cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/40034360
With Duverger’s Law (i.e., in non-PR electoral systems, a trend towards a two-parties), we are running out of time to act. Canada’s 2021 effective number of parties is 2.76 - this number will decrease over time, and will eventually end Canadian democracy as we know it today.
The only way to prevent this democratic backsliding is proportional representation: [email protected]
The OLP, ONDP, and the Greens should just work together strategically in elections to not split votes, win the election, and implement PR for the provincial electoral system. We know the NDP and Greens have been consistent with supporting PR, so there’s really just getting the OLP on the bandwagon. They’ll continue to have little chance at winning as long as DoFo continues to be the good FPTP player he is.
That said though, I seriously don’t know what goes into the OLP’s current strategy. They almost don’t seem like they have one, almost like they don’t desire to become the provincial government. Feels like they’ve been really muted, passive, and only plays within the FPTP rules.
But the Liberals benefit from keeping the system broken, and their corporate donors don’t want the strong democracy we would have under PR. This goes without saying, but obviously the Conservatives are worse.
Yes, that feeling is precisely the reality.
Similar to the Democrat’s strategy in the US, the Liberals’ strategy is to get as many votes as possible without significantly changing the system for their corporate donors. Party over country for both Conservatives and Liberals.
I doubt if the Ontarian Libs are actually benefiting from this, given that they’ve consecutively lost 3 terms now and is not even the official opposition, unless your suggestion is that they’re well-fed by these corporate donors enough to do barely enough to keep splitting votes and let one of them have a chance of winning, which also means they’re basically in cahoots with the PCs, even if indirectly.
In any case, if that’s what you believe is the situation here, then isn’t there no chance in hell would the Libs ever “merge” or even work with the NDP?
I apologize in advance if my response isn’t as precise as expected. I’m having trouble understanding what you’re trying to convey.
The Conservatives and Liberals feel that winner-take-all such as FPTP benefits them in the long run. If this was not the case, they would be supporting PR to ensure every vote counts. Read more Fact Checking Justin Trudeau on Electoral Reform.
I don’t think it’s that the Liberals are well-fed by their corporate donors, but too often they choose corporations over people. Carbon pricing and national pharma care, are examples of people first, non-corporate policy, actually – so maybe I could be wrong. I think it’s more of Liberals think the NDP is too leftwing, and PR similarly.
In terms of PR, yeah, the Liberals are basically in cahoots with the PCs.
Liberals work opportunistically with the NDP, and vice versa. But they are quite different parties. For starters, PR is a sticking point, only Greens/NDP consistently support it. Remember, pre-Justin Trudeau, abortion policy for the Liberals was not whipped, meaning MPs were free to vote their conscience. The Liberals are not as left leaning as they market themselves to be.
Sorry if my response was confusing. I’ll start off with some clarifying statements.
First off, I was trying to focus on the provincial level and not the federal level, as I’ve been led to believe there’s a good amount of distinction and separation between the two. I must admit I’m not born and raised Canadian, though I’ve lived here for many years now, and have only slowly learned of the relationships between the different political parties, federal and provincial, rather recently (last few years really). Thus, my understanding is likely flawed and imperfect. And it certainly doesn’t help that people I’m close to are somewhat apolitical.
With that said, given the topic at hand, where there’s an argument for consolidating the OLP and ONDP, my first thought was that it doesn’t seem likely to ever happen, given how far apart they are in terms of where they are on the political spectrum. At this point, it seems more likely that they would work together to form government in order to push policies that they want through. And if that is the OLP’s goal at the end of the day, then I believe they should just work with the ONDP. And given that they don’t seem to have much of a chance at winning, they should feel more compelled to support PR. That’s the point in my original comment.
On that note though, part of me is skeptical if the Liberals (OLP) actually have policies that they actually want to implement, given how incredibly vague their answers have been to virtually every question being asked of them (e.g. “we will build more houses”, but how?). At this point in time, they don’t feel too different from the PCs; essentially just fishing for sentiments and hoping the fishes would bite.
And it’s honestly unfortunate that PR is treated as a partisan sticking point; it should not. Anyone who would rather stick to FPTP over PR just seems greedy and — I know this is over-exaggerating and over-simplifying — shows their authoritarian tendencies, if not the inability to see the world functioning in any other way.
As far as the Liberals go both provincially and federally, my impression has been that they are really more attempting to be centrist, while playing along with certain leftist or left-leaning ideas, while being somewhat critical of the right; essentially, “we’re not the Conservatives”. Of course, I understand that some people do buy into their marketing, believing them to be more left-leaning than they are, and that because of that impression, these people also end up thinking that the NDP and Greens are much further left.
And thank you for sharing that link. I was curious about exactly happened to Trudeau’s whole talk about electoral reform that eventually led into nothing. Some sources seem to claim that there was simply no consensus on which path to move forward on, but I see now that he is one of those who was against PR, be it misinformed, intentionally or not, and would rather go with ranked ballots, which seems to just be ill-informed.
Haha, I think life is more relaxing this way, look at the US, everything is politicized. I don’t have any friends who are political, either.
Yes, I made a post about this exact point: Question for @ontarioliberal.bsky.social: … for the second election in a row, you’ve placed second in votes but third in seats… How many more times do you need to get burned by FPTP before backing PR?. Yet they seem to just keep going with the status quo, even with Bonnie Crombie, who wasn’t even elected in her own riding, was kept as leader unanimously.
Speaking with a lot of people on electoral reform, there are some who are anti-PR on the basis that they genuinely believe extremists will be elected. Which I say, in a democracy people are deserving of and entitled to representation, PR (and neither FPTP) doesn’t do anything to change that.
But yes, those who would rather keep
FPTPnon-PR electoral systems are either misinformed or are greedy. I believe Justin Trudeau falls under the misinformed camp, but with scandals such as the SNC-Lavalin Affair (who have rebranded under AtkinsRéalis), I’m unsure. But I suppose it doesn’t matter, since instant runoff voting (IRV), is not proportional representation, which means there will still be major distortions in representation in government.To me, it’s not a question of electoral reform or no electoral reform, it’s more a question of proportional representation or winner-take-all. This is why I and many others see Trudeau’s IRV ploy as not being a long term solution, a distraction.
Also, you can have both ranked ballots and proportional representation under single transferable vote (STV).
P.s. if you aren’t already, please subscribe to [email protected]. I’m really trying to build the community and grow the PR movement!
To be fair, I can’t say I’m super interested in politics either. I’ve only started looking at it after knowing about how there are other ways to, in a sense, “implement” democracy through different electoral systems, and that the problem is inherently mathematical (which is what I’m interested in; seemingly simple but difficult-to-solve mathematical problems that also isn’t just a number theoretic problem). The rest of what I now know just comes from knowing how broken FPTP is and how it’s essentially destroying the fabric of a democratic society, and it just makes me concerned enough to keep looking further in, hoping we’re actually doing something to save ourselves.
But yeah, I really wonder what goes into their heads, knowing that in a winner-takes-all system, everything you do can easily be undone by those on the other side, and little to no legacy can be easily left behind, assuming you can even get a chance to get back into office. Someone’s got to sit these people down and show them the reality of things, cause it just seems like they either don’t recognize the possibility of what PR would get them (which is to allow them to have a chance at pushing more centrist policies through), can’t have it figured out in their heads, or are actually just against a fairer society, in which case we call them out for it after talking to them.
And yeah, Crombie losing in her own riding should be a sign that she just doesn’t have support from even people in her own riding. Something feels incredibly wrong with the OLP to me, both from this, how they’ve campaigned, and also just how they’ve behaved over the many years we’ve had the PCs. They’re essentially sleepwalking and hoping nobody notices it.
No electoral system can prevent extremists; as long as you’re electing people, you’re bound to have an extremist in the office at some point. We should this frame the question like so: would you rather have an extremist who has full control over your government, or a group of people with extremists mixed in such that they have to work with other people to get their extremists policies enacted? It should be a no brainer from there.
And what are the chances of you having a large group of extremists in power? It’s certainly non-zero. PR isn’t immune to politicians gaming the system by installing multiple extremist candidates that tries to capture a wide range of voters, and then betraying their voters, but it would require a large and coordinated effort for them to do so in a country to be able to effectively consolidate power. Otherwise, it’s just a reflection of the voters around us, and perhaps in a polarized world, that’s a scary thought.
In any case, you’re right, electoral reform is more so the means to the end where we have a fairer electoral system through proportional representation, instead of a winner-takes-all system that encourages polarization. It’s funny to me that Trudeau has repeatedly lamented at how our world (arguably the Western world) is more fragmented and polarized while he continues to advocate for a system that squarely encourages that.
Yes, implement democracy is correct.
Look into policy lurch. Basically, a party will implement “extreme” policies because they know it will be undone in the next election. And in the case it’s not undone, it could also be problematic (e.g., chronic underfunding of public services).
I actually think LPC front-runner, Mark Carney falls into this camp - against a fairer society.
It’s difficult to nail down slimy people.
I would say we already have extremists: those that believe an electoral system that ignores votes is acceptable.
When speaking about democracy, we should start with the most ideal, then work backwards for trade-offs. A direct democracy is the most ideal. And we move to representative democracy, as it’s more practical. But the trade-off for FPTP - it’s simplicity, which no longer is worth it since we can handle more complex electoral systems. Therefore we know that PR is the solution.
At least with PR, we only have ourselves to blame in failure. With winner-take-all, an extreme minority can, and has, taken down the majority.
What’s not funny, unfortunately, is how effective the anti-PR crowd is. But we have principles and fairness on our side, and that will never become disliked.
Policy lurch is exactly what I’m thinking of. Thank you for bringing that term up.
My understanding of intelligence is likely different from others; being intelligent doesn’t mean you should be on the good side. Having a healthy foresight and knowing what should work better for more people over the long term are not qualities of intelligence; they are those of wisdom. Being intelligent just means that you know how to consume information and wield knowledge, not necessarily for good or bad. So I don’t doubt that Mark Carney is intelligent, but he certainly hasn’t shown the wisdom that Canada truly needs, only short-term goals. The latter isn’t always bad, but the world lacks wise visionaries, and Canada seems to be in dire needs of one.
I’ll be honest and say that while there’s a need to fight Trump from down South at the moment, I can’t say Carney has actually demonstrated any traits that makes me trust him. There’s his somewhat question-raising profile about whether he’ll actually be see national problems correctly to be able to do things for ordinary people, or if he’ll just be another corporate-loving minister. He’s tried to use it to distance himself from Trudeau’s government, but that seems unnecessary, especially when there seems to be plenty of ways he could make that distance clear through actually proposing solutions that are clearly different from those of Trudeau’s.
I don’t disagree with the fact that we should find that sentiment abhorrent, but that’s definitely not a classification that people would think of when we say “extremists”.
And this might be controversial to say, but there are lots of people who just don’t want to deal with whom they consider as “extremists”, and would rather have structural barriers in place to keep these voices segregated. Anti-PR people is a mix of misinformed people, actual pro-FPTP people, and those who do view it as an effective tool (though a flawed view) at keeping voices they don’t want to hear out. Cutting people may be a viable strategy for small and/or close group settings, but it’s not the way for a democratic society, and that is where I think more messaging needs to be done to make people know and weigh the benefits of a fairer society over short-term, localized social calmness. Just trying to take a hard look at reality and give my 2 cents there.
Well said.