Via email;
I’ve taken up a cause called Defend Democracy. We just launched it last week, and the point of it is to put as much pressure on JT as we can to get him to commit to calling a referendum on electoral reform. Our position is aggressively neutral on the question of reform itself; our argument is simply that Canadians themselves must have the final say over any reform package in a national vote.
Right now the cornerstone of the effort is an e-petition on the new House of Commons e-petition service, but we also have a landing page and Facebook/Twitter pages up.
My question today is if you’d be willing to help to raise the profile of the cause on Small Dead Animals? Maybe a button on the site, or if we get any media coverage you’d be willing to post them in the blog.
| The site is www.DefendDemocracy.ca – the petition, Facebook, and Twitter are all linked to from there. |  |
I signed the petition.
Hopefully the Liberals have not sunk so low as to put through “reforms” without asking the people of Canada. My fear is that, while we know that the Laurentian Elite were extremely upset when a western based Conservative Party won a majority and governed Canada, they will “reform” the electoral system so that the left will have a perpetual stranglehold on government control.
Did anyone miss the last and most recent referendum whereby the conservatives got ‘schlonged’.
Do you think this majority leftist country will pass on the chance to get the it commie wogs in government in the majority for the rest of Canada’s future. The only reason Canada ever gets to have a majority is because of the huge split between the criminal liberals and the uber stupid NDP.
This would be the referendum that finally unites the left into one big socialist ball of shit. There would never again be a conservative government in our country. Hello Europe!
I CANNOT VOTE FOT THIS SLAUGHTER OF THE RIGHT.
Done. I’ll start emailing it around too. And point out to your email list that it’s an official House of Commons/Parliamentary petition you’re signing and not the equivalent of a private, online poll or the like.
I thought two provinces already rejected this so that should be the end of the story. Maybe that point should rather be publicized.
This is how we got our lovely Constitution and Bill of Rights. Not a single Premier or the Prime Minister had a mandate from the citizens they were supposed to represent to negotiate with Westminster for the repatriation of our Constitution and the creation of its Bill of Rights. All of it was designed by lawyers, for lawyers, not the Citizens of Canada. This should be grounds for a class action lawsuit by the citizens of Canada against those Premiers, Prime Minister (or their estates). But, given that this would require the use of lawyers and the legal industry, good luck with that.
In addition to ON & BC, PEI also held a referendum on electoral reform in 2005, rejecting the proposed reform.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Edward_Island_electoral_reform_referendum,_2005
I used Twitter to publicize the Defend Democracy website by posting a tweet at National Newswatch. Let’s see if it’s published there. It’s useless to urge my Twitter “followers” – 2 or 3!? – to get on the bandwagon.
National Newswatch did publish my tweet.
They will lock down a permanent 25 % for Quebec not based on population
The justifications are not unreasonable: don’t be afraid of change, look to Europe, voter participation, better reflection of electorate. But one election, where the winning party has the same percent support as the last governing party, should not be an open ticket to make fundamental changes to the vote. Nor does the support of provincial premiers. Big changes should require significant support. I see this change as being as transformative as a province separating from Canada because the size of government ensures they have their fingers in every aspects of your life. Who governs is incredibly (but regrettably) important.
I think that it should be understood and accepted that any changes can be reversed or changed again in the same way they were originally changed. If there’s no referendum this time then it won’t require it next time either.
As for the problem that voting reform will never again allow a conservative in power. Maybe the way things are at this moment but things can and will change in response to whatever occurs. For instance, the only party I can stomach voting for right now is the CPC. This creates a problem since you may have to put in a second choice. Personally, I would like another choice….just not the ones currently available. A libertarian party or even a party that strictly supports taxpayer interests as unashamedly as Liberals support certain corporation and industries (quebec’s bombardier and ontarios ‘s auto industry, for instance) and the NDP supports public service unions.
I suspect changes will result in more parties and, for better or worse, more coalitions. Isn’t the old joke that progressives will love coalitions until the conservatives form government with support from the Christian Heritage party. That’s what I foresee, 3 mainstream parties and a bunch of special interest parties.
Finally, like Quebec, all provinces have the option of separating and/or blackmailing their way to a better deal with Ottawa. Surely the anointed ones east of Saskatchewan don’t really believe the west will pay more than their share of federal taxes while never getting a chance to have their preferred party in power. We have seen this film : western alienation. An Ottawa perpetually dominated by quontario progressives becomes arrogant and economically absusive. The west gets fed up. Things will then change.
The resentment from a badly done election reform will be long-lived, IMO. Anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves. Think NEP.
Western Canada has seen a steady flow of easterners with their eastern politics moving west for better job ops. Who do you think just elected an NDP regime in Alberta?
It is too late to turn it back …in the West we are now out numbered by the socialists who want constant Santa clause type government.
Conservatives vote for what is best for the country …
Liberals/NDP vote for what is best for themselves …
It’s unfortunate that the “Defend Democracy” focus is on having a referendum rather than actually defending democracy with a focus on making the vote of every Canadian count equally – especially since our past two elections have produced false majorities where the ruling party received only 39% of the vote but received over 50% of the seats.
We should be defending democracy so that 39% of the vote results in 39% of the seats, and so that every Canadian can be properly represented in our government, rather than over half of Canadian voters having their vote completely ignored as happens in our current system.
Show your love.
Vote None of the Above.
Democracy is history , welcome to Kleptocracy.
50% of average taxpayer income goes to taxes, society is done.
Anything that is voted on by Canadians could backfire the way the last election did. Many people don’t vote for sensible governments and policies. They vote emotionally and for what is mostly likely to benefit them. There are more people who are takers rather than providers in our country, so you can expect the responsible, productive and honest citizens to increasingly be hostages to the rest. Huge influence blocks like the unions in Ontario can sway votes to serve their own agendas. The kind of reform I would support would involve breaking the power of the unions to campaign for the parties that are then obliged to them for continued support. So while I support the general idea, I think a referendum could go badly wrong. I guess I no longer believe that ‘democracy’ as it has evolved in this country really will serve us better.
Never take the Fiberals for granted,, they will lie, cheat and deceive, for any reason, at any time
“We should be defending democracy so that 39% of the vote results in 39% of the seats”
Why shouldn’t a constituency be represented by an MP of our choosing? Why should MPs be elected that represent no-one? The whole point of this so-called reform is to place party politics at the forefront with party MPs elected by no-one in particular.
Also, a referendum is not a Constitutional amendment. There are vary valid reasons for a province to reject such an amendment including dilution of Constitutionally guaranteed representation of all but Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia.
Be really careful what you wish for. First past the post has a lot of faults but it has served us and mother Britain well for a long time. Whatever you call representation by popular vote, the result is the same – chaos. And it ultimately disenfranchises the true conservative voter completely.
This is one of the lesser of 2 Trudeaus many promises that is likely to die a mercifully unnoticed death if we just leave it the hell alone.
We must remember the Liberals under JT as front man were given a majority right to govern knowing his admiration for the Commie dictatorship of China. This plot would be a killer for democracy as we know it.
Liberalism will be the the new Communism when JT and company are through with this country.
Signed. PR in any of its forms is an affront to the legacy of this country and our constitution, of which it will never pass muster without majority referendum support. PR would make our parliament less stable, basically a home for sore losers, and would injure local representation while bolstering already rampant elitism with party leaders picking members instead of a plurality of voters with choices amongst many parties, with “democracy” apparently resting on their second choices. No way the voters as a majority had this question in mind at the ballot box. Will we ever learn from the tyrannical behaviour of thin majority governments assigned themselves unlimited powers, as in AB, ON and now at the federal level?
Why do we “Escape from Freedom.”
http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-escape-from-freedom/#gsc.tab=0
Disagree, the electoral juice is not worth the party squeeze to local representation, where not every riding receives the candidate &/or party affiliation most of them (a plurality) voted for. Plus party elites do the choosing of those who do their bidding, not local members. Tuning FPTP into a race for first & second place votes is not more democratic by any means and lends itself to pizza parliaments; hardly for the “public good” imho.
Rex agrees with me, Kate and many others btw, in this imho well-argued article:
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/rex-murphy-the-liberal-government-does-not-have-the-right-to-unilaterally-change-our-voting-system
Unilateral changes to the electoral system based on under 40% of the popular vote won’t and should not happen. I would be curious to see what the House of Commons would look like with some Christian Heritage and Libertarian members, along with more Greens and a few (overt) Communists. I don’t think it will happen soon though, “because I have nice hair” isn’t a sufficient reason for electoral reform.
The reformists always look for their possible advantage and ignore the fatal flaw… We all know that it is financially possible to RUN 3 Conservative alternatives.. Ultra/Middle/Lite which would divide the votes of the Liberals to a right/left parsing…..Good luck
It’s unfortunate each representative cannot just be a representative without having to kowtow to a schoolyard gang called a party.
The US Constitution was originally intended for each representative to stand on their own two legs, but the schoolyard gang crowd wasn’t kept out. Therefore the original emphasis on individual rights, and not group rights. But the group rights crowd continues to hold sway…people are like cattle. Even driving up and down the road, they drive in herds. Not many individualists any more…
People who still think that signing petitions will change anything in this phucked up country, need their heads checked.
The proposed “reform” is all about Ottawa and nothing about constituencies. It’s about big government with some MPs not chosen by the voters but by the parties. It is a weakening of democracy.
There are fewer individualists nowadays because the value of individualism is not being taught in schools anymore and parents are too busy or too lazy or too distracted to help.
The value if the pis ire life is stressed everywhere withe idiotic term “we’re all in this together.” I ask .. In what together? Really. … In WHAT TOGETHER?
They have no reply that makes any sense.
I am an individualist.
“Unilateral changes to the electoral system based on under 40% of the popular vote won’t and should not happen.”
Between Liberal, NDP, and Green party voters, over 62% of the popular vote went to parties that support electoral reform.
In fact, the only federal party explicitly opposed to replacing FPTP are the Conservatives, who garnered less than 32% of the popular vote.
Even worse in Quebec where “solidarity” is the sacred word. Tribalism and collectivism, not individualism.
too much info required on the survey and it would not let me change one field that was wrong. I agree with a referendum but my name and email is all that is necessary.
Rita, there are not enough intelligent and wise citizens in Canada to make such a decision.
I’m not actually arguing for either electoral reform or the stayua quo of FPTP. I’m merely saying that the reform side has some reasonable arguments and change doesn’t scare me all that much. But, unilaterally changing the election process in order to prevent political opponents from winning elections will eventually cause worse problems. Ottawa has already disenfranchised western Canadians from the federal bureaucracy via language requirements (which replaced postal code discrimination) To further alienate this region while raking in equalization payments cannot possibly have a good outcome.
Regarding equalization – I tire of the media-splaining that equalization is not taking from one province to give to another. Follow the money. Taxpayers pay the federal government; the Feds calculate who is a have or have-not province with the equalization formula (which is itself biased regarding hydro, for instance); then the money is given to have-not provincial governments while the have provinces get zero equalization dollars. So it does benefit the residents of certain provinces at the expense of others. It’s all about provincial welfare for poor provinces not redistributing wealth from rich to poor Canadians regardless of where they live. It rewards incompetent governments – there’s no way big, resource wealthy provinces like Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec should be have-nots.
kt – gee, I must have missed the commercials where the NDP and Greens ran on changing the electoral system. Substituting your wishes for reality again?
If they believe in it, let them run on it. You can say afterwards what you think they believe in, but your track record on realistic interpretations of history will always make me doubt that you’re looking at things properly.
What “change” did 62% of voters support? Hmmm? Very illogical argument on your part. What other policies are the Grits obligated to enact that a “majority” of voters supported?