Nearly 15,000 signatures on petition for reform of Quebec voting system

MONTREAL – A petition calling for voting reform in Quebec, posted on the National Assembly website, has received nearly 15,000 signatures since October 3.

The petition, launched by the Mouvement démocratie nouvelle and sponsored by PQ MNA Pascal Bérubé, had collected some 15,000 signatures as of Monday at 11 a.m. It is the petition with the most signatures among those currently open on the National Assembly website.

The document calls for the current first-past-the-post voting system to be replaced by a mixed member proportional voting system, which “would allow for a fairer representation of the diversity of opinions, values and convictions expressed by the Quebec population”, according to the petition’s instigators.

“This is just the beginning, let’s keep up the fight, and we hope this beginning will give us momentum,” says Jean-Pierre Charbonneau, president of the Mouvement démocratie nouvelle and former president of the National Assembly, in an interview.

“What I want citizens to know is that they can join this movement,” he added, pointing out that the petition can be signed until December 4.

Charbonneau says the petition is intended to ask the Legault government to keep its 2018 promise on voting reform, but also to show that Quebecers are interested in the quality of democracy.

“People consider that it wasn’t fair the electoral result last year, when with less than 41 per cent of the vote, we got 72 per cent of the [Coalition avenir Québec (CAQ)] MNAs,” says Charbonneau. It’s not acceptable, it’s not fair, it’s not equitable. That’s not true representative democracy.”

He believes that the current voting system creates an “imbalance” in the National Assembly, where Québec solidaire (QS), the Parti québécois (PQ) and the Quebec Liberal Party (QLP) had very different numbers of MNAs for the same percentage of votes. With 15.43 per cent of the vote, QS obtained 11 MNAs, with 14.61 per cent of the vote, the PQ obtained three MNAs, and with 14.37 per cent of the vote, the QLP obtained 21 MNAs, according to Elections Québec data.

The Quebec Conservative Party received 12.91 per cent of the vote, but no MNA.

“This petition is part of the follow-up to a commitment the Parti Québécois made several years ago to reform the voting system,” said PQ MNA Pascal Bérubé in an interview. He calls on the CAQ to keep its promise, but also on the QLP to take a stand in favor of voting reform.

“People don’t always realize at the time that the CAQ’s omnipresence on Quebec territory is linked to a system that favors this party. Reforming the voting system is not about favoring any political party, it’s about favoring democratic expression,” he added.

The petition comes as QS MNA Sol Zanetti called on Premier François Legault to renew his commitment to reforming the voting system.

Zanetti presented a bill to the National Assembly on October 5, aimed at establishing a new voting system more representative of the will of voters.

The MNA for Jean-Lesage is asking the CAQ government to call his bill before Christmas, so that it can be studied in parliamentary committee.

• This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on October 15, 2023.
• With information from Frédéric Lacroix-Couture.