By now, most of us have heard about Bridget DePape, the Rouge Page who smuggled a “Stop Harper” sign into the Senate chamber under her skirt and successfully displayed it before the Red Chamber for a good 20 seconds before being escorted out by the Sergeant at Arms. Ms. DePape’s display of civil disobedience has been roundly praised by voices as diverse as The Toronto Star’s Heather Mallick, Filmmaker Michael Moore, and 75% of my Facebook friends. Ok, maybe not THAT diverse!

As a non-violent protest, Ms. DePape’s stunt can be viewed as nothing other than a wild success. To her credit, she had a press release on the wire literally as it was happening and it was wall-to-wall interviews for four days. She reportedly missed her own convocation ceremony to deal with all the media requests. Unfortunately, presented with this outstanding opportunity to reach a national audience with her message, Ms. DePape overshot just a wee bit.

Quoting from Ms. DePape’s release: “This country needs a Canadian version of an Arab Spring, a flowering of popular movements that demonstrate that real power to change things lies not with Harper but in the hands of the people, when we act together in our streets, neighbourhoods and workplaces.”

Now while I have strong beliefs that our democracy needs work, I have no illusion that we do not, in fact, live in a democracy. We had a free election like 5 minutes ago. Ms. DePape’s call for a Canadian Arab Spring demonstrates, among other things, a monumental lack of perspective that torpedoes any credibility she might have had as an activist for real change.

Ms. DePape continued on this theme while speaking last week at an Ottawa march of about 200 people (perhaps not exactly the sweeping uprising in the streets she had in mind, but a solid nuisance to commuters nonetheless):

“The power of the street is greater than the power of any Parliament.”

So if I’m following this right, Ms. DePape seems to be suggesting that unelected street mobs should wield the true power and save us from the tyranny of the elected Parliament of 308. Who is being undemocratic now, I ask?

To be fair, Ms. DePape has plenty of company among the ranks of Harper critics prone to over-reaching hyperbole. It is not enough to simply disagree with the government’s agenda and present alternatives; Harper has to be painted as a ruthless dictator intent on trashing Medicare and marriage rights, public executions, soldiers on every street corner and gun shops where the abortion clinics used to be.

Mr. Harper, of course, is only a dictator within the framework that our electoral system allows. Ms. DePape rightly points out that 3 in 4 eligible voters did not vote for Mr. Harper’s agenda, but what is most notable is that nearly 40% didn’t vote at all! Instead of focusing on that point and asking why it is so many Canadians declined to engage in our democracy, Ms. DePape takes the opportunity for a little statistical misdirection. Fact is that there is no evidence to support the notion that those who stayed home would have been more likely to support one political party over the other. All we know is they made the decision to STAY HOME.

Is there a disconnect between the government we have and the government Canadians want? Darn right. Despite 6 in 10 voters siding with other parties, the Conservatives enjoy a majority in the House of Commons – a Harper dictatorship of sorts! But this is a perfectly normal outcome of our ‘first past the post’ electoral system – in the last 50 years only Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives governed having won 50% of the popular vote (1984). The juggernaut Liberal governments of Jean Chretien, for example, won their majority mandates with 41.3%, 38.5%, and 40.8% of the popular vote.

It seems to me if Ms. DePape is really interested in ensuring her generation is heard, the first step should be to get them to the ballot box, not into the streets. And if she is concerned that Canadians are not getting the government they voted for, she should be advocating for electoral reform that would deliver a Parliament more representative of the verdict of voters, not disparaging the importance of Parliament’s place in our democracy.

MK

There was something for all of us to be astounded by in the election just passed, whether it was the NDP surge, the Conservative majority, or the near-demise of the Bloc Québécois. But perhaps as much as any of these events may have been a shock to the system, perhaps above all else were the ways in which election data and discussion circulated to and among online communities during the campaign itself. Voter engagement may finally have found its public lobby.

Forty-eight hours before the polls opened on Election Day 2011, Angus Reid [pdf] added to our daily dose of public opinion. In most ways the results of this particular poll reflected the campaign’s most compelling media story: Jack Layton had risen to the highest approval among the five leaders (50%). He was in a statistical tie with Stephen Harper under the question Which leader would make the best Prime Minister? (29% and 31% respectively, followed in third place by “None of them” at 14%). Opinions of Harper, Michael Ignatieff, and Gilles Duceppe had plummeted by more than 25 points each, while opinions of Layton had risen by 40 points.

Layton may have been the only party leader widely supported by his own party’s voters.

But what weight should be attributed to this party leader question? As usual, and to our detriment, the media colluded to encourage us to think that, like our neighbours to the south, we elect heads of state when in fact we elect MPs, each of whom may (or may not) align her- or himself with a party. Perhaps at no time in Canada’s 144-year history has this distinction been more meaningful than in the recently concluded 40th Parliament when we were told, and apparently accepted, that “coalition” and “undemocratic” are synonymous. In fact, nothing could be more democratic in a parliamentary democracy than encouraging consensus and “meeting in the middle” between elected representatives, most particularly during a minority government.

In this election, once again, there seemed to be a misunderstanding that the party that gained the most votes, even in a minority, is the only party that may form a government. If this were true, we could would be trapped under a minority of MPs who follow a handbook compiled to derail consensus building on cross-partisan committees. This is why the Governor General may be asked to appoint a Prime Minister from among the other parties if he believes someone else will more effectively find the consensus necessary to form and run government.

Local media outlets would do well to place stronger emphasis on local candidates during election campaigns.

How can we gauge the extent of the effects of this deep, harmful, and pervasive misunderstanding about how our parliament functions? Consider the Angus Reid findings for the sort of government with which Canadians would be “Very Dissatisfied”: 44% said Conservative Majority, 30% said Conservative Minority, 34% said Liberal-NDP Coalition, and 42% said Liberal-NDP Coalition with Bloc support. Remarkably, each of these “Very Dissatisfied” results led its respective question over responses ranging from “Very Satisfied” to “Moderately Dissatisfied.” In other words, Canadians would be “Very Dissatisfied” with any of the four outcomes that were most likely to prevail by election’s end. Conservative supporters might regard this as a frustration that an election was even called, and others might regard this as yet another sign of dissatisfaction for a degraded parliamentary culture of spite, fear and secrecy. But how much could be attributed to voters believing that they vote directly for a Prime Minister by voting for a candidate to become an MP?

Is it possible that these numbers indicate a gap in comprehension that strangles parliament?

Compounding this distance between voting intention and result is an electoral system without proportional representation. Most of the polls we see during an election project a potential popular vote, not the potential numbers that will fill seats in the House of Commons. The distinction is important because what polls lead us to expect can determine how campaigns evolve, what issues are raised, and ultimately who we vote for (or against). Popular vote polls are not indicative of the possible voting outcomes in a system without proportional representation. This is how we can have a governing party (of any stripe) that receives only one-third of the popular vote. Ranked balloting, for example, addresses this divide as well. It is quite possible that the distance between the voter and the government compounds political apathy and disenchantment in Canada. Our votes matter less without proportional representation.

Of course, all of this makes for tepid social media banter. Or so we used to think.

As news feeds pile up with shared posts at the rate of spitballs, communities of friends form new communities of engaged (and enraged) voters. Our principles and objectives of Peace, Order and Good Government may make for dull news cycles, but the thrill of shared opinion and accumulated political knowledge is tangible.

This election was hardly an “unremarkable” campaign, as curiously characterized by The Globe & Mail’s editorial board in the final week. In postings and discussions on social media, voters, especially young voters, were starting to care. This engagement was being noticed. And this notice encouraged further interest. A few types of discussions ensued.

One set of these can be characterized as the “Preaching to the Converted” type in which users enthusiastically post partisan material to each other. With this type, dissent is often “shouted down.”

Another, more productive set, is the “Open Forum” set in which users post material, partisan or not, and facilitate sometimes heated discussion among commenters who argue for or against diverse views. It is in this second, more productive set the poster’s dual role of Facilitator and Debater is most obvious. Participants listen and learn from each other, even as they take sides on issues and party politics. A great many more may read and be informed by these types of discussion without participating. It is possible that this type of public engagement is on the rise. (A third set of postings seeks to discourage public debate by chastising those who fill up news feeds with political discussion.)

As polls, such as the Angus Reid poll cited above, are passed around, debate increases. An understanding of not just which MP best represents your views, but of how the electoral system writ large actually works, increases apace.

Social media promise to increase the public lobby at all levels of government. They offer immediate fora for dialogue that potentially builds engagement. The people have always had voices, but now they have an immediate and potentially wide-reaching means to practice using those voices more than once every four years.

But with social media-facilitated discussion may come a price.

Running for office was never meant to be easy, but who would answer the call to serve in the age of social media? Where once a well-timed news bite could scuttle a campaign, the repeated sharing of damning suppositions by distanced posters accumulates slowly into permanent traces. Where one might share an article about a party leader’s personal scandals online, who would stand at the corner and proclaim it in person? And who would run for office with a decade or more of posted traces ostensibly available for public scrutiny, indefinitely?

During this past election we witnessed great capacity to generating meaningful public debate and to put “direct” back in “direct democracy.” Where a new forum is available to current and future voters, how it will be adapted to reflect the public lobby may in fact define the tone of parliamentary discussion in the coming years, no longer the other way around.

RCW