If the PPC has 5% support and you want to prevent them from having anything close to 5% representation… I suppose appealing to the liberal democratic principles of equality and fairness wouldn’t sway you to PR voting. They weren’t designed for your particular goals here.
Bingo.
The problem is that in a PR systems, small parties can frequently leverage that 5% to get huge concessions out of line with the wishes of the electorate as a whole.
Our current system has many problems and I am not opposed to reform in principle, but one of the key emergent properties of the current system is that extremists must moderate their positions to gain power. Usually, anyway. Doug Ford is a key counterexample. In a PR system the whole thing is reversed and moderates must reach out to the extremists to form government and must make concessions to people way outside the political norm.
A Conservative party that is beholden to the likes of the PPC or social regressives is not something I ever want to see.
Is that true? Do extremists have undo influence in other PR legislatures (MMP/STV) elsewhere? Some examples would help.
I’m fine with single transfer vote within the context of the riding. It maintains the local rep, ensures a broadly acceptable representative takes a seat in the House and allows 2nd tier candidates that run good campaigns to benefit from presenting broadly acceptable positions.
That aside, I see the “Trudeau is dividing our nation” narrative is coming in hot and fast today. It’s disturbing the way the Conservative party is being presented as a regional party when they did in fact gather lots of votes outside of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Not a lot of seats but lots of votes.
Probably not. Yves-François Blanchet has run a very good campaign by pledging to defend the positions of the Quebec government and the consensus positions of the National Assembly of Quebec. The current Quebec government, run by François Legault, is nationalistic (in the Quebec sense, which means that it affirms the particularities of the Quebec nation, along with its values which can be different or even at odds with the rest of Canada), but not sovereigntist, and is currently very popular. So this was a very good strategy on Blanchet’s part, which allowed him to reunite the Bloc which was in disarray under the previous leader Martine Ouellet, attract valuable candidates with previous political experience, and offer a worthy alternative to the Liberals. All this within a period of eight months which is very impressive.
Quebecers know that it is not through the Bloc that Quebec will obtain independence. The Bloc presents itself as a party that will respect the democratic will of the Quebec nation and not try to meddle with it. If this democratic will included a desire for independence, then obviously the Bloc would defend it as well, but with a popular government that will not push the issue of independence and is already expected, barring some unexpected scandal, to be reelected in 2022, it probably will not happen. If I can speak for myself, I would vote Yes in a referendum on independence, but I don’t expect I will get to vote in one during my lifetime. This said, the issue will also never die because there will always be people to defend this ideal.
I want to reiterate what RickJay said: very few people enthusiastically voted for the Liberals. They were a default choice, in Quebec as well as everywhere else in Canada where people voted for them. Maybe Trudeau expected he could get a large majority of Quebec seats just by showing up, but there was a wide opening for another party to gobble up these seats, and this time it was the Bloc. To be honest, I think there would have been an opportunity for the Greens to start a wave during this election. They had the momentum after electing a second MP earlier this year, and with the Bloc and NDP still weak at the campaign’s outset and climate change a major electoral issue in much of the country, including Quebec, they had the right branding to position themselves as the alternative. We’ve seen in 1984, 1993 and 2011 that Quebecers aren’t shy to massively vote for a party they’ve never supported before. But Elizabeth May didn’t have a great campaign, and her weak French skills (seriously, it’s painful to hear her speak) didn’t help matters. I’m disappointed in the Greens’ campaign, but we’ll see how they do in the future.
This is honestly surprising. Conservative (and Bloc) voters are more likely to vote than voters from other parties. Trudeau won the 2015 election because he drove up turnout among the young. Their turnout probably dropped in this lackluster election, which is partially responsible for his poorer showing.
Low turnout makes things better for Conservatives in Canada.
Best example is Israel, which has pure PR. Labour and Likud are not particularly sympathetic to the policies of the little religious parties, but those parties’ votes are generally essential to forming a government, dontheir ultra-Orthodox policies continue to govern. So regardless which big party firms government, those policies continue.
You are absolutely correct.
And the National Post is full of shit. Which should be completely unsurprising.
But isn’t the Israeli government an accurate (and even a moderating actor) for the inherently extremist views of its population (especially in any Canadian sense).
I’m now looking through the results of the 2019 election and the Israeli Labour party is in 6th place and couldn’t even muster 5% voter support. The next big-tent party to the left of Lukid is the new centre “Blue and White” party.
Who cares? A perfect approximation of the population’s views is not the most important function of government by a hundred miles. If you wanted perfect democracy the solution is simple in this modern world. Everyone could vote on every piece of legislation. But golly, that’s too unwieldy. So instead you want to get as unwieldy as possible but that things still trundle along with new improved democracy. No thanks.
I want as much democracy as keeps the government responsive to the people. Canada has progressed nicely as a nation. I don’t see a big problem that needs a big disruptive fix.
Well direct democracy is a real problem as it introduces gridlock and apathy; it’s a system clearly inadequate for national usage and would be real problem. Extreme fragmentation and undue radical/extremist influence are also real problems that should be addressed in any system we have (or might have); these are issues that work against our shared principals of a fair participating democracy.
You know, if you like our current system, because you are familiar to it or whatever, that is a fair stance to have (not one I share, but it’s still valid). There’s no need to throw up DD strawmen as a counter to a PR system.
Absolutely the first thing they need to do is get rid of Elizabeth May.
I must again point out that, logically, if you want to improve Canadian democracy, the place to start isn’t the House of Commons. It’s the Senate.
It wasn’t a strawman. It was an unabashed argumentum ad absurdum and it was merely to illustrate that you want is de facto trying to get as close as possible to the same gridlock.
And look at RickJay’s “improvement”. Hey, lets add a legislative assembly to the process! That’ll get stuff done for the people!
No. I do not want gridlock nor repeated voting via referendums. I do want to keep our representative democracy. I do want a functioning legislature. However, I also want additional things.
I want a legislature that is representative of Canadians’ political consciences (without excessive fragmentation beyond our ability to discern differences between parties, or such). I want Canadian voting power to be divided fairly among its citizens regardless of the characteristics of their particular riding’s boundaries/demographics/provincial location (as within our clear abilities to do so). I want to fight public distrust and apathy in our democratic institutions by making the choices made by Canadians at the ballot booth to be reflective of the how our Parliamentary system is nationally governed. I want Canadians to have access and be able to easily understand how their political power is entrusted and wielded by the stewards we call elected officials.
I want** much more too** and see no reason why we cannot learn and improve our shared system to more accurately reflect our values and traditions. Canada is a great country, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t address the problems that we have with our present system. Of course you might disagree, but people do have problems. If these problems can’t be orderly addressed (without triggering a dreadful constitutional crisis or what) at least they can at least be soberly evaluated without evoking the bedlam you are saying that I want.
I never meant to say you wanted gridlock. I mean the more granular you make parliament by being more proportional, the closer you get to the gridlock of direct democracy. I’ve said somewhere before that I might support a a system that had a higher than usual threshold like 10% to get seats.
No problem. 
And then whoever the next leader of the Green Party is, they too will be trashed and lied about with gleeful abandon.
I have rarely seen more complete bullshit peddled about a politician in my life. Most people don’t have one single clue about what the Green Party stands for, and it’s not due to lack of trying. They had a clear platform, which was completely ignored by the media and most everyone else. Folks would rather make up complete crap.
I repeat - whoever is the next leader of the Greens will be treated exactly the same - the target of bullshit and lies.
Well it’s interesting reading a number of these opinion pieces about how Trudeau will have to rely on the NDP and Greens for support. The Liberals only need 13 seats from other parties and those can come from anywhere. I’d imagine you could cobble together a sufficiently appealing bill to garner 25 odd Conservative votes to counter balance any internal party defections.