Lessons for Canada's Progressives from the French Elections
The Liberals, NDP, Greens and even Bloc Québécois should establish a one-time united front with the goal of immediately introducing proportional representation if elected.
This piece was originally published in the Tyee.
A much anticipated electoral victory for the far-right National Rally, or RN, was averted in France’s legislative elections earlier this month, courtesy of an informal, tactical alliance between the centrist Renaissance party and left-wing New Popular Front coalition, or NFP.
It remains to be seen if the NFP, which won a plurality but not a majority of seats in the National Assembly, will have the opportunity to try to implement its ambitious agenda of increasing taxes on the rich, lowering the retirement age to 60 from 64, building a million affordable housing units and freezing the prices of essentials, including food, electricity and gasoline. But the larger threat of a far-right government has been averted, at least for now.
While there are clear differences between the electoral situations in France and Canada, there are certainly lessons Canadian progressives can glean from the results in France. Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative party is a different beast from Marine Le Pen’s RN, but it’s undoubtedly drawing from the same right-wing pseudo-populist playbook that has made significant global gains over the past decade.
With Poilievre’s Conservatives riding high in poll after poll, the only way to defeat him is for the Liberals, NDP and Greens, and perhaps even the Bloc Québécois, to establish a one-time united front, in which the parties unite behind the single candidate in each riding that has the best chance of defeating a Conservative.
This progressive alliance must immediately resurrect Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s broken promise to implement electoral reform, with some variation of proportional representation to ensure that the next government, whatever its political stripe, governs with the consent of the majority of voters.
If they win, there’s no need for a complex and costly referendum. That’s what the election was for.
Time is of the essence
French legislative elections have two rounds of voting. After the first go, parties that earned less than the 12.5 per cent threshold are eliminated and voting occurs again. Between the two rounds, French progressives had time to get their acts together and block the RN from a legislative victory.
Canadian progressives don’t have the luxury of a runoff election to unite around. They’ve got one shot, and the sooner they communicate their intention to voters, the more difficult it will be for Poilievre to accuse them of subverting democracy by entering an arrangement to ensure majority rule, as Stephen Harper did when the Liberals and NDP discussed the possibility of forming a coalition, with informal Bloc support, after the 2008 election.
Yes, a united progressive front will mean that a lot of good candidates who have already secured nominations will have to bow out of running in the next election, but the longer the Liberals, Bloc, NDP and Greens wait to join forces, the more candidates will be disappointed.
If this one-time gambit is successful, future elections will have more local candidates, not fewer.
Press for proportional representation
While the NFP won a clear plurality of seats, with the ruling Renaissance party of President Emmanuel Macron placing second and the RN third, the popular vote tells a different story, one that calls into question the long-term viability of France’s centre-left electoral alliance.
Despite finishing third in seat count, the RN placed first in popular vote by a large margin, with 37 per cent of votes cast in favour of their anti-immigrant, anti-climate-action agenda, compared with 26 per cent for the NFP, 25 per cent for Renaissance and five per cent for a leaderless Republicans — France’s traditional centre-right party.
An informal electoral coalition is useful for keeping a particular party out of power within the confines of a winner-take-all electoral system, but will inevitably produce a long-term backlash and crisis of legitimacy if the party that wins the most votes is repeatedly precluded from winning the most seats.
The issue at hand is the first-past-the-post system itself, which is less rule by majority than rule by efficiency.
Like Macron this year in France, Trudeau gambled on calling an early election in 2021, arrogantly presuming he would be able to regain his parliamentary majority. Instead, Trudeau was humiliated with the lowest-ever vote share for a Canadian government, which, thanks to Canada’s electoral system, resulted in the Liberals gaining three seats.
In order to guarantee stability, Trudeau entered a supply-and-confidence agreement the following year with NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, laying the potential groundwork for a broader front come election time.
A system of proportional representation would guarantee perpetual majority rule by ensuring that every vote counts, regardless of where voters live, and that whoever forms government is able to play nice with other parties’ priorities and share power, rather than entering lopsided supply-and-confidence deals.
Proportional representation, its critics argue, would reward an extremist party like the RN, or the People’s Party of Canada, by giving them a number of seats that accurately reflects their popular vote.
But hang on a minute. Under proportional representation, an election’s winner is still the party best able to form a coalition constituting a majority of seats in the House. If the RN is invited into a ruling coalition, France has much bigger problems than just its electoral system.
New progressive leadership would help
One reason Trudeau has become so unpopular is his broken promise to ensure 2015 was the final election under first past the post.
Steven Paikin, host of TVOntario’s The Agenda, has suggested Trudeau dust off this broken promise as a last-ditch effort to improve his fortunes in time for the next election. It’s hard to see who would regard such a gesture as anything but naked cynicism.
Were the Liberals to resurrect electoral reform as part of a united front with the Bloc, NDP and Greens as a safeguard against Canada’s slow descent into a two-party system, it just might work.
This task would be made much easier if Trudeau resigned, allowing another Liberal to take the reins who hasn’t accumulated a decade of broken promises, scandals and international embarrassment.
Stepping aside would dull the Conservatives’ attacks on Trudeau as a power-hungry tyrant intent on keeping power by any electoral means necessary.
NDP Leader Singh has been tainted by association with Trudeau, via the aforementioned supply-and-confidence agreement, which has produced significant, albeit insufficient, gains for labour rights and the expansion of public health care. After seven years as NDP leader, Singh might also want to consider stepping aside for someone willing to offer bold policies of the sort the NFP ran on in France.
Of course, none of this is guaranteed to work. Trudeau has shown no indication that he’s willing to swallow his pride and resign, even after losing a safe Toronto seat to the Tories, and Poilievre has been relentless in attacking the real and imagined failures of the “Liberal-NDP coalition,” in erroneous reference to the supply-and-confidence deal, as is.
Many Canadians, whether rightly or wrongly, feel it’s time for a change of direction after a decade of Liberal rule. At this point, a Poilievre government might be an inevitability.
But a united front for electoral reform is worth pondering by Canadians who fear that the Liberals’ failures on climate, housing, the drug poisoning crisis and more could lead to a Conservative government that will only make matters worse.