Should Crossing the Floor Be Allowed in Canada?

This morning, Marilyn Gladu, the Conservative MP for Sarnia, elected four times as a Conservative, crossed the floor to join the Liberals. She is the fifth opposition MP to do so since November, following Conservatives Chris d'Entremont, Michael Ma, and Matt Jeneroux, and NDP MP Lori Idlout. Gladu was also, for the record, publicly calling for automatic by-elections for floor crossers just three months ago. In January she said “Really, the whole point of being an MP is to represent your constituents. So if they’re voting you in under one platform –for you to switch for whatever reasons, just seems to me to not be representing what you’re supposed to be there to represent."

You can't make this stuff up.

Imagine If the Shoe Was on the Other Foot

If you don't see the problem, think about this potential scenario for just one second. Imagine Donald Trump had a minority of seats in Congress and a couple of Democrats switched teams and became Republicans. The amount of vitriol that would rise to the surface of the discourse. It is not a stretch to posit that it would turn violent in a place like the USA. People would be taking to the streets. It would matter.

Yet for some reason, Canadians are giving each of these people a pass. We talk about our sovereignty. How Canada must be protected, how we think it's so important to have a democracy with clear rules and regulations. That your voice counts, and your vote matters. But evidently, this is totally wrong.

That's Not How the System Works

Technically, in this country, you don't vote for a leader. You vote for your MP. With this fact, the common counterargument surfaces: elected officials have the ability to change their mind, and they're elected as a member of parliament — not as a party delegate.

Sure, technically that is true.

But in reality. Out in the real world, that is not at all how the system works. Most Canadians do not know the name of their MP. They almost certainly do not know who their previous MP was. They vote for their leaders. They remember who they voted for by the leader of the party. It's not technically the case, but outside of exceedingly rare circumstances, that's just how it is, and everyone knows it.

Beneficiaries of Floor Crossers Will Always Rationalize It

A lot of (in this instance) Liberal supporters will say: well, it doesn't matter, that's their prerogative, that's actually how the system works. Rules are rules, after all. And they'll keep saying that right up until the floor crossing goes the other way.

That's the major hypocrisy at play here. People support this when it benefits their team and oppose it when it doesn't. That's not a principle, that's just picking a side. It should be self evident to anyone with a modicum of sense that if the Conservatives were doing exactly this right now, those same people would be furious. And they'd be absolutely right to be.

This Really Matters

This is especially problematic because taken in aggregate, the Liberal government has gone from a minority to a majority. In other words, the Liberals will be in full control of the country for a four years. It was already certainly the case with the current by-elections, frankly. But now it's cemented, a fait accompli.

This matters most of all because it erodes people's confidence in democracy. What is the point of voting for a party, or a person representing a party, if they can just switch teams whenever they'd like? For many, there is no point.

In other words, these elected officials, during their campaigns, clearly said they would subscribe to a certain set of ideals. Then once elected, once given power, they completely abandoned those statements and principals. In any other industry, this would be considered fraud. Maybe in this context, it is. It opens the Liberal government to the notion that their majority is fraudulent. The polls suggest they could have picked it up honestly, with by-elections, but they did it with backroom deals.

This Will Just Keep Happening

If this isn't addressed (which in all likelihood, it never will be), it becomes a permanent feature of our democracy.

Quite simply, being an MP sitting in government is better than not being in government. You are more prominent. You have more power. It is essentially all upside. Therefore, as an MP, you are always incentivized to be in government. This will stand for any opposition MP moving forward.

The integrity of parliamentary democracy is supposed to keep things in balance. We can have disagreements about how fair the system is right now, but making it less fair, and just always incentivizing floor crossing, is something else entirely.

Again, think about the shoe being on the other foot. If the Conservatives had a minority, or even a majority, they could poach Liberal MPs the exact same way - offer them appointments, give special attention to their ridings. It just becomes a prominent feature of how politics works. It means then that you're always going to have people incentivized to cross the floor to the party in power.

Because, aside from integrity (which doesn't seem to be a feature we care about in politicians much anymore), why wouldn't you? There's no penalty. You don't lose your job, as a matter of fact - you have more job security, because now there won't be an election for three more years.

Without guardrails in place, opposition MPs will be incentivized to cross the floor. Always. At some point, there isn't really a reason to have more than one party at all.

The Fix

There's nothing wrong with an MP saying: "I don't have confidence in my leadership anymore, and I would like to step away from this party and operate alone". That's legitimate and can happen in extremely rare situations.

But that MP should not be allowed to join another party. If they want to change teams, quite simply, they should step down and have to run in a byelection. This would ensure that they still have the confidence of their constituents. Indeed, if they are firm in their belief that that is the will of their constituents (which they always tell you they are), then they should be more than happy to stand again for election wearing a different hat.

At the very least, they should not be allowed to simply walk into another caucus.

The whole notion of being able to actively poach floor crossers (and it does not matter that it's been used before) is a threat to our democracy. If we actually care about that, this needs to stop. And the fact that there's no penalty, no political cost, that this is framed as a failure of the Conservative party, instead of being morally dubious, is pathetic. Again, the same would apply if the shoe was on the other foot.

The great irony is that in 2015, Justin Trudeau was elected partially because he had promised electoral reform. It would seem, this fact has been be lost on Canadians.

What's more, detractors of the Liberal government will now always be able to call Carney's mandate illegitimate. Frankly, those detractors might be right.