, but we're not going to do that. We heard that loud and clear at the beginning of this. The Prime Minister remains I think he said deeply committed to electoral reform, as do I. We're now going to wait for this committee to come back to us. What he said was ... these rooms, this room is full right now but I gotta tell you in most rooms across the country it hasn't been standing room only.

People aren't clamouring for change the way they were under the former government. And I get that - people have other priorities like jobs, kids, and grandkids and house concerns and they care about things like the environment. But this does have a significant longterm impact and it does matter and like I said I'm pushing for this every day. We're finishing our tour right now hearing from Canadians who wanted to be part of this conversation. We're very serious about this and we're going to see it through. We really really hope that the Canadians that have come to us with a thoughtful consensus that they've been able to come to because we are not going to ... 

Even though the Prime Minister has a preference, even though I am arriving at a preference of a specific system with certain elements, we're not going to move ahead unless we have support from Canadians. So yes we want change but we're not going to ram it through because that's just a political nightmare and anti-democratic so ..."

Audience : Didn't he say it would be the last election under FPtP?

Monsef : 

"Yeah and I was standing behind him when he said it in Ottawa. He said he'd bring together a committee to study the issue and if conversations like this were happening in the country during the summer of last year, you can bet anything that these rooms would be packed and people would be asking and demanding for change."

Audience : "Well they might be in four years. [cheers, claps] ... The majority in this room did not stand up and say Yes for FPtP. ... Yeah like 6 people ... In four years it could be a very different story - that's not the way to go."

Monsef : What's not the way to go?

Hard to hear audience responses here : Campaign promises ... people are still hopeful .. You promised last election under FPtP ... clapping 

Monsef : 

"I'm not disputing that. I have a mandate to advocate and pursue and propose change. I'm not disputing that. What I'm adding here though is a reality that we're all aware of - If the Liberal Party were to say Hmmm there's no consensus among the committee, we haven't heard from all Canadians - I don't really think a referendum is a good idea but the committee might come back and say that it's the only way .... ok I know there's some scars in this room, please ... if reform does not have broad support of Canadians, we're right back in the same problem area that you just said"

Audience member : No we're not because the Liberal Party was elected on a campaign platform ... backtracking ...

Monsef : 

"Ok we're not backtracking - I'm explaining a political reality that what we said was Canadians are going to come and recommend something and then we're going to move ahead. We established the committee. We established the committee under traditional rules and people freaked out - oh these rules with the majority and the minority means you're going to ram through whatever change you want. That's not what we voted for - And so here we have this room full of people who feel like me, who feel like the Prime Minister, but that's not every room in the country and you have to take that into consideration.So again, my commitment to you, to everyone in this room, is every day we're advocating for change."

Audience member : Please make a decision that isn't a non-decision. 

Monsef : 

"I'm hustling every day, like 24 hours a day for change. That's my job and I'm wholeheartedly committed to it. There are political realities around it that anybody in this room given what you've experienced with electoral reforms [STV vote in BC] is ignoring - well that's not really helpful or effective. My job is to take all of that into consideration. So my promise to you is I'll be advocating for change. .. on both sides of the aisle within both chambers because we're going to need the help of Senate as well."      

 Transcribed from livestream of the meeting at  https://www.facebook.com/CdnDemocracy
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