It has been tiring over the years listening to people such as University of Toronto Professor Peter Russell selling proportional representation as the only voting system for Canada. The only good news about his ideas are that they are based on logical argument and not some of the outrageous claims made by organizations such as Fair Vote.
But on top of being enthused about proportional representation, Professor Russell is also a booster of citizens’ assemblies. A citizens’ assembly is chosen by lottery very much like the grand jury systems used in many American states. They operate under direction of a leader who can usually get them to do what the leader wants. It was citizens’ assemblies in British Columbia and Ontario that offered bastardized versions of proportional representation that voters in both provinces ultimately rejected.
But the real problem with proportional representation is the dark side that happens if this country jumps blindly into this type of voting. Most observers agree that it would be difficult to ever again to have a single political party win a majority government. More serious, we might never again have a national political party.
Canada is country of tensions and political diversity. After the First World War, these tensions produced the United Farmers’ movement which in turn gave impetus to the Progressives, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (later the New Democratic Party) and the Social Credit—with spin-offs to the Ralliement des créditistes du Canada and eventually the Parti Québécois and the Bloc Québécois. It reached a peak in 1993 when 14 political parties were registered to contest the federal election.
While the Liberals won a large majority at that time under our first-past-the-post system, they could only have formed a government under proportional representation in coalition with third-place Reform or the fifth-place Progressive Conservatives. (The official opposition Bloc Québécois with only 13.5 per cent of the seats under PR would not have been a logical coalition partner.)
That election was a grim forecast of what would happen if Canada moved to proportional representation. It might be fairer to the political parties but would it be fair to Canadians? The danger is that Canada can dissolve into a regime of regions. We have all seen what happens with regional parties and what can happen when Quebec looks only to Quebec and Alberta cares only for its own wants.
Canada is a country to be envied as long as we stand together. We are a country that is strengthened by unity. Let nothing divide us.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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