Daily Archives: 4/22/2007
Dion Open to “Electoral Reform”
| 4/22/2007 | Posted by Patti under Canadian Politics |
Apparently as part of Dion’s agreement with Elizabeth May the leader of the Green Party he’s indicated an openness to looking at electoral reform. There isn’t anything wrong with looking at our voting system periodically to consider if the system is fair. Assuming that something needs to be changed is not good though.
Fringe parties and parties with relatively low support seem to be the ones which are engaged in whining that the electoral system is ‘broken’. These parties seem to think that because they have support spread thin across the country that they are entitled to a seat in Parliament and we should ‘fix’ the system. The system is only broken if we decide that representation in Parliament is based on national popular vote and not local voting.
The system we have has been historically based on local voting trends with each riding deciding their party of representation in Parliament. I have yet to see a convincing argument why we should have MPs who can’t garner enough local support to be elected to Parliament on their own merit.
Ontario is currently looking at so called ‘reform’ and has put forward a mixed proportional representation suggestion which we’ll be voting on in October. I’m not the least bit impressed on that suggestion. To date, any of the provinces where some form of tinkering with the process has been put forward, it hasn’t been accepted. Seems to me that we’re wasting time and resources on trying to fix what works.
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