Much to everyone’s surprise, the Conservative Party gave up its unswerving support of the status quo in support of Proportional Representation. Much to everyone’s surprise, the NDP gave up support of its favourite system (Mixed-member Proportional) in order to achieve consensus. Apparently you weren’t paying attention, Mr. Bott, because the Opposition Parties came to consensus.
Even the Bloc came to realize that, even though it fared better than the Greens, even though it more than doubled its seat count in 2015 spite of a serious decrease in the votes they earned, Proportional Representation would have given them even more seats because the votes cast in their favour merited more seats. Even the Greens bent on the referendum question.
The only party that does not want to live up to the 2015 Liberal election promise is the Liberal Party now that it holds a phony majority in Parliament.
None of the Opposition Parties ruled out Proportional systems using a ranked ballot option. You may remember a majority of BC voters (58%) voted to adopt Single Transferable Vote in the first BC Electoral Reform Referendum. BC-STV certainly uses a ranked ballot.
I am guessing that wasn’t what you meant; I’m guessing you were referring to the winner-take-all Alternative Vote option supported by Prime Minister Trudeau. I understand the LPC made some effort to rebrand it as “Preferential Voting,” “Preferential Ballot,” and then “ranked ballot” Just so you know, no one — including the Liberals — on the ERRE Committee entertained the Alternative Vote system under any of its aliases, for the simple fact that the system was so thoroughly discounted by a preponderance of expert testimony.
The reality is the one person too inflexible to make this work — because he would not entertain any but his own deeply flawed preferred system — was the Prime Minister. His intransigence triggered his intemperate decision to usurp the democratic rights of the electorate by unilaterally pulling the plug on the Electoral Consultation Process — a process that arose from the grass roots and received overwhelming support from his own Liberal Party — because it failed to deliver the answer he wanted.
Well over 100,000 Canadians signed the parliamentary e-616 petition, nation wide rallies and protests are being held across Canada. Far from being “dead,” Canadian electoral reform is teetering on the tipping point.
There is still time for Mr. Trudeau to make this right. Just.
