Fair Vote Canada - Edmonton Chapter

Tod gets it.

𝗯𝘆 𝗧𝗼𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗻 • https://FarAndWide.news
Mark Carney just became the first prime minister in Canadian history to ride a wave of floor-crossings into a majority government, Somewhere in Ottawa tonight, a backroom is being renamed in his honour.
The Liberals finally crossed the 172-seat line, helped over the threshold by three byelection wins and, before that, by five MPs who were elected under one logo and decided, sometime between the swearing-in and the second free lunch, that a different logo suited them better.

NOT JUST A LIBERAL HABIT
But let's not pretend floor-crossing is some uniquely Liberal sin. Belinda Stronach did it. David Emerson did it about fifteen minutes after being sworn in as a Liberal in 2006, so fast, in fact, it sparked an ethics investigation. It remains the gold-medal performance in the sport.
The point isn't who does it. The point is that it shouldn't be a sport at all.
Let's be real. When we mark a ballot in this country, most of us mark it for the party, not the person.
Pretending otherwise is the kind of thing only a political scientist or a cornered MP would say with a straight face.
If Marilyn Gladu's beliefs evolved so dramatically that the Conservative Party no longer fit her, fantastic, good for her, growth is beautiful. Resign the seat. Run in a byelection. Let the people who hired you decide if they'd like to keep you on under new management. That's just having the courage of your convictions, plus a functioning spine.

A BROKEN VOTING MACHINE
Part of the issue is the very system that produced this mess in the first place.
My own MP here in Nanaimo won her seat last election with only 35 percent of the vote. Sixty-five percent of my neighbours voted for somebody else, and we still ended up with the candidate the smallest single bloc preferred.
In a country with five federal parties on the ballot in most ridings, a system designed for a two-party fistfight produces results that look less like democracy and more like a raffle. We are using a Victorian voting machine to run a twenty-first-century country and then acting surprised when the gears grind.

THE PROMISE THAT WASN'T
The part that really gets me, is that we almost changed this.
In 2015, Justin Trudeau looked Canadians in the eye and promised that election would be the last one held under first-past-the-post. He said it in the platform. He said it in the throne speech. He struck a committee. And then two years later, stood up and said, sorry, reform is hard.
So here we are. A majority government built partly on people changing teams mid-game, governing a country where my own MP represents the preferences of barely a third of her constituents, in a system the sitting prime minister's predecessor swore he'd fix and then didn't.
You can be uncomfortable with the floor-crossings and uncomfortable with the math that made them necessary at the same time. In fact I'd argue you have to be, because the two things are pieces of the same problem.

CARNEY'S CHANCE
We can fix this. We've had the Law Commission report sitting on a shelf since 2004. We've had referendums in three provinces. We've had a federal committee that did the work. The blueprints exist.
What's missing is a prime minister with a majority big enough to spend some political capital on something that won't immediately benefit his own party.
Mark Carney now has that majority. He didn't quite earn it the way I'd have liked, but he has it. He could use it to finish the job Trudeau walked away from. He could make this the last Parliament where a candidate with 35 percent gets 100 percent of the seat, and the last one where a backbencher can change my vote for me without asking.
Or he could do what every prime minister with a majority eventually does, which is decide the system that gave him the keys is actually pretty great after all.
I know which way I'd bet.
I just really, really hope I lose.

✅ Do you agree with this essay? Vote here: https://linkto.run/p/ZY0HXKMM
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Congratulations to Avi Lewis on being elected federal NDP leader!

He consistently said proportional representation would be his one demand in a minority government.

needs an update to its democracy as well.

We had a productive strategic planning at the curling rink. Looking forward to future initiatives. :)

Way to sum things up well, Anita: "In a democracy, a party with a minority of voter support shouldn’t be able to wield 100 per cent of the power."

Should Alberta Adopt a Proportional Representation? - Alberta Views About 80 per cent of democracies in the OECD use Proportional representation, including democracies ranked as the world’s strongest.