We had a very enjoyable discussion on political reform in Edmonton today. Senate reform, Parliament reform and electoral reform were the main items touched upon. As the electoral reform was being discussed, several participants of our forum brought forward the idea that every party in Canada needs to declare its position on this topic prior to the next federal election and should also provide a specific plan on what it would do to realize this position.
As a representative of the NDP at the meeting, I stated that the New Democrats support electoral reform to make every vote count and that some form of proportional representation was probably the way to go. The Greens, as far as I understand, have a similar viewpoint on the need for electoral reform. As correctly noted by one of the people today, Tories would be the last party to ask to support electoral reform, as they are quite satisfied with the first-come-first-served (aka first-past-the-post) system. But what is the position of the Liberals? Is there a centralized viewpoint on this among them?
I personally think that before any talk of a coalition between the parties can be started, this needs to be cleared up. Electoral reform may well be the uniting or separating factor in the next federal election. With every new election when the issue of making each vote equal is swept under the rug, the injustice is perpetuated further, damaging our democracy and turning people away from taking any interest in politics.
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Saturday, June 12, 2010
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Excellent question. We know why Liberal MPs are not always interested: they were mostly elected from Liberal strongholds that benefit from winner-take-all. But Liberals voters elsewhere need PR: why don't they speak up?
ReplyDeletehttp://wilfday.blogspot.com/2010/02/liberals-have-needed-proportional.html
http://wilfday.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-dont-more-liberals-speak-up.html