MLAs should drop their secret ballots

Some time next week, Nov. 15 possibly, Nunavut’s new group of MLAs will make one of the biggest decisions they’ll ever get to make.

They’ll elect a government.

Under our non-partisan system, Nunavut voters, through 22 concurrent elections scheduled on the same day, are able to elect or acclaim local representatives.

But Nunavut voters do not have the power to either defeat an old government or choose a new one. Neither do they have the power to endorse or reject any Nunavut-wide platform or program.

Only MLAs can do that. Through a convention inherited from the Northwest Territories legislature, they choose Nunavut’s government — a premier and cabinet — from among themselves, as soon as possible in the weeks that follow our locally-based legislative assembly elections.

They do this in a gathering they call the “Nunavut Leadership Forum,” which this year they’re likely to hold by the middle of this month. There, they use a process identical to that used by the NWT legislature, where it’s called the “Territorial Leadership Committee.”

In the early days of territorial government, MLAs did this work in secret. They chose a government leader and cabinet behind closed doors, emerging only to announce the result of deliberations that were hidden from outside scrutiny.

But following public outrage in 1987 over the confusing and secret process they used to elect a government leader that year, MLAs changed their ways.

In 1991, they made the process public. MLAs were nominated in public for the premiership and for jobs in cabinet. Each nominee was given 10 to 20 minutes to pitch their candidacy to MLAs in public speeches. MLAs were allowed to question them, also in public. But when it came time to actually elect a government, they continued to use secret balloting.

All the same, these public leadership forums were an important step in the evolution of government in the territories. The additional transparency likely made the process somewhat more legitimate in the eyes of the public, and these government-selection sessions — among the elite at least — became much-watched spectacles.

Following the creation of the Nunavut legislature in 1999, Nunavut MLAs adopted the same process, which until now has remained unchanged.

But Nunavut MLAs — should they wish to do so — have a chance to remove the last vestige of secrecy left over from the old government-selection system used in the 1970s and 1980s.

The can get rid of their secret ballots.

Choosing a government is not a trivial act. As we’ve said, it’s one of the most important decisions that MLAs will get to make during the life of this or any other legislative assembly.

But under the secret ballot system for choosing a premier and cabinet, constituents, for the most part, do not know who their MLAs supported or opposed.

This is information that constituents need to fully assess the performance of their elected representatives. Constituents ought to know who their MLAs supported and who they did not support. This is especially important for the premier election, because the premier’s powers include the ability to appoint or dismiss deputy ministers and other senior managers, thereby influencing many government priorities and policies that affect voters.

Secret balloting, however, means constituents are denied access to information on who their MLAs supported for premier and other cabinet positions.

The only exceptions are those MLAs who nominate candidates. But even when an MLA publically nominates another member for, let’s say, the premier’s job, that is no guarantee the nominating member will actually vote for the person they nominated. In a secret ballot system, no one ever knows.

The justification for secret balloting is that the practice lets MLAs present a façade of unity after they’ve chosen a government. They use it to pretend the government they’ve just chosen represents the unanimous will of the assembly.

But in the 2008 Nunavut leadership forum, almost everyone in the room knew who supported whom and who didn’t. The legislative assembly, like any other deliberative body, has always been divided by factions and cliques that form naturally around personal and regional loyalties.

MLAs know this. It’s time the public knew it too. Let the Nunavut legislative assembly choose our next government with public disclosure of who votes for which candidates. JB