On Wednesday, the House of Commons voted against a motion calling for the federal government to establish a citizens assembly to “determine if electoral reform is recommended for Canada and, if so, recommend specific measures that would foster a healthier democracy.” Those voting against the motion included a majority of Liberal MPs and most of the Trudeau government’s cabinet. But that doesn’t mean electoral reform is dead — or that it couldn’t still happen before the next election.
After all, a citizens assembly would have taken time we probably don’t have. With Donald Trump poised to win the next U.S. presidential election despite trying to overturn the results of the last one, we no longer have the luxury of pretending democracy is somehow invulnerable or unassailable. There are even those in Canada who very much wish to assail it, albeit by less crude and crass means than Trump.
The merits of a more proportional system of representation are no secret at this point and require no further study or debate. British Columbia formed a Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform more than two decades ago and its conclusions were clear: "Election results will be fairer, reflecting a balance between votes and seats, voters will have more choice and candidates will work harder to earn their support," the assembly’s final report argued.
The case for electoral reform has only grown stronger since then as the lethal combination of social media, the first Trump presidency and a global pandemic has driven people further apart than they’ve been in generations. And then, of course, we have hostile state actors like Russia, China and India trying to exploit and profit from these divisions.
In 2015, when the Liberals promised Canadians would never see another federal election contested under our first-past-the-post system, electoral reform was part of the broader aspirational aims of the Trudeau team. Now in 2024, it’s far more existential. Canadians are increasingly disillusioned by and disengaged from the democratic process, and that’s especially true in places like Alberta and downtown Toronto and Montreal where large portions of the public are effectively disenfranchised by the electoral dominance of the Conservatives and Liberals. A more proportional system would see Liberals elected in Alberta and Conservatives in our biggest cities, an outcome that would yield a more diverse and representative national legislature.
It would also eliminate the frustration associated with so-called “strategic voting,” wherein New Democrats are often encouraged to vote for the Liberal candidate in order to avoid splitting the progressive vote. Allowing people to vote their conscience might increase the rates at which people participate in elections. In New Zealand’s last three federal elections, for example, turnout has averaged just under 80 per cent.
Just as importantly, a more fair and just electoral system would remove some of the polarization that’s come to define our politics. Without the ability to win artificial majorities with a minority of the popular vote, parties would have to be more open to working with each other — and, by extension, less willing to demonize their policies and people.
The Liberals wouldn’t be doing this entirely out of the goodness of their hearts, mind you. One of their biggest weak spots right now is with younger voters, the demographic that helped sweep them to power back in 2015. Only 25 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 34 support Trudeau’s Liberals right now, a significant drop from the 34 per cent that backed them in 2021 and the staggering 46 per cent that swung Liberal in 2015. Some of them aren’t coming back, but many were alienated by Trudeau’s decision to walk away from his promise to replace our first-past-the-post system. Delivering on that, albeit belatedly, might make a lot of them reconsider.
Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives would come out swinging against any attempt to change the electoral system, even if it would actually benefit them in a bunch of different ways. By electing a more geographically diverse slate of MPs, they wouldn’t necessarily be so beholden to their Prairie base. And in the last two elections, a more proportional system would have given them more seats — maybe even more than the Liberals. But with polls now showing the Conservatives poised to benefit disproportionately from first-past-the-post’s math — some projections have them winning 65 per cent of the seats with less than 45 per cent of the vote — they’re not likely to listen to these sorts of arguments.
Some Liberals might not want to hear them either, since implementing a more proportional system would almost certainly mean they’d never form another majority government. But they need to ask themselves what matters most: some potential future government or the next one that Canadians will elect. That one, after all, could easily unwind some of their most important achievements, from climate policy to childcare. It could even throw the door more widely open to the sorts of culture war nonsense that has so thoroughly infected American politics. And with conservative provincial governments in seven provinces, most notably Ontario and Quebec, it could even take a run at the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
If nothing else, the Trudeau Liberals should have realized by now that they’re not going to win the next election by tweaking their communications policy or doing some other rearrangement of their deck chairs. They need to think much, much bigger than that. Maybe it will backfire. Maybe Canadians will revolt against a government that changes the electoral system this late in the game. But one thing is for certain: if the Liberals don’t start swinging for the fences, they aren’t going to get the home run they need.
Alberta is headed towards a summer from hell
Last summer’s wildfire season in Alberta was brutal. The one ahead might be even worse. That was the message coming from the Alberta Fire Chiefs Association (AFCA), which took the rather extraordinary step of publicly calling for its government to start planning ahead. “Time is running short for meaningful discussions and planning from a multi-jurisdictional, multi-level government approach … with respect to this year’s upcoming fire season,” AFCA president Randy Schroeder said. “It’s only 10 weeks until some of the municipalities will start to have legitimate fire risk and some of that might be even earlier.”
This is just one of the harbingers of what looks to be a tough summer in 2024. With the province already dealing with near-drought conditions, Alberta is in the midst of a remarkably dry and warm winter that’s the product of both El Niño and climate change’s impact on it. Stacey Smythe, an assistant deputy minister with Alberta Environment, told the CBC that many of the province’s most important reservoirs are well below where they need to be at this time of year, with some running as low as 15 per cent of capacity. "More than agriculture will be impacted if this extreme level of dryness continues," she said. "The situation is going to impact all of Alberta. It is a societal issue — not an environmental issue."
The provincial government has begun to acknowledge this threat, even if it refuses to address the role climate change is playing. During a recent town hall, Environment Minister Rebecca Schulz announced the creation of a “Drought Command Team,” while her office sent a letter to all the province’s 25,000-odd holders of water licences to kick off negotiations over how they’ll manage the situation.
Best of luck with that, minister. This is, after all, a premier and government that has defined itself by its willingness to cater to the me-first populism of anti-vaxxers and other public health skeptics. The calls to get vaccinated back in 2021 and 2022 were as much about protecting other people as they were ourselves, and they were greeted with protests and outrage. They even helped force Smith’s predecessor to resign.
Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver might be willing to forgo watering his lawn all summer, as he said during the drought town hall, but I would not bet heavily that his party’s most loyal followers will do the same. If anything, I’d expect water restrictions to create a bumper crop of new conspiracy theories on the far right, ones that revolve around globalist governments trying to tell farmers when and how they can water their crops and feed their livestock.
As the CBC’s Jason Markusoff wrote, “Dried-up rivers and parched fields may demand Albertans to all be in this together in 2024, to share, to compromise. That collective spirit didn't always work so well throughout the pandemic, and our current premier was among those who pushed back — but this time is necessarily different.”
Maybe. Or maybe, the conspiratorial mindset that so many Alberta conservatives either helped plant or actively fertilized during the pandemic will come back to haunt them — and us. Let’s hope the rains spare us from ourselves.
The Globe and Mail’s EV nonsense
Confession time: I have always enjoyed the work of Andrew Coyne, even if I don’t always agree with him. He’s a wonderfully evocative writer who takes on wonkish subjects like road pricing and electoral reform without letting his politics get ahead of the facts. I often leave his columns either smart or delightfully surprised by what I’ve learned, and I try to bring this to my own work whenever possible.
That’s why I found his recent column on the federal government’s big bet on electric vehicles so incredibly disappointing. It reads like a paint-by-numbers anti-EV screed, one that hits all the familiar talking points without bothering to look at what the evidence really says. He opens with some concern trolling around sales figures and the fact that EVs currently only make up 13 per cent of the overall Canadian fleet. “Are we really going to quintuple that in six years? Octuple it in 16? Sales of EVs have been growing rapidly until lately — though final sales numbers for 2023 aren’t yet available for Canada, sales were up 50 per cent in the United States — but they show every sign of slowing.”
This is a basic mathematical error, and it’s one I’m kind of shocked Coyne made. No, sales are very much not slowing — for all the talk about it, fourth-quarter EV sales in the United States increased 40 per cent year on year. What Coyne means to say is that the rate of growth is slowing, but that’s a much different thing — and one that should naturally be expected as EVs continue to claim market share from internal combustion vehicles.
He correctly notes the growing pains among North American automakers, but curiously omits the fact they’re getting lapped on this front by Korean and Chinese EV makers. BYD, the biggest manufacturer of electric vehicles on Earth, grew its sales by more than 60 per cent in 2023. This year could be even bigger as it ramps up production of its Seagull, an electric hatchback that will sell for less than $17,000 in Australia. Ironically, the only Asian automaker Coyne references is Toyota, whose long-standing skepticism towards EVs has been noted by both the media and the company’s shareholders.
Next he’s on to the cost of batteries, where he quotes a 2022 study suggesting their cost had “soared.” As Coyne writes, “Roughly 40 per cent of the cost of an EV is the battery; roughly 50 per cent of the cost of the battery is for basic materials, notably copper.” One small problem: his report is stale-dated. The most recent data shows that battery prices are again dropping, with Goldman Sachs predicting a 40 per cent drop from 2022 levels by 2025.
He even brings up the notion that EVs aren’t necessarily better from an emissions perspective, since the electricity powering them might not be from clean sources. “It depends, in part, on how the electricity that powers them is produced: if from nuclear or hydro, then yes, a net reduction in emissions; if from oil or coal, not so much.”
This is a ludicrous argument to make in Canada where the grids in Quebec, Ontario, and B.C. — the three biggest EV markets, by far — are all almost entirely powered by clean electricity. Even in Alberta, coal-fired electricity has almost entirely been phased out, while in Manitoba, it’s a mixture of natural gas and hydro. As to electricity being generated by oil? Come on, Coyne.
It’s disappointing to see someone like him make such predictable and tired arguments (and they weren’t alone, since the Globe ran another anti-EV op-ed at the same time). The transition to electric and non-emitting vehicles is happening whether some people in Canada like it or not. And in a rapidly decarbonizing world, Canada’s economy is particularly exposed given its dependence on producing and exporting fossil fuels. Just letting the market do its thing could leave us significantly poorer, unless we find ways to participate meaningfully.
It seems like we’re actually doing that, by the way. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, Canada now has the best lithium-ion battery supply chain in the world. “Canada’s consistent manufacturing and production advances, and strong ESG credentials, have helped it become a leader in forming the battery supply chains of the future. Strong integration with the U.S. automotive sector means Canada is also a big winner of the ‘friendshoring’ ambitions of the Inflation Reduction Act.” That’s a pretty important strategic asset, and it’s a product of the willingness of governments (federal and provincial) to make bets on things like EV battery factories and, yes, EV mandates for consumers.
Time will tell how those bets pay out, of course. But it would be better if the Globe’s writers focused on the challenge ahead rather than trying to engage in rearguard battles against a technology that’s already won the race.
Ottawa is dropping the ball on energy efficiency
As I’ve noted time and time again, the Trudeau government has a talent for pairing ambitious climate policy with dreadful execution. That apparently extends to its handling of the Greener Homes grant program, which provides up to $5,000 for energy efficiency upgrades like insulation, windows and heat pumps. Despite — or perhaps because of — its enormous popularity, the program is reportedly going to close to new applicants by the end of March. The $2.6-billion program was supposed to run until March 31, 2027, but with the caveat it would take applications until the money ran out. With more than 503,000 grants already paid out, that point is about to be reached.
This could leave thousands of people who do the energy audits required to unlock the funding in the lurch, and potentially out of work or business completely. As VerdaTech Energy Management’s Stephen Farrell told the CBC, "We've just increased the number of energy advisers across Canada dramatically. Millions and millions and millions of dollars was spent training new energy advisers.” Some have spent as much as $10,000 on the equipment required to perform these audits. And now, most of their work is about to vanish.
Energy efficiency has long been some of the lowest-hanging fruit in the climate policy basket. No, it’s not as sexy as electric vehicles or carbon capture and storage, but as the International Energy Agency has noted, it represents more than 40 per cent of the emissions reductions needed by 2040. In Canada, where energy usage is particularly high, there should be even more apples on this tree. They should be even shinier right now given the impact energy efficiency improvements can have on home heating and utility bills in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis.
And yet, apparently the federal government is contemplating closing off this orchard. At a time when it’s willing to throw tens of billions of dollars in subsidies at both global EV manufacturers and fossil fuel companies for carbon capture and storage, this makes zero sense. The potential impact on the growing community of energy auditors is also completely self-defeating since the federal government will need these auditors to stick around for the proposed changes to the building code that will be implemented in 2025.
I understand that this is a government struggling to display competence right now on a wide variety of fronts, but this is one it really can’t afford to screw up.
Recommended Reading
Because there’s too much good content out there to write about, I’m going to test out a new feature this week and share a selection of stories I think you might be interested in reading.
First, there’s Evan Scrimshaw’s pushback against criticism of his work coming from the left, and calls to be more vocal in criticizing Canada’s conservatives. “We don’t need more sanctimonious columns in publications left-wingers will read about why Poilievre is bad,” he writes. “We need people pushing the broad Canadian left to get their heads out of their asses and get themselves in winning positions.” Read it.
I also enjoyed Richard Warnica’s take on the housing crisis in Toronto, and why there’s no silver bullet or single solution that will fully address it. “Federal and provincial governments wanted to both cut spending and taxes without suffering for it politically,” he writes. “They did that by telling cities to pay for those services themselves. That meant that the cities themselves had to either cut services, raise taxes or find some other way to punt the problem. Mostly they punted, in ways that would, over time, drastically fuel housing inflation.
“Without change, Toronto will continue to shrink and grow at the same time. Families will flee. Homelessness will soar. It will, increasingly, be a city built for the very rich and the very poor, with less culture, less kids, and far fewer usable parks, where the only people who can afford to follow their dreams will be the already wealthy or those who dream of joining them.”
As I like to say: ahem to all of that.
In a related piece, Eric Lombardi — the founder and president of More Neighbours Toronto — suggests that our toxic housing market and the disproportionate impact existing homeowners have had on its development is turning cities like Toronto into quasi-feudal environments for young people and new Canadians. “Like a dark past era, success in Canada is increasingly a product of inheritance and connections rather than merit, challenging a deep national myth that Canada is a free nation of free people. It requires a deep reevaluation of our systems and commitment to substantive reforms aimed at rejuvenating the Canadian dream and upholding our core values as a nation.”
And finally, in the Globe and Mail, health writer André Picard calls out federal legislators for their unwillingness to take on the challenge of expanding MAID to other people who might need it. “There is no question that allowing people with mental illness to access MAID is a complex and fraught issue,” he writes. “We need to balance individual rights with protecting the vulnerable. But these decisions need to be made on a case-by-case basis, between an individual and medical practitioners. The role of government here is mostly to get out of the way. Politicians should no more be deciding who accesses MAID than they should be deciding who gets a heart transplant.”
That’s it for this week. As always, please share this on your socials if you can, and feel free to write with any complaints or compliments. They’re both appreciated.