The worst aspects of competitive sport are infiltrating and distorting Canadian electoral politics.

As I get older and necessarily see more political machinations – from my own municipality of Bowen Island B.C., and at the provincial and federal levels of government – I am struck by the similarities between politics and the worst of competitive sport.

It’s not that I’m against competitive sport; I’ve indulged in it for almost all of my adult life and I’ve had wonderful experiences. But the worst aspects of it appear to be infiltrating our electoral politics – the system has become a winner-take-all; there is very little camaraderie between opposing sides, a distinct lack of interest in collaboration, and an ongoing derision of the character and morality of one’s opponents. Governments in power, whether they sit at the provincial or federal level, rarely represent a majority of the population, but typically act as if they have a mandate of overwhelming support.

Consider Stephen Harper’s Conservatives: In a “best-case” scenario of majority government, they would still only be supported by about 40 per cent of Canadians. They would have the power to create law for all on behalf of this 40 per cent. A simple remedy to this problem, at least for both federal and provincial governments, is a system of proportional representation: more parties, more diversity of viewpoints in framing legislation, and necessarily, more compromise and collaboration. We came close to something like this in British Columbia in our last election, but the specifics of the proposal just couldn’t be sold to the voters. We should try again.

Surveys have demonstrated that nation states with consensus-driven systems of decision-making have greater support from their citizens. Further, the same polling tells us that these systems of government are also correlated with greater trust in fellow citizens – and that these citizens have greater confidence in their legal systems. Additionally, and perhaps not surprisingly, rates of imprisonment are much lower than in jurisdictions with winner-take-all systems. With more trust in one’s fellow citizens and more careful and collegial construction of legislation, there is less need to be punitive.

The picture is a little more complicated at the municipal level, where a system of proportional representation could not save us from ourselves; there are often many different viewpoints represented by half a dozen elected representatives or more. But the same difficulties can still arise in these town hall settings (not unlike those recent town hall meetings on health care in the United States), where two choices are argued about, where complicated issues come down to for and against, and dialogue and compromise take a back seat to saying yes or no to a given proposal. Add to this the reality that the men and women who run for political office municipally, provincially, or nationally, rarely have well developed skills in the realms of compromise, consensus, and negotiated decision-making.

So it seems that the problem of collaborative governance goes beyond proportional representation, taking us to investment in an ethic of co-operative governance. In many senses, it’s still about numbers – recognition that substantial minorities need to be a part of any legal process. I don’t mean every crank with a loud opinion, but credible and significant minorities.

It’s what many of us in my workplace (the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser) call a big tent approach. We welcome many different credible methodologies, ideologies, and disciplines, and we try to provide support for all. We do, however, have one cardinal rule: Don’t burn down the tent. For us, it’s not about winning and losing, it’s about moving forward, with the support and trust of our colleagues. It’s not always easy, but I like to think that we have something, at least at the moment, that could carry over quite well into the political realm.