N.W.T. electoral commission's work not enough to fix broken consensus system: former MLA

The Northwest Territories Electoral Boundaries Commission has been reviewing the number, size and boundaries of existing electoral districtsand is expected to table its report in May, during the next sitting of the legislature.

In the first of a series of conversations on electoral reform, Trailbreaker host Loren McGinnis spoke with former MLA for Kam Lake Kieron Testart.

Testart was elected to the Legislative Assembly in the 2015 electionand sat until 2019. Heis a past president of the N.W.T. Liberal Party and haslong championed the idea of territorial political parties a discussion that stretches back decades.

This discussion has been edited for length and clarity.

Loren McGinnis: You have said the system isn't working as it is now, and I understand you believe thatthe consensus government, nonpartisan system in some ways stands in the way of real progress. What are your objectionswith the system we have now?

Kieron Testart: I would go farther and say it's very much a broken system at this point. And although it is not party-based, it is deeply partisan. The divide between the regular members and the cabinet members is, you know, significant. And there's a sharp power imbalance in the House as well when it comes to staffing resources and the ability to influence public policy. And that's really what it comes down to. Northerners for many years have been, you know, demanding significant public policy outcomes, whether there are changes to GNWT's (government of the Northwest Territories) internal policies around hiring or larger goals like public housing, environmental protection, economic development. These things remain almost impossible to change, despite the fact that we've had high turnover in sitting politicians who ought to be driving those changes.

And that's really what the crux is. The GNWT's bureaucracy are the ones who determine and execute public policy. There's no independent public policy being developed outside of the the government, essentially the bureaucracy, and being brought to the bureaucracy to execute.Everywhere else in Canada, you have political parties who do their own grassroots policy development. They get elected and then they implement their policies. And that does not happen in the Northwest Territories. So despite MLAs running on ideas and promises and commitments to do things differently, they end up doing things exactly the same way.

LM: I'm not trying to get you to make anybody else's case, but what do you see as a strength of the consensus system?

KT: I would say people tend to get along. But this current assembly has shown that that's not the case. Perhapsone strength is that the actual committees of elected officials who look over legislation, look over departmental budgets and travel the Northwest Territories, talking to residents to solicit their input, is very strong and it's not bogged down by partisan grandstanding, because that is an issue you see in other parliaments.

In the Northwest Territories the standing committeesarefocused on talking to Northerners and they're focused on delivering good legislation. So that is probably the strongest part of the consensus government system that currently works the way it should.

LM: So what's your sense of the appetite for moving away from consensus government right now?

KM: There an appetite for change. What that change looks like, I think, is up to the people who want to deliver it So whether that's a slate of candidates who are going to run together as a team and offer a common vision for what they want to do if they get elected, or whether it's what we've come to expect in the Northwest Territories with independents, all kind of saying we'll do a better job than the last guys.

But this current government has not addressed the systemic issues that are holding the North back from reaching its true promise. We've been in a deep recession for a very long time now, and there's no real hope for economic growth on the horizon. The government is fixated on its own budgets, on its own spending and saving money for itself and its own purposes. And that's the fundamental disconnect. There's a separation between, you know, the GNWT as an entity and the people it's supposed to serve.

And the politicians who are in there, are more interested in fighting with each other than actually doing that job We've had two change elections back-to-back. But nothing has really fundamentally changed with how the North is doing And instead of scratching our heads trying to figure that out, I think personally that the system that is working virtually everywhere else in the world, in a Commonwealth country, a system of parties that are able to take the ideas of citizens and turn them into public policy, is the best choice to move the North forward.

LM: It's not a silver bullet, to be sure. You look at systems that are bogged down in partisan bickering and do not make a lot of progress on things that matter to people.

KT: Right. And you have to strike a balance in your legislature .... You don't want a hyper-partisan legislature that can't function,the kind of stuff we see in the United States. But you also don't want a legislature where there's no tension, there's no opposition, there's no critical review of what a government is doing, and there's no risk of that governmentfalling if it's not doing a good job. You know, that's something that always exists in every single parliament except ours.There's no snap elections. There's no defeats of budgets. None of that can happen. So what is the check on power in the Northwest Territories? Well, quite frankly, there isn't one.

LM: What about ranked ballots where voters can indicate a second or third choice, potentially more accurately reflecting the nuance of what voters want? Would that integrate or not with our current system of government?

KT: Well, it integrates perfectly with any system, and in particular the consensus system, if it stays this way. Because you cannot have proportional representation in a consensus system, but you can have ranked ballots, and ranked ballots ensure that no vote is wasted. You know, there's we have plenty of elections that are won by two or, you know, six votes, a handful of votes. And the way we fix that is through ranked ballots, because it ensures that all the votes are counted, all the votes go where they belong. And it forces candidates and political parties to pull their messaging and their positions on the issues closer to a place that they can appeal to the largest amount of people, which is ultimately going to result in better policy. Because if you only play to your base and to the margins of the ideological spectrum, you're not going to be anyone's second choice or third choice for that matter.

LM: What about changing the number of seats in the legislative assembly?

KT: So right now the cabinet needs at least three regular members to support them. That already gives them a lot of advantages because the cabinet votes as a bloc and they control the purse strings of the territorial government. So it's pretty easy to get those three votes, but nevertheless you need at least three.

If we takethe commission's third option, where they knock seats down to 16, that will make it so the cabinet only requires one vote to pass anything turning the N.W.T. Legislature into a rubber stamp legislature where the government is just going to propose legislation and it's always passed. And that is extremely troubling for a free and functional democracy because the regular members will have zero power if the seat count drops without a corresponding drop in cabinet. But if you want to do that, you'd have to knock cabinet down to four plus one premier and that's absurd when it comes to governing too much work for four people to do and you'd screw up the regional representation of cabinet that currently exists.

If you look at the rationale for why the commission is recommending that, it seems to be around austerity, which surprised me because the commission shouldn't be worried about the territorial budget. They should be worried about what is the appropriate amount of seats to ensure a functional democracy. And I think that option is a ticking time bomb. And I'm deeply concerned and hope that the legislature ultimately rejects it.