cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/24368090
The seat make up would look more like the left if we had a more fair and accountable proportional representation over the obsolete first past the post.
We repeat that every time this chart looks like this. Which is almost every election. We even elected a guy on the promise to change it. 🥹
Yup, and now it will bite him in the ass. Imagine if we had coalition governments in Canada that actually represented the Canadian voice. The parties will have to make concessions and actually talk to each other like in a marriage.
It’s plausible that Trudeau could want to push through voting reform as one last move to salvage something since him losing the next election likely spells the end of his political career.
The problem is the Liberals as a whole. It pretty predictable Conservatives are going to do a horrible job and by the 2029ish election the tables will be flipped and Liberal will only need to campaign on not being a disaster of a party like the incumbents.
As much as I hate to pin hopes on a hail mary like that, this is likely the only scenario where we will get voting reform to happen. The party in power has no incentive to change the system that brought them to power in the first place, so we’re basically gambling on an outgoing party using their last days of holding onto power to make it happen. Just writing this out makes me wonder how we ever got here in the first place. Who thought first-past-the-post was anywhere near a functional system to begin with?
Its the same “power corrupts” story again and again. Karina Gould gave an impassioned speech on electoral reform (http://www.ourcommons.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/house/sitting-64/hansard#Int-8963139). But after replacing Maryam Monsef as Minister of Democratic Institutions, her views suddenly became far more simplistic. In a 2017 interview on CBC’s Metro Morning, she was asked “Why is it important that people at the very least believe every vote counts?”. She replies “Because they do. … We literally count them: 1, 2, 3, 4, up to the majority that wins.”
The people have the power not the conservatives or the liberals and research has shown the Canadian public wants proportional representation however we’re currently not putting enough pressure about the unfair system of first past the post. There was a vote on national citizen’s assembly that went like this
“On February 7, Parliament voted on Motion M-86 for a National Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform. The result was: YES 101 NO 220 In addition to the support of the NDP, Green Party and Bloc MPs, 40 Liberals and 3 Conservatives voted for the motion. To see how your MP voted, scroll to the bottom of this email.”
It’s incredibly depressing to know that my vote in federal elections is useless just because of where I live.
Interesting to see the charts there showing a steady 25% against. Even when asked if a majority government should have the support of a majority of voters!
Who are these guys! Its hard to believe that a quarter of people surveyed appear to not want our democracy to function.
Good luck convincing the government to enact it when they’ve already decided our poor populace just doesn’t have “enough interest” in the idea.
Not sure why this is down voted. This is exactly what happened. Trudeau ran on electoral reform in 2015. That was gonna be the last FPTP election, he said. Then they did some consultations with the public and said that not enough people wanted it. Shortly after, they threw the whole thing down the garbage chute.
Then they did some consultations with the public and said that not enough people wanted it.
Worse than that, Trudeau straight up said “People wanted electoral reform because they were unsatisfied under the Harper government, now that we’re in power everything is fine and people don’t care about electoral reform anymore.”
Source article in Le Devoir (French), I’ll quote the relevant part here:
« Sous M. [Stephen] Harper, il y avait tellement de gens mécontents du gouvernement et de son approche que les gens disaient “ça prend une réforme électorale pour ne plus avoir de gouvernement qu’on n’aime pas”. Or, sous le système actuel, ils ont maintenant un gouvernement avec lequel ils sont plus satisfaits. Et la motivation de vouloir changer le système électoral est moins percutante [ou moins criante] »
Well the fact that other parties wouldn’t agree with the Liberals’ solution didn’t help (even though it would have been better than what we have at the moment).
You’re giving the liberals too much slack here when they need more pressure to do the right thing. The smaller parties and independents only want a fairer system that the most democracies use such as Norway or Sweden, which is proportional representation.
People don’t want to be forced into two camps they don’t like.
That graphic doesn’t tell me anything. Maybe it should be defined better?
“Vote”
votes for electoral reform
“Fuck you. Anyways… don’t forget you HAVE TO vote for us if you don’t want the conservatives again.”
Man, we really are more alike then we think
