17 Responses for "NDP denied voters proportional representation in 1980"

1. macadavy October 1st, 2008 at 2:37 pm 1

   Helloooo? Anybody home?
   It is simple courtesy, when you quote someone as extensively as you did, to give them credit:
   SOURCES PLEASE!

2. southernontarioan October 1st, 2008 at 2:51 pm 2

   *That* is depressing! I would have expected something like that from Layton, but I really thought more of Broadbent.

3. Eric Smith October 1st, 2008 at 3:04 pm 3

   Here’s the full article, from the Winnipeg Free Press.

4. mushroom October 1st, 2008 at 3:20 pm 4

   In the 1980s, the NDP was primarily a Western Canadian party. While Broadbent favoured proportional representation, a lot of his contemporaries such as Dave Barrett, Allan Blakeney, and Howard Pawley were opposed. To this date, many provincial NDPers from the West remained not convinced of electoral reform.

   Witness the MMP referendum in 2007. Northern Ontario went vehemently against it. Areas that Layton is heavily targeting in this election.

5. Jennie Dailey-O'Cain (NDP) October 1st, 2008 at 3:44 pm 5

   southernontarioan,

   Read the article again. It’s Broadbent who was for it. The rest of his caucus at the time (or at least a majority) was against it.

   My first thought: if they were afraid of LOSING THEIR SEATS, they didn’t understand how PR works! Grr.

6. Whiskey Echo (N. Van, not affiliated or decided... yet) October 1st, 2008 at 3:49 pm 6

   Well, every election someone proposes to FINALLY give this country PR, and after every election the public tends to forget about it and let the politicians off the hook (because they are politics-fatigued at that point). The real shame is that they do this at the same time as they complain about how distorted the vote result is. Perhaps what is needed is the public keeping up sustained pressure for it.

   BC will have a chance to – the provincial election will be next spring, and PR will once again be on the ballot.

7. Chrystal Ocean (Green) October 1st, 2008 at 4:14 pm 7

   Sorry folks. I’d forgotten to add the link to the column. Done now.

8. Chrystal Ocean (Green) October 1st, 2008 at 4:24 pm 8

   BTW, macadavy, it was an oversight, fer #@!* sake. Be nice.

   I was so incensed by the content of that column – and had to rush out the door, to boot – that I plain forgot.

9. David October 1st, 2008 at 4:47 pm 9

   Hard to believe that something like this remained hidden for this long. Political secrets rarely last until the next election.

   I found the article itself quite obnoxious. It quotes an English professor and a historian with diatribes against the horrors of a Conservative government. I assume that is because the author couldn’t find any political scientists willing to say such stupid things in public.

   Since when are the opinions of english and history professors legitimate ‘expert’ commentary on political matters?

10. Nicolas October 1st, 2008 at 7:59 pm 10

    Maybe we should push more for PR as they’re saying in the article.

    What if the bloc teamed up with NDP and the Greens for PR. Someone would have to lobby the Bloc about it. The other parties would agree.

    This is lame; maximum 40% decide to vote conservative. But we have to count the 65% or so parcipating in the election. So the majority is clearly against the right wings. Let’s kick them out!

11. hosertohoosier October 1st, 2008 at 10:15 pm 11

    “This is lame; maximum 40% decide to vote conservative. But we have to count the 65% or so parcipating in the election. So the majority is clearly against the right wings. Let’s kick them out!”

    1. By that standard no party can form government.
    2. 36-40% of Canadians have the Conservatives as their first choice. However, for about 20% of Canadians that don’t vote Conservative, the CPC is their second choice. Indeed many of those voting Liberal are conservative (think of the Liberal MP’s that opposed gay marriage, for instance) You do not have sufficient data to say that the CPC is not the pareto optimal choice.
    3. It is not clear that people would vote the same way under PR – you could easily have the emergence of new parties.

12. paulalex October 2nd, 2008 at 8:11 am 12

    The Bloc will never support PR because they always do much better with FPTP.

13. Dave Fluri (Non-Partisan) October 2nd, 2008 at 10:13 am 13

    I’m always skeptical of an explosive story, solely attributed to unnamed sources, right in the middle of an election campaign.

14. Whiskey Echo (N. Van, unaffiliated Canadian nationalist) October 3rd, 2008 at 10:38 pm 14

    Paulalex is probably right about the BQ not supporting it; but aside from that, PR draws support from across the whole political spectrum.

15. macadavy October 4th, 2008 at 11:11 am 15

    Apologies, Chrystal Ocean, if I came on too strong!
    I guess it was my frustration at not being able to access the full article.
    (And, full disclosure, I’m a Dipper who was incensed by the perceived slight to a man right up there with Tommy Douglas on my personal Top Ten Greatest Canadians List) Pax, OK?

16. Whiskey Echo (N. Van, unaffiliated Canadian nationalist) October 5th, 2008 at 5:49 pm 16

    One thing to note about the NDP though – in 1980, the NDP was largely a western-based regional party. Rural battles were mainly NDP-PC, the Liberals few western seats in that era were in urban places (Vancouver, Victoria). When Reform came up, they oddly enough stole a lot of NDP rural votes. Anyways, bottom line is, in those days the NDP would have benefitted from the effects of FPTP which favour regional-based parties like Reform and the BQ, so therefore their opposition to PR would be more “normal” then compared to now.

17. Stephen LaFrenie November 1st, 2008 at 6:12 am 17

    “According to well-placed sources, Broadbent said he would take the proposal to his caucus. The answer was no. Broadbent told the prime minister NDP MPs were afraid of losing their seats. Trudeau declined to forge ahead alone.”

    Using just a rough idea of PR based on the percentage of the vote in that 1980 election the seats would have been something similar to this.

    124 seats Liberal
    53 NDP
    90 PC
    liberal PC NDP
    Seats won 147 103 32
    Seat change +33 -33 +6
    Popular vote 44.34% 32.45% 19.77%
    Swing +4.23% -3.44% +1.89%

    I’d say the article references are simply liberal nonsense. Pierre Trudeau had no intentions of endorsing any form of PR that would reduce his hold on power. We’re being asked to believe in this section of the article that Pierre Trudeau wanted to introduce a system that would certainly reduce the number of seats he could capture in the next election and that the NDP which would have gained more seats which would have been obvious (even if they only had a rudimentary understanding of PR) said no.

    The article then claims that although the liberals and Trudeau had a majority government it was solely the fault of the NDP who had the fewest seats in the house. Trudeau could have changed the system anytime he wanted. Why didn’t he? Why didn’t he consult with the PC? Why don’t these ‘high placed sources’ talk about that since they obviously are party to private conversations at the time?

    The real story is that Trudeau offered Broadbent a cabinet post in order to have at least one person in cabinet who spoke for western Canadians and wasn’t a conservative. A ‘token’ MP that wouldn’t have enough clout to sway cabinet. Mr. Boadbent has talked about this offer publicly and stated that he couldn’t in good conscience take a solo position in the cabinet and instead asked that Trudeau take six NDP MPs into government positions to form a real coalition. Trudeau refused.

    Yes it is true that NDP provincial governments have no intention of surrendering FPTP wins in jurisdictions that they hold regular power. The federal NDP is in no hurry to change the system but at least introduced a motion for it to be studied in the Martin government. The liberals consistently reject any notion of electoral reform as do the conservatives. NDP bashing based on falsehoods won’t get us closer to electoral reform.

    http://archives.cbc.ca/emissions/emission.asp?page=1&IDLan=1&IDEmission=729&IDClip=10669

    “Shortly after the election Trudeau took an unusual step and offered Broadbent a post in the Cabinet. The Liberals had just one MP west of Ontario and they desperately needed support from the NDP-rich West if they were going to expand their energy policy and bring home the Canadian Constitution.
    • Broadbent wasn’t interested. “They didn’t need us in terms of numbers,” Broadbent told his biographer. “Accepting Cabinet posts under those circumstances presented no long-term advantage to the party.”