The Senate—No Solution to Regional Alienation

Canada has always been a highly regionalized country—the Maritimes, Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies, B.C., all with varying interests and economies and, with Quebec at least, culture. One particular complaint is that the country is run from the centre, i.e. Quebec and Ontario dominate with the other regions struggling to be heard. An oft-peddled answer to this problem is giving the provinces equal representation in a more powerful elected senate, aping the U.S. Senate.

This Made in America solution is a very bad idea. The elected part is good, the equality not so much. Equal representation of states in the U.S. Senate (two senators per state) has utterly corrupted American democracy.

Consider recent events. Most Americans voted for Hillary Clinton for president—they got Donald Trump. Over a period of six years in Senate elections, Democrats won the popular vote by more than eight per cent—but the Republicans control the Senate. Senators supporting Bret Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court represented only 44 per cent of Americans, but there he is, wearing the robes. The system not only corrupts representation in the Senate itself, but it also corrupts presidential elections, via the Electoral College, and supreme court nominations.

The problem is that the system represents states, not people, while democracy is for citizens, not jurisdictions. The corruption is best illustrated by the ridiculous fact that a voter in Wyoming (population 578,000) enjoys roughly 70 times more influence in the Senate than a voter in California (population 39.6 million). A majority of Americans live in just nine states. They have 18 votes in the Senate, while the minority holds 82 seats.

The more densely populated a state is, the more it tends to lean left and Democrat. Furthermore, the more heavily populated states tend to have a higher degree of racial diversity. Not only are liberal or left-leaning citizens short-changed, but so are blacks and Latinos.

Most Americans want universal single-payer medicare, stronger gun laws, and a higher minimum wage, but they aren't getting any of these things. Addressing some of the most serious issues in the country, including reducing discrimination against minorities and dealing with global warming, is becoming increasingly difficult. And this is getting worse every day as large states continue to add population while the smaller states continue to shrink. It is hard to imagine how the U.S. can avoid a constitutional crisis.

There is no solution here for our regional squabbling. We might, however, look to amelioration by changing our voting system. Our current system, first-past-the-post (FPTP), aggravates regional alienation by over-representing parties in some regions and under-representing parties in other regions.

For example, consider one of the most regionally divisive events in our history, the Alberta energy wars. On a dark day in October, 1980, the federal government under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau instituted the National Energy Program. Many Albertans continue to think of it as ruining the oil industry of that time and it continues to reverberate in this province's politics to this day.

Under a proportional representation system (PR), this sorry business would probably never have happened. At the time, Alberta had no MPs in Ottawa, no one to speak for the province, even though in the 1979 federal election, the Liberals had received twenty-two per cent of the Alberta vote. Under PR, this would have put five MPs into the House of Commons. With five Liberal MPs, not only would Alberta have had a voice in the federal caucus but, considering Alberta’s importance in energy matters, one of those MPs would very likely have been appointed the Minister of Energy. (In 1993, Alberta elected four Liberal MPs, and one was indeed given the energy portfolio.)

No federal energy minister from Alberta would have tolerated an NEP like the infamous act of 1980. If an NEP were enacted at all, it would most assuredly have been much more sensitive to the views of Albertans. There would have been no day of infamy, no alienation.

Whereas FPTP aggravates regional alienation, PR would ameliorate it. And, for the icing on the cake, it would provide us with a far more democratic voting system in the bargain.