<!--?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?--><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>CH12</title> <link href="../Styles/9781459739123_INT.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"/> <meta content="urn:uuid:d7cfa477-adc2-4219-b269-32daa4d986e3" name="Adept.expected.resource"/> </head> <body id="CH12"> <div class="Basic-Text-Frame"> <h1>12</h1> <p class="chaptertitle"> How Hard Is Asking a Clear Question?</p> <p class="smspace">The preferred way to frame a ballot question, and the wording specified in a number of statutes, is “Are you in favour of …? Yes <span class="Basic-Graphics-Frame"><img alt="89827.jpg" class="frame-6" src="../Images/89827.jpg"/></span> No <span class="Regular"><span class="Basic-Graphics-Frame"><img alt="89831.jpg" class="frame-6" src="../Images/89831.jpg"/></span></span>.” This formulation leads to clarity about what is being asked. The simpler the question, the clearer the issue to be decided. The more direct it is the easier to force choice. The point is to elicit Yes or No, not Maybe or Don’t Know.</p> <p>Although Plato taught that asking the right question is often the most important thing, and despite Anton Chekhov reminding us that brevity is the handmaid of clarity, in this department of being brief and clear, a number of Canadian referendums have come up short. This wording by Premier René Lévesque for Quebec’s 1980 referendum entered the record books for all-time foggiest:</p> <blockquote> <p class="left">The Government of Quebec has made public its proposal to negotiate a new agreement with the rest of Canada, based on the equality of nations; this agreement would enable Quebec to acquire the exclusive power to make its laws, administer its taxes and establish relations abroad — in other words, sovereignty — and at the same time, to maintain with Canada an economic association including a common currency; any change in political status resulting from these negotiations will be submitted to the people through a referendum;</p> <p class="bstart"><span class="italics">ON THESE TERMS, DO YOU AGREE TO GIVE THE GOVERNMENT OF QUEBEC THE MANDATE TO NEGOTIATE THE PROPOSED AGREEMENT BETWEEN QUEBEC AND CANADA? YES <span class="Basic-Graphics-Frame"><img alt="89836.jpg" class="frame-6" src="../Images/89836.jpg"/></span> NO </span><span class="Italics"><span class="Basic-Graphics-Frame"><img alt="89834.jpg" class="frame-6" src="../Images/89834.jpg"/></span></span><span class="italics"> .</span></p> </blockquote> <p>Another exhibit in this ambiguous question category, and edging out Quebec’s 1980 ballot for longest, was provided by the Northwest Territories for a vote on territorial division. A map showing the proposed boundaries was included on the ballot, not in accompanying material. The “question” itself, four paragraphs running to 186 words, lacked clarity because the extended preamble gave voters a lot of information better confined to the information pamphlet. The wording:</p> <blockquote> <p class="left">On April 14, 1982, a majority of voters in an NWT-wide plebiscite voted to support the division of the Northwest Territories so as to allow the creation of a new Nunavut Territory with its own Nunavut government. The NWT Legislative Assembly and the Government of Canada accepted this result.</p> <p>In the Iqaluit Agreement of January 15, 1987, the Nunavut Constitutional Forum (NCF) and the Western Constitutional Forum (WCF) agreed that the boundary for division for the NWT would be the boundary separating the Tungavik Federation of Nunavut (TFN) land claim settlement area from the Inuvialuit and Dene-Métis land claim settlement areas. On April 19, 1991, the Government of Canada endorsed the compromise boundary shown on the map below.</p> <p>[Here a map of the Northwest Territories’ proposed boundary line appeared on the ballot.]</p> <p>Division will occur in such a way as:</p> <ul> <li>to maintain adequate levels of public services;</li> <li>to respect the opportunity of residents in the Mackenzie Valley and Beaufort areas to develop new constitutional arrangements in the future for the western part of the NWT; and</li> <li>to respect the employment status and location preferences of GNWT employees.</li> </ul> <p class="left"><span class="italics">ON THESE UNDERSTANDINGS, DO YOU SUPPORT THE BOUNDARY FOR DIVISION SHOWN ON MAP ABOVE? </span><span class="italics">Yes <span class="Basic-Graphics-Frame"><img alt="89841.jpg" class="frame-6" src="../Images/89841.jpg"/></span> No <span class="Basic-Graphics-Frame"><img alt="89838.jpg" class="frame-6" src="../Images/89838.jpg"/></span>.</span></p> </blockquote> <p>A couple of key rules are that the proposition be stated in a way that isn’t loaded and that the ballot question be unambiguous. The directness of the ballot question “Are you in favour of adding fluoride to Toronto’s drinking water?” leaves no doubt about what the issue is. The wording doesn’t attempt to give a synopsis of the issue, nor explain it, because decades of experience with municipal ballot questions showed that people voting would already have heard fluoride’s benefits explained by public health authorities and medical scientists, listened to denunciations by libertarians and conspiracy theorists about adding a chemical to the municipal water supply, weighed those concerns against the fact chlorine was already helping to keep the water safe to drink, and considered the low financial cost in tax dollars for widespread public benefit of improved dental health for everyone in the city. With any ballot question, which always <span class="italics">follows</span> a campaign period for debate and voter education of pros and cons, those casting ballots know why their choice is Yes or No — when the question is straightforward. When we cast a ballot to elect a representative, only the names of the candidates — not their bios and positions on issues — are presented for us to choose between.</p> <p class="subhead">Multiple Questions on One Ballot</p> <p class="smspace">There is nothing wrong with combining several questions on a single ballot provided the consequences have been thought through. They hadn’t been in Ottawa when city council put a question before city voters in 1933. The question asked local electors whether they favoured a council composed of a mayor and six councillors; a council with a mayor, four councillors, and eleven aldermen; or retaining the existing system. People voted about equally for all three options. With that ambiguous outcome, a sheepish city council took no action.<span class="supnote">1</span></p> <p>Having a number of questions has proven possible in a variety of situations, however. When Newfoundlanders voted on their future after the Second World War, the first ballot offered three choices, which led to a second round of voting on only two options, the one about joining Confederation winning by a slight margin. When British Columbians voted on aboriginal land claim issues in 2002, eight different questions faced them on mail-in ballots. In 2016 Prince Edward Islanders saw a weighted ballot on which they ranked their preferences between five different electoral systems, learning in the bargain how weighted ballots might work in a preferential electoral system.</p> <p>Asking someone their choice between options needs to clearly convey what the issue is, so the consequences of deciding one way or the other is also evident. Statutes and case law governing the referendum process specify that a ballot question be brief, clear, and answerable by either Yes or No.</p> <p>Sometimes governments cloud a choice with ambiguity to camouflage their true intent, thinking they can fool gullible voters with what seems a low-risk option. Quebec’s 1980 ballot question on “negotiating sovereignty-association” is a prime example. Yet even in confusing cases, political science research suggests that people sort out the crux of the choice facing them. The 1942 vote about releasing the government from its prior electoral commitment was, everyone knew, about green-lighting conscription. That 1980 vote in Quebec, despite the vague and convoluted question, was about Quebec separating from Confederation in one manner or another.</p> <p>The danger of ambiguity about such a matter as the future of Canada, however, couldn’t be allowed to just let drift into another separatist-sponsored referendum in Quebec, which prompted Prime Minister Chrétien to initiate a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada. Its 1998 landmark decision in <span class="italics">Reference Re Secession of Quebec</span> concluded that unilateral secession was illegal, would require a constitutional amendment, and that only a clear majority on a clear question could bring about any sort of obligation on the federal and provincial governments to negotiate secession.<span class="supnote">2</span></p> <p>The Chrétien government then introduced “An Act to give effect to the requirement for clarity as set out in the opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Quebec Secession Reference,” or the Clarity Act for short. Enacted by Parliament in 2000, it stipulates that for any referendum about the secession of a Canadian province, Parliament has the power to determine whether the question is clear enough and the majority large enough to be recognized as a valid basis for negotiation.<span class="supnote">3</span></p> <p>In response, Quebec’s National Assembly responded by enacting Bill 99, “An Act respecting the exercise of the fundamental rights and prerogatives of the Quebec people and the Quebec State.” It stipulates that Quebecers may determine unilaterally how to exercise their right to choose their political regime, including sovereignty, and the winning option in a referendum would be whichever side obtains 50 percent of the votes plus one.</p> <p>The contest between federalists and separatists, more aptly understood as competing visions of Confederationists and independentists, is long-standing. A couple of colonial provinces participating in the negotiations for a combined federal state stayed out of 1867’s new arrangement for some years. Nova Scotians voted in several elections for anti-Confederation candidates and elected a majority of them to the House of Assembly in Halifax and the House of Commons in Ottawa. Newfoundlanders didn’t vote for the Confederation option in their first referendum, and only narrowly did so in the second. Quebecers twice voted on separation, with Confederation winning both times but only narrowly in the second round.</p> <p>Sometimes people in these and other provinces vote in general elections to register protest against how Confederation operates. When the ballots are in general elections, it is impossible to discern clearly the message of disquiet or the measure of dissent. In the rarer cases of a referendum ballot, it has been slightly more obvious, but the unclear wording still makes interpretation problematic. Whether the “Terms of Union” for Newfoundland still had to be negotiated after the referendum, or the proposition for future negotiation of “sovereignty-association” portended nothing more than a nebulous outcome, reflected more the ambivalence of politicians than the ambiguity of ballot questions. Although it’s important for referendums to have straight-up questions, they’re impossible to pose when it’s not clear what’s really wanted.</p> <p>Every component of our governance system — general elections, courtroom trials, royal commission inquiries, coroner’s inquests, industrial arbitrations, referendums — is subject to strong conflicting pressures. None of them has a blemish-free record. General elections are abused when a premier opportunistically calls a snap election to win a surprise victory over temporarily weakened opposition, or to sidestep rather than confront a political dilemma, but nobody shocked by such abuses calls for abolition of elections. Nobody who sees a mistrial advocates abolition of the judicial system. Even ardent critics of the inordinate time and high cost of a royal commission or public inquiry don’t assert we should never again have public investigations of intricate public matters. So why heed those who, disliking the controversial issues that referendums confront, oppose the procedure itself?</p> </div> </body> </html>