The Truth About Canada (46 page)

Fair Vote Canada says,

Based on the large number of countries using proportional or fair voting systems over extended periods of time, international experience demonstrates the following benefits over winner-take-all systems:

• Wasted votes and distorted election results are reduced.

• Phoney majority governments are rare.

• Voter turnout tends to be higher.

• Parliaments are more representative of the range of political views and the composition of the electorate (gender, ethnicity, regions).

• These countries maintain strong economic performance.

• Citizens tend to be more satisfied with the way democracy works.
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Alas, if political reform in Canada is a serious problem that must be addressed, the appalling lack of political knowledge in our country is equally disturbing. I briefly touched on this in the chapter on education. For your further consideration, as if the frequently demonstrated ignorance of our history wasn’t enough, a 2005 study showed that only 40 percent of voters could define the differences between left and right in politics. Good grief!

In one public opinion poll, almost 60 percent of Canadians thought that aboriginals in this country were either better off than or had about the same standard of living as most Canadians. In a December 2005 poll reported in the
Globe and Mail
, 59 percent were unable to identify our only female prime minister, 43 percent couldn’t identify the NDP leader, and 44 percent didn’t know which prime minister was responsible for free trade.

In their previously mentioned study for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Neil Brooks and Thaddeus Hwong reported that in Canada 11 percent of the population has frequent political discussions with friends, compared to over 20 percent for Greece, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and an OECD average of 15.5 percent. In a list of 19 countries, only two have a lower percentage than Canada.

A few words about the Senate. Here, I’m entirely with the abolitionists. John Baglow, who has been active on the national council of Fair Vote Canada, writes: “Do we really need an Upper House? New Zealand does quite nicely with only one. The Senate is seen by many as a creaky, elitist institution used to reward the political friends of the party in power.”
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With a new PR system, we’re going to need some more members of Parliament to do the system justice. Let’s get rid of the Senate and expand the elected House of Commons. About the dumbest idea I’ve heard from Stephen Harper is the guaranteed gridlock-inducing election of Senators, a concept fraught with terrible potential problems of conflict, confusion, and rigor mortis.

Yes, yes, I know all about the constitutional problems entailed in abolishing the Senate. So let’s have a period of public discussion and debate, and then a national referendum on the subject. I suspect a strong
majority of Canadians would approve of abolition. Can one in 10 Canadians name a significant accomplishment of the Senate? And as it is, the representation in the Senate is wonky. For example, British Columbia and Alberta have almost a quarter of Canada’s population but only 12 seats in the 105-seat Senate. Atlantic Canada has 30 seats with less than a third of the population of B.C. and Alberta.

Who needs it?

I hope that Tom Kent is right that “public opinion will before long compel electoral reform.” Maybe, but when? That the NDP has not pushed proportional representation as a top priority amazes me. It would so benefit the party, and there’s little doubt that with an adequate information campaign, a majority of Canadians would be supportive. But without strong government support, which is unlikely, proportional representation or other election reform is difficult. Witness the narrow technical setback in British Columbia in their 2005 referendum on a single transferable vote (STV) system despite majority approval by voters.
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Note that in B.C. every household received a brochure outlining the STV system. In 2007 in Ontario, no such thing happened.

The electoral reform proposal put before the people of British Columbia in 2005 received majority support in 77 of B.C.’s 79 constituencies but failed because only just under 60 percent (57.7 percent) of voters approved of the proposed change. Some of those who voted against the STV proposal were swayed by the calculation that a seat in the legislature could be won with less than 17 percent of the vote, while many others thought STV was too complex.

Two countries, Ireland and Malta, employ the STV electoral system, plus Scotland for local elections. The Australian state of Victoria held its first STV election in 2007, and Minneapolis will use STV for its municipal elections. Vancouver political columnist Bill Tieleman is strongly opposed to STV.

STV is complicated, confusing, prone to errors and delay, it reduces local accountability, increases the geographic size of ridings, allows elected members to avoid direct accountability
for their decisions, increases political party control and allows special interests to dominate party nominations.

It also has not been proven to do many of the things its proponents claim — it does not increase the ability of third parties and independents to get elected, and it is not truly proportional in guaranteeing that each party will get the number of seats in the Legislature equivalent to the percentage of votes they received.
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Without question, the Canadian people should be allowed to vote in a national referendum on a clear electoral reform question, but only after a good period to allow for a sufficient informed debate.

Electoral reform has also been rejected by 64 percent of voters in P.E.I., and it’s not clear that New Brunswick will proceed with their planned 2008 referendum. According to the
Globe and Mail
, “Basic though it is, electoral reform is one of those Important Topics That Cause Eyes to Glaze Over.”
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Perhaps, but polls repeatedly show that Canadians are in favour of proportional representation. Clearly, what is needed is strong political leadership on the issue. However, anyone waiting for Stephen Harper or Stéphane Dion to provide such leadership is going to be bitterly disappointed, unless citizens across the country apply a great deal of well-organized pressure.

Briefly, let’s look at the October 2007 provincial election in Ontario, where Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals won two-thirds of the seats in the election with only 42 percent of the vote, “a resounding victory” according to some in the press. Meanwhile, only 37 percent of voters supported the mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) system recommended by the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly, which had met regularly for eight months before bringing forward the suggested reforms. More than 1.5 million Ontarians voted for the MMP in what the press called “a resounding defeat.”

What happened? It’s not difficult to explain. Many, if not most, didn’t understand what they were being asked to vote about. The public
education program was totally inadequate. The
Globe and Mail
’s Roy MacGregor put it this way just before the election: “Half of Ontario voters don’t know about the proposals. Just ask a few people in a shopping mall. Shrugs. Embarrassment.”
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Larry Gordon of Fair Vote Canada called the public education campaign “pathetically inadequate” and pointed out that more people voted for MMP than for three of the four major parties. He also pointed out that if there was a vote among those aged 18 to 24, the MMP referendum would have easily exceeded the threshold required for approval.

The results from all of this were déjà vu all over again. The 58 percent of voters who voted against the McGuinty government received only a third of the legislative seats. The voter turnout of 52.7 percent was the lowest in Ontario’s history.

It’s worth mentioning that critics of proportional representation constantly complain that it would result in minority governments. Yet in all the federal elections going all the way back to 1921, only four times was a majority government elected with a majority of the vote.

Lastly, on the topic of electoral reform, it should be remembered that even though Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty promised back in 2004 that “decisions must be perceived to be beyond the influence of political contributors,” this is the province where individual donations of up to $16,800 were allowed in the 2007 election.

40

WOMEN IN CANADA

GOOD NEWS AND BAD

H
OW
do women in Canada compare with women in other countries when it comes to disparities between the sexes in human development? There are two conflicting lists.

In one, the UN’s Gender-related Development Index, Canada comes fourth in a list of 140 countries, behind only Iceland, Norway, and Australia.
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Of the other G7 countries, France is 7th, the United Kingdom 10th, Japan 13th, the United States 16th, Italy 17th, and Germany 20th. But in a second list, the annual World Economic Forum ranking of gender equality, Canada is down in 18th place, far behind all the Scandinavian countries but well ahead of the United States, which is in 31st place.
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When it comes to politics, as we shall see, Canada’s performance can best be described as awful.

First, though, let’s look at women in Canadian universities. In the 2004/2005 academic year, there were 585,200 women students registered (58 percent of total registrations), compared to only 429,000 men. In master’s programs, women accounted for 53 percent of enrolment, but for only 47 percent of doctorate registrations.
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Women now make up the majority of students in medicine, law, in the arts, in the sciences, and in physical and life sciences technologies, but only about one quarter of those enrolled in architecture and engineering.

While Canada does quite well in the ratio of female to male students
when all forms of post-secondary education are included, 10 countries have a higher ratio: Norway, Iceland, Sweden, the United States, Denmark, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Slovenia, Barbados, and, somewhat surprisingly, Kuwait.

In eight OECD countries — Canada, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, and the United States — the educational attainment of females aged 25 to 64, measured by the number of years of schooling, is higher than that of men. In Canada, in 2006, 29.9 percent of females had a post-secondary certificate or diploma, exactly the same percentage as males.

Females are now more likely to complete upper secondary education than males in almost every OECD country. Today, only in Turkey are graduation rates for females below those for males.
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In 1990/1991, only 19.6 percent of full-time university faculty in Canada were women, and only 7.6 percent were full professors. By 2002/2003, these numbers improved, but only to 29.9 percent and 17.2 percent, and while they are still far too low, they continue to improve. Since the mid-1980s, however, full-time female professors in Canada have earned some $5,000 less than their male counterparts, an improvement over the 1960s, when the gap was $10,000 to $15,000.
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According to Statistics Canada,

A woman with a university degree in 1977 earned $1.88 for each dollar earned by a woman with a high school diploma. The corresponding ratio for men was $1.63.

By 2003, women with a university degree earned $2.73 for every dollar earned by those with a high school diploma. The corresponding ratio for men was $2.13.

Between 1993 and 2003 the university premium for women was 22% higher than for men.

In 1977, there were four people attending universities from families in the top fifth of the income distribution for every person attending from the bottom fifth. By 2003, this ratio had fallen to only 1:6 for women and to 2:7 for men.
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Today, the number of females graduating from law schools in Canada is some 50 percent higher than the number of males, and some 57 percent of students in the first year at medical school at the University of British Columbia are female, as are 60 percent at the University of Toronto and some 75 percent at the University of Montreal. In fact, in 14 of 17 Canadian universities, there are more women than men in medicine. This is quite a change from 1970, when only about 18 percent were women.

In 2004, 34 percent of doctors in Canada were women, somewhat below the OECD average of 38 percent. Of the 30 OECD countries, only Switzerland, Austria, the United States, Luxembourg, Iceland, and Japan had lower percentages of female physicians. The Slovak Republic was the highest at 57 percent, followed by Finland, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, all above 50 percent. The Nordic average was 42.5 percent, the United States was at only 23.4 percent females.

In 1976, only 42 percent of Canadian women aged 15 and over were part of the paid workforce. By 2006, the percentage had increased to over 62 percent. This percentage of females who were in the Canadian labour force in 2006 compares with the OECD average of 62.8 percent, but it is well below the rate for the Nordic countries: Denmark at 75 percent, Norway 75.4 percent, and Sweden 75.6 percent. Canada’s rate of female labour force participation is lower than the G7 average of 66.6 percent and slightly below the EU15 average of 63 percent.

In comparison, the proportion of men who were in the labour force in 2006 was 72.5 percent. Statistics Canada reports that in 2006 almost two-thirds of all the employment gains were among adult women, and the proportion of women aged 25 and over who were working hit a record high in December 2006, bringing their unemployment rate to a 30-year low of 6.1 percent compared to 6.5 percent for men.
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