Here is a Question for you Jack

So here we are. The election is over, Ottawa has a new, but not necessarily better look to it and many of the 60% or so of Canadians who didn’t vote for the Blue Man Group are wondering what happened. More and more are asking themselves, “Isn’t it time we took a hard look at our electoral system.” The first-past-the post system just doesn’t cut it.

All that considered I think that Fair Vote Canada has a great suggestion for Jack Layton’s first Question in the new Parliament. They are nudging the new Leader of the Opposition to ask:

Mr. Speaker, in 1996, when the right was divided and we seemed to be faced with the prospect of “Liberal government forever”, the current prime minister, who was then out of elected office, co-authored and published with Tom Flanagan a remarkable article entitled “Our Benign Dictatorship”. In this thoughtful and well researched article, they decried the way that our first-past-the-post voting system creates one-party rule “beset by the factionalism, regionalism and cronyism that accompany any such system.” They said, and I quote, “For Canadian democracy to mature, Canadian citizens must face these facts, as citizens in other countries have, and update our political structures to reflect the diverse political aspirations of our diverse communities.”

They went on to decry the hugely distorted election results in the 1993 election, in which the Reform party won 52 seats with 19% of the votes, but the Progressive Conservatives, with 16% of the votes, won only two seats, while the Bloc Quebecois, with only 14% of the votes, won 54 seats and formed Her Majesty's “Loyal” Opposition.

“Imposing a first-past-the-post voting system upon a society with deep ethno linguistic and regional cleavages,” they said, “inevitably fragments Canadian conservatism,” adding that, ”Our system has similarly fragmented social democrats.”

They encouraged the Reform and Progressive Conservative parties to advocate electoral reform, and suggested the NDP would vote for it too.

“No one who cares seriously about ideas,” they said, “whether conservative, liberal or socialist, should be happy with the thought of prolonged one-party rule,” because, they pointed out, it leads to cronyism, corruption, cynicism and chaos.” The absence of effective competition,” they said, “is just as bad in politics as it is in economics.”

“Voters on the left,” they pointed out, “are as much entitled as voters on the right to effective representation.”

They went on to point out that, “In today’s democratic societies, organizations share power. Corporations, churches, universities, hospitals, even public sector bureaucracies make decisions through consultation, committees and consensus-building techniques. Only in politics do we still entrust power to a single faction expected to prevail every time over the opposition by sheer force of numbers. Even more anachronistically, we persist in structuring the governing team like a military regiment under a single commander with almost total power to appoint, discipline and expel subordinates.”

They conclude by saying, “Many of Canada’s problems stem from a winner-take-all style of politics that allows governments in Ottawa to impose measures abhorred by large areas of the country,” and “Modernizing Canadian politics would not only be good for conservatism, it might be the key to Canada’s survival as a nation.”

Mr Speaker, we on this side of the House couldn’t agree more with all of that, so my question to the Prime Minister is this: Now that you have won a majority government on the basis of having received less than forty percent of the votes cast in the election, do you still believe in proportional representation?

Then Fair Vote suggests that Jack follow up with the following supplementary.

Mr. Speaker, historically, up to 80% of votes cast for the NDP federally have been wasted votes—they did not help to elect anyone, and our party has always had about half as many seats in this place as we should have won based on the number of votes we received. That has changed, Mr. Speaker, and today, the New Democratic Party is actually slightly over-represented in this House.

But Mr. Speaker, we are willing to put the interests of the country ahead of the interests of our party, and we call on the governing party to do the same.

We do still support proportional representation, Mr. Speaker, and my supplementary question to the Prime Minister is this: When will his government put forward amendments to the Canada Elections Act to give Canadians a modern, fair, proportional voting system, so that every Canadian can have a vote that makes a difference? When they do, Mr. Speaker, we will vote for it.

I don't know if Jack reads what Fair Vote writes about the issue but I hope he does. That question would get people's attention. Let him know this is a great idea.

Time to Bring in Electoral Reform

Hi there from the Speaker's chair

As one of the sixty percenters, those people who didn’t vote for the blue meanies, I couldn’t help to notice that while the big parties have been quick to defend our undemocratic first past the post electoral system when it comes to General Elections, they recognize how flawed the system is when the time comes to elect the Speaker of the House.

It took six ballots before Andrew Scheer got the keys to that lovely old residence in the Gatineau’s. If the House of Commons used the system, which they think is good enough for the rest of us; the Speaker would most likely be a New Democrat.

It is well past time for this country to talk about serious electoral reform and to join the majority of world democracies in embracing proportional representation.

UK Election Should be a Wakeup Call

It isn’t over yet in the UK but I have been watching the attempts to form government there with rapt interest. Canadian political commentators have been critical of the process but to me, it is a good deal better having the interested parties struggling to make some kind of compromise than it is to meekly allow a government with very little voter support simply assume power the way we have in this country.


Why should we assume that it is any more legitimate for David Cameron’s right-leaning Conservatives to form government with the 36% support they won from voters rather than have a coalition of the more socially conscious Labour, the Liberal-Democrats and members of various other small parties including the Green member elected last week who collectively scored over 50%, run the country.

Something about that sticks in the craw of commentators like the Globe & Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson and others and frankly I cannot fathom why. Canada’s elites seem to have a mental block about proportional representation and they don’t like the concept of a hung parliament being able to be worked out in a compromise through discussion of common interests. I wish Simpson could explain to us, why a system which would give the party that got 45% of the popular vote , 45% of the seats in Parliament is flawed.

We need to make the process more democratic and why, as Canadian voters we cling to the out dated first past the post system is beyond my comprehension.

I do know why the Harpers and Ignatieff don’t want to change the system. It is all about the hope that their party will achieve that elusive 40% which just might get them a majority Government. The NDP are just as bad. It has been party policy for years but when is the last time you heard Jack Layton speak out in favour of proportional representation. Jack still thinks he has a chance of becoming Prime Minister. Some democracy we live in.

Here in Canada, over the last 80 years only four governments were elected by a majority of the people who cast ballots. That was in 1940, 1949, 1958 and 1984. Here in Canada it took 31,000 votes to elect each Bloc member of Parliament, 37,000 to elect one Liberal, 40,00 for each Conservative and 111,000 to elect each NDP member. The Greens received close to a million votes and elected no one.

So let’s take a hard look at what is happening in the UK and in our own country. It is time to stand up and tell the party leaders that electoral reform is more than giving a few extra seats to Alberta. We need significant change and we need it now. Be part of the solution. Get involved. Speak out.

Nicholson and His Cronies Are Out of Touch

The right wing, law and order agenda marches on. The Government has again introduced legislation which would make a six month jail sentence mandatory for growing a few as six marijuana plants. This is legislation that died on the order paper when Harper prorogued Parliament a few months ago. The Senate reviewed the bill and thinking it too harsh, recommended some changes which would relax some of the more draconian penalties but Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has chosen to ignore those suggestions and resurrected his old bill.


Nicholson who I suppose would know about these things, suggests that anything over five plants growing at home is done for the purpose of trafficking. What a crock. It just shows how out of touch these Tories are.

If this bill passes, anyone wanting to smoke a little reefer will have to buy it on the street instead of harvesting a little from under the grow lights.

This all might go down well in small town Alberta but I can't see it winning these guys any support in British Columbia where, from an agricultural perspective,  the devil's lettuce is the largest cash crop in the province by a long shot.  Amazingly, the Liberals voted for this legislation the last time around but, they seem afraid to vote against anything that might inadvertently cause an election. Frankly, I'll feel a little better when the Liberals stop self destructing and find their cahones.

The thing that we should never forget when it comes to government bills is that a good majority of Canadians votes against the Tories in the last election. They may be ahead in the polls today but they can never claim to be a government supported by a majority of Canadians. They are just there because of a deficiency in our electoral system.

What About This Election Idea?

As election talk increases our newspapers are full of opinions by political pundits telling us that Canadians don’t want an election. They think that Ottawa should simply get down to work even if it means letting Little Stevie run roughshod over our already bruised Canadian psyche.

As much as Stephen Harper drones on about his legitimately elected government, only about 30% of Canadians voted for those guys in the last election. A majority of Canadians don’t want this Harper government in power. That much has been clear from the outset.

I used to support the idea of minority governments. Historically, they have worked but in this age of fuck you politics, they are an appalling failure.

So ask yourself, what have we got?

• We have a bullying style of leadership from the Prime Minister, a style of leadership so mean spirited that it undermines respect for the office he holds.
  
• We have a right-wing government that is bit by bit changing what it means to be a Canadian for the rest of us.

The result is that as a people, Canadians who have a reputation for finding the workable compromise, are being led by a “my way or the highway” government. It is a situation few of us are comfortable with.

The real question is do we want to exchange a Conservative lead government for Liberal government with the same lackluster support now held by Harper and his gang? Why bother.

In the short term what we need is a real coalition government that can team up together and make parliament work. Not some temporary soft Conservative/Bloc/NDP coalition like we are working with now in the short term, but a formal Liberal/NDP deal. Any reasonable government with a social conscious would be supported by the Bloc. A good coalition would easily go full term.

The only thing standing in the way of that happening is hubris and there are few things more powerful.

In the long term, Canadians have to begin to realize that democracy as we know it in this country is a sham.

• When 30% can bring any party to power in Ottawa.
  
• When 40% support can win a government a majority.
  
• When Mulroney’s 50.03% win in 1984 is being described as a landslide

We need to change the electoral system.

Canada is one of the few remaining major democracies still using the “first past the post” system. Most major democracies scrapped this "winner take all" system some time ago. Winner take all systems subvert the core principles of representative democracy.

So, wake up Canada and reclaim your country while you can still recognize it.