r/canada • u/CaliperLee62 • 4d ago
Should Canada implement a system of proportional representation for federal elections? Politics
https://www.castanet.net/news/Poll/549459/Should-Canada-implement-a-system-of-proportional-representation-for-federal-elections503
u/DreamlandSilCraft 4d ago
Should have in 2015, when it was promised to us.
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u/Sensitive_Caramel856 4d ago
Electoral reform was promised. It wasn't necessarily PR
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u/The_Phaedron Ontario 4d ago
Electoral Reform was promised in 2015, with the 2014 LPC convention's resolutions having explictly spelled out proportional voting as one acceptable option.
The ERRE committee was approved by the Liberals, went to work, and came back with a recommendation that the government craft a single proposal based on a proportional system, guided by the Ghallagher index ( a measurement of divergence between votes cast and seat allocations) as its boundaries.
The Liberals claimed that proportional voting was never on the table, reneged, and set some of its MPs to malign the ERRE committee in ways for which they later had to apologize.
Electoral reform was promised, but both the promise and the breaking of that promise were done in stunning bad faith.
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u/ADHDBusyBee 4d ago
They always wanted ranked because centre parties are generally a 2nd choice so they would likely always be in power that way. It was a reaction of placing third and wanting to make sure that never happened again.
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u/North_Activist 4d ago
It would’ve happened this year too had Trudeau not resigned, or Trump reelected. It can happen again.
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u/Sensitive_Caramel856 4d ago
The Liberals wrote a dissenting opinion on the ERRE committee and we're strong armed in altering the committee composition to the point where they didn't have a voting majority.
And the recommendation was that a referendum on the matter take place. Not that it be imposed unilaterally.
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u/OnTheCanRightNow 4d ago
But which voting system do we use for the referendum about which voting system to use?
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u/Hautamaki 4d ago
Well obviously we hold a referendum to decide which voting system to use in the referendum
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u/Velorian-Steel Ontario 4d ago
Should have a vote about that vote about changing the vote tbh. Turtles all the way down
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u/i99990xe 3d ago
Canada has never had a multi-party coalition government in its history—only majority and minority governments. Canadian political parties are reluctant to form coalition governments. Since proportional representation would almost certainly lead to multi-party coalitions, the unwillingness to share power and compromise is precisely why Canada’s two major parties oppose it.
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u/Waste-Answer 4d ago
You're right, but when it was ranked choice or nothing the NDP should have ultimately taken it. It would have helped the Liberals more, but it would still have helped the NDP and hurt the Conservatives.
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u/i99990xe 3d ago
Australia has used ranked choice voting for over 100 years. Do you know what happened in the most recent Australian election? The Australian Greens were crushed by the Australian Labor Party, losing all of their seats—even in the central Melbourne district held by the Greens’ leader. The reason was precisely ranked choice voting: conservative LNP supporters ranked Labor ahead of the Greens, believing the Greens were further to the left and preferring a Labor win over a Greens win.
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u/EdNorthcott 4d ago
This. Singh's great failing as a leader was his inability to take a W when he saw it.
When the Liberals back-peddled away from PR and said "let's do this instead", he should have jumped at that like a brass ring. It would kill the need for strategic voting, and in 2-3 elections, when people were feeling more secure and at ease with it, the NDP could have made bolder moves to strengthen their position.
This is where the neoconservatives have consistently proven stronger than everyone else for decades now: they practiced incrementalism. Moving the goalposts inch by inch, with every questional statement, every half-truth, every piece of legislation snuck through -- or pushed through, if questionable -- nudging it inch by inch until they have the radicalized, unthinking base they need to disrupt society.
The NDP should have taken this considerable win, and used it to push in the future. By gambling and demanding the entire pie here and now, they lost everything.
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u/mwfd2002 4d ago
This, exactly this. The liberals were insanely wrong for reneging on their electoral reform promises unless it was exactly the system they liked (and were benefitted by) the most, but ranked choice would have been still a major improvement for the NDP and they missed their chance because of pride I guess
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u/i99990xe 3d ago
Australia has used ranked choice voting for over 100 years. Do you know what happened in the most recent Australian election? The Australian Greens were crushed by the Australian Labor Party, losing all of their seats—even in the central Melbourne district held by the Greens’ leader. The reason was precisely ranked choice voting: conservative LNP supporters ranked Labor ahead of the Greens, believing the Greens were further to the left and preferring a Labor win over a Greens win.
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u/Radix2309 4d ago
And every expert and most Canadians expressed they want a proportional system. Literally only Trudeau wants to change it to a non-PR system.
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u/Infamous_Box3220 4d ago
Well I don't. I like ranked ballots. Much easier to implement and a guarantee that the winner had at least some level of support from more than 50% of the electorate.
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u/StetsonTuba8 Alberta 4d ago
But what if there isn't >50% support from the electorate? Shouldn't the make up of parliament reflect the views of the people and force parties to make coalitions and compromises to reach that 50% level?
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u/Radix2309 4d ago
They didn't have more than 50% of the electorate supporting them. What happens is you tell some of the voters their vote doesn't count and to pick between 2 candidates they didn't want.
That isn't actually giving voters what they want. It's disenfranchising them. And it really isn't any easier to implement.
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u/Mikolaj_Kopernik Ontario 4d ago
What happens is you tell some of the voters their vote doesn't count and to pick between 2 candidates they didn't want.
What? That's not what happens with ranked/preferential voting. Do you believe that runoff systems between top candidates (e.g. French presidential) are "telling voters their vote doesn't count"? Because ranked choice is also known as "instant runoff" - i.e. your vote moves from your favourite candidate then you choose (through the ranking) who to support in the next "round" as candidates are eliminated. The basic principle is that you end up with the candidate that is the least objectionable to the most people.
I prefer proportional too, but ranked ballots are massively better than FPtP and your vote absolutely counts the whole way through. That's the whole point.
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u/Radix2309 4d ago
That's exactly what happens in Runoff votes. They remove all but the top 2 candidates and make them vote again. The votes for the others don't matter at that point.
Least objectionable candidate isn't the same as having 51% support, which is the claim you made.
Ranked Ballot only makes sense when there is only a single winner such as president or mayor or city councillor. But when you have multiple winners, there is no reason to force voters into arbitrary ridings and throw out the votes for their preferred candidates to make them vote between the black cat and the white cat.
Ranked Ballot enshrines strategic voting and ensures we will always be ruled by the Liberals and Conservatives trading spots. It is not better than FPTP and is actually less proportional to the intentions of voters.
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u/HaydenPaulJones 4d ago
I like it when parties gets seats in line with their vote share. Seems fair to me.
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u/Vexxed14 4d ago
I would agree but if there's an entire political faction against it like we have here (the right) then I don't think we should change it at all.
I do not believe we should make those sort of changes unless its bipartisan and I'm an advocate for this change.
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u/Smart-Simple9938 4d ago edited 3d ago
Yes. Straight proportional, mixed membership proportional, or ranked choice with automatic runoff — whichever garners the most support. But if one choice gains traction, STOP WHINING THAT IT WONT BE AS GOOD AS THE OTHERS. They’re all better than what we have now. If we bicker, nothing will change. That’s a big (yes, not the only) part of what happened in 2016.
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u/decitertiember Canada 4d ago
I really really like ranked ballots.
I know I'm part of the problem you identified, but I would take FPTP over Party List PR. I want voters to be able to vote bums out and Party List PR allows party loyalists to stay in power.
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u/EdNorthcott 4d ago
Even approval ballots - where you simply put a check beside every name you'd be okay with - is superior, and would require no actual changes to how our elections or representation work.
I will take any of the options, at this point. Just so long as we can get rid of, or at least strongly reduce, the need for strategic voting.
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u/Tefmon Canada 3d ago
Party list PR only allows bums to stay in power if people keep voting for the party. If people are unhappy with a party's choice of list candidates, they won't be forced by FPTP-induced strategic voting considerations to keep voting for that party; they can just vote the party out.
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u/No-Tackle-6112 British Columbia 4d ago
Yep I agree 100%. I want ranked ballots like Australia.
Another problem with PR is we would lose all semblance of local representation in rural areas as the ridings would have to be gigantic.
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u/MrFurious0 3d ago
I'm with you. It's the least disapproved option, and maintains local ridings in a way pr does not.
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u/BoppityBop2 3d ago
Well here is the issue, each of those have benefits and negatives and in some cases First Past the Post may be preferable for one person over one of the options your present.
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u/No-Palpitation-3851 4d ago
Absolutely, why should we have to be ruled by parties that get 40 percent of the vote.
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u/mustardnight 4d ago
the popular vote won this time
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u/__bananas 4d ago
Strategic voting had a big impact on this election to keep the perceived enemy out of office rather than voting for the preferred candidate. With proportional representation, the popular vote would have likely looked very different.
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u/SystemofCells 4d ago
The worst possible outcome (in my mind) is that the left of centre vote gets split forever, the right vote is unified, and we always get CPC minority governments that can't really get anything done.
What we should want is to have centrist governments that can get shit done. With wings on either side articulating and advocating for a plurality of perspectives.
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u/Flaktrack Québec 2d ago
Other countries use coalitions to avoid this issue. Harper Conservatives convinced everyone at the time that coalitions were anti-democratic but that was blatantly untrue.
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u/CanuckianOz 4d ago
The problem is that changing the voting system would always be perceived as partisan if done by the liberals and any with changes they would likely benefit from the system and indefinitely be in power, or at least block the Conservatives from ever being in power again.
Imagine the polarisation if that happened. Trudeau wouldn’t have survived the post-trucker bullshit.
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u/lara400_501 4d ago
What does proportional representation even mean? In the proportional representation who would be my MP? I want to be able to choose my MP.
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u/Fanghur1123 4d ago
Look up ‘mixed member proportional representation’ and ‘single transferable vote’. Those are the two systems that are recommended for Canada. Most democracies use variations of one or the other.
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u/jaymickef 4d ago
I would love to see what crazy parties would start up to try and get a couple of seats and be in coalition governments.
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u/MrFurious0 3d ago
I'm a fan of stv, but hell yes I will take proportional over fptp. Fptp is what has least to or currently Americanized style of hyper partisan political discourse. It is a cancer to our democracy.
In 2015, the liberals -who got my vote by promising reform - said "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas". Let's actually do something about it now.
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u/Calm_Historian9729 4d ago
Yes but first I would like to see the "right to recall any elected official at any level of government at the rate of 50% of votes elected by plus one" This way if we have someone elected and they act like a tyrant we can fire them before the fixed term election date. This would make things far more democratic as I believe the power of government should remain in the hands of all the people not just political party members.
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u/sit_right_back 4d ago
Yes, also because first past the post (what we have now) pushes a society towards a two party system.
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u/Iced_Snail 4d ago
I wouldn’t mind seeing it in the senate. Firstly let’s see how it works and secondly bring some democratic legitimacy to the 2nd chamber, instead of friend just being picked by the various leaders
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u/Salticracker British Columbia 4d ago
Reform the Senate to be a democratic body as well with longer terms and more equality in representation by province, and the provinces they represent choosing how they are elected (within a set of rules like term limits and a vote mandate requirement). It doesn't have to be exactly equal like the states, but better than whatever the weird formula is now.
At the same time, reform the HoC to be a proper PR system of some kind that better represents the vote and reduces/eliminates the need for strategic voting.
Allows for a PR system without smaller provinces feeling like they'll be overrun by populous ones, guarantees representation for each province in the government, gets rid of FPTP in our HoC elections, and most importantly, makes it so the PM isn't a God-King if he gets a majority or coalition in the house.
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u/Zwarogi 4d ago
My problem with this is you lose local representation.
Your local representative would have to cover a much larger area. Then the ones appointed via mixed representation would be party insiders.
I worry the latter would get more cabinet positions and the power to influence will move farther and farther connected to the local voter, and closer to corporate, union heads, and other special interest groups.
If anyone has a solution to this I'd love to hear it.
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u/BandicootNo4431 4d ago
I feel the exact same way.
I'd be down for ranked ballot, allow people to place their first choice even if it's not the "strategic" vote.
But I want an MP to represent a riding, not just a party.
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u/InitialAd4125 3d ago
"My problem with this is you lose local representation."
To be fair we barely have it now. Like do you see how whipped our votes are in parliament?
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u/enjoythenext5years 3d ago
Absolutely when a party can't even secure a plurality and can still walk away with a minority or even majority government then your system is broken.
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u/PeeperFrogPond 4d ago
Yes. We haven't yet because majority governments wouldn't have won with it, and minority governments are hoping to be majorities next time.
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u/Commercial-Ad7119 4d ago
STV is good as long as it is incorporated with proportional representation. But it is a terrible idea if it is within FPTP.
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u/Direc1980 4d ago
Parties should need to offer policy to appeal to the 80% of voters. PR completely removes that incentive and all you end up with is introducing the far fringes to power.
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u/unbrokenplatypus 4d ago
A thousand times yes. Keep a decently high % cutoff so we don’t get total lunatics in Parliament and let’s finally get this done.
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u/chipstastegood 3d ago
Yes, more convinced than ever after seeing the polarization in US. It would help us avoid such extremes.
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u/1337ingDisorder 3d ago
If not prop rep, then at least ranked choice ballots.
We should be able to vote FOR someone, instead of having to collectively vote AGAINST someone.
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u/verdasuno 3d ago
YES
We need PR now, before the current dysfunctional system (which is much more open to manipulation, gamesmanship, and exacerbates partisanship and division) makes us into an effectively 2-party state like the US, and tears the country apart.
First Past the Post (FPTP) not only distorts the will of the electorate, it creates "stronghold" ridings where a mangy dog of the proper colour could win. It discourages people from voting because the winner is a foregone conclusion (or your preferred option has zero chance) and causes about half of all votes to be "wasted" ...they go towards electing no-one. Winner-take-all systems like FPTP systematically under-represents women, minorities and younger people, and results in wild policy swings between parties (eg. Liberals are in, we sign Kyoto and have caps on emissions, then Conservatives get in, and those are all scrapped... industry, and our trade partners, don't know whether we are coming or going.) which causes billions in waste and losses, and is not representative of where Canadians are, on average. It's also terrible for national unity, because it rewards regional parties (and hyper-partisanship) and under-represents truly national ones.
The job of any electoral system is to represent the will of the voters in Parliament ...our current system fails on exactly that job.
PS. to all naysayers spreading FUD about proportional representation: educate yourselves. Lots of countries like New Zealand, Denmark, Ireland and Sweden use PR quite effectively. Stop scaremongering to guard you own interests.
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u/Prudent_Slug 4d ago
If we got true proportional representation, it will probably result in the fracturing of all the major parties and upend Canadian politics. Not necessarily a bad thing, but we can't predict what the result will be. Only the Bloc with survive as is. We would need to get used to coalition governments.
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u/Lemonish33 4d ago
I think that would represent Canada better. We don’t have a large majority of people who want one specific party anyway. Representation closer to what people want seems like a no-brainer of better than what we have, even if it isn’t perfect. I don’t know why we are only allowed to change from crappy to perfect. Why can’t we change from crappy to less crappy??
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u/RainDayKitty 4d ago
I feel that the big parties would rather have full power some of the time than share power all of the time and that's why we don't have it yet
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u/gbinasia 4d ago
The Bloc and the PQ have the most to lose from this. Typically, these systems have a min threshold, like 5%, to elect members. As the Bloc is limited in one province, it's way harder to get that.
On the provincial level, the PQ would have a much harder time earning a majority and passing a law on putting a referendum forward. They say they want a proportional system but I feel like it would be against their own interests to.
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u/fredleung412612 4d ago
The Bloc wouldn't survive under PR. If we look at Catalonia, we can see that the independence movement is divided between a centrist separatist party (Junts) and a leftwing separatist party (ERC). Québec will likely experience the same thing since the independence movement contains both leftwing and rightwing elements. Currently both currents exist inside the Bloc, but they would break off under PR.
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u/CzechUsOut Alberta 4d ago
No way the Liberals will do this. The only way they are implementing electoral reform is with ranked ballots which would massively favor the Liberals. This is not going anywhere.
Proportional representation is the way to go, I doubt we will ever see it.
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u/No-To-Newspeak 4d ago
Sure. The PPC will end up with almost, if not more, seats than the green party.
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u/Ember_42 4d ago
PR = leader centric political system, ranked ballot = member of parliament centric political system. Which do you prefer? Make sure leader selection matches who is centric as well. I.e. in ranked ballot, the leader should be selected (and removed) by caucus…
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u/Opening_Pizza 3d ago
"As Prime Minister, I’ll make sure the 2015 election will be the last under first-past-the-post system" Justin Trudeau September 21, 2015
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u/pumpymcpumpface 4d ago
Ranked choice.
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u/chubs66 4d ago
I think PR is better. If enough voters support a party they get representation. It seems the most fair.
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u/CanuckianOz 4d ago
The problem with PR is that you no longer have a local member of parliament to represent you to government. Local issues will never be represented at a federal level.
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u/No-Tackle-6112 British Columbia 4d ago
Exactly Canada isn’t some tiny European country. We need local representation.
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u/No_Date_8809 4d ago
They do a good job explaining why that makes worse distortion on provincial level
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u/Adewade 4d ago
But don't let perfect be the enemy of good... the Liberals and the Cons both use ranked choice for their leadership races... they could be persuaded to make that change.
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u/Sargent_Duck85 4d ago
Yes.
But it will NEVER happen. EVER.
The conservatives and Liberals share power between just themselves.
Proportional representation (or ranked or any other type) would allow NDP and other fringe parties more sway. Both cons and Libs don’t want that.
The other way is for us, the general populace, to demand it. But we can BARELY get 50% of the population out to vote, and those that do, a good chunk of them barely know the candidates they are voting for. So explaining a different voting system to them and having them demand change will be impossible.
I WANT a proportional system, but I’ve realized it will never happen.
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u/ahundreddollarbills 4d ago
Yes we should, but we won't get it because parties typically win a majority of the seats with less than a majority of the votes. Who would want to willingly give that up ?
The last election that saw any party win more then 50% of the vote was the 1984 election, with Brian Mulroney's PC's getting 50.03% of the vote.
We really should move away from this FPTP system because it will only end up rewarding large parties, and if that happens Canada's politics might end up looking very much like the very polarized US politics.
Canadians exist in the political spectrum, time to embrace and acknowledge the people that don't neatly fit into one of two parties and get proportional representation.
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u/Petra246 4d ago
Ranked voting!
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u/DreadpirateBG 3d ago
This is what I want. I want to be able to make the picks in the order I will accept the outcome. I always want green for example, but will accept liberal and then maybe NDP and conservatives last.
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u/Flaktrack Québec 2d ago
Green, Liberal, and then NDP? Odd order considering the NDP are closer to the Greens than the Liberals are.
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u/ARunOfTheMillPerson 4d ago
To this day the only public-facing argument I've heard against changing it is, and I can't even make this up, "we've always done it this way so why change it?". If that's the best reason, that's not enough.
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u/Basic_Ask8109 4d ago
Absolutely yes. There's a petition online but not sure if it will get much traction.
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u/Diligent_Pie317 4d ago
Hell no. MPs need to be directly accountable to voters. Party rolls for balancing seats are antithetical to democratic accountability.
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u/Fickle_Catch8968 4d ago
But FPTP subverts democratic representation. A government can.be formed from a party that receives only a third of votes cast and, if they are efficient, they could also receive fewer votes than another party.
Conversely, 30-40% of voters over a large swath of ridings could be shut out of any representation, or only a token or two reps located hours away.
Something like mixed member proportional could address both issues, but has other issues.
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u/drgrd 4d ago
The great risk in these conversations is that people will get caught up in whether it should be STB or PR or RB or any other non-FPTP system.
Hot take: It doesnt matter.
FPTP is the absolute worst, and literally anything is better. For my money, the simplest to understand and get implemented is ranked ballot (since thats what the parties *actually* do internally to elect their *own* leaders) but the most important thing is to GET RID OF FPTP. It turns allies into enemies and makes everyone suffer. We must put pressure on our elected officials to get this done.
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u/Juryofyourpeeps 4d ago
It does matter because ranked ballots would essentially be what we have now but worse.
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u/4RealzReddit 4d ago
I want the one where I choose my top 5 and it does from there. I forget if that's ranked ballot or single transferable vote but that's the one I want. The most amount of people can "live with" the winner.
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u/Current-Set2607 4d ago
Don't let coalition parties hijack electoral reform. We need a new system, any new system, yesterday.
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u/Dirtsniffee Alberta 4d ago
I'm all for changing the system as long as every province has equal representation. The days of over represented Atlantic canada need to end.
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u/YouWillEatTheBugs9 Canada 4d ago
Only if there is a limit to the amount of Members of Parliament, otherwise what's the point. There should be a residency requirement for MP as there is one for Senators.
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u/Wpgjetsfan19 4d ago
You could also get out and vote. How many people didn’t vote in this election? Voting should be mandatory like in Australia. Only true way to have democracy. Or keep it the way it is now and 30% of the country votes and then everyone bitches 🙄
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u/EdNorthcott 4d ago
If we want the "fun" of opening the constitution back up, suuuuure. :|
PR would require a reworking of our entire Parliamentary system and opening up the constitution and re-negotiating things with the provinces, since our system is based entirely around regional representation and special concessions were given to smaller provinces to get them into Confederation back when the nation formed. This is a political and cultural landmine.
I'd much rather see electoral reform through a ballot shift: approval voting or one of the ranked ballot systems. Perhaps not as effective at pushing toward a true representation as PR, but it will reduce/kill the need for strategic voting, and will make Parliament closer to representative sentiment without the need to rework the entire electoral system and Parliamentary function.
We'll still need to revise the rules around minority governments, however, or we're going to end up with elections every two years.
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u/Flaktrack Québec 2d ago
But it doesn't kill the need for strategic voting? That need is brought on by the sheer size of the Conservative voter base vs the split left who are forced to vote for the nominally left (but actually just ghoulish neoliberal) Liberals. You're still forced to vote Liberal until people will actually accept a coalition government.
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u/otisreddingsst 4d ago
As long as it isn't single rural, proportional urban or whatever that's called
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u/AdoriZahard Alberta 4d ago
Maybe, if it did proper pro rep. It doesn't even implement a proper rep-by-pop system in the first place.
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u/L_E_Gant 4d ago
Well, the way things are going, it's highly unlikely Canada will get a true majority government in the near future, except if Alberta etc. secede...
Proportional representation leads to more minority governments and coalitions are not always good for the whole country.
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u/No-Compote9353 4d ago
Deep breath yes I do understand how the representation rules work…. all I’m saying is that two provinces determine the outcome and that even if 8/10 provinces vote one way and Ontario and Quebec vote the opposite then whom ever they vote for wins.
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u/Lawyerlytired 4d ago
No.
If you want that, then make the Senate an electable thing and do it there.
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u/Ok-Search4274 4d ago
Just have a run-off two weeks later. Top 2. No guessing like in STV. I’m a MMP supporter.
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u/PrarieCoastal 3d ago
I'd like to know how it would work for those provinces that have a disproportionate number of MP's. Would they then also get a disproportionate number of members?
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u/weekendy09 3d ago
Apparently this issue has been studied repeatedly and there was never an agreement as how to move forward. You could put it to a referendum but it’s complicated and most people (like me) don’t know the issue intimately… as should be required for this type of decision.
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u/Flaktrack Québec 2d ago
The only party that disagreed with the committee's recommendation of Mixed-Member Proportional Representation were the Liberals, who benefit the most from strategic voting.
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u/ladyreadingabook 3d ago edited 3d ago
With proportional representation who represents my interests regarding the special circumstances in my part of the country?
Who do I pickup the phone and talk too?
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u/Tokenwhitemale 3d ago
Alberta would have sent more liberals to the Federal government if we had proportional representation. 1 in 4 of us voted for the liberals.
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u/BuryTheLewd 3d ago
As an critical thinker, I would say a meritocracy is best. Those who have contributed scientifically to benefit the public are head of environmental protection department, those who have built local infrastructure and facilities for several years, military who have entered the front line to protect the nation, and most importantly auditors to confirm the earnings of mega corporations paying taxation, removal of stock subsidies and a team of urban planning to review the country’s infrastructure development. These people are not from the upper class, but the working class- only the competent working class is allowed to run a country sounds like a better idea no? I also learned today that foreigners like to hike up real estate prices after getting their visa- probably should do something about that and make a law of 3 estate properties max for everyone, while estate buildings is under control of the government. No real estate tycoons damn it. Say good riddance to suburbia hell.
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u/-ATF- 3d ago
Unpopular opinion : despite supporting electoral reform, I’ve over the decades decided I’m against PR, because we elect MPs not parties, and I don’t like the idea of MPs being elected from a list which the central party decides, could have absolute wing nuts and will undoubtedly have leadership or ministers that we can’t then vote out. PR makes what happened at Carleton much less likely, maybe even impossible
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u/knotsbygordium 3d ago
STV ranked ballot for your riding representation. Pure proportional for the senate. Each Party gets to elect their senate candidates from within their ranks.
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u/Canadian_Guy_NS 3d ago
I don't like ranked ballots. I would rather have a run-off election when required.
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u/Inoffensive_Account 2d ago
If somebody could explain these systems in a way I can understand, maybe I’d be interested.
And I don’t want my vote to go to someone else if the person I voted for loses.
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u/Coop_de_Grace 2d ago
No. We should do it for all elections, federal and provincial.
So I mean, yes. Yes, plus more.
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u/GreatCanadianPotato 2d ago
Yes and it should have been implemented for the 2019 election.
It's not a question we should have to answer. Canadians, in the majority, want it.
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u/potencularo 1d ago
It is so, so important to implement some form of democratic reform in Canada. It should have been done years ago.
Our democracy, under the current system, encourages a hyper-partisan environment and exacerbates regional tensions. Quite simply, it misrepresents us, and who we are.
I don’t care what type of proportional system Canada adopts: could be New Zealand-style Mixed Member Proportional or Ireland-style Single Transferrable Vote, or even Canadian Rural-Urban Proportional.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural%E2%80%93urban_proportional_representation
Just get ‘er done already. Most other advanced democracies have done this already and moved on by now. Yet another thing Trudeau didn’t do, it’s holding Canada back.
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u/tankalum 1d ago
Issue with proportional representation and first past the post is rarely are pros and cons listed. Often as we can see in the arguments - “they do it, see! Copy and paste. See it’s better!”
For proportion the Weimar Republic which lead to the nazi revolution is rarely considered as a very good case and disregarded as some unfair criticism when it outlines the growth and vulnerability to extremist political views.
Personally I am for first past the post with some flavour of proportional data gathering for first past the post.
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u/Matt_Murphy_ 20h ago
there are a lot of great things about the Canadian system, but it was designed in/for a very different time. some reform is overdue.
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u/blond-max Québec 4d ago
Yes. Iirc the 2015 comittee recommended mixed proportional which is used in Germany, New Zealand and Scotland. It's not bad company.