October 12, 2015: Next government may not be obvious on election night

By Michael Regenstreif

The longest federal election campaign in modern Canadian history is finally into the homestretch and, as I write on October 2, it’s still a horserace with the three main parties – Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, Tom Mulcair’s New Democratic Party, and Justin Trudeau’s Liberals – very close in the opinion polls. The latest data shows the Conservatives with such a small lead over the Liberals that it’s within the margin of error, with the NDP not far behind.

If the current polling trends are an accurate reflection of what will happen on October 19 – and that remains to be seen given both the volatility of the electorate and the difficulty pollsters have had in recent years achieving reliable polling results – then it is all but certain none of the three main parties will elect enough members of Parliament to form a majority government. The question then becomes which party will form the government?

Conventionally, in a minority situation, we assume the Governor General will call on the party that elects the greatest number of MPs to form the government. That’s the way it’s usually worked in the past when the competition to form government has been between two main parties with third parties well behind in their seat counts.

This time, though, it looks like all three main parties could well end up within striking distance of each other with just a few seats separating the first-place party from the second and third. This presents a number of possible scenarios, which could turn the days, or possibly weeks, following October 19 into a whole new ballgame.

The way parliamentary systems actually work is that it’s not necessarily the party with the most elected members that forms the government. Rather, it is the party – or a coalition of parties – best seen to command the confidence of the majority of members that establishes government.

In Israel, where no party ever elects a majority of members of the Knesset, it’s not always the party with the most seats that heads the governing coalition (and it is always a coalition there), it is the party that can make the deals that give it the confidence of the majority. In 2009, for example, Tzipi Livni’s Kadima party received more votes and elected more members than Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud, but it was Netanyahu who was able to cobble together a majority coalition making him prime minister.

Could Canada, after October 19, 2015, be in for the kind of negotiations that take place after every Israeli election?

Let’s assume the current polling numbers are somewhat accurate and that they hold up through election day. The analysis at threehundredeight.com – a site that aggregates and analyzes results from all the main polling fi rms – suggests each of the three main parties will win more than 100 seats.

If that’s what happens and the parties all insist on going their separate ways, we’ll have an unstable minority government and will almost certainly be in for another election very soon.

However, if any two of the three main parties can form some sort of coalition, it would have the support of a solid majority of members sitting in the House of Commons.

Realistically, it’s hard to imagine the Conservatives working with either of the other two parties.

And while the other two parties may be closer ideologically to each other than either is to the Conservatives, this has been a campaign marked by their leaders’ seeming disdain for each other.

Is there enough common ground between the Liberals and the NDP to form a stable coalition? Would one leader yield to the other as prime minister? Would we see a power-sharing agreement – as we sometimes see in Israel – where one is prime minister for two years and then they switch?

Both the Liberals and the NDP have talked about electoral reform that would result in a House of Commons whose membership more accurately reflects national voting patterns than the first-past-the-post system in each riding that has been in play since Confederation. If a proportional or partial-proportional representation system is introduced in Canada, it may well mean we’ll never elect a majority government again and Israeli-style negotiations leading to Israeli-style coalition governments becomes the norm here.

In the past, when we’ve elected a majority government or a minority government with a significant plurality, the election night results have been quickly obvious.

That may not be the case on October 19.

February 23, 2009: So, who did the Israelis choose to lead?

By Michael Regenstreif

Back in November, just after the Canadian election and just before the American, I wrote that those elections, plus the upcoming one in Israel, make this a fascinating time for those of us interested in politics.

Looking ahead to the Israeli election, I asked a couple of questions: “Will Israelis choose Kadima’s Livni or Likud’s Netanyahu?” and “Given Israel’s proportional representation system, to whom will the next Israeli prime minister be beholden when it comes to putting together a governing coalition?”

Opinion polls leading up to the February 10 vote suggested Benjamin Netanyahu was headed to a substantial victory. But things changed as the campaign drew to a close. Ehud Barak’s collapsing Labor Party bled support to Kadima and the extreme right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu, headed by Avigdor Liberman, drew substantial support away from Netanyahu.

In the end, Livni squeaked ahead with 28 seats to Netanyahu’s 27. But both claimed victory: Livni because she had the most seats of the 30-something parties who ran in the election and the dozen that garnered enough votes for representation in the Knesset, and Netanyahu because the right-wing and religious parties could come together in a majority coalition.

There are a number of possible scenarios for coalition building that will play out in the days and weeks – and possibly months – to come. Some of the likeliest possibilities are detailed in Leslie Susser’s JTA report on Pages 1 and 2.

Of all the scenarios, Israel’s best hope for stability would be a national unity coalition that would bring Kadima, Likud and Labor together – perhaps with the rotating-prime-ministership model that followed the 1984 election. I wouldn’t expect either a Livni or Netanyahu coalition that’s beholden to Liberman’s support to last more than a year or two, if that.

After our fall election, there were calls for proportional representation to be introduced here and, in that same November column, I expressed some reluctance to the idea based on what I’ve observed of Israeli politics over the years where the leading party has always had to look for support from single-issue or narrowly focused parties in the Knesset.

I think these latest Israeli election results will only reinforce that reluctance. The day after the election, I got an email from an Israeli friend, Menachem Vinegrad, who lives in the Upper Galilee, commenting on the results. “No clear winner has emerged,” he wrote, “and the stronger parties must now bargain, barter and bribe in order to put together a ruling coalition. It’s altogether a rotten system.”

In the days after the election I read many editorials and columns in Israeli newspapers – from Ha’aretz to the Jerusalem Post – that pretty much agreed with my friend Menachem’s assessment and spoke of the need for a massive overhaul of a system that just doesn’t work very well.

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The Batsheva Dance Company from Israel performed at the National Arts Centre (NAC) earlier this month.

A few days before the performance, someone forwarded a letter to me that was being circulated by Diana Ralph of Independent Jewish Voices encouraging a letter-writing campaign aimed at NAC management demanding cancellation of the event because Batsheva is “funded by Israel’s government, its performers include none of Arab extraction, and it is ‘proud to be considered Israel’s leading ambassador.’”

Independent Jewish Voices also demands that the NAC commit to boycotting all “Israeli-funded artists and cultural exchanges.”

I think back just a few decades to when the lives and livelihoods of many on the left were destroyed by McCarthy-era blacklists and boycotts. Now, it’s some groups on the left and a labour leader, CUPE Ontario’s Sid Ryan, who are engaged in McCarthyism.

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In the Federation Report on Page 6, Linda Kerzner and Alana Kayfetz mention the daily challenges faced by students on campus who are engaged in Israel advocacy.

Disturbingly, there have been growing numbers of reports of anti-Israel incidents on Canadian campuses that have crossed the line into antisemitism, including several disconcerting reports of antisemitic violence at York University in Toronto and UBC in Vancouver.

While it is important that our universities remain venues for freedom of expression of all points-of-view, it is unacceptable that anyone be subjected to any form of hatred or violence.

November 10, 2008: Canadian, U.S. and Israeli elections make this a fascinating time

By Michael Regenstreif

This season has – and will continue to be – a fascinating time for those of us who are highly interested in politics.

As I write, we’re about two weeks past the Canadian federal election and, in a few days, Americans will head into their voting booths. And the Israeli election date has now been set for February 10.

By the time you read this column, the results of the U.S. election will be known. If the polling data available three days before the election holds up – and I’ll be highly surprised if it doesn’t – Senator Barack Obama of Illinois will be the president-elect.

Obama’s election will be a watershed moment in American history – a moment whose great hope and promise Obama will have to work hard to fulfil in the coming years.

The question has been raised often during the very long presidential campaign about what an Obama presidency will mean for Israel. No less an authority than Joe the Plumber, a man Republican candidate Senator John McCain called his “hero,” was quick to agree with the poppycockish statement that “a vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel.”

Obama has been a great friend to Israel and I’ve no doubt he will continue to be. His promised engagement in the Middle East peace process, from the very beginning of his mandate – as opposed to George W. Bush, who engaged only at the tail end of his already-failed presidency – is the best hope for peace since Yitzhak Rabin’s tragic assassination.

Ambassador Dennis Ross, a highly respected veteran of Middle East peace negotiations in the administrations of the first George Bush and Bill Clinton, is Obama’s top adviser on Middle East issues. He will be in Ottawa on November 24 to deliver the keynote address at the Negev Dinner. It should be fascinating to hear what he has to say at this important time.

Of course, much will depend on who wins the Israeli election (and whether there will be a Palestinian leadership able to act authoritatively on behalf of its people). Will Israelis choose Kadima’s Livni or Likud’s Netanyahu? They have very different agendas.

And, given Israel’s proportional representation system, to whom will the next Israeli prime minister be beholden when it comes to putting together a governing coalition?

Speaking of proportional representation, it’s been pointed out that, if Canada had such a system, rather than our first-past-the-post system, Parliament would look very different than it does today. The October 14 election results would have given us fewer Conservative and Bloc members and more from the Liberals and NDP. The Green Party, with nearly seven per cent of the popular vote, would have elected about 21 MPs.

Taking the logic to its limit, a party with one-third of one per cent of the vote could be entitled to an MP. Imagine all the single-interest groups who could garner one-third of one per cent of the vote. While Israeli electoral law demands that a party garner two per cent of the vote to be represented in the 120-seat Knesset, the percentage in Canada, with 308 parliamentary seats, would have to be much lower.

Having watched Israeli politics for many years, and having seen how the major Israeli parties have had to dicker for the support of narrowly focused or single-issue parties, I’d think long and hard before introducing such a system here.