It’s not your party that trumps geography, it’s your political viewpoint, which is very imperfectly translated into parties under the existing SMD system, and would be somewhat less imperfectly translated into parties under a PR system. See above.
I would also point out that the political stalemate we’re in is because of FPTP – imagine the 1993 election all over again with some form of proportional representation. The PCs aren’t punished for having some national support but running a distant second or third locally, the Reform Party and the PCs can co-exist comfortably and we get to skip that whole business of the imploding right-wing and an arrogant, King-like Jean Chretien. The Liberals probably still win a majority, depending on the system, but it’s not so assured. PR fosters a bit of regional partyism – but it also keeps it at bay. The Bloc would find it difficult to earn more than 40 seats all of a sudden, for one example.
My sentiments on this topic are much in line with RickJay’s. I like local regional representation in Parliament. Even if my MP is from a party I’m largely ideologically opposed to, as happens to be the case.
I think, BrainGlutton, your largest stumbling block is your insistance that somehow your individual vote should count. Should make a difference. Realistically, outside of municipal elections in small towns (that is, small towns by Saskatchewan standards, meaning a couple hundred people), that’s just not going to happen. From an expected utility standpoint, voting is irrational. Your vote, by itself, is irrelevant. This is, sadly, an unavoidable fact about democracy in any largish group. However, the structure of the issue makes it similar to an n-place prisoner dilemma, where it is the case that the larger the number of people who do the individually rational thing, the worse off everyone in aggregate is. Hence, we attempt to cultivate a culture where voting is expected behaviour, in order to get people to behave in a manner which makes us collectively better off, even if it’s individually sub-optimal from an expected utility standpoint.
Let me say that again. Your vote doesn’t matter. Learn to deal with this fact. Your reason for voting should never be based on “what am I going to get out of this behaviour” thinking, because you aren’t going to get a damn thing. Rather, vote based on which candidate best shares your views on governance. Even if your candidate doesn’t win, your views are registered. That is the point of demcracy. (Incidentally, it’s also why I think that so-called “strategic voting” is usually wrong-headed.) Do you think that just because the Saskatchewan Party lost yet again to the NDP in the last provincial election that votes cast for them are irrelevant? You better believe that the NDP shouldn’t be thinking so, because if they do I guarantee you they’ll lose the next one. (Actually, they’ll probably lose the next one anyways, but I won’t bore you with local politics.) Absolutely people are going to note the amount of support losing politicians have, even if only to better enable them to keep that support too low to win an election. That’s democracy in action too.
I’m reasonably happy with our political structure as it is. There’s some substantial room for improvement - party discipline could stand being a lot looser, for example. I could probably be persuaded to get behind some sort of single transferable vote system while retaining the one riding, one MP system, but that’s just an incremental change. If we’re going to do anything more drastic, reforming the Senate makes a lot more sense. Hey, maybe we could get ourselves a PR senate. Wouldn’t fracture the government into coalitions that exaggerate the power of minor parties, so long as the House of Commons is still clearly more powerful than the Senate, which would likely still only be able to send bills back to the Commons, and perhaps recommend amendments. Maybe worth thinking about.
Well, this thing about MPs rewarding people who voted for the “right side”, or governments rewarding ridings who elected a MP from the right party has been with us for a long time, and I believe that it’s actually less prevalent than in the past. I don’t think it’s a consequence of people believing that their ideas should be somehow represented in Parliament, even if they’re minority ideas.
I think that what BrainGlutton mostly wants is a system that would end the “tyranny of the majority” caused by having only the most popular ideas, or the most “moderate” ideas, represented in Parliament. A proportional system would allow ideas that wouldn’t otherwise even reach public consciousness to be included in the public debate. This has positive and negative effects which we have to be aware of. Personally, I think that our current first past the post system is flawed, and could be improved, but I’m not sure that proportional representation (in any form) is the solution. It could be, but it could also not be.
I hear you about the Senate, I also think that it should be improved in some way, or maybe even abolished. Preferably improved, because it’s not a bad idea to have politicians that are not necessarily accountable to a given riding, but rather to the entire country (or province, state, etc.) Actually, Gorsnak’s idea of a Senate elected with province-level PR is interesting, since senators already only represent their province. However, I don’t see any problem with an unelected head of state. Many countries have a head of state that’s mostly a figurehead. I’d say it might be even better for our head of state not to be a politician. This way he/she is more representative of the entire population. Look how many Americans hate their current president, and think he doesn’t represent them at all. Of course, right now, the positions of Queen and Governor General don’t mean much to most Canadians (many see them as a waste of money), so maybe we could find a way to make them more meaningful, by increasing the responsibilities of the Governor General. What these could include, I’m not sure right now, but I think it’s an idea.
I actually suggested a similar system in another thread; twelve Senators from each province, allocated to each registered party, by the percentage of votes cast in that province in the general election.
I’d be more partial to having, say, 25 Senators from each of four major regions (Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario, West) but I don’t think either solution will fly politically anyway.
The solution there, I think, is limiting the scope of the Governor-General’s job to something useful, but not as powerful as the President of the USA. But I’d be happy with just reforming the Senate.