On Wednesday, the House of Commons voted against a motion calling for the federal government to establish a citizens' assembly to “determine if electoral reform is recommended for Canada and, if so, recommend specific measures that would foster a healthier democracy.” Those voting against the motion included a majority of Liberal MPs and most of the Trudeau government’s cabinet. But that doesn’t mean electoral reform is dead — or that it couldn’t still happen before the next election.
After all, a citizens' assembly would have taken time we probably don’t have. With Donald Trump poised to win the next U.S. presidential election despite trying to overturn the results of the last one, we no longer have the luxury of pretending democracy is somehow invulnerable or unassailable. There are even those in Canada who very much wish to assail it, albeit by less crude and crass means than Trump.
The merits of a more proportional system of representation are no secret at this point and require no further study or debate. British Columbia formed a Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform more than two decades ago and its conclusions were clear: "Election results will be fairer, reflecting a balance between votes and seats, voters will have more choice and candidates will work harder to earn their support," the assembly’s final report argued.
The case for electoral reform has only grown stronger since then as the lethal combination of social media, the first Trump presidency and a global pandemic has driven people further apart than they’ve been in generations. And then, of course, we have hostile state actors like Russia, China and India trying to exploit and profit from these divisions.
In 2015, when the Liberals promised Canadians would never see another federal election contested under our first-past-the-post system, electoral reform was part of the broader aspirational aims of the Trudeau team. Now in 2024, it’s far more existential. Canadians are increasingly disillusioned by and disengaged from the democratic process, and that’s especially true in places like Alberta and downtown Toronto and Montreal where large portions of the public are effectively disenfranchised by the electoral dominance of the Conservatives and Liberals. A more proportional system would see Liberals elected in Alberta and Conservatives in our biggest cities, an outcome that would yield a more diverse and representative national legislature.
It would also eliminate the frustration associated with so-called “strategic voting,” wherein New Democrats are often encouraged to vote for the Liberal candidate in order to avoid splitting the progressive vote. Allowing people to vote their conscience might increase the rates at which people participate in elections. In New Zealand’s last three federal elections, for example, turnout has averaged just under 80 per cent.
Just as importantly, a more fair and just electoral system would remove some of the polarization that’s come to define our politics. Without the ability to win artificial majorities with a minority of the popular vote, parties would have to be more open to working with each other — and, by extension, less willing to demonize their policies and people.
The Liberals wouldn’t be doing this entirely out of the goodness of their hearts, mind you. One of their biggest weak spots right now is with younger voters, the demographic that helped sweep them to power back in 2015. Only 25 per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 34 support Trudeau’s Liberals right now, a significant drop from the 34 per cent that backed them in 2021 and the staggering 46 per cent that swung Liberal in 2015. Some of them aren’t coming back, but many were alienated by Trudeau’s decision to walk away from his promise to replace our first-past-the-post system. Delivering on that, albeit belatedly, might make a lot of them reconsider.
Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives would come out swinging against any attempt to change the electoral system, even if it would actually benefit them in a bunch of different ways. By electing a more geographically diverse slate of MPs, they wouldn’t necessarily be so beholden to their Prairie base. And in the last two elections, a more proportional system would have given them more seats — maybe even more than the Liberals. But with polls now showing the Conservatives poised to benefit disproportionately from first-past-the-post’s math — some projections have them winning 65 per cent of the seats with less than 45 per cent of the vote — they’re not likely to listen to these sorts of arguments.
Some Liberals might not want to hear them either, since implementing a more proportional system would almost certainly mean they’d never form another majority government. But they need to ask themselves what matters most: some potential future government or the next one that Canadians will elect. That one, after all, could easily unwind some of their most important achievements, from climate policy to childcare. It could even throw the door more widely open to the sorts of culture war nonsense that has so thoroughly infected American politics. And with conservative provincial governments in seven provinces, most notably Ontario and Quebec, it could even take a run at the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
If nothing else, the Trudeau Liberals should have realized by now that they’re not going to win the next election by tweaking their communications policy or doing some other rearrangement of their deck chairs. They need to think much, much bigger than that. Maybe it will backfire. Maybe Canadians will revolt against a government that changes the electoral system this late in the game. But one thing is for certain: if the Liberals don’t start swinging for the fences, they aren’t going to hit the home run they need.
- Max Fawcett
- Lead Columnist
- @maxfawcett
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Why not just abolish
Why not just abolish political parties totally and based on population per area, vote for a candidate that represents their interests. Each riding elected person forms the government. No opposition parties, no wasting of tax dollars, work gets done. If the senate remains, it should be an elected senate, not a bunch of lifers who have zero motivation to achieve anything but a salary and pension.
The current party-based system just doesn't work, too much grandstanding, bickering, spreading disinformation and obstruction, nothing gets done. The conservative opposition these days are nothing but a bunch of spoiled children.
No. It would be even worse.
No. It would be even worse. With political parties, at least they have a general ideology that broadly sticks around over time, that you can decide if you want it. With individuals, if you're lucky you know what they're promising, which is almost certainly lies, and you probably have NO guidance on their positions about national issues, just local ones. Then, in parliament, it would be like having literally HUNDREDS of political parties, none of them with enough power to advance legislation. Chaos.
Plus, if you abolished political parties they would just come into existence again, and you wouldn't be able to stop them without massive interference with core constitutional freedoms--freedom of expression, association and whatnot.
The senate thing I can get behind.
Interesting article, but it
Interesting article, but it didn’t mention another potential game-changer happening later this year (2024): The Charter Challenge for Fair Voting will likely appear in the Appeal Court for Ontario.
In addition to party political maneuvers we must also consider the rights of every Canadian Citizen to effective representation, which is not happening under our current electoral system.
When politicians don’t stand up for civil rights it’s up to citizens to fight for those right in court. Nobody else can do it for us.
The Charter Challenge for Fair Voting is in the Appeal stage right now.
They're now inviting contributions towards the remaining $25,000 they estimate will be needed to prepare for and appear in the Appeal Court for Ontario - likely to happen sometime in 2024.
Link to the Charter Challenge for Fair Voting:
https://www.charterchallenge.ca/
Link to MakeVotesEqual.ca Blog comments on the current stage of the Challenge:
http://www.makevotesequal.ca/blog/comments-on-the-appeal-phase-of-the-ch...
I tend to have my
I tend to have my disagreements with Mr. Fawcett, but I firmly agree with this one. Proportional representation is better in nearly all ways, both in being more democratic and in being better for our social fabric. And, under proportional representation, next election the Liberals might at least salvage a spot in a minority government rather than being crushed. And the Conservatives would have a ton of trouble forming government for the foreseeable future, because I can't see them commanding an actual majority of voters all by themselves, and none of the other parties really wants to co-operate with them because they go out of their way to be hard to work with. If they got less extreme they might get the Liberals to back them in a minority, but they've got a lot of de-crazifying and bridge-mending they'd have to do before that became possible.
So yeah, there's a LOT of upside for the Liberals in going proportional. When they thought they were untouchable and could keep getting majorities forever they weren't interested, but things are quite different now.
Excellent points. It should
Excellent points. It should be obvious that proportional representation would likely prevent majority governments, and that in turn would really improve government. It is unacceptable that our PM chose to back away when his preferred approach to proportional representation (which would have yielded results even less proportional than under FPTP) was not supported. The question now is whether Trudeau is willing to put the benefit of Canada and Canadians ahead of the Liberal Party, as was his choice in 2016. Given the threat to democracy represented by a mini-Trump majority government (i.e. PM PP) in the next election, adopting proportional representation now would benefit both the Liberals and Canadians more than the Conservatives the choice would be logical. But then buying an oil pipeline at the same time as declaring a climate emergency demonstrates how illogical our PM really is!
I think the Trudeau old guard
I think the Trudeau old guard cares not admit that they have been in more than one weak "proportional" government ever since they lost their majority. In addition, Trudeau seems to be open to another negotiated confidence and supply agreement with the NDP after the next election, so why not genuine proportionality? The next election may be different where the Lib support collapses with Trudeau still at the helm, and the NDP powerless to do anything about it except enjoy the bump in votes by disaffected Lib supporters who will never vote Conservative, even as Poilievre waltzes up the aisle.
Wouldn't it be interesting if the NDP had a chance to lead a minority government backed by the Lib remnants left after voter punishment has been delivered, possibly with Bloc co-operation?
Fat chance. All I can do is hope the NDP run a viable and strong candidate in my riding that has a fighting chance to defeat the Conservative candidate.
But the goalposts would change if Trudeau retired and a fresh face got the leadership, one with experience in the world and a willingness to give motivated backbenchers a chance to help change Canada's political paradigm away from vested corporate interests that do not harmonize with decarbonization, social justice and a fairer voting system. That would be a refreshing renewal to offer a lot of voters who have given up on Trudeau's brand of liberalism, a brand with too much hypocrisy and lack of foresight to count for much in this century.
I empathize with the angst
I empathize with the angst Max, but we're in a full-on culture war here so the Liberals standing firm and in solidarity with the NDP is as close as we may ever get to our progressive majority holding the line against the apparently intoxicating insanity of the political right. Under such tricky circumstances, it truly is as easy as ABC.
How would MORE dividing help at a time when that is what an ever more mendacious, aggressive and wildly opportunistic right wing has already accomplished, leaving only the "conquering" part.
Context, our thing, is that these Christian Nationalists have beavered away at this diligently and patiently for decades as the "moral majority," defined as "a political action group formed in the U.S. in the 1970s to further a conservative and religious agenda, including the allowance of prayer in schools and strict laws against abortion."
And the left has enabled it with OUR delusions on the left, broadly summed up as "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." The problematic word there is "moral," one definition being "of or relating to the judgment of right and wrong in human behaviour" but those were the also very Christian Martin Luther King's words. So it's a bit like the indigenous here in Canada wanting the favour of the Pope, kind of "up is down" and irrational, which perfectly describes our current mess.
So our only rational bulwark against the natural chaos embodied in religious doctrines, any and all of which subscribe to the "big lie" that now threatens democracy itself? The historical, hard-won jewel (irregular though it is) in humanity's crown--our precious "rule of law." Admittedly, that is ALSO potentially captured now via the U.S. Supreme Court, but with their understandably eager ruling against women's basic rights, (a classic "rush to judgment') AND how that's playing politically, the main conveyance after all, these psychos may have finally overplayed their hand and will lose it all. Women ARE half of humanity, and finally realizing THAT should and could trump everything. (And they don't like Poilievre either. ) We've had the luxury of living during an upward swing, but there's simply no middle anymore, any more than there's a middle in the night. And 'twas ever thus; big pictures like that also apply to us it turns out, products of nature that we ever more demonstrably ARE.
Wait, you're against
Wait, you're against proportional representation now? I've always assumed you were sincere, but this . . . either you do not understand how proportional representation works, or your whole schtick all this time has been a disingenuous ploy to get rid of the NDP.
Giving benefit of the doubt, let's walk through how proportional representation works, one more time. The key thing about proportional representation is that your whole "Groups with different ideologies MUST unite" approach is no longer relevant, because a percentage of the vote is a percentage of the vote, so a (Lib + NDP) party with 55% of the vote gets the SAME number of seats as Libs with 30% and NDP with 25%.
So for instance under first-past-the-post, if the Conservatives get 40% of the vote while the Libs get 30%, NDP 25%, and Greens 5%, the Conservatives probably get a majority government and the apocalypse you claim to fear happens, whereas if the Libs & NDP unified, lost 5% from people getting upset about it but still got 50% of the vote as this combined party, it's the combined LibDP that gets the majority government. That's what gives your argument its force; the NDP and Greens are skeptical not because this is not true, but because they don't think any of their policies would ever see the light of day in such a party.
But. Under proportional representation in the same scenario, the Conservatives get 40% of the seats while the Libs get 30%, NDP 25%, and Greens 5%, because it's PROPORTIONAL. In this situation, in theory the Conservatives might try to form a minority government, say with the Liberals--and if they were the old school Progressive Conservatives they might have pulled that off. But the current Conservatives are toxic to all the other parties, even the Liberals, so this scenario would result in a Liberal minority government with NDP and perhaps Green support, or perhaps some sort of Lib/NDP coalition government. So the apocalypse does NOT happen. Meanwhile, under proportional representation, the number of seats a LibDP party would get would be no larger than the two parties got separately, and maybe smaller because of disaffected voters who think the united party no longer stands for their values. So the idea of unifying for power stops being a thing except for very small parties who are individually below whatever the low-percentage cutoff for getting seats is.
Proportional representation makes it nearly impossible for the alt-right to form a government, unless as a country we are so far gone that we actually DESERVE that fate because a majority actually voted for the bastards.
There are a number of other implications of proportional representation. Regional parties like the Bloc lose a lot of power. There is no need for tactical voting because your vote for the party you actually like best will count. There is slightly less need to worry about the horse race; say you're a Liberal and the Liberals are doing poorly, there isn't going to be this tipping point where it suddenly feels pointless to go out and vote because the seats, and perhaps your seat, are just out of reach--instead, every vote still counts and the Liberals will still have a chance of being involved in government.
So do you get it now? Proportional representation gets us the results you claim to want. But it gets them without forcing democratic socialists to vote for neoliberals. So if it can be achieved, it's a better solution to the problem. If your motivation for killing non-Liberal left parties is what you say it is, you should support proportional representation. If you instead oppose proportional representation, it makes one think that your motivation is actually just to kill non-Liberal left parties so the Liberals can try to rule forever without ever having to offer a progressive policy, kind of like the Democrats in the US.
Yeah, I get it, but the very
Yeah, I get it, but the very length of your patient/patronizing explanation demonstrates my point, AS DOES the predictably long list of back and forth on any comment section, not to mention the results of failed provincial referendums--it's TOO DIVISIVE. Especially when politics are also demonstrably binary in a way they have never been.
So in that context, I'm not tribal ANYTHING, that's the pick your "team"/vote your conscience/make YOUR vote count idealism is inapplicable BS, the common delusion of a capitalist, modern society based on selling, individualism and personal expression above all else.
The motion voted down in the
The motion voted down in the House last night (NDP MP Lisa Marie Barron's private members' motion M-86) is virtually identical to the Liberal party's own Priority Resolution #11, embraced and inscribed into its current policy platform at its most recent national convention just nine months ago:
"BE IT RESOLVED that the Liberal Party of Canada urge the Government of Canada to establish a non-partisan National Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform to continue the work started in 2014."
Yet when the chips were down only 40 of the Liberal party's 157 MPs voted in support of a policy indistinguishable from one of their own.
What happened? Why were those 40 MPs not whole-heartily joined by the rest of their colleagues?
For answer, it's revealing to note that the Liberal yea-sayers all hailed from the party's back benches, including four former ministers in past Trudeau cabinets, while yet every one of Trudeau's 40 current cabinet appointees voted nay.
Which is to say, those nay votes were whipped.
For folks (like Max Fawcett?) wondering why the Liberal party seems to keep contradicting itself on electoral reform, you'd best talk to the hand that's holding the whip.
The sooner the Liberals can be rid of their leader, the sooner they'll be able to catch up with the moment.
This article is shortsighted
This article is shortsighted as it takes electoral reform as proportional representation as synonymous. Proportional *party* representation is a fundamental change to the system that will change voters relationship with parties, in several bad ways. PR failed in referedums already.
Instead, Liberals can focus on systems that are straightforward and layer over our current one - instant runoff voting, as has already been implemented in Maine and Alaska.
PR advocates cannot decide amongst themselves which PR system is best, and the failures in referendum again and again means the idea is dead on arrival. Instead, we can fix the spoiler effect with instant runoff voting without changing any district maps or flipping the system on its head and demanding voters select a party brand instead of a real person.
Instant run-off voting is
Instant run-off voting is widely acknowledged as an effective way of electing a sole representative—a party leader, say, or a mayor or a president—but a lousy way of electing a multi-member assembly or legislature. Trudeau favours it because as a means of electing the latter it'd tend to advantage his own party over the others, but even he acknowledges how this makes it a non-starter among everyone besides Liberals.
There's a broad consensus shared among just about every group anywhere that has actually sat down, studied and debated the issue of electoral systems and reform together. The consensus is that PR works best, and that despite the distinctions between this PR system or that one, they all outperform FPTP on any measure of equal and effective representation. Citizens' assemblies have consistently concluded as much. Referendums, not so much—but then again referendums don't require participants to actually sit down, study or debate anything. Indeed for that reason referendums are a preferred method not to address issues so much as to evade them.
But most of the readers on this thread are aware of all that, and in any case the real question here isn't about which electoral system we should choose. It's about how or even if we can change it at all, given the resistance of Canada's two most powerful political parties, historically bound as they are to the self-serving perks and privileges of FPTP.
FYI: Parliament is a
FYI: Parliament is a collection of representatives from electoral districts. They may as well be a collection of mayors - mayors should be selected with IRV as well. Parties get tacked on afterwards and they mostly ruin things. Everything in your comment only makes sense if you are party-brained so hard that you forget that people are being represented by people, not party brands. We could be done with FPTP and the questionable legitimacy it creates, if we just accept IRV.
FYI: Dispense with the
FYI: Dispense with the parties and brands as you like. PR works fine with or without them, as anyone who's done their homework would know.
Whether parliament would work fine without them is another question, one you'll find taken up by others at the top of this thread.
I'll leave you to quarrel with others over the merits of this or that electoral system. As I've said elsewhere in this thread, the bigger question remains how it may be possible to change our current electoral system at all.
Without parties,
Without parties, 'proportional representation' is a meaningless term. 'Proportional representation' strictly means seats according to party vote share. Without parties, PR is not a concept. In an hour long zoom call I think I could convince Max Fawcett that proportional representation is nonsense.
No, proportional
No, proportional representation strictly means seats according to VOTE share, not 'party vote' share. The distinguishing feature of PR is that it strives to include every voter in the vote share, not just, say, that fraction of the voters fortunate enough to have cast a ballot for the sole winner in winner-take-all systems like ours. Treating each vote as equal ensures that the resulting assembly of representatives is an accurate reflection of—or is in other words proportional to—the disposition of the entire electorate.
That parties come into it at all has less to do with electoral systems in themselves than wlth sheer expedience among large populations of voters, as evidenced by the overwhelming number of populations that resort to party designations to help differentiate between the differing values and priorities of the candidates who hope to represent them. As virtually all large voting populations resort to such differentiation, so virtually all electoral systems reflect as much, PR included.
David - every single choice
David - every single choice in BC's PR referendum assumed the existence of political parties. If parties didn't exist, none of the choices would make sense because the problem PR sets out to solve cannot even be identified if parties didn't exist. You're just using the word 'disposition' as if it was synonymous with 'party'. Do people that enjoy people vote for the PPC? It's in the name, after all.
The problem PR sets out to
The problem PR sets out to solve is how to provide as many of the voters as possible with representation. Our current electoral system grants representation to only about half of those who cast ballots, leading to huge omissions and distortions in the representativeness of our elected assemblies. That's the problem, it's easily identifiable, and it'd be the same problem no matter what words we used to distinguish or characterize the options on our ballots.
Most municipal elections in Canada are conducted with no reference to political parties whatsoever, but the voters are nevertheless still tasked with filling an assembly's worth of seats, just as they are in provincial or federal elections, and so the degree to which the make-up of the assembly is an accurate reflection of the make-up of the electorate is still very much an issue. Whether your vote grants you representation at any level of government will depend very much on what kind of electoral system you use.
For a more expansive discussion on PR as applied specifically in elections without parties, or where the ballots list candidates by their personal names alone, you could start by looking up Single Transferable Voting here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote
STV is just one choice among
STV is just one choice among many. Just 1 of the 4 possible systems that groups like 'Fair Vote Canada' is pushing for. Maybe PR would happen if PR advocates could agree on something for a change?
STV is indeed one choice
STV is indeed one choice among many. The choices we make depend on the questions we ask. You asked how PR can exist without parties. I offered the choice of STV because it's specifically well-suited for ensuring a high level of representation in elections without reference to parties.
That said, virtually all PR advocates are completely agreed that Canada's voters would be far better served by almost any system of proportional representation over the winner-take-all system that we have now. Accordingly, Fair Vote Canada is pushing for no particular system so much as for a path towards a process that could yield a made-in-Canada solution with compelling, country-wide citizen support.
Which brings us full circle back to the article that gave rise to this thread. Earlier this month PR advocates helped bring a motion for a national citizens' assembly on electoral reform to the floor of the House of Commons. The motion received near-unanimous support in the House from all but two crucial blocs: the Liberals and the Conservatives, whose respective leaderships emphatically voted it down.
Whether PR happens in this country depends very little on whatever its advocates agree on. On the contrary, it depends almost entirely on finding a path through the wall of resistance put up by its most committed opponents, which is to say FPTP's most deeply committed political beneficiaries.
The point is, do you respect
The point is, do you respect the will of the voters or not? PR failed in referendum in BC. The irony.
Advocates of PR are intentionally undermining IRV. They are intentionally undermining the legitimacy of the election.
PR received the support of a
PR received the support of a 57% majority in BC's first referendum, but it failed to pass the 60% 'super-majority' threshold set by the then-governing Liberal party—themselves at the time enjoying a 'super-majority' in BC's Legislative Assembly on the strength of an identical 57% vote.
The irony.
The point isn't whether you or I respect the will of voters; it's whether our political leaders do.
PR advocates don't advocate for IRV for the same reason that they don't advocate for ham sandwiches: neither offers the prospect of fair and equal representation for all. But your choice of the word "undermining" is revealing, suggesting as though advocating for fair and equal representation were an insidious and harmful thing to do.
I think we're clear were we stand.
How did the 2018 vote go? I
How did the 2018 vote go? I'll wait. Again, you're repeating party brained talking points.
"Liberals need to ask
"Liberals need to ask themselves what matters most: some potential future government or the next ones that Canadians will elect."
Gee, MIGHT that have had something to do with why they arranged that agreement with the NDP, WHICH THEY ARE ALSO SIGNATORIES OF?
Why oh why are the Liberals singled out and impugned with such tedious regularity by all and sundry for being "power-hungry" when attaining a majority is the goal of EVERY SINGLE political party EVER?!
I am struck by the extent to which so many people seem to have lost ALL perspective, perversely at the most consequential time in our history, stubbornly refusing to even give credit where credit's due! In other words, most people are sounding like conservatives! It's like they've all been conned, a salient feature being the smug unawareness that's so shockingly and widely on display at the moment. Subliminal advertising clearly works far better than anyone wants to admit.
Another manifestation besides the usual tall poppy syndrome is the false equivalence/bothsidesism displayed by Mark Critch on the popular CBC comedy show "22 Minutes" making fun of Trudeau AND PP, which used to be funny back in the day when conservatives weren't peddling genuine catastrophe, but no longer IS.
Since so many progressives have that in spades, could it be the downside of an open mind and a strong predisposition toward fairness? What else explains the stunning perversity of idiots like PP and Trump getting ANY where politically EVER?
And while maligning Trudeau as if he was the only person in the craven Liberal Party (even when it obviously attracts the brightest and best from which he's chosen SEVERAL outstanding ministers to work alongside of him, any of whom could conceivably be a good leader; PLEASE cast your eyes over the benches of ANY of the other parties, particularly the conservatives with their consistently and strikingly shallow "talent pool"), people routinely, simultaneously expect "the feds" to address and fix EVERYTHING all the time, and sooner rather than later!
And further proof of what I'm saying, on the subject of PR, since the various forms of it on offer demonstrably create an additional source of division along with the sheer idealization of it, why does everyone automatically assume that Liberals abandonment of it had nothing to do with THAT political reality, settling instead on their uniquely arrogant desire to win a majority as I already pointed out?! AND at a time when we desperately NEED a progressive majority in whatever form it presents itself to pretty much SURVIVE FFS?!
And New Zealand turfed their progressive government at the last election btw.
This pendulum swing pattern in our democracies reflects how excitable, irrational, and worst of all, how malleable people are when they're given agency of any kind in such an important competition as governance.
What's happening right now also shows why we say what we say about democracy as a system.
Most of this is not really
Most of this is not really something there's much point commenting on, but I can answer one of your key questions:
The stunning perversity of idiots like PP and Trump getting anywhere politically ever comes down to money, and the interests of people with a lot of it. The extremely rich, who can afford propaganda and who own the media, don't really like democracy. They want the extremely rich to be in control. Short of actually getting rid of democracy (a la Pinochet or Franco), the next best thing is to have the stupidest faction elected, because they are the easiest to fool and manipulate. There has always been a constituency for vaguely right wing ideas, but the alt-right as we know it, including the religious right, is the result of huge amounts of plutocratic money, from creating those "social media" echo chambers to all those "think tanks" to buying up "talk radio" in the US back in the Rush Limbaugh days to pushing a bunch of money into pushing churches towards right wing politics, to, finally, owning the Globe and Mail and the National Post and the Vancouver Sun and so on and telling them to talk about these people a lot and treat them as if they were serious politicians.
It's class war. Just because the working class haven't been doing class war for 40+ years doesn't mean the plutocratic class ever stopped.
Astute observations! Money is
Astute observations! Money is also the reason that nearly all of the electoral reform referendums have failed. The power brokers, the elite, and especially the plutocracy don’t like REAL democracy as it threatens their hold on power. As a result, they pull out all the stops whenever an electoral reform or PR referendum comes up - they certainly know how to scuttle any attempt to ditch FPTP and replace it with a more representative democracy. In the BC electoral reform referendums, the “NO” side didn’t hesitate to throw misinformation and disinformation into the public debate. The key weapon is FEAR - fear of nefarious groups taking over the governance of the country somehow with a small percentage of the vote; this was shamefully represented by anti-PR ads with Jack-booted soldiers marching in the streets, an obvious reference to Nazi Germany.
We know that the CPC will never embrace real democracy (PR) as they would have a much more difficult time acquiring a majority government and they loathe the idea of sharing power (governance). The Liberals are also uneasy about the possibility of having to share power given Trudeau’s shameful backsliding on electoral reform. Both parties want to be unencumbered by the manifestations of real democratic reform as FPTP allows them to attain and retain POWER with FALSE MAJORITIES!
A Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform is realistically the ONLY way to defeat the powerbrokers because as history has shown, the moment a referendum on electoral reform is initiated the battle is already lost. This depressing inevitability is only reinforced by the influence of social media where outright lies are presented as truth.
The sooner we get a made-in-Canada system of Proportional Representation the better.
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