The outcome of the 2025 election with proportional representation.

What would have been the outcome of the 2025 Canadian election with proportional representation?

First, many votes would have been cast differently, before the New Democrat vote collapsed. In the two weeks before Donald Trump said "Canada would be much better off being the 51st state" the polls showed an average of 16.1% support for the NDP, and 28.2% for the Liberals. By election day, the NDP vote had gone 9.8% as “strategic votes” to the Liberals, leaving only 6.3% for NDP candidates. Similarly, the Liberals picked up 3.4% from the Greens leaving them only 1.2%. (They also got more votes from the Conservatives, and 0.8% from the Bloc.)

As Prof. Dennis Pilon says: "We know that, when every vote counts, voters won't have to worry about splitting the vote, or casting a strategic vote. Thus, we should expect that support for different parties might change.” But I will not try to simulate the outcome with no strategic voting.

Simulation

On the votes as cast, my simulation with province-wide PR shows the Liberals electing 154 MPs, the Conservatives 142, the NDP 23, the Bloc 22, and the Greens 2. This contrasts with the First-Past-The-Post outcome: Liberals 169, Conservatives 144, Bloc 22, NDP 7, Greens 1. However, the balance of power is the same: the Liberals need the Bloc or the NDP to pass legislation.

One-party majorities?

Canada’s last three elections, like six of our eight last elections, did not elect a one-party majority government. Germany, Europe’s most successful country over the last 60 years, never once elected a one-party majority government in 18 elections since 1961. Can Canada learn from Germany?

Liberals

The Liberals need PR as much as the NDP does, to give their voters an equal voice in each province or region. In Alberta, 11 MPs, not just 2. In Saskatchewan, 4 MPs not just 1. In the 17 BC ridings outside the Lower Mainland, 6 MPs not just 3.  In the 22 ridings of South-west Ontario, 10 Liberal MPs not just 5. In the 15 ridings of Northern and Central Ontario, 7 MPs not just 5. In the 25 ridings of Eastern and Central Quebec (Capitale-Nationale, Chaudière-Appalaches, Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, Bas Saint-Laurent, Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeleine, Côte-Nord, Estrie, and Centre-du-Québec), 9 MPs not just 6.

Conservatives

And look at how PR would have changed the Conservative caucus. Instead of electing only one MP from Nova Scotia, they would have elected four, such as Allan MacMaster (who resigned as an MLA and Deputy Premier to run federally), and incumbent MPs Stephen Ellis and Rick Perkins. In the 26 ridings of the BC Lower Mainland they would have elected 11 MPs, not just 7: including incumbent Kerry-Lynne Findlay, a 10-year MP. In the 34 ridings of Toronto and York, they would have elected 14 MPs, not just 9, including star candidate Karen Stintz, 11-year Toronto city councillor. In the 27 ridings of South Central Ontario (from Peel to Niagara Region) they would have elected 13 MPs not just 7, including former MP and former Ontario cabinet minister Parm Gill. In the 34 Quebec ridings of Montreal-Laval-Montérégie, Conservatives would have elected 7 MPs, not zero, including their star candidate Neil Oberman. In the 19 ridings of Mauricie-Lanaudière-Laurentides-nord-ouest they would have elected 4 MPs not zero, including their star candidate, former Trois-Rivières mayor and three-time candidate Yves Lévesque.

New Democrats

And then there’s the NDP, who would have elected 6 MPs from Ontario instead of none: 2 from Toronto & York (likely including MPP Bhutila Karpoche), I from South-west Ontario (maybe incumbent Lindsay Matthysen), 1 from South Central Ontario (likely incumbent Matthew Green), 1 from Eastern Ontario (likely MPP Joel Harden), and 1 from Northern and Central Ontario (maybe Dr. Andréane Chénier from Sudbury, CUPE Health & Safety expert and school trustee; or Nicole Fortier Levesque from Kapuskasing; or Kenora’s Tania Cameron). And elected an MP from Saskatchewan (likely Professor and lawyer Rachel Loewen Walker). And elected an MP from Nova Scotia (likely former MPP Lisa Roberts), and 3 more MPs from BC (likely incumbents Peter Julian, Alistair MacGregor and Taylor Bachrach), and a second MP from Alberta (no doubt incumbent Blake Desjarlais), and a second MP from Manitoba (likely incumbent Leila Dance). And three MPs from Quebec (likely Nimâ Machouf, Ruth Ellen Brosseau and Quebec City’s Tommy Bureau). Total 23, not just 7. (I give the Greens two seats, including incumbent Mike Morrice.)

Alberta Liberals

Let’s look at Alberta Liberals in more detail. Alberta sends 37 MPs to Ottawa. That`s 10.8 per cent of the MPs. They might expect three members of a 30-member cabinet. But they elected only two Liberal MPs, due to First-Past-The-Post: Corey Hogan and Eleanor Olszewski. Assume the Mixed Member Proportional system. This was recommended by the Law Commission of Canada. With two votes, you can vote for the party you want in government. And you can also vote for the local candidate you like best regardless of party, without hurting your party, since it's the second (regional) ballot that determines the party make-up of Parliament. About 32% of voters split their ballots this way in New Zealand with a similar system. This makes it easier for local MPs to get the support of people of all political stripes. They can earn support for their constituency-representation credentials, not just for their party. This boosts the kind of support MPs bring with them into the House of Commons, thus strengthening their independence.

With the Mixed Member Proportional system. Alberta would elect 23 local MPs, and 14 regional MPs for top-up seats. I used 18 regions with an average size of 19 MPs, similar to Scotland’s model with an effective threshold due to regions of 16 MPs. With two regions, that`s seven from Edmonton and Northern Alberta, and seven from Calgary and Southern Alberta. With open-list, the ballot would look like this ballot that PEI voters chose in their 2016 plebiscite. In Edmonton, likely Edmonton mayor Amarjeet Sohi, maybe Mark Minenko, Lindsey Machona and Blair-Marie Coles. In Calgary, likely former MP George Chahal, and maybe Lindsay Luhnau, Bryndis Whitson, 2021 candidate Shahnaz Munir; and former Lethbridge mayor Chris Spearman.

National poll shows 68% support for proportional representation

A national poll of Canadians asking about support for proportional representation was conducted by EKOS Research Associates between January 22-29, 2025. 68% of Canadians support moving to proportional representation, with only 19% opposed and 13% unsure.

Note on thresholds: most proposals for MMP in Canada assume a threshold of 5% (like Germany) or 4% (like Sweden). The choice between the two has been difficult: in New Zealand the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System recommended MMP and a threshold of 4%, but the government changed this to 5%, and this remains an issue there. Scotland has no legal threshold, but has an effective threshold due to regions of 16 MPs. For this simulation I used 18 larger regions with an average size of 19 MPs (more in larger provinces). This gave the NDP the seats it deserved, as a legal threshold of 4% would have done.

How would regional MPPs serve residents?

See how it has worked in Scotland.

Who should design an electoral system? A Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform could do an impartial job of designing a PR system, if they are asked to.

Technical Notes:

1.    The calculation for any PR system has to choose a rounding method, to round fractions up and down. I have used the “largest remainder” calculation, which Germany used until recently, because it is the simplest and most transparent. In a 10-MPP region, if Party A deserves 3.4 MPPs, Party B deserves 3.1, Party C deserves 2.3, and Party D deserves 1.2, which party gets the tenth seat? Party A has a remainder of 0.4, the largest remainder. In a region where one party wins a bonus (“overhang”), I allocate the remaining seats among the remaining parties by the same calculation.

2. The purpose of the compensatory regional seats is to correct disproportional local results, not to provide a parallel system of getting elected. The Law Commission of Canada recommended that the right to nominate candidates for regional top-up seats should be limited to those parties which have candidates standing for election in at least one-third of the ridings within the top-up region. The UK’s Jenkins Commission recommended 50%. This prevents a possible distortion of the system by parties pretending to split into twin decoy parties for the regional seats, the trick which Berlusconi invented to sabotage Italy’s voting system.

3.  How many MPs do we need? It is hard to design a more representative system without more representatives. But no group of politicians will want to take responsibility for adding MPs. A Citizens Assembly is ideal for that purpose. In New Zealand the 1986 Royal Commission on the Electoral System recommended MMP and that the number of MPs be raised from 99 to 120 (although they considered 140 would be ideal, they realised that it would receive too much public backlash). The increase was a talking point of opponents in the 1993 referendum. In Ontario, the 1997 Citizens Assembly recommended its 103 ridings be increased to 129.