Is “Let’s build” turning into “Let’s build whatever the Prime Minister wants – and to hell with checks and balances”?

While the jury is still out, those concerned with Mark Carney’s Bill C-5, “An Act to Enact the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act and the Building Canada Act”, have raised some serious red flags.

As authors of the blog “Pledge for Canada” explain:

“Under the Building Canada Act (BCA), a Cabinet minister may on their own issue an order to write a national project into a schedule of the BCA – making it part of the law – and then go on to issue a document to authorize the project to go ahead subject to either no conditions or any conditions the minister sees fit.

This authorization can be given whether or not permitting the project would run afoul of any one or more of 13 statutes (and 7 sets of regulations under some of these statutes) already in existence and listed in an annex to the BCA – statutes such as the [Environmental] Impact Assessment Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Fisheries Act, and the Indian Act.”

Toronto Star columnist Althia Raj didn’t mince words:

— Toronto Star headline: “Mark Carney can’t be allowed to ram through his plan to build big”

“The Building Canada Act, is the type of legislation that Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper might have been too timid to bring forward, fearing a public backlash. It hands over sweeping decision-making powers to one cabinet minister in untransparent ways, gives cabinet the ability to delete environmental laws from consideration, and creates a dangerous precedent that should be looked at with a fine-tooth comb…”

Bill C-5 raises the question of whether Canadians want the Cabinet to be able to disregard laws – passed by a Parliament of democratically elected MPs – that they find inconvenient.

On this point, Andrew Coyne’s new book, “The Crisis in Canadian Democracy”, makes it clear who actually decides important matters: The Prime Minister.

In a democracy where power is already concentrated with the Prime Minister more than in almost any other OECD country, Bill C-5 may be part of a troubling pattern across the country suggesting that concentration of power is getting even worse.

In Ontario, under Progressive Conservative Premier Doug Ford, we have Bill 5, the “Unleashing Our Economy Act”.

Bill 5 empowers Ford’s Cabinet to designate any area of Ontario a “special economic zone”. Once so designated, the government can choose to disregard provincial laws passed by the legislature.

In BC, under BC NDP Premier David Eby, we have Bill 15, the “Infrastructure Projects Act. According to Ecojustice, Bill 15 gives the government the power, without approval of the legislature, to designate projects which will be exempt from environmental rules and to force local governments to issue permits.

In the words of Tsartlip Chief Don Tom, this act gives Eby’s Cabinet “the authority to override permitting and environmental assessments for projects they deem a priority. There are no clear limits. No binding safeguards. No commitment to co-governance with rights holders.”

Federally and provincially, we have a democratic system that has given almost unbridled power to one person (Prime Minister or Premier) to determine:

What’s in the “national interest” What’s a “provincially significant” project What’s a so-called “special economic zone” And then bypass the legislature to push projects forward.

As Stephen Harper aptly noted in 1997, our winner-take-all political system produces governments which can resemble a “benign dictatorship”.

And first-past-the-post is a big part of the problem.

By handing us false majority governments, first-past-the-post has enabled laws and conventions to be changed over time at the behest of whatever leader is in power. These changes have concentrated almost all the levers of power at the top.

In other words, when the electoral system gives one party or one person too much power, no surprise – they give themselves more.

Those rules and precedents carry on to the next Prime Minister or Premier, who is only too happy to ignore whatever their party might have said in their platform about walking some of that back.

When a government has a false “majority” as is the case with Ontario, BC and other provincial governments, there is often little anyone can do to prevent legislation that concentrates even more power with the leader.

Thus the voting system has the short-term effect of allowing governments elected with 40% of the vote to ram through whatever they want, and the long-term effect of making it even easier for their successors to do so in future.

The good news is: despite the last federal election pushing us closer to a two-party system, Canadians still elected a minority government.

Therein lies a crucial opportunity for those who favour a more inclusive democracy.

During the election campaign, Mark Carney told the media that he was personally open to electoral reform, adding:

“There may be a point where we’ve advanced on other immediate pressing priorities, particularly the crisis, that those more structural issues in our democracy can be addressed.”

Mark Carney also made it clear he would approach electoral reform very differently than Justin Trudeau, whose “my way or the highway” approach shut down the conversation.

Proportional representation, leading to coalition governments, could provide checks and balances to the PMO, ensuring more parties have a voice in crafting legislation.

With proportional representation, more Canadians will have a say about what’s in the national and provincial interest.

Let’s seize the opportunity of this minority government to build the strongest economy in the G7 – and strongest democracy, too.

The post First-past-the-post concentrates power at the top appeared first on Fair Vote Canada.

Fair Vote Canada 🗳️🍁 on Bluesky

A Crown agency built under an outdated first-past-the-post system just scrapped a visionary rail partnership with Deutsche Bahn, from a country that uses proportional representation.

When the system is stuck in the past, so are the decisions it produces.

Canada needs PR.

An e-petition will require 5 citizens/residents and an MP to be created. Once it is approved the petition can start collecting signatures. A minimum of 500 signatures is required to have the petition presented to the House of Commons.

The process is depicted here: https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/Documents/poster-e.pdf

Perhaps organization such as Fair Vote Canada can draft the petition and find an MP who will be willing to sponsor it (most likely a Liberal, Green or NDP MP). I will be willing to put my name forward if Fair Vote Canada can't find 5 citizens to start the petition (but I am sure they can).

Just a thought.

Pierre Trudeau saw how much of a threat first-past-the-post was to Canadian unity, and today that threat is more present than ever.

It’s time to honour his vision by implementing proportional representation.

It’s time to demand change.

#cdnpoli

First-past-the-post is failing voters. Distorted results. Polarized politics. The risk of moving closer to two-party system.

Join us for a webinar with Globe and Mail columnist Andrew Coyne and Professor Dennis Pilon to break down the problems with Canada's democracy and how we can fix it.

After the presentations we'll have time for Q+A, so bring your questions!

Thank you for supporting the campaign for proportional representation and we hope to see you on June 7.  

As we review election results, it is clear that fear-based voting accomplished the opposite of what voters wanted. 

In riding after riding, Canadians voted Liberal hoping to stop Poilievre.  Many of those voters would have voted Green but thought 2025 was the year to vote "strategically." As a result, Mike Morrice, the heroic Green MP for Kitchener Centre who was favoured to win, had many voters vote Liberal instead of Green, thus electing a Conservative. The same thing happened in Nanaimo–Ladysmith where the smart vote was Green, but guessing wrong elected a Conservative. I faced the same headwinds in Saanich–Gulf Islands where I had to plead with voter after voter that voting Liberal could elect the Conservative… The same fear-based voting decimated the NDP. This was an election where smaller parties were squashed in the two-horse race, as though we directly elect our prime minister.

Fear-based voting is driven by our perverse voting system called "First Past the Post." Justin Trudeau won a majority in 2015 in large part because he promised that 2015 would be the last election under First Past the Post.

It is not that First Past the Post is unfair to the Green Party–First Past the Post is unfair to the voter! We must not risk a Trump-like leader in Canada in some future election having 100% of the power–over both the executive and the legislative–with less than 50% public support. We can and must reform our voting system.

We are launching a grassroots cross-country campaign to force the Liberals to live up to their 2015 campaign promise, "Better Late Than Never!" And it means we have to convince them that the risk is real of a False Majority government in the next election. The Conservatives could gain 100% of the power with 40% of the vote. The 2025 election showed how unfair voting meant that thousands of votes did not count. MPs won seats with the narrowest of margins–one MP won on the basis of a single vote, eliminating the ballots of thousands of voters. It is only under FPTP that a prime minister can have total control without the support of most Canadians.

Historically, NDP governments in Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba all had the chance to abolish First Past the Post for provincial elections and never did. Even when Jagmeet Singh had the opportunity to include electoral reform in the Confidence and Supply Agreement (CSA) with Trudeau, he failed to do so. This is why the Green Party's commitment to ending FPTP is crucial for a fairer, more democratic Canada.

To launch this campaign, we need to raise $100,000 before Parliament resumes on May 26. It is an ambitious goal, but it is realistic. In Parliament, I will put forward private members' bills and table petitions, while working on every MP to sway their vote as the grassroots mobilizes to speak to every MP in their local offices.

If you believe in a Canada where every vote counts, please donate now and sign up to be a volunteer leader for your community!

Donate

Donate now to help us reach our $100,000 goal and help us build a better democracy together.

With deep gratitude for your support,

Love,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth May, O.C.

Leader of the Green Party of Canada

MP for Saanich–Gulf Islands

I don't know very well how the legislative process works, but to the best of my understanding, the last step involves a vote where we decide whether to pass a bill. A simple majority means it passes, otherwise it's rejected. This leads to an interesting (and possibly dangerous) dynamic where the government can be very different depending on whether or not the winning party has a majority. It means that when we have a majority, it can lead to what we call "tyranny of the majority". It also means that there's very little difference in how much influence a smaller party can have between having a single MP until the point where they can team up with another party to form a majority. It means that even if we get proportional voting for selecting MPs, we might still need to vote strategically in order to either ensure or prevent a majority government, or to encourage a specific coalition government.

Do we have any potential solutions for this? Or did I maybe misunderstand how things work and this isn't actually a problem?