Advancing Proportional Representation in Canada

Full Transcript:

Introduction: 

The story of proportional representation in Canada is one of great hopes, changes in reform strategies, but also – unfortunately – many broken promises. So the country is still stuck with the outdated first-past-the-post electoral system at all levels of government. 

With Réal Lavergne I discuss the efforts of Fair Vote Canada to push for electoral reform. He shares the frustrations and problems that come with the first-past-the-post electoral system and how FairVote Canada tries to bring change. While most people seem to be aware of the defects of elections in Canada, to introduce proportional representation through electoral reform is extremely difficult. 

FairVote is at the center of this struggle and has tried many different tactics to implement fairer elections. Yet, several referendums have failed to gain a majority among citizens, also due to skewed incentives of political parties in power not to campaign for PR. As a new strategy, FairVote Canada tries to make political parties commit to citizens’ assemblies on electoral reform.

Réal Lavergne was President of Fair Vote Canada from 2016 to 2021 and is well versed with the experiences of advocating for proportional representation in Canada. Réal is an economist by training and got his PhD in Political Economy from the University of Toronto. 

His professional experience of 34 years includes university teaching, policy research, research management, policy analysis and management. Before starting to work as a volunteer for FairVote Canada, he spent many years in International Development, including many years at the Canadian International Development Agency.

I am your host, Stephan Kyburz, and this is the thirty-third episode of The Rules of the Game podcast. I am a political economist with a PhD in Economics from the University of Bern in Switzerland. And I previously held positions at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Center for Global Development.

You find a full transcript of this episode on my website rulesofthegame.blog. I am always curious to hear your opinion, so please send me an email to rulesofthegame.ddi@gmail.com. A great way to support my podcast is to leave a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. So if you want to do me a favor please rate the podcast on your favored platform. If you find my discussions interesting and you’d like to support my work, consider buying me a coffee at buymeacoffee.com and you find the link to it on my website rulesofthegame.blog. 

Please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Réal Lavergne.

Discussion:

Stephan Kyburz: Réal Lavergne, welcome to the Rules of the Game podcast. I’m very happy to have you on the show.

Réal Lavergne: And I’m happy to be here. 

Stephan Kyburz: As usually my first question is what is your first memory of democracy?

Réal Lavergne: That’s a very good question. You know, it’s always interesting to think back. Where did you get your ideas? I certainly didn’t get it from my family. My family was very non political, as good Franco Manitobans in the time, they voted liberal and they just voted liberal all the time. So they don’t have to think about these things too much. And then we didn’t do civics in high school either. I did run for high school council and I won. I was the secretary and then I took Pol Sci at university. But to tell you the truth, starting to think in depth about what democracy means and what it means to have an effective democracy, I didn’t really start thinking a lot about that until after I joined Fair Vote Canada. And the more I got into the problems with our electoral system in Canada, the more I appreciated what it takes for a good democracy to function. 

Stephan Kyburz: And so it’s actually interesting how you came to Fair Vote Canada, right? So you started as a volunteer quite late in your career and then you became president for the years 2016-2021. Can you share that story?

Réal Lavergne: Yeah. So I started working as a volunteer on a small basis in 2013 or so. I started out editing Wikipedia pages that had to do with proportional representation. That is the kind of thing I do. I brought a lot of professional skills to the job. I was a fairly senior civil servant, a lot of writing experience, I have several books to my name, I have a PhD, all that stuff. And that allowed me to get elected on the council quite quickly and then eventually to become president. I just got more and more involved. And the opportunity at that time to get PR in Canada looked really, really good, particularly on the federal side. And I figured that if there was a way for me to leave some sort of legacy, this was an area where I felt I could really make a difference. Fair Vote Canada is quite small. It only has one professional staff, a paid staff. So having someone like me to come on and say, well look, I’m actually prepared for the next little while to work full time on this cause, that was a big addition to their resources. 

Stephan Kyburz: So, what were your experiences as a president during that period? Before we go into the details of the institutions, etc. What was the topic of the time?

Réal Lavergne: There were several topics at the time. One of the things that one has to realize is that Canada is a federation. So we have governments at the federal level, obviously, in 10 provinces, three territories, two territories. And municipalities as well. And the interesting thing is in Canada, every single constituency uses first-past-the-post. It’s the only country in the world that uses first-past-the-post at absolutely every level everywhere. So that’s the particularity of Canada. What that means for us, for Fair Vote Canada, is that we get a lot of opportunities to engage. And in the time that I was president, there were three major, I mean really major opportunities to engage that presented themselves. And the organization Fair Vote Canada would shift its priority, its campaign efforts according to the priority of the day. And that was different all the time. In the early years, from 2014 to 2017 or so, we were focused on the federal level, where there were special opportunities there. Then we fought a huge referendum in British Columbia in 2017 and 2018. And then after 2018 there were some very interesting opportunities in Quebec and some of our attention went there, as well as in Ontario where there were opportunities. And Prince Edward Island. So we’re busy in a lot of different places – Yukon is another place that I could mention. 

Stephan Kyburz: Okay, so we may go into these different cases later. But first of all, I would like you to share what are the issues with the Canadian electoral system or with the systems at the various levels. If you talked to citizens, you know, how would you tell them that Canada needs an electoral reform?

Réal Lavergne: Usually what I will do if I’m streeting, or doing door to door, that kind of thing. So I’m dealing with people who may not know very much. I lead with the idea that we need to make every vote count and that’s, but that’s a difficult idea for people to understand. So in order to make it clearer to them, I explained that I come from a riding, it’s called Ottawa Vanier, that has voted the same, they voted liberal since confederation. And imagine how I feel as a voter in that riding, it really doesn’t matter who I vote for, the winner will be the same. Therefore, my vote actually is worth nothing, no matter who I vote for. I can vote liberal, but the Liberals are gonna win anyway. So even then my vote is wasted. I can vote for any other party and my vote is wasted. So people understand that fairly quickly from the perspective of a specific riding. And so many ridings are safe seats in Canada that the story is likely to resonate for them in their own riding as well. And then what I’ll do is I will explain what it would be like, how it could be different!? And I live in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, you know, and Ottawa has seven federal ridings. Now, imagine what would happen if you just took all of those seven ridings and you merge them together in one. Now, whoever you vote for, would increase the share of votes of that party? So if a party won 1/7 of the vote, approximately, they would win one seat. If they won 3/7 of the votes, they get three seats. That’s how it works. So you can see how in that case, no matter who I voted for, my vote would count to elect the party of my choice. So that’s the difference between first-past-the-post and proportional representation. It’s visible in two ways. One, you’re not using a single-member district anymore, you’re using a multi-member district, in this case a seven-district. And secondly, every vote counts to elect somebody of your choice, which is not the case at all under first-past-the-post. That’s the main thing. From there, there’s all kinds of ways that first-past-the-post manifests itself, that people can understand having to vote strategically, false majorities, concentration of power in one party, hyperpartisanship. People understand all of these issues and if you have a deeper conversation, they quickly get very convinced that proportional representation would be way better for Canada than what we have now. This is really a very serious problem, this problem of first-past-the-post. People just don’t understand it because we’ve had first-past-the-post forever. People think that’s just the natural order of things. But of course it’s not! We have proportional representation in almost every country in Europe. 

Stephan Kyburz: Yeah, exactly. And historically electoral reform has been on the minds of people in Canada, I guess? Or at least it was a topic throughout the years. What is the state now of electoral reform? Where does it stand now? 

Réal Lavergne: The big push for proportional representation in Europe was in the late 19th century, early 20th century. And that resonated internationally. So there was some of that in Canada as well. In Alberta and Manitoba in around the 1920s, they actually brought in single transferable vote in the major cities there, in Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg, that lasted for about 30 years. And there was a lot of talk about proportional representation even back then in Quebec. And federally, our first broken promise on electoral reform goes back to Mackenzie King who was Prime Minister after the 1919 election, who had promised in 1919 to bring in proportional representation, if elected. Well, that was our first broken promise. So it goes back a long way now. Since then, the big wave started in around the year 2000 or so. It started again in Quebec before that in the 1980s. But in the rest of Canada, the big wave started in the 2000s. 2000 not coincidentally, it is the year that Fair Vote Canada was founded. And it’s after that, that we had all those referendums and a lot of commissions and stuff. So the big years were the years 2000. What’s different today, I think, is that public awareness and media awareness is probably higher than it’s ever been because every time we run a campaign, whether it’s a referendum or a broken promise, the issue gets a lot of play. After every single election, people are looking in the media at the results of the election, the distortions which have taken place, and some of those distortions have been worse and more outrageous in recent elections. In the last federal, last two federal elections, the Conservatives actually won more votes than the Liberals, and the Liberals formed government, minority governments, but they formed government nonetheless. Because the Conservatives got way fewer seats. In the Quebec election, you had three parties in the last election, which got basically the same share of the vote, around 14% each. Out of those three parties, one of them got no seats at all, and the other two got way fewer seats than they wanted, but the proportions are completely different. In Ontario, the Liberals got more votes than the NDP. The NDP got 31 seats and the Liberals got eight with the same share of the vote. Well, actually the Liberals had a higher share of the vote. So, these are outrageous, truly outrageous electoral results and people appreciate that.

Stephan Kyburz: So at all levels of government, you have really disproportional results and this is probably discussed a lot in the media as well. Right? I mean, there is a lot of attention on those disproportionalities because it seems somehow wrong. 

Réal Lavergne: There is. Although, oddly enough, when we have electoral coverage by CBC, they don’t tend to focus on the share of the vote versus the share of seats very much. I find that’s unfortunate. Fair Vote Canada will put out a press release every time and the media will pick it up. But it’s not getting as much attention as we would like. But when it’s really outrageous people notice. And after the last election in Ontario, so this is 2022, last June for one of the first times, one of the major mainstream media, the Toronto Star, actually came out with a formal editorial calling for proportional representation. That was a first in Canada. 

Stephan Kyburz: And did that produce like a wave in the media – in the other media? 

Réal Lavergne: No, so you’ve got the Globe and Mail, for example, which hasn’t changed its position. The National Post, these are all papers that are headquartered in Toronto along with the Toronto Star. So the Toronto Star changed its editorial stance, which is very good. But no, the others haven’t followed up. As a rule, the mainstream media tends to be quite conservative. I think if you’re mainstream media, you’re threatened by anything that will change the balance of power in society. And that seems to be what’s happening in this case. 

Stephan Kyburz: And so there was this famous case, I would say, of Justin Trudeau committing to electoral reform and the Liberal Party announced that they would follow through. But then it was canceled or Justin Trudeau didn’t follow through. Can you explain what happened there? 

Réal Lavergne: Yeah, that was one of the most disappointing results. We’ve had a lot of disappointing results, but that was one of the worst. Trudeau had been very categorical: 2015 will be the last first-past-the-post election in Canada. He said that categorically, he said it many, many times. And after his party won power, he actually set up a special committee on electoral reform to study the issue. So, there was a lot of hope at that time. The consultations were the largest public consultations ever held in this country, with hundreds of thousands of people becoming involved in one way or another. Fair Vote Canada was a big part of getting people out to speak their minds on this issue. What happened is that, I think that Trudeau was using that electoral issue as leverage. It was part of the democratic reform platform that he announced shortly before the election and that helped to propel his party from third place to second place, and eventually to form a majority government. It was really something. And I think the democratic reform part of their platform played an important role in that, and that’s one of the reasons people were so disappointed when he just at some point just said: it was my choice to make. And basically he canned the whole thing. And it’s been very hard to get it back on the table since then. 

Stephan Kyburz: And what was the political economy? There’s the leadership of course, but there were also the parliamentarians, right, that have to support or on the other side push against it. Can you explain the political economy element of this? 

Réal Lavergne: Well, the first part of the political economy that’s important, is that when the Liberals made that promise, that was in June of 2015, they were in third place. They had come in third in the previous election. For the first time in history, they had come in third, well behind the NDP. And in June of 2015, they were still in third place in the polls, so they needed something to get back up. Nobody really expected that the Liberals would go from being in third place to actually forming a majority government, which is exactly what happened. What happens then is when you’re in third place, you want proportional representation because you’re gonna be getting less than your share of the seats. And that’s what was happening with the Liberals in spades. And in some places, the Liberals have basically disappeared because of that. In Western Canada, the Liberals have basically disappeared. But that’s not what happened federally. What happened federally is they made a comeback in 2015. And when you take power with a false majority, Trudeau was elected with 39% of the popular vote, but he had, I think 54% of the seats, a huge bonus, you don’t want to kiss that bonus goodbye. And secondly, you’re likely to have some opposition from your caucus members who, they got elected under first-past-the-post, if you change the system they may no longer get elected. Now, the extent to which the opposition of caucus members was an issue federally, we don’t know. That’s a black box. But there are other cases where opposition from caucus made all the difference. And the example to look at for that is Quebec, where we know that in three different instances in Quebec, a party that had promised electoral reform, got elected, lost the support of caucus, and then basically waffled on their promise. And in all cases it was a very solid promise. Three different parties, the party Quebecois, the Quebec Liberals and finally, recently, the Coalition Avenir Quebec. In three different cases, the government backed down on their promise to bring in electoral reform. And we know for a fact that the opposition was coming mainly from caucus. 

Stephan Kyburz: Right. And how did Fair Vote Canada act on that, how did you change campaign strategies or your work regarding those disappointments, both at the federal and the subnational level? 

Réal Lavergne: Well, the first response, for example, to the federal broken promises is of course to raise gain. We organized demonstrations on the hill, we organized demonstrations across Canada. The anger was manifested across the country. It was picked up by the media. It just didn’t change anything, unfortunately. The shifts in strategy didn’t actually take place until after the British Columbia referendum. Because very shortly after Justin Trudeau broke his promise federally, in B.C. an NDP government was elected. The NDP government had in its platform that if they were elected, they will hold a referendum on electoral reform. And again, it was a unique opportunity. They were elected with a minority, with the Greens holding the balance of power. And in fact, the Liberals in B.C. had gotten a larger share of the vote than the NDP. It was the NDP that formed government, and they formed government because the Greens decided to support the NDP instead. And one of the reasons the Greens decided to support the NDP instead is they were able to make a deal on electoral reform. And the Greens are always in favor of proportional representation because if anybody gets hurt by first-past-the-post, it’s the Greens in Canada. Unfortunately, they were only able to get the referendum. We all felt that in this case, finally we’d be able to win this referendum because the government that was putting it forward, in theory, actually supported proportional representation. Well, as it turned out, they did support it. Premier Horgan came out a couple of times at least encouraging people to vote for the Yes side. But again, on the caucus side, they were pretty lukewarm about it and they weren’t campaigning very hard. On the caucus side they stayed basically quiet. Whereas on the caucus side on the liberal side they were hostile towards proportional representation – for obvious reasons. The NDP and the Greens would no longer be splitting the vote with proportional presentation, it would be much harder for them to form government. And so you had this very nasty campaign against voting for proportional representation. And in the end, despite Fair Vote Canada and other organizations’ best efforts, we lost that referendum. And that was what really turned things around for Fair Vote Canada, that we need to do something differently, that we cannot trust the politicians on this issue, even when they’ve been friendly towards proportional representation, like the B.C. NDP. And at the same time we’re saying, okay, so number one, there’s a huge conflict of interest. The party that gets elected to form government doesn’t have any interest in changing the system that brought them to power. So there’s a clear conflict of interest there. And so what that means is you need to hand things over to citizens. But paradoxically, referendums are hard to win in this issue for a number of reasons that we can talk about. Is there a better way to hand this over to citizens than referendums? That was the question we asked ourselves. And the answer was right there, because in Canada, we’ve had experience with citizens assemblies. We had a Citizens Assembly in B.C.. It was the first Citizens’ Assembly in the world on changing the electoral system was in B.C. in 2005. It led to a result where we almost won that referendum. That referendum got approximately 58% support for the yes side. And then there was another Citizen’s Assembly in Ontario. So we know about that. And what Fair Vote Canada concluded was that if you want to engage citizens in this, if you want to hear directly from citizens, the best way to do that isn’t through a referendum because of all the easy ways that there are to abuse a referendum, but through a Citizens’ Assembly. So we’ve now basically changed our strategy. We don’t even ask for a promise for proportional representation anymore. We think that such promises are worthless or largely worthless, as we’ve just had the experience. So we’re asking to promise a Citizens’ Assembly and ideally not just one party, but get to collaborate with other parties and jointly call for a Citizens’ Assembly and do that before you get elected. And then if you get elected promise that you’re going to have a Citizens’ Assembly within six months and promise that you will act on the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly. So that’s a way to hand things over to citizens. It’s a way for citizens to recognize that they have to in some way recuse themselves from this issue because of the conflict of interest. And it’s a much easier promise for politicians to make. So many politicians, I just want to add one little thing here, so many politicians have been burnt now by promising electoral reform and then not actually delivering, that there’s increased reluctance to promise it but they can promise a Citizens’ Assembly. 

Stephan Kyburz: So let’s talk about the Citizens’ Assemblies, but before I’d like to still go back to the referendum. So what was special about that referendum was that the threshold for accepting the proposal was 60%, right? So it was higher than usual. 

Réal Lavergne: Yeah, that was actually, that was for the first B.C. referendum. There have been three referendums in B.C. and it was in the first one that you had this 60% threshold. I think maybe the second one as well, but certainly the first one and they got 58%. So very close. The most recent referendum was for 50%. And other more recent referendums have been 50% as well. I think everyone kind of recognized afterwards that 60% threshold was ridiculous. So that’s no longer the norm. The norm now is 50%.

Stephan Kyburz: And the Citizens’ Assembly in British Columbia, what was the process? So you say politicians commit to organize the Citizens’ Assembly once they are in power, right? And then the Citizens’ Assembly would propose different electoral systems? 

Réal Lavergne: Yes, that’s how it worked in 2005 in B.C. When the Liberals were in opposition, having lost to the NDP in a wrong winner election, they had promised a Citizens’ Assembly if they were elected, and they delivered on that. And it was a good Citizens’ Assembly by all respects. So they delivered on that. What they hadn’t promised was to have a referendum afterwards in the next election. So making sure you don’t get reform for the next election. But worst case scenario would be the election after that. And they hadn’t promised this, particularly the 60% threshold that was introduced afterwards. So the system was kind of rigged to avoid a win in that B.C. case.

Stephan Kyburz: And going forward, what is your strategy to make parties commit to electoral reform? Especially through the Citizens’ Assemblies? You almost need like a contract, so they actually keep their commitments, right? 

Réal Lavergne: Yeah. So, I mean, right now, our main push is to push the Citizens’ Assembly idea and to get that accepted as the new normal. This is the way that it has to be done. So, for example, in Prince Edward Island, a motion has been passed in the legislature to hold a Citizens’ Assembly. So that’s a big win. Whether the government will actually deliver, because it’s the opposition that got that motion through with support from all of the parties, but, you know, the government in power may decide to just sit on it until the next election. I can see that happening. In Yukon, we did the same thing. There’s been a push there to encourage the Citizens’ Assembly and there they have promised to organize, to start with consulting all citizens in Yukon about whether that’s a good idea or not. And federally, we’re pushing the idea of having a motion in parliament calling for at least to study the issue of a Citizens’ Assembly and that emotion actually passed. But then the election came in and that kind of threw things, threw a wrench in the works. So we’re trying to get that idea accepted. In Ontario, there’s a very special opportunity coming up in that the difference in Ontario with other provinces is that all three opposition parties – were talking about the Greens, obviously, the NDP more or less obviously, and now the Liberal Party – all have a very strong interest in proportional representation or some form of electoral reform. So, what we’re arguing is that all three of those parties should go into the next election promising a Citizens’ Assembly and promising to act on a Citizens’ Assembly if they’re elected. 

Stephan Kyburz: But there’s still the risk that the recommendations of the Citizens’ Assembly are not followed through, right? 

Réal Lavergne: Absolutely! There’s always that risk because constitutionally, it’s the government that’s in power that decides what the electoral system is going to be. Which is very strange because of the conflict of interest that’s involved. We’re trying to change that by saying at the very least, let’s hand the power to recommend over to a Citizens’ Assembly. That would be some progress. One thing that’s interesting to know is there is a Charter challenge up. We have a Charter of human rights and freedoms in Canada, which does refer to voting rights. And so we’re arguing we don’t have equal voting rights in Canada. And we’re hoping that the Supreme Court will pronounce itself on that and hopefully that the Supreme Court will say you have to find a way to hand this over to citizens and the Citizens’ Assembly would be one way to do it. Now, whether that will happen or not, or it’s just wishful thinking on my part, I’m not sure. But that Charter challenge is definitely going forward. It will be going to the court, the Ontario court first, in 2023.

Stephan Kyburz: And do you look to other countries for inspiration or is it more or less the subnational level in Canada, that brings the different movements, different strategies, that show the way to go?

Réal Lavergne: We look to other countries for two things. One is for evidence about the difference between proportional representation and first-past-the-post in terms of results. So we spend a lot of time reading and studying the literature. We have a document called “A Look at the Evidence” that we keep up to date as we accumulate more evidence and it covers all the different topics of good governance. And clearly the international literature shows that the results in terms of good governance are far superior with proportional representation. So we look to other countries for that reason. We also are following what happens in other countries in terms of electoral reform, of course. And also the setbacks in democracy. And one of the things that I’ve observed in my review of what’s happening in other countries is that countries that are suffering setbacks, and so the U.S. would be an obvious example of that, but also if you look to eastern Europe, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, all of those countries that have suffered setbacks, some of them have proportional representation, but that’s not enough, it’s not proportional enough. And what happens is you end up electing a false majority and the false majority uses that false majority to undermine or to improve the odds for itself, and in so doing undermining the democracy. You get setbacks and democracy if your system is not democratic enough in the first place, which I think is a very important lesson to learn. 

Stephan Kyburz: So maybe one topic that is also important is education of the people, right? So that enough political push is built up for reform. What are your strategies at Fair Vote Canada to educate people? 

Réal Lavergne: Well, we reach out a lot through the media. We use social media, we have door hanger campaign that we do. We’ve done in the last several elections, we’ve distributed hundreds of thousands of door hangers and flyers. But you know, we’re a pretty small organization. We only have one professional staff. All our funding comes through volunteer contributions. We cannot educate 35 million Canadians. It’s just not possible. And in any case you can’t force people to become educated. People have their own lives. They’ve got kids, they’ve got sports, they’ve got work and they cannot become experts on every issue. And that’s one of the reasons that referendums are a problem. And that’s one of the reasons that a Citizens’ Assembly is vastly superior to a referendum as a way of getting citizens input because with the Citizens’ Assembly, the people who participate do so voluntarily. They may be selected at random because that’s the way it works, but they still have to accept. They accept to donate basically quite a lot of their time over a long period of time to study the issue in depth, but to come up with what is a citizen’s perspective and not a vested interest politician’s perspective on the issue. So we believe that a Citizens’ Assembly is actually vastly superior to a referendum as a way of soliciting citizens’ input on this issue. 

Stephan Kyburz: Yeah, I’m curious to see how that way of bringing reform through Citizens’ Assembly, how that works out, because I’m more on the side of popular votes because I think it brings more legitimacy or you know, it’s a more powerful instrument. But of course it’s really, really hard to win a referendum on electoral reform and there are only a few cases, like the one in New Zealand that I have discussed also on the podcast, that was successful. But I mean, if the Citizens’ Assembly is a way to bring about reform that’s worthwhile to pursue. I’m just a bit worried that there might also be disappointment in the end. 

Réal Lavergne: I think you make a really good case. A referendum is definitely a good tool for educating citizens. It’s also a good tool for manipulating citizens. Unfortunately, you get a lot of miseducation that takes place. But that, you know, that’s certainly an asset of referendums, if they were well done. If a Citizens Assembly is well done and it’s highly publicized, then that can also play that role. And one doesn’t exclude that there could be a referendum down the line. Once people have had a chance to experience both systems, I think it would be much harder to mislead citizens because they would know how both systems work and would be able to vote accordingly. 

Stephan Kyburz: Yeah. I think also they are complementary in a way. It could be that the Citizens’ Assembly is a preparatory tool for a referendum, right? 

Réal Lavergne: Yes. And that’s what happened in B.C. and I think that’s one of the reasons that because the Citizens’ Assembly was widely respected, widely publicized in B.C., is one of the reasons they got that 58% result. You didn’t get that in Ontario because it wasn’t publicized. It also depends on how egregious the distortions were just before. So for example, if you were to do a referendum in Quebec right now or if you had a Citizens’ Assembly first followed by a referendum in Quebec, I think that referendum would pass because the results of the recent election have been as egregious as they’ve been. Similarly in Ontario, right now, I think the odds of a referendum would be better. But it all depends on how the referendum is done and whether it’s preceded by a Citizens’ Assembly. So at the very least it has to be preceded by a Citizens’ Assembly – a well done Citizens’ Assembly. 

Stephan Kyburz: So for people who would like to read a bit more about the case of Canada or also about Fair Vote Canada, what books or articles or documents would you recommend? 

Réal Lavergne: I’d say go to our website: Fairvote.ca, and browse through that. I think that’s the shortcut to learning more about proportional representation in Canada. I would refer people, you can look it up directly on google, or you can get it from our website, this little document that I spoke to you about earlier “A Look at the Evidence” is a very interesting resource document. It’s a reference document. It’s not something you read cover to cover, you know, but if you want to know about the international literature and what it’s saying about proportional representation, that’s a very good source. There’s a book by Dennis Pilon called “The Politics of Voting”. It’s a little bit old right now but that one is specifically on the Canadian case. So that would be a good source. And then the last book that I like to recommend, but it’s not specifically about proportional representation, in fact it doesn’t even have proportional representation in the index, is David Moscrop’s little book “Too Dumb for Democracy?”, which is really interesting in terms of understanding, really democracy at its roots. You know, what does it take for democracy to work? Given that we’re not always rational. So I mean that’s a really interesting question to ask and a valid one particularly in today’s age of populism and backtracking on democracy. I strongly recommend that book although it’s not strictly about proportional representation. It does recommend Citizens’ Assemblies, however. 

Stephan Kyburz: I definitely linked to those resources. That’s super interesting and, Réal Lavergne, thanks a lot for taking the time to discuss electoral reform in Canada on the Rules of the Game podcast, it has been a very insightful discussion. 

Réal Lavergne: It’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much. 

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