Not only did the recent federal election waste $300 million of our taxpayer money, it also wasted a significant amount of time and productive effort of many of our nation’s citizens, as well as a considerable amount of energy of the non-renewable kind as politicians and their entourage planed, bussed and motored around the country. Instead of electioneering for six weeks, our politicians should have been focussing their energy on dealing with the pressing issues Canada is facing in this time of turmoil and change.
Canada is a large and diverse country with a wide range of political preferences based not only on the usual individual differences, but also on regional differences related to such things as geography, history, economy, population and culture. As a result, a majority government is no longer the likely outcome of any federal election. As Canadians, we must accept that, indeed, minority governments have become the logical outcome in a country as diverse as ours. More importantly, our politicians must also accept this reality. Our elected representatives must learn to put aside partisanship to ensure that a minority government is productive and progressive.
As has been said before, there are challenging times ahead, and we need the collective wisdom of all parties and all elected officials working together to help us prepare. Of course, if we believe in true democracy, where every citizen has a say, and where every vote has meaning, then our new group of MPs is far from what we, the electorate, voted for. Yes, it is time to replace the old, first-past-the-post system with a proportional voting system, which would accurately reflect the democratic wishes of Canadians.
Below is a commentary from Fair Vote Canada about the unrepresentative parliament that Canadians recently elected. [ www.fairvote.ca ]
Also click on the link to read the recent Macleans magazine cover story written by editor-in-chief, Andrew Coyne, on October 16, 2008.
What if they gave an election and nobody won?
We now know one thing: this electoral system is broken
ANDREW COYNE | October 16, 2008 |
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Electoral dysfunction, yet again
[October 15, 2008]
[Fair Vote Canada www.fairvote.ca]
Greens deserved more than 20 seats – voting system also punished New Democrats, western Liberals and urban Conservatives
Once again, Canada’s antiquated first-past-the-post system wasted millions of votes, distorted results, severely punished large blocks of voters, exaggerated regional differences, created an unrepresentative Parliament and contributed to a record low voter turnout.
[Note: The following commentary is based on returns at 2am ET]
The chief victims of the October 14 federal election were:
– Green Party: 940,000 voters supporting the Green Party sent no one to Parliament, setting a new record for the most votes cast for any party that gained no parliamentary representation. By comparison, 813,000 Conservative voters in Alberta alone were able to elect 27 MPs.
– Prairie Liberals and New Democrats: In the prairie provinces, Conservatives received roughly twice the vote of the Liberals and NDP, but took seven times as many seats.
– Urban Conservatives: Similar to the last election, a quarter-million Conservative voters in Toronto elected no one and neither did Conservative voters in Montreal.
– New Democrats: The NDP attracted 1.1 million more votes than the Bloc, but the voting system gave the Bloc 50 seats, the NDP 37.
“How can anyone consider this democratic representation?” asked Barbara Odenwald, President of Fair Vote Canada .
Had the votes on October 14 been cast under a fair and proportional voting system, Fair Vote Canada projected that the seats allocation would have been approximately as follows:
Conservatives – 38% of the popular vote: 117 seats (not 143)
Liberals – 26% of the popular vote: 81 seats (not 76)
NDP – 18% of the popular vote: 57 seats (not 37)
Bloc – 10% of the popular vote: 28 seats (not 50)
Greens – 7% of the popular vote: 23 seats (not 0)
Fair Vote Canada also has data for each province on the number of seats won and number of seats actually deserved by each party.
Odenwald emphasized that any projection on the use of other voting systems must be qualified, as specific system features would affect the exact seat allocations.
“With a different voting system, people would also have voted differently,” said Larry Gordon, Executive Director of Fair Vote Canada. “There would have been no need for strategic voting. We would likely have seen higher voter turnout. We would have had different candidates – more women, and more diversity of all kinds. We would have had more real choices.”
Fair Vote Canada (FVC) is a national multi-partisan citizens’ campaign to promote voting system reform. FVC was founded in 2001 and has a National Advisory Board of distinguished Canadians from all points on the political spectrum.
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