POL 221 CLASS SCHEDULE 08-2

May 6 INTRODUCTION 

Organizational Meeting - no readings, no tutorials

May 13 & 20: THE CONSTITUTION

• Dyck, ch.2 & pp.409-414

Web Resources: 

See the results of Angus Reid's Citizenship Quiz. 

Connect to ITP Nelson's Canadian Constitution Page

Constitution Act, 1867 and the Constitution Act 1982
 

Lecture Notes:

The evolution of Canada's territory can be followed at maps available from the National Atlas of Canada; select "Historical" and then "Territorial Evolution."
 

Key dates in Canada's path to independence:

1867 - Confederation: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, & the province of Canada combine into the Dominion of Canada. The Dominion was created by the British North America Act, 1867 (The BNA Act); this law is now referred to as the Constitution Act, 1867.

1923 - Halibut Treaty: The first international treaty negotiated by Canadian representative without British involvement. The Halibut treaty was reached with the United States. The treaty was still signed by the King as Emperor.

1926, 1929, 1930 - Imperial conferences which established the political autonomy of the self-governing Dominions. Included in the agreements was one that the Dominions could chose their own Governors General.

1931 - The Statute of Westminster: provided that legislation passed by the Dominion Parliaments could amend or repeal legislation passed by the Imperial Parliament in London. The big exception was the collection of British North America Acts, which could still only be changed (for the most part) by the British.

1939 - The King declares war separately for Canada.

1949 - The Supreme Court of Canada finally becomes the last court of appeal for Canada, replacing the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London.

1982 - The Canada Act, 1982 passed by the British Parliament ends any further British legislative authority over Canada. It includes the Constitution Act, 1982 that provides the Charter of Rights and a Canadian process for amending the Constitution.

The formal Constitution of Canada is defined in s.52(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982.  The Constitution is comprised of 26 statutes and 10 amendments made since 1982.

The whole constitution of Canada involves all the rules, customs, and principles relating to the structure and exercise of government power in Canada.  The constitution includes all documents of the formal Constitution, as well as a wide range of other laws, judicial decisions, and informal rules called constitutional conventions.

Examples of important court cases on the constitution include the Supreme Court of Canada's decision on Patriation in 1982 and on Quebec separation in 1998.

Main principles of the Canadian constitution:

• democracy
• federalism
• parliamentary (responsible government)
• constitutional monarchy
• rule of law
• judicial review

"Constitution v. constitution"

The whole constitution of Canada comprised of:

• formal documents of the Constitution
• amendments to the Constitution
• other statutes
• judicial decisions
• constitutional conventions
• usages and practices

Formal Constitution described in s.52: The Canada Act, 1982 plus 25 other statutes and orders-in-council listed in the Schedule  to the Constitution Act, 1982.

52. (1) The Constitution of Canada is the supreme law of Canada, and any law that is inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution is, to the extent of the inconsistency, of no force or effect.

(2) The Constitution of Canada includes

(a) the Canada Act, 1982, including this Act;

(b) the Acts and orders referred to in the Schedule; and

(c) any amendment to any Act or order referred to in paragraph (a) or (b).

(3) Amendments to the Constitution of Canada shall be made only in accordance with the authority contained in the Constitution of Canada.

The two main constitutional documents that define the powers of Canadian governments are:

• The Constitution Act, 1867. This statute of the British Parliament created Canada in 1867 and set out the division of powers between the federal and provincial governments. Its original name was the British North America Act, 1867 - often referred to as the "BNA Act", but this was changed in 1982. 
• The Constitution Act, 1982. This Act created for the first time a set of amending procedures for the Constitution to be amended entirely in Canada. Until 1982, many changes to the then British North America Acts had to be carried out by the British Parliament. This Act also includes the Charter of Rights & Freedoms. The Constitution Act, 1982, was actually created as a part of the Canada Act, 1982. The Canada Act ended any further British legislative authority over Canada. 

Key words & concepts:

• Constitution & constitution
• constitutional conventions
• rules of internal morality
• rules of critical morality
• customs
• patriation
• preamble of the Constitution Act, 1867

Constitutional conventions are binding rules of political behaviour that are not laws. Conventions are also different from customs or usages, because conventions protect or enable a constitutional principle; customs are traditional patterns of behaviour with ceremonial value.

Traditional authorities, such as Eugene Forsey and Sir Ivor Jennings have argued that one should add to this definition of conventions wording that implies that they are considered binding by those to whom they apply.  Unfortunately, this ensures that conventions are rules of internal morality. Conventions need to operate as a rule of  critical morality if they are to bind political actors.

Traditional approach to identifying conventions developed by Jennings:

• relevant precedents, past events
• the statements of the political actors in the precedents reviewed
• what constitutional principle is at stake

But statements of political actors may be useful but not determinative because actors can be

• ignorant of the rules
• mistaken in their honestly held belief
• badly advised as to what the rules are
• knowingly false - actor may be trying to get away with something they know to be wrong

Past precedents can be out of date and not reflective of contemporary consensus of appropriate behaviour.

May 20 & May 27: FEDERALISM

• Dyck, ch.18

Web Resources:

Connect to the ITP Nelson pages on: 

• Canadian Federalism
• National Unity & Quebec 
• Aboriginal Issues 

Weekly News Item:

Lecture Notes:

Canadian governmental authority divided principally between the federal government and the ten provinces.  Other types of government exist but are created by ordinary legislation and not the Constitution: 
• the Territories
• Yukon
• Northwest Territories
• Nunavut (came into being April 1, 1999)
• municipalities
• aboriginal governments
the Constitution Act, 1867 provides a fundamental division of all legislative jurisdiction between the federal and provincial governments.  The original division of powers intended for most of the important areas of public policy to be assigned to the federal government, and mostly local and private matters assigned to the provinces. Canada originally had very centralized system of federalism, but has changed other the years because of: judicial decisions, changes in constitutional conventions, political practice (including federal spending power). Areas of concurrent jurisdiction: agriculture, immigration, and pensions.  Provincial law paramount for pensions, in all others it is federal paramountcy in event of conflicts between federal and provincial laws. until mid-20th century

Canada was described by some commentators as "quasi-federal", because of the subordination in the Constitution of provincial legislatures to federal government actors.

• federal cabinet has power of 'disallowance' - can veto a provincial law up to a year after it was enacted by the provincial legislature
• Lieutenant Governor can be bound to act on instructions from Ottawa to exercise power of 'reservation' - reserve assent pending approval of the bill by federal cabinet - or can reserve a bill on own initiative. 
• Lt Governor can also veto a bill by refusing royal assent - which is the final stage for a bill to be approved and become an Act (also known as a statute).

Canadian federalism has changed dramatically over the years, for several reasons:

• changes in political perception and practice: provincial rights movement, constitutional conventions grew to nullify reservation and disallowance
• changing importance of matters originally assigned to provinces: education and health care
• key judicial rulings on:
• position of Lt. Governors
• property & civil rights power
• trade & commerce power
• treaty-making and implementation
• Peace, Order & Good Government Clause (POGG) contained in the preamble to s.91 of the Constitution Act, 1867.
• Gap Doctrine
• National Concerns/Dimensions Doctrine
• Emergency Doctrine

fiscal federalism is a term to describe the practical federal framework that has arisen because of the financial arrangements between the national and provincial governments

• federal spending power - attaching conditions on grants to provincial governments in order to set standards in areas of public policy that are formally within provincial jurisdiction. The most important area of public policy where this applies to day is health care, where the federal government has set five principles the provinces must meet: universality, comprehensiveness, accessibility, portability, public administration.
• transfer payments of money from the federal government to the provinces are very important, especially to the poorer provinces; PEI's cash transfer from the federal government make up over 40% of total revenues for the provincial government. There are a number of transfer programs, but the most important are:
• equalization
payments were set up in their modern form in 1957. Equalization is mentioned in in s.36(2) of the Constitution Act, 1982:

"Parliament and the government of Canada are committed to the principle of making equalization payments to ensure that provincial governments have sufficient revenues to provide reasonably comparable levels of public services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation."

 

• Because the provincial economies differ drastically, the federal government gives "equalization payments" to bring the revenue raising capacity of the poorer provinces class to 95% of a national average. There is now a cap, so that no province that receives equalization payments can see their resulting fiscal capacity raise above that of a non-receiving province.
• The levels used to be derived from a basket of 33 potential revenue sources calculated for 5 provinces: Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia.  But this formula was changed with the 2007 budget.
• The base level is now calculated from all ten provinces. Fiscal capacity is based on personal and business income taxes, consumption taxes, property taxes, and resource revenues.
• The importance of how equalization is calculated is shown in the very different positions that Newfoundland & Labrador occupies in relative per capita GDP, 4th, and in per capita revenue capacity under the existing formula, 8th.
• A serious political issue has been whether to include royalty payments from oil & gas developments. With the 2007 budget, the federal government decided to include 50% of resource revenues in each province
• Another problem is how to handle decreasing payments to provinces that begin to enjoy economic expansion. Nova Scotia and Newfoundland & Labrador signed separate agreements to provide protection to their equalization payments that would otherwise be reduced dollar for dollar for the monies they receive as a result of offshore oil development. The agreements provide for a phasing out of this protection over a period of 10 and 12 years respectively.
• The federal government is currently reviewing the equalization program
   
• program funding - Canadian Social Transfer provides funds to provincial government for social assistance, child care and post-secondary education. The Canadian Health Transfer supports provincial public health expenditures. The CST and the CHT are paid out to the provinces in both cash and tax transfers. The provinces and territories are budgeted to receive a total of $52.2 billion in CHT and CST in 2007-8; $30.8 billion will be cash transfers and $21.4 billion will be in tax transfers.
• These program transfers are also subject to 'associated equalization' that adjusts the cash payments to provinces to account for the relative differences in value of the tax transfers.

As a result of equalization and the associated equalization of program funding, the total amount of transfers per capita varies from one province to another quite significantly.

The provinces and the federal government paint very different pictures about the extent of federal government funding to the provinces.  For example the federal government data shows over $6.7 Billion transferred to the BC government in 2004/5.  While the BC 2004 budget claimed it would only receive only $4.3 Billion.  The two figures equal 22.0% and 14.1% respectively of the total BC government revenues. The difference lies in fact that BC only counts straight cash transfers, while the federal government includes tax room transferred to the province.

Several provincial governments have complained about the "fiscal imbalance" between the federal and provincial levels of government. The government of Ontario  has set up a web site to promote its position on the fiscal imbalance. However, the nature of this imbalance is complicated by the decisions several provincial governments took in the past ten years to reduce taxes, while not reducing expenditures proportionately.

The three territories have their own funding formula through which the federal government subsidizes the costs of the territories public spending. Enormous web of federal-provincial intergovernmental relations includes annual first ministers' meetings, premiers-only meetings, federal-provincial ministerial meetings,  and countless meetings of federal and provincial officials dealing with specific policy areas.  The result is an effort to coordinate and even harmonize laws and policies; for example, although there are 10 provincial and 3 territorial sets of laws on highways and drivers' licenses, these laws are very similar across the country. 

Intergovernmental relations. The various levels of government maintain regular meetings for consultation and coordination. The prime minister of Canada now meets every year with the premiers of the provincial and territorial governments. A record of the various first ministers' meetings held between 1906 and 2004 is available in a (large) pdf file. This "federal-provincial diplomacy" extends to ministers and civil servants as well, with literally thousands of meetings each year on specific policy topics. 

The 2003 First Ministers' Accord on Health Care set a number of objectives for improving health care delivery in Canada, and created the Health Council of Canada to monitor the implementation of the Health Accord.

Many restrictions to trade among the Canadian provinces have emerged over the years, but some effort to ease trade was made in the mid-1990s. The result was the Agreement on Internal Trade negotiated in 1994. One major weakness of this agreement, however, is the lack of effective enforcement measures. 

In addition to federal-provincial meetings, there are many inter-provincial meetings held without federal officials. The premiers meet at least once a year, and these relationships are being increasingly institutionalized with the creation of the Council of the Federation.

A number of bilateral agreements have been signed between individual provinces over the years, the most recent (and quite controversial is the  Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA).

June 3& 12: THE CHARTER OF RIGHTS

• Dyck, ch. 19

Web Resources:

Connect to the ITP Nelson Canadian Rights page

Weekly News Item:

Key words & concepts:

• parliamentary sovereignty
• limited government
• civil liberties & civil rights
• legislative bill of rights
• the 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights
• provincial human rights acts
• entrenched rights - The Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms
• S.1 - the clause that guarantees and limits rights
• Substantive rights:
• Section 2 - Fundamental Rights
• Sections 3 to 5 - Democratic Rights
• Section 6 - Mobility Rights
• Sections 7 to 14 - Legal Rights
• Section 15 - Equality Rights
• Sections 16 to 23 - Language Rights
• Section 24 - Remedies
• Section 32 - Application of the Charter
• Section 33 - the Notwithstanding Clause
• most recent use of s.33 was by the Alberta Legislature in 2000, to exclude same sex couples from coverage in the provincial Marriage Act.
• an instance in which it was advocated but not used advocated came in a  Reform Party motion to use s.33 to protect laws banning child pornography

• judicial discretion in Charter cases involves deciding:
• scope & content of the right
• whether there is an infringement of that right
• in the case of a law, whether the infringement is justifiable under s.1
• using the Oakes Test
• what remedy, if any, should be given
• question of institutional capacity of judicial process for policy making
• judicial sovereignty vs. constitutional sovereignty

June 10: 

July 8: 

RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT & PARLIAMENT

• Dyck, ch.23
• Heard, Ch.3 (on Reserve)

Web Resources:

Connect to the ITP Nelson Canadian Legislatures page

Weekly News Item:

TBA

Key words & concepts:

• prime ministerial government
• cabinet government
• parliamentary government
• representative government
• Responsible Government:
• collective
• confidence convention (defeats on: 1. any ordinary matter the Prime minister says in advance is a vote of confidence; 2. defeats on broad measures of government policy - Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne, main budget motions, main Supply Bills; 3. any motion worded as a loss of confidence or serious censure of the government)
• cabinet solidarity
• cabinet confidentiality
• individual
• informational
• culpable
• anonymous civil service

For a good discussion of many issues concerning responsible government, see the Privy Council of Canada's 1993 publication, Responsibility in the Constitution.

See the federal Deputy Ministers' Task Force Report, Volume 4, Part 1, on Ministerial Accountability.  Please note that this is a large file (1,630 KB) and requires the Adobe Acrobat Reader. 

July 15:

PARLIAMENT 

• Dyck, ch.22
• Heard, pp.76-99 (optional)

Web Resources:

Connect to the ITP Nelson Canadian Legislatures page
 

Weekly News Item:

Lecture Notes:

With the centrality of the cabinet to how parliamentary government functions, it is useful to know the size of Canadian cabinets relative to their legislatures.

For an explanation of specific terms related to parliamentary government and procedure, consult the glossary of parliamentary terms.

A concise guide to how the House of Commons functions can be found in the Compendium of Procedure the Commons' Table Research Branch has prepared.

Key words & concepts:

• Canadian Parliament is technically comprised of the Queen, the House of Commons and the Senate.
• legislative process: Chart and explanation of how bills become law 
• charts on  the successful passage of government and private members' bills 
• royal Assent is culmination of legislative process that turns a proposed Bill into an Act of Parliament; Not all Acts come into force immediately, which may be at a set date in the future or when proclaimed by the Governor General
• Canadian legislatures vary in size and each electoral riding is significantly different from one jurisdiction to another. The House of Commons has 308 members and the Senate 105; Provincial legislatures vary in size from 27 in PEI to 125 in Quebec; BC has 79.
• caucus
• See: Sharon Carstairs' "Some Reflections on the Role of Caucus" 
• closure and time allocation 
• free votes
• functions of Parliament and cabinet domination
• Much of the work is carried on in committees, which may examine government spending estimates and legislative proposals in details, as well as conduct inquiries into specific issues in public policy: House of Commons, Senate and BC 
• Officials:
• Speaker
• For more info on the role of the Speaker see the summaries provided by the Alberta Legislature or the Canadian Parliament 
• See: Dale Lovick, "Re-examining the Mythology of the Speakership" 
• Clerk
• Further info on the role of a legislature's Clerk can be found in the  summary provided by the Saskatchewan Legislature. 
• Sergeant-at-Arms
• The Saskatchewan Legislature offers a brief review of the history and role of the Sergeant-at-Arms.
• House Leader
• Whip
• party discipline
• an example of party discipline came when Liberal MPs were called upon to vote against an Alliance motion that quoted from the Liberal's 1993 election Red Book; in a rare act of defiance, two Liberal MPs voted against the party line.
• party government
• Question Period

A recent debate in the House of Commons highlighted how Question Period can be used to hold cabinet ministers to account for their actions and those of their departments.  In 2001 the Opposition grilled the Minister of Immigration and the Solicitor General over the presence of an Italian Mafia boss in Canada, who had lived here for a couple of years before his arrest.  The issues at stake are: why did the government take to long to act when the Italian government had requested the individual's arrest? To what extent can the Solicitor General be held to account for the RCMP, which is supposed to act at arm's length from the minister?

• representation is problematic.  Different views on HOW to represent  (delegate or trustee) as well as whom to represent (whole constituency, citizens who voted for MP, political party, microcosm of society
• roles of Members of Parliament
• effectiveness of legislatures is related to how many days of the year they actually meet to conduct business.  Compare the legislative calendar for BC (73 sitting days in 2007, 71 in 2006) and the federal parliament (117 sitting days in 2007 and 135 in 2006).

The Senate:

• made up of 105 members: 24 for each: Western Provinces, Ontario, Quebec, Maritime Provinces; plus 6 for Newfoundland & Labrador and one each for NWT, Yukon & Nunavut.
• deference to House of Commons
• intra-state federalism
• reform:
• abolition
• adapted appointment process
• German model
• Triple-E
• The Harper government introduced Bill S-4 in 2006 to reduce the term of new senators to 8 years, but it died in the Senate.  The government then re-introduced a modified form of this  measure as Bill C-19 in the House of Commons in 2007.
• The Harper government has also proposed "consultative" elections for senate nominees; this measure was first introduced into the House of Commons in  2006 as Bill C-43, and was re-introduced in the next Session of  Parliament as Bill C-20.
•  1998 Angus Reid Poll found that 11% of Canadian favoured keeping the Senate the way it is, 41% favoured outright abolition, and 43% favoured some kind of reform.  A 2006 Ipsos Reid poll found that 44% favoured electing senators, 31% preferred abolition, and 25% wanted to keep the senate the way it is. In an important example of the importance of polling questions, you can see the difference when Environics asked in January 2006: "If the Conservatives form a government after election day, do you think they should or should not do each of the following? ...e) change the Senate of Canada so that future senators are elected?"  In the responses to that questions, 71% said senators should be elected, while 21 said they should not and 8% didn't know.
• roles for current Senate
• 'sober second thought'
• regional representation
• minority interest representation (originally included propertied class)
• s.26 of Constitution Act, 1867: 8 extra senators appointed in 1990 to allow passage of GST legislation
• some provinces have passed legislation to provide for elections of 'nominees' for senate vacancies, in the hope & expectation that the Prime Minister would appoint new senators from those who had won election:
• BC passed a law in  1989 to allow senate elections, but this is now "spent"
• Alberta has a Senatorial Selection Act and has held elections in 1989, 1998
and 2004. Visit the Alberta government's site on senate elections for more information.
• Gen. Stan Waters was elected in 1989 and appointed to the Senate in 1990
• Elections were held for two senate nominees in 1998
• But, Chrétien appointed a new Alberta senator prior to 1998 provincial senate election
• In 2007, Stephen Harper chose Bert Brown for a Senate vacancy in Alberta, as Brown had come at the top of the 2004 senatorial elections.

 

July 22: THE COURTS

• Dyck, ch.24

Web Resources:

Connect to the ITP Nelson Canadian Law & Judiciary and the Introduction to Courts page

Weekly News Item:

Lecture Notes:

Key words & concepts:

• judicial impartiality - a state of mind in which the judge maintains an open mind towards the parties and issues involved in a case
• judicial independence
  - an institutional relationship between the judiciary, on the one hand, and the legislature and executive, on the other, that allows the judges to act impartially
• three elements of judicial independence were described by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Valente:
• security of tenure
• financial independence
• see also the Supreme Court decision on how judicial salaries should be determined, in the 1997 Provincial Judges Reference which held that the government cannot negotiate directly with judges over their salary but must appoint an independent commission to make salary recommendations, and the 2005 Provincial Court Judges Association case, which held that the government may justify any variations from the judicial salaries commission but only my meeting directly the points raised by the commission.
• administrative independence
• there are also other important elements of judicial independence beyond those mentioned by the Supreme Court:
• freedom from informal pressure from politicians & public
• limited speech & political activity for judges
• A controversial issue is whether judges should be able to criticize other judges. Judge John McClung has caused controversy by publicly  rebuking Justice Claire L'Heureux Dubé of the Supreme Court of Canada for things she said in overturning a decision he wrote for the Alberta Court of Appeal
• several complaints  have been filed with the Canadian Judicial Council, which can hold hearings into whether McClung should be removed from the bench
• appointment of judges
• merit, patronage & public hearings
• removal of judges
• On what grounds should a judge be removed from office?  Who sets these standards?  What process should be followed?
• An example of a judge would have been removed if he didn't resign is Justice Robert Flahiff of the Quebec Superior Court who was sentenced in 1999 to three years in jail for money laundering
• pros & cons of ultimate control by elected politicians
• should the government be able to change the general direction of the courts by deliberately selecting new judges who have a particular ideological mindset?

July 29: ESSAY DUE!!

ELECTORAL ACCOUNTABILITY & ELECTIONS

• Dyck, Chapter 13 and Andrew Heard, "Electoral Reform"

Web Resources:

Connect to the ITP Nelson Canadian Elections page

Andrew Heard's Canadian Elections 2000 site.

Connect to the National Atlas of Canada's clickable elections maps for the results of the 2000, 2004 and 2006 elections.

Weekly News Items:

TBA

Lecture Notes:

Key words & concepts:

• direct democracy
• recall
• connect to Elections BC for information about recall in BC 
• requirement that 40 % of MLA's voters sign recall petition within a 60 day period
• referendum, plebiscites and citizens' initiatives
• recent  referenda in Canada on constitutional issues include:
• Quebec, 1980 - on sovereignty association
• Quebec and Rest of Canada, 1992 - The Charlottetown Accord
• Quebec, 1995 - on a sovereign Quebec
• Newfoundland, 1997 - on abolishing the denominational school system
• connect to Elections BC for information about initiatives in BC 
• 10% of all registered voters in each BC riding must sign a petition within a 90 day period
• if petition succeeds, a committee of the legislature recommends either the introduction of the bill into the legislature or that the draft bill be sent for an initiative vote. If 50% of the registered voters in the province, including 50% of the voters in each of two-thirds of the ridings across the province vote in favour of the draft bill, then the government must introduce the bill into the legislature.

• distribution of seats
• Electoral Boundaries Reference [1991] decision of the Supreme Court of Canada found that seats must not normally vary in size more than 25% from the average number of electors per constituency in order to provide "effective representation."
• every 10 years a commission reviews the distribution of seats across the country and recommends how many seats in the House of Commons each province should have, and recommends where the boundaries should be drawn for the ridings.  As a result of the latest report the size of the Commons grew from 301 in 2000 to 308 ridings for the 2004 election; Ontario got three new seats, and Alberta & BC each got 2.
• electoral distortion is the extent to which the share of seats won by parties does not match their share of the votes. 
• Nova Scotia's 1998 election was rare in that the three major parties won almost identical shares of seats and votes.
• most elections are not so free of distortions, the worst include:
• elections where a party won the most number of votes, but only won the second largest number of seats:
• Canada 1979 - Conservatives formed a minority government, even though the Liberals won more votes
• Ontario 1985 - Conservatives formed a majority government even though the Liberals won more votes
• Saskatchewan 1986 - Conservatives formed a majority government even though the NDP won more votes
• British Columbia 1996 - The NDP formed a majority government even though the Liberals won more votes
• Quebec 1998 - the PQ formed a majority government even though the Liberals won more votes
• elections where one party won an excessive number of seats, at the expense of other parties that won substantial numbers of votes:
• New Brunswick, 1987
• Canada, 1993
• PEI, 1988 and 1993
• British Columbia, 2001
• only a small minority of registered voters actually vote for the winning party in most elections. This is because a significant number of Canadian voters decide not to vote. Declining turnout among registered voters has become a matter of increasing political concern, although the portion of Canada's total population who cast votes has remained relatively stable over the years.
• electoral system reform has become an important political topic in Canada, with several provinces engaged in considering moving from the current single member plurality system to one of the alternative systems:
• majority systems
• proportional representation
• mixed systems include two different types of electoral systems for different subsets of seats in the legislature.  For example, in Germany, half the seats are filled by single member plurality and half by the party-list PR system.

In 2004 BC Citizens' Assembly considered whether the province should consider adopting a new electoral system. The Assembly decided to recommend that BC should adopt the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system; you can watch a Flash presentation on the whole BC-STV system proposed, or just on the counting system. The Assembly's report, Making Every Vote Count (pdf - 1.9MB) was released in December 2004. The recommendation to adopt a new electoral system was put to the voters in a referendum question at the May 2005 provincial election. In order for the measure to be acted upon, the government required 60% support across the province, including 50% support in 60% of the ridings. The referendum results fell just short of the main criterion, with 58% support province-wide; all but 2 of the ridings saw at least 50% support. The premier has since pledged to hold another referendum at the time of the next provincial election in May 2009.

The Ontario government set up a Citizens' Assembly in 2006 to investigate possible electoral reform. In its final report issued in May 2007, the Assembly recommended that Ontario adopt the MMP system. The recommended system will have 90 members elected through SMP and 29 will be appointed from party lists to bring each party's total share of seats to match their share of the votes. A referendum was held  in October 2007on whether to adopt this change, but it was rejected by over 63% of Ontario voters.

A referendum was held in PEI in 2005 about whether to adopt an MMP system, and it was reject by about 64% of voters.

FINAL EXAM:

Friday August 8 -- 12 noon to 2PM in AQ 3154