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Time to Repair Our ‘Damaged’ Democracy: Stephane Dion

November 5, 2015

Time to Repair Our ‘Damaged’ Democracy: Stephane Dion

New foreign affairs minister, a long-time vote reform advocate, dishes on fixing our system.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s choice to represent Canada on the world stage, Stephane Dion, will have his work cut out for him promoting the Liberals’ brand of democracy as foreign affairs minister.

The former party leader and 19-year veteran MP said protecting democracy at home continues to worry him, too.

“We have been elected to change the policies of the country,” the Saint-Laurent MP said in an interview with The Tyee yesterday, “but also to change the way these policies are decided — the process by which we may improve our democratic practices in Canada, our Parliamentary democracy and our democracy in general… a democracy that has been damaged over the last 10 years.”

Today, Dion was handed the high-profile foreign affairs portfolio at a swearing-in ceremony in Ottawa.

Maryam Monsef, an Afghan refugee who at 30 became one of Canada’s youngest-ever MPs* after winning jailed Conservative Dean Del Mastro’s seat, became the country’s first Minister of Democratic Institutions.

But as the federal Liberals’ long-time critic for democratic reform, Dion will likely be sought out for advice and remain connected at least behind-the-scenes to the electoral reform file.

He has extensively studied alternative voting systems used around the world, most prominently various types of proportional representation that attempt to align popular vote with the number of seats in Parliament. But which alternative to choose has long divided electoral change advocates, and that’s the task ahead for Trudeau’s promised parliamentary committee tasked with recommending reforms.

In fact, Dion has invented his own personal voting system he’s dubbed “P3” — proportional-preferential-personalized vote. In a nutshell, rather than one MP per riding, he proposed there be five in much larger ridings than today. Voters would rank parties in order of preference; then rank the five candidates put forward by their chosen party.

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