This is the twenty-eighth article in the Whoa!Canada: Proportional Representation Series During the 2015 election, Mr. Trudeau unequivocally promised to make 2015 the last First Past The Post election. If elected, “We will make every vote count.” It’s no secret Fair Vote Canada has been using the catchphrase “make every vote count” to describe Proportional Representation for years. In fact,…
This is the twenty-eighth article in the Whoa!Canada: Proportional Representation Series
During the 2015 election, Mr. Trudeau unequivocally promised to make 2015 the last First Past The Post election. If elected,
“We will make every vote count.”
It’s no secret Fair Vote Canada has been using the catchphrase “make every vote count” to describe Proportional Representation for years. In fact, they launched their “Make Every Vote Count Campaign” in 2013. If you follow the link you’ll see the Hon. Stéphane Dion on the podium for the announcement. Another LPC cabinet minister, the Hon. Carolyn Bennett is on the Fair Vote Canada Board. Certainly my Liberals For Fair Voting friends were aware of this when I helped them make a little video we called “The Foundation” to help them sell Resolution 31 at their 2014 Policy Convention. Resolution 31 was duly adopted by the Liberal Party and in fact formed the basis of Mr. Trudeau’s electoral reform campaign promise.
Mr. Trudeau confirmed his electoral reform promise in the Throne Speech, and (although it took a little nudging) an all party Electoral Reform Parliamentary Committee was formed. Because of the tight time frame, the committee worked through the summer, taking evidence from experts in Canada and around the world. And the Committee, like Minister Monsef, travelled across Canada in a whirlwind tour.
No doubt because the ERRE Consultation was woefully underfunded, the Committee only managed a single stop in Ontario. No money was spent on advertising, and there was little advance notice, but in spite of the main stream media’s absolute failure to cover it, all the Electoral Reform events were full of citizens. A preponderance of citizens and experts supported some form of Proportional Representation. Then the ERRE Committee submitted a consensus report calling for some form of Proportional Representation and a Referendum. But the government was not wildly happy to see such an impossible outcome. And so mydemocracy.ca was born. Do you know, the government spent more money sending postcards telling people to participate in a seriously problematic survey that inspired more parody than response. While the Honourable Ms. Gould’s talking points are intended to make us believe the postcard survey was a bug duccess, the reality is 360,000 Canadians is a ridiculously low response rate for a country with upward of 15 million voters.
But the Liberal Party holds a majority in Parliament, and we all know a majority government can pass (or kill) any law it wants. No consensus is required, even when the “majority” is based on the votes of only 39%. That is, after all, how the system we currently use works. (Part of why it so badly needs modernization.)
The Liberal Party hasn’t managed to articulate a single good reason for a Prime Minister elected on promises of transparency and more democratic governance to squash the promised democratic process this way. Even if Prime Minister Trudeau decided he doesn’t want electoral reform, he could still have allowed the process to run its democratic course to the finish. The same power that allows the plug to be pulled prematurely now could have been used to whip the vote at the eleventh hour.
The only reason for breaking this promise in such an odious way that I can imagine isthe Prime Minister and the Liberal powers that be have noticed the growing interest, support and commitment Canadians are developing in electoral reform, in spite of everything.
I understand the PM was grilled about electoral reform at every single stop on his recent cross country tour. Were those in the Liberal power structure getting nervous that enough public backing might just get Proportional Representation legislation through Parliament and into Law?
With all the Liberal talk of values and electoral reform, the one word that never seemed to come up was fairness. No system that assigns 100% of the power to a party winning 39% (or less) votes can be considered fair. And in my experience, Canadians value fairness. My Liberals for Fair Voting friends know know very well they benefit from the proportionality inherent in our existing winner-take-all system. Yet they don’t think it’s fair that so many other Canadians get little or no democratic representation.
There is still time to draft electoral reform legislation (the ERRE Committee could surely manage it) and get it through with enough time for Elections Canada to implement a new system in 2019. Canadians don’t need to understand the electoral math to know our First Past The Post system is not working for a majority of Canadians. How can a nation that prides itself on fairness continue to cling to a winner-take-all system that’s inherently unfair?
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Respectfully express your opinion, tell them we’ll #seeyousaturday
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Atlantic 15:00
Eastern 14:00
Central 13:00
Mountain/SK 12:00
Pacific 11:00
@JustinTrudeau and the #LPC promised that 2015 would be our last #FPTP election. #PerformOnReform
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e-600 (Electoral system)
Lower the voting age to 16
The Petition is open for signature until February 8, 2017, at 12:34 p.m. (EDT)
e-613 (Electoral system)
Achieving gender balance in Parliament
The Petition is open for signature until February 16, 2017, at 11:34 a.m. (EDT)
e-616 (Electoral system)
Encouraging the Liberal Government to get ERRE back on track (Nathan Cullen)
The Petition is open for signature until March 2, 2017, at 11:20 a.m. (EDT)
e-678 (Electoral system)
Implement Mixed Member Proportional Representation (Kennedy Stewart)
The Petition is open for signature until March 24, 2017, at 9:26 a.m. (EDT)
Use the Green Party of Canada tool to send a message:
A Broken Promise to Canada
Change.org: Open Letter to Liberal MPs Re: Electoral Reform
Read More:
Read the Liberal Electoral Reform Report from 1921:
SPECIAL COMMITTEE APPOINTED TO CONSIDER THE SUBJECT OF
Proportional Representation AND THE SUBJECT OF THE SINGLE TRANSFERABLE OR PREFERENTIAL VOTE (pdf)
your Member of Parliament
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• Proportional Representation for Canada
This is the twenty-fourth article in the Whoa!Canada: Proportional Representation Series
On the 1st anniversary of the Liberal Majority, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggests Canadians have lost our “appetite” for electoral reform now that his party has won a majority government.
A majority built on 39% of the votes cast.
Just as Mr. Harper had a majority built on 39% of the votes cast.
Something unprecedented happened in the 42nd Canadian federal election of 2015. Every party — except the one in power — campaigned on electoral reform. This is something that would never happen without wide spread dissatisfaction with the electoral system we use now.
When most people feel they can’t vote for what they want, even if the person they vote for is elected, they don’t have the representation in Parliament they want. When the system fails to serve us, we don’t feel engaged in or satisfied by the process. When a majority of voters are routinely unrepresented, when some votes count more than others, but most votes don’t count at all, there is something wrong with an electoral system.
Even though we don’t understand the problem or know how to fix it, we know something isn’t working. So when Mr. Trudeau said, “We will make every vote count,” it resonated with Canadians.
The Liberal Party promise was itself an acknowledgement of the uncomfortable truth that every vote does not count in the voting system Canadians use now.
So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a lot of Canadians were less than pleased to read the ipolitics report: Trudeau taking heat for walking back electoral reform: Prime Minister tells Le Devoir Canadians’ motivation for change has weakened.
Our votes need to count as much today as they did last October.
Your vote should count. And so should mine. All of our voices deserve to be heard, but they won’t be until we have a fair electoral system. Canadians have been waiting for meaningful electoral reform for a hundred and fifty years. We can’t let them walk away from this election promise, this is our historic opportunity to create a stronger democracy and public policy that serves all Canadians.
Please phone or email your MP to let them know that we expect them to keep their election promise to make every vote count.
Here are the phone numbers and email addresses of our Waterloo Region Liberal MPs.
Bryan May – Cambridge
telephone: 519 624 7440
email: Bryan.May.P9@parl.gc.ca
Marwan Tabbara – Kitchener- South Hespeler
telephone: 519 571 5509
email: Marwan.Tabbara.P9@parl.gc.ca
Bardish Chagger – Waterloo
telephone: 519 746 1573
email: Bardish.Chagger.P9@parl.gc.ca
Raj Saini – Kitchener Centre
telephone: 519 741 2001
email: Raj.Saini.P9@parl.gc.ca
Read the article in Le Devoir
or the English Translation
If you aren’t in Waterloo Region, you should contact your Liberal MP too. And if you don’t know who your MP is, you can find out here by Postal Code. If you know who it is but need the contact info you can find it here by typing your MP’s name.
Image Credits:
Justin Trudeau by A.k.fung has been dedicated to the Public Domain, which made it possible for me to dedicate my mini-poster to the Public Domain as well.
• Proportional Representation for Canada
