Fair Vote Canada has, at least as far as I’ve seen, the only political newsletter that consistently delivers on its mission. Today they shared this letter from a prominent Liberal supporter calling for Proportional Representation at the federal level.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/…/electoral-reform-can…
They also shared this letter from Conservative Michelle Rempel, also supporting PR.
https://www.westernstandard.news/…/article_34832384…
It’s important to have all sides on board with a change this big. And now we have some kind of minimum set of exactly that.
The Rural-Urban Proportional Representation system proposed during the work of the committee on electoral reform a few years back is still a very strong option for Canada, addressing both our dense, geographically-limited population centres and our vast, sparsely-populated geographic territory. Its primary strength comes from the Single Transferable Vote system that would be used in densely populated areas, but it is also smart and sensible to acknowledge that many of our ridings at the federal level are already quite large, and to use an as-needed top-up system to account for proportionality in those ridings. It’s not perfect. But it’s custom-fit for Canada, at least.
Just as importantly, from a voter’s perspective it is no more complex than the system favoured by the federal Liberals. You still vote on a list of members, and your vote still counts for exactly one person. The difference between the two is that in RUPR your vote can always have an impact on the result. In FPTP Ranked Choice your vote often has no effect, or even cements the victory of your less-preferred choices, skewing results away from proportionality (and thus, to me, the basic spirit of democracy).
It’s a good time to call, text, email, or otherwise contact your MP to remind them that democracy is important to you, and that the rise of extremist politicians like Pierre Pollievre has not been in the slightest hindered by FPTP – not to mention how many internal party races are run using similar systems – so take a moment and remind our figureheads that they need to secure a stable future that reflects who we actually are, not just who they wish we would be.
