Fair Vote Canada just announced that a motion for a Citizen’s Assembly on electoral reform will be voted on in Parliament.
You have to scroll down a bit to see the announcement, which then contains links to details.
In summary, Fair Vote has worked with a few MPs to create and submit a motion to get their asses in gear on electoral reform. This will be voted on in Parliament, so pester your MP and anyone else who can help. And, obviously, spread the word.
So long as the Liberals and Conservatives think there’s a chance they can win a majority, they’ll stave off any attempts to move to a proportional system. It’s interesting that after the last election, I started seeing Conservative supporters, particularly in the West, start talking about electoral reform.
I don’t know how many more hung parliaments we’re going to need before the major parties give up the ghost. But there won’t be any support from the Bloc, because a PR system would likely harm them. That pretty much leaves the NDP as the sole major Federal party that actually supports electoral reform. Who knows, maybe if the Liberals squeak through with another minority the NDP may be able to force the issue, but I’m not holding out much hope.
What drove me most crazy about Trudeau’s rapid betrayal on this one is that the frigging liberals really would become Canada’s “natural ruling party” on a PR system. Even at their weakest they’ve always held enough votes to have remained strong and relevant if we used PR. However they know they’d lose the majority, and they’d rather lose entirely almost half the time than have an almost unassailably strong hold on the country that requires them to work with others.
It’s the only game the Liberal and Tory strategists know; swapping majorities with periods of hung parliament instability in between. It is possible that the CAS agreement with the NDP suggests a change in direction for the Liberals, but it’s one thing to exchange some goodies in return for maintaining confidence, and quite another to move to a PR voting system that would make formal coalitions all but inevitable (as happened in New Zealand).
I would love to see conservatives take an interest in electoral reform. It’s so often seen as a left issue because the NDP and Greens push for it, but the word “proportion representation” is as the name sounds. It treats all parties equally and has no bias to left or right.
As an Albertan if PR were to come here I could kiss the left ever winning goodbye because the NDP (centrist in Alberta) only has a chance when the right splits the vote. I’d still take it even if it meant my party wouldn’t win because it’s the fair thing to do.