by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

What do you call the place where the party that gets the second most votes has, on three occasions, formed a majority government? What do you call a place where many citizens have stopped voting because they consider their local results a foregone conclusion? What do you call a place where one party can attract a significant chunk of the popular vote and yet still go totally unrepresented in the legislature?

Why, Quebec, by gosh.

After decades of widespread grumbling, a government-organized Estates General on the Reform of Democratic Institutions was convened a few months back and after much jaw-wagging, the results are in. If Sunday’s votes were anything to go by, Quebecers overwhelmingly want more proportional representation, a system that would see the number of seats held by a party in the National Assembly determined by its proportion of the popular vote.

The by-invitation-only Estates General was almost totally ignored by the English media, except for the occasional portrayal of the affair as an elitist government make-work project for friends. And those who never bought into the exercise include Fo Niemi, the executive director of the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations (CRARR).

“The whole process completely left out issues affecting ethno-cultural communities. It was like a semantic omission and neglect of what’s such an obvious reality of Montreal and Quebec,” says Niemi. “There were some last-minute additions to the program, but they weren’t thought out properly.”

Niemi would like to see the system promote the presence of more ethnic minorities in the legislature. Right now, minorities often run as “kamikaze candidates in places where they don’t have any real chance to be elected,” says Niemi, who also considers the Estates General a wasted opportunity to recommend a reform that would welcome non-citizens, such as landed immigrants, into the electoral system. Currently such residents don’t have the right to vote, work in elections or donate to political parties.

“We have 100,000 people of adult age whose political liberties are severely limited,” says Niemi. He also criticizes the Estates General for totally ignoring the province’s largest minority. “Women, youth, aboriginals [and] ethnic communities are all in there, but anglophones aren’t mentioned anywhere.”

Niemi was also saddened that the approximately 800 delegates failed to endorse a proposal to lower the voting age to 16. “Youth under 18 still have needs, they still consume education and social services, but still don’t have the rights to what courts call effective representation,” he says.

Pluralism voiceless

But for others, the closing of the Estates General on Sunday brought out some good news. Veteran political activist Paul Cliche rejoiced that 90 per cent of those casting votes Sunday recommended proportional representation. “For 30 years I’ve been agitating on this issue,” says Cliche, who authored a 200-page text recommending the voting system in 1999. “The current majority-rule system is now only used by four major countries, the U.S., U.K., India and Canada, and even the U.K. has put proportional representation in Scotland, Wales and London. The current system is too generous to the winning parties. In 1944, 1966 and 1998 it put the second largest party in power in Quebec. When you’re for justice, you’ve got to recognize that this isn’t democratic.”

The current system also muffles the voices of other smaller parties, he points out. “We have a pluralistic society, so it’s normal that certain ideas like those promoted by ecologists, or those who are anti-globalization, should be heard in parliament.”

Cliche also nominally supports a presidential system in provincial politics, where a premier would be elected directly. A motion recommending that change was rejected by 53 per cent of those casting ballots at the Estates on Sunday.

Big labour also likes the presidential system. “We think it might be interesting to have the premier elected by all Quebecers rather than being voted in by their party,” says Arthur Sandborn, president of the Montreal Central Council of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux. The union also backed the adoption of proportional representation. “The current system creates all kinds of crazy distortions of voting patterns. We can’t have more situations like last time, where the party with the less votes has a terrible majority. What surprises me is that more people aren’t more up-in-arms over that,” says Sandborn. :