Check out Fair Vote Canada’s info for tips on what you can do for fairness.
Will your MP represent *your* interests when they cast their vote?
On May 31st Canadian Parliamentarians will vote on whether to accept the recommendations of the #ERRE Committee.
Tell your MP what *you* want.
The Trudeau Government spent millions on the much lampooned My Democracy survey (far more than on the ERRE Committee’s cross Canada Consultation… and then the Trudeau Government said Canadians didn’t want Proportional Representation!
The survey (deliberately ?) didn’t ask for specific electoral systems, but contrary to Government claims, by far the results supported adoption of some form of Proportional Representation as in the above pie chart.
Read the surbey result yourself here:
MyDemocracy.ca — Online digital consultation & engagement platform
Tell Your MP to vote YES to Proportional Representation on May 31st
visit Fair Vote Canada to find ways *you* can help!
http://www.fairvote.ca/errevote/
“2015 will be the last election using First Past The Post.”
—Justin Trudeau, 2015
A Liberal friend assured me that, since the Liberals believe in evidence based policy, this *had* to mean we would end up with Proportional Representation.
And she was right: even though the ERRE Consultation was woefully underfunded and the lions share of the outreach was left up to ordinary Canadians DIY community dialogue and information sharing, even though the ERRE Committee recommended Proportional Representation… and then Prime Minister Trudeau pulled the plug.
Every issue Canadians have will benefit from Proportional Representation, which is why we need it back on the table. On May 31st Parliament will vote on whether it will accept the ERRE Committee Recommendation.
Proportionality isn’t just about political parties, it’s about all sorts of representation.
It was NOT Mr. Trudeau’s decision to decide to over-rule the majority of Canadians who voted for parties advocating electoral reform.
(Nor should it be his decision to overule the majority of his own party who supported the electoral reform policy he repeated over and over as a campaign promise, then reaffirmed as part of the throne speech, then spent millions of dollars consulting with Canadians about.)
The MyDemocracy survey results demonstrated a majority of its respondents want a fair inclusive political system.
More than 130,000 Canadians signed the e-616 parliamentary e-Petition* telling Mr. Trudeau’s Government we want the Electoral Reform process to continue.
The ERRE Consultation confirmed that Canadians want electoral reform… and a majority want Proportional Representation. And that is what the ERRE Committee recommended.
The Government response is the equivalent of “No. Because I said so.”
The House of Commons will vote on whether to accept the recommendation of the ERRE Committee on May 31st, 2017.
Tell your MP you want all Canadians to have votes that matter, and that you expect them to vote to accept the ERRE Committee Recommendation.
*more than any other Canadian Parliamentary e-Petition… almost twice as much support as the next most successful petition.
Canada: MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD
During the 2015 Federal Election, Mr. Trudeau invited Canadians to vote on the Liberal Policy…
https://www.liberal.ca/realchange/canada-infrastructure-bank/
https://www.liberal.ca/realchange/electoral-reform/
More than 25,000 Canadians voted on Electoral Reform.
Fewer than 1,000 voted on the Infrastructure Bank idea.
But Mr. Trudeau decided not to do Electoral Reform ~ in spite of the fact 26,129 Canadians were interested in it. Now we hear that Mr. Trudeau is going to push ahead on the Infrastructure Bank that only 997 Canadians even bothered to vote on!
What gives?
Not only has party leader Oak Bay-Gordon Head MLA Andrew Weaver been re-elected, he will now be joined by new MLAs, Sonia Furstenau in Cowichan Valley and and Adam Olsen in Saanich North and the Islands.
Although Green candidates have broken through in legislatures here and there, this historic election is the first to have elected a Provincial Green Caucus. Just as in the USA and UK, Canada’s unfair First Past The Post electoral system makes it exceptionally difficult for small party and independent candidates to get elected. And even when they are, Canadian legislatures have added another artificial barrier: a political party can be duly registered, and run candidates and even manage to win seats in the legislature, but the legislature has imposed a threshold before an elected party is entitled to receive additional perks. In BC the threshold is 4 seats, so our new Green caucus is one seat shy of official party status.
Although the dust hasn’t quite settled yet, neither the BC Liberals or BC NDP won a majority in the election. If this is still the case after recounts and absentee ballots have been incorporated into the tally, the BC Greens will hold the balance of power. Leader Andrew Weaver has expressed a willingness to work with whoever necessary to make government work, but his two non-negotiable points are legislation to get big money out of politics, and Proportional Representation. Lets keep our fingers crossed for that excellent BC outcome!
Since much of the rest of the world’s democracies use Proportional Representation, this is not the case elsewhere. Just now Australia has 9 Green Senators in their STV Proportional Representation Senate, but only recently elected their very first MP to their winner-take-all House of Representatives. New Zealand has fourteen MPs ~ and they only adopted MMP after a 1993 Referendum. There are currently Greens in Canada and the UK (and the USA), we are way behind the wave of Green Candidates being elected at all levels of government in the 90+ countries that already use Proportional Representation.
It took some doing, but our current Party Leader Elizabeth May broke through to become Canada’s first elected Green MP. She was followed at the provincial level by Andrew Weaver in BC, Peter Bevan-Baker in PEI, and David Coon in New Brunswick.
Now it’s time to meet the BC Greens:
Adam Olsen, Saanich North and the Islands
https://www.youtube.com/embed/HNrxfHLozHU
Sonia Furstenau, Cowichan Valley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny7bGM3YB2E
Andrew Weaver, Oak Bay-Gordon Head
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkRfkCUSsps
Check out our Green World to find out more about Greens elected in Canada and abroad.
Image Credit:
the excellent photo of BC’s new Green Caucus © by Laura Colpitts is used with permission
[reblogged from WRGREENS]