The Greens got 7% of the popular vote while the Bloc got 10%. The Greens got more votes this election than in the past, yet they lost their one seat (won in the 2006 election). The Greens have no seats, yet the Bloc, who got only 3% more votes, won 49 seats. They even beat out the NDP who won 37 seats and got 18% of the popular vote...
...what?
A long standing critism of Canada’s electoral system has been that its inner workings were designed for a time when only two parties were running.
An editorial written in Thursday, October 16th Globe and Mail by Ed Broadbent (President of Rights and Democracy) really gets at the issue of proportional representation.
Most European democracies have successful systems of proportional representation. He said that a system such as those in Gremany, New Zealnd and Wales would work well in Canada and would make our Parliaments both more representative and more stable.
Broadbent points out that if our seats represented the proportion of actual votes, the Liberals, New Democrats and the Greens would have a majority of seats (yay!), and if they followed the European pattern, these would combine to form a government with each party having seats in the cabinet and a program that actually reflects how a majority had voted.
“As Canadians know, the Liberals, New Democrats and Greens did agree on a number of economic measures, on social policy, the environment and protection for families in the current economic crisis. Since the majority of Candaians voted for these parties, they, not the Conservatives, should be determining our political agenda…In Canada as a whole, the NDP received a million more votes than the Bloc. Yet the Bloc recieved 50 seats and the NDP only 37… It’s time Canadians got the governments we vote for, not the ones our outmoded electoral system continues to regurgitate. It’s time our neanderthal journalists and politicians started telling the truth about our lack of democracy”- Ed Broadbent.
Amen.
So what’s a person to do? How can it be changed?
Here’s a start:
Sign this petition.
Go to the Fair Vote BC website and join the campaign. We have a provincial election coming up in May 2009. Add them on facebook, and empower yourself though knowledge.
3 comments:
omg, i've totally been bitching about this since the election too... petition signed!
jacqui
And once you've signed the petition, join Fair Vote Canada at www.FairVote.Ca and get involved!
this is a very uniformed post considering ed broadbent is a lifetime ndp er and was beaten by guys like mulrouny, joe clark, chretian and trudeau. If the electoral system was "reformed" / presented in a way so as to take Ed's and your way of counting votes then I presume Ed would have been primeminister when he was running. A way of re fighting his lost past.
In your three party left wing conglomeration of the "most" votes who would be prime minister? These 3 parties wouldnt last 1 month at the helm and smart, concerned relevent people like YOU would not want to live in thier canada. Do you really think that if the system was presented BEFORE the election in a way to put the parties in power by popular vote there would be more appetite to vote consolidate votes? In that case the stronger leader would win, because we cant have three prime ministers after all can we.
Considering the demographic of voters Harper would have fared much better not worse....
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