From Macleans.ca

I wish/hope that the final Ontario proposal does not leave it to party leaders and staff to rank the PR-elected members. Our leader-centric democracy already resides too much power over nominations, elections and parliaments in the hands of party leaders, we don’t need to hand them even more power over determining who gets elected. Canada is in bad need of restoring the idea that elected representatives owe their primary allegiance to voters, not to parties or leaders. An open list is better than a closed list, for it leaves the ranking of who gets elected in voters hands, where it belongs. -Rick Anderson (Fireweed Democracy Project)

I agree entirely. Which is why it is critical that the Ontario Citizens’ Assembly re-examine whether the 30% proportional seats are open- or closed-list (i.e. whether or not voters get a say in who gets elected) and whether those members are accountable to voters in a given region or not.

Regional MMP gives a rationale for enlarging the legislature — you aren’t just creating more seats just so that parties are fairly represented (i.e. get their fair share of the seats); rather, these new members introduce a critical missing scale of representation into the legislature — the regional scale. Suddenly, regional issues (i.e. issues that span more than one riding, but are not necessary province-wide issues) — like traffic congestion, smog, improving commuter service, regional tourism, urban and rural economic development, growth management, etc — with regional MPPs, these issues finally gain a voice in Queen’s Park. And far from balkanizing the province into regions, it ensures that all parties take into account all regions, rather than cater exclusively only to regions in which they are assured of getting the most votes (which is what our present system does). Thus, regional MPP is the key to looking after the overall interests of the province. Suddenly, Conservatives in Toronto, or Liberals in rural Ontario, or NDPers in London will have a voice in Queen’s Park. Their vote will help elect an MPP.

So why does the OCA model have province-wide closed lists? They were deemed necessary because up until the last minute the OCA was considering keeping all 107 local ridings (some argued to reduce this to 100). However, in the group sessions, they came to the conclusion, quite rightly, that you could have as little as 90 local ridings without negatively impacting local representation (as my 90-seat riding map clearly illustrates). They worried, quite rightly, that 25% PR seats wasn’t enough. And they also wanted to have the overall legislature at or below the previous 130 seats. So the decision to lower the local seats to 90 came quite late in the game. And the decision to have either closed- or open lists was not deemed important enough to include in the initial round of decision-making. I believe this was a mistake, because whether the lists are open- or closed is a make-or-break issue for most Ontarians who have been following the process.

What the OCA didn’t do is then re-assess the model’s other characteristics, including whether it was necessary or desirable to retain province-wide closed lists, in light of the new 90 local seats. Province-wide closed list is therefore a vestige of the early model that kept 100 or 107 local ridings. With 30% proportional seats *and* allowing overhangs, there is no need to have a single province-wide list as long as the regional lists are not too small. With 5 Southern regions (East, Southwest, Central, Horseshoe, Toronto), you get an average of 7.2 list seats per region (ranging from 6 in the East to 8 in Toronto and the Horseshoe). This is large enough to ensure women and minorities are nominated (min 5 is needed), but small enough to allow for open-list. Voters simply mark an X next to their favourite of the 6-to-8 candidates for their preferred party (a vote for that candidate is a vote for his/her party). It’s not complicated at all.

The OCA is right to worry that a single province-wide list may or may not be geographically balanced. So they considered rules to ensure it is. But they seem to have come to the conclusion that as self-interested entities, the parties will naturally have geographically-balanced lists.

But that’s an erroneous assumption. It assumes that parties are interested in appealing to all regions equally. Not so if a party thinks it can gain more votes by pitting one region against others (or simply by focusing its efforts in select regions). This is quite possible. For example, playing on the impression that the Ontario Liberal Party is too Toronto-centric, the PCs could very well decide that, on balance, they could gain more seats outside of Toronto than they would gain inside Toronto if they united a rural Ontario message against the Toronto-centric Liberals. And they would probably be right. At best, the PCs gain 7 Toronto MPPs under a 129-seat MMP model. They could gain a considerable more if they ran an anti-Toronto campaign. If so, they may well place only rural list candidates high on their list. So, here, the PCs make a strategic decision to favour rural Ontario over Toronto. Their resultant list members therefore would be very rural-centric, effectively sacrificing Toronto list MPPs in order to gain a larger number of party votes outside of Toronto. This is just one example of where a party might make a strategic decision not to run lists that are geographically balanced.

Others are equally likely — the Greens might decide that with limited resources, they will not direct any funding to local campaigns at all and focus only on getting list MPPs elected (indeed they would be foolish not to do this). Their most effective strategy would certainly be to concentrate on urban voters with a message that asks people to vote NDP or Liberal locally, but vote Green on the party vote. Their limited dollars will be most effective in urban centres rather than spread themselves thin across rural Ontario. So, their lists might have only urban candidates high on the lists.

So, it is naive and simply wrong to believe that parties will naturally take into account all regions (by ensuring top-ranked candidates come from all regions).

The OCA is begging the question of geographic balance for list seats because it feels that it has geography covered with local seats. Except, those local seats have only one member. So unless you vote for the winner, that local voice won’t share your concerns. A regional MPP, on the other hand, would. And that regional MPP could speak to concerns specific to your region.

I strongly urge the Citizens Assembly to take another look in the final weekend of their deliberations at the question of province-wide vs. regional list members and whether those votes are open- vs. closed-list. Not only is open-list and regional list members a far easier sell to Ontarians, it is a far better system — it’s more accountable, it ensures that all regions are treated fairly, it gives a rationale for restoring the legislature to pre-1999 levels, and, with overhang seats, it still ensures that overall results are proportional.