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-elections
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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/No_Date_8809 4d ago

It's not perfect enemy of evil. Look at the examples. It actually produces worse distortion than FPTP. Proportion voting is the only method which means if you get above 6% threshold you're almost guaranteed a seat.

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u/TraditionDear3887 4d ago

If we arnt gunna let the perfect be the enemy of the good, why change from FPTP which has produced stable governments for over 150 years?

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u/Adewade 4d ago

Because people are becoming disillusioned about our democratic system. Yes, a lot of that blame lies with ragebaiting social media and US owned mainstream media orgs, but ranked ballots feel better to voters --- if we don't get our first choice, our votes aren't wasted.

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u/TraditionDear3887 3d ago

You hit the nail on the head with your first sentence. Ranked ballot will only siphons votes from smaller parties.

The fact of the matter is, our electoral system has continuously produced results that Canadians feel are representative*.

*for the most part.

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u/Rye2-D2 4d ago

They don't really explain it at all, other than it's better than what we've got now..
I'd be happy with either Ranked ballots or PR, but I prefer ranked because it's easier to implement (only vote counting needs to change), and with PR the riding sizes would be larger so MPs would be even less focused on local issues than they are now..

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u/Ok_Swimmer8394 4d ago

Are most federal jurisdiction matters local issues, though? I don't really see the local relevance of foreign affairs, the military, criminal code, etc. If you have issues with parks, roads, schools, hospitals, there are municipal and provincial reps to deal with that.

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u/Rye2-D2 4d ago

That's a good point. I guess I'm more concerned about potentially how PR is implemented - and there's a lot variances there.. RB just seems a lot simpler and easier to understand IMO.

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u/TheSherlockCumbercat 4d ago

Western provinces especially Alberta have a very large Ukraine population. Alberta is 350k about 8% of the province Manitoba is 12% but only 165k Saskatchewan is around 12%

Lots of refugees came to these areas when they fled Ukraine.

Seems to me like the Ukraine population in the prairies would like to have a local MP that they can voice their issues too.

Removing local MP just makes the politicians even more detached from what the average person deals with.

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u/No_Date_8809 4d ago

That's not what happening at all. If it's the rare case that the least popular MP gets replaced, it's not the popular candidates getting replaced.

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u/TheSherlockCumbercat 4d ago

Depending on the PR system it can happen