When you find you have been panning the provincial and federal Liberal parties, it is wonderful to come across someone who just might be a nugget of real gold. This is a liberal who thinks for himself, invests time in research and speaks out with truths as he sees them.
We are speaking here about Toronto’s Ward 5 City Councillor Justin Di Ciano. He spoke to the House of Commons special committee on electoral reform on the one day that the committee spent in Toronto and in Ontario on their recent cross country hearings. He spoke some truths for many Canadians who are being given no chance to be heard.
The first question Di Ciano asked of the committee was what is so pressing about the subject of electoral reform when so few Canadians are interested in the debate? He asked them if they are not searching for a solution to a problem that does not exist?
He bluntly told the committee that “If we want to engage Canadians on issues, then our governments need to engage Canadians on the issues that need fixing.”
He pointed out that our first-past-the-post voting system works well. It provides “representation from a geographical, descriptive and ideological perspective” and “produces stable and efficient governments capable of enacting timely legislation.”
Hear, hear!
While we are still reading the transcript of that day’s proceedings, we feel pleased that Mr. Di Ciano made a case for us that the committee refused to allow us to make.
Babel-on-the-Bay has its own test of what is of interest politically speaking. It is our own readership as reported by Google Analytics. Our readership has been almost falling off the scale lately when talking about electoral reform. There is just not that much interest even among our politically conscious readers. Mind you if you want your readership to skyrocket, you only need to mention Donald Trump.
It says in the transcript from the Toronto meeting of the parliamentary committee that there was nobody there in Canada’s largest city from the news media. That should be indicative enough.
But the best news was Justin Di Ciano. We had already noticed him when he spoke out against ranked balloting in Toronto. A former council had asked the province to allow ranked votes and Di Ciano was an emissary to tell the provincial powers that they had changed their mind. His point was simply that ranked balloting does not deliver what it promises.
What was best though when addressing these Liberal-controlled bodies, he had no problem with admitting that he was a life-long Liberal but was quite willing to speak out. He is definitely worth watching.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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