One Man One Vote: One Vote One Value

50. Reform Government in the Dominion: Pie-Nie $peaches (Toronto: 1878); Official Report of the Liberal Convention (Toronto: 1893). 51. William Douglass, "Rent - a Criticism of Professor Walker's Work on that Subject", Proceedings of the Canadian Institute, series 3, 4( 1885) 58-60; "Harmonies and Antagonisms in the Social Forces", in Canadian Economics (Montreal: 1885). 52. Solomon Vineberg, Provincial and Local Taxation in Canada (New York: 1915). 53. Adam Shortt, "Municipal Taxation in Relation to Speculative Land Values", Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 58 ( 1915) 214-221; William Pearce, The Absurdity and Injustice of Single Tax as Carried out in the Western Provinces of Canada (Calgary: 1915). 54. John McLean, Protection and Free Trade (Montreal : 1867). One Man One Vote: One Vote One Value FRED SCHINDELER~ Most definitions of democracy recognize as a funda~ental principle the necessity that the decision-makers in a polity be chosen by a majority of the people and that ultimately their decisions must be acceptable to a majority of those same people. Whether one adheres to Abraham Lincoln's simple "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" or Joseph A. Schumpeter's more sophisticated "institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's votes",1 one's conception of the democratic method must always involve some notion that the people have the principal control over the direction of public policy.2 The body of the Iournal of Canadian Studies 55. C. D. W. Goodwin, op. cit. p. 52. 56. Canada, House of Commons, Minutes of Proceedings , Evidence, etc., Committee on Banking and Commerce during the Parliamentary Session of 19121913 , Appendix No. 2, Journals of the House of Commons (Ottawa: 1913). 57. ibid. p. 306. 58. ibid. p. 305. 59. For example see E. A. Partridge, A War On Poverty (Winnipeg: 1925-28); W. C. Good, Production and Distribution in Canada from the Farmer's Point of View (St. Anne de Bellevue: 1919); E. Porritt, Sixty Years of Protection in Canada (Winnipeg: 1912); J. J. Harpell, Canadian National Economy (Toronto: 1911); Percy H. Scott, The New Slavery (Toronto: 1914); C. W. Peterson, Wake Up Canada (Toronto: 1919). citizens must make a choice of leadership and hence of programmes, for, if political power is not wielded by those whom the people choose, there is no guarantee that it will be directed to ends that the people can accept. All individuals must be given an equal opportunity to choose, and all choices must be accorded equal weight.3 Where distortions of the people's choice occur through the vagaries of an electoral system, the onus is on the proponents of such asystem to show that it produces conditions so favourable or so necessary that it should be retained in spite of the inequities it produces. There is now some doubt that the singlemember , simple-plurality system used in Canada effectively fulfils the democratic requirements suggested above. Advocacy of the single-member , simple-plurality system assumes that the decision-makers in a parliamentary democracy have been chosen by the people when a Govern- ~I would like to acknowledge the assistance that I have received from two of my former students, Robert Drummond and John Witham. 13 ment has been formed which can command the support of a Parliament - that Parliament being composed of individuals, each of whom has been the choice of a plurality in one of a number of approximately equal divisions of the electorate. When the decision-makers sit in that Parliament, require its majority support, and periodically seek the approval of the electorate for the retention of their positions, the basic requirements of a democratic polity are assumed to have been met. However, the advent of disciplined political parties has given rise to such fundamental changes in our representative bodies that the single-member, simple-plurality system no longer satisfies the basic premise of democratic government . Contrary to the popular assumptions underlying parliamentary government, the composition of the decision-making body (i.e. the Cabinet) is determined not by ad hoe coalitions of individuals in Parliament but by the...