The plummeting poll numbers for Justin Trudeau and the federal Liberals might not seem as dire if Canada had adopted a new voting system.
The problem is that, should they implement electoral reform, it would mean no more Liberal majorities ever.
They’re okay with swapping seats with the Conservatives every few years, but having to cooperate with the NDP every day forever, and dragging Canadian politics leftward to meet the actual needs of the electorate, is a non-starter for the Calgary and Laurentian cheque-writers that underpin both the LPC and CPC.
I suspect it would result in permanent minorities, and the growth of smaller, more local parties. I’m no political scientist, but as far as I can tell, formalized political parties are just magnets for corruption and consolidation of power that’s for sale to anyone with a fistfull of disposable cash.
Libs are closer to the Cons than they are the NDP
This isn’t true at all. Liberals are much closer to social democrats than they are to fiscal and social conservatism.
They are fiscally conservative not just close
No, the Liberal Party is fiscally liberal, not fiscally conservative. While both philosophies think a market economy is the best economic system, a fiscal liberal is more inclined to use fiscal policy to intervene in that market economy to rectify social or economic inequalities. This would be entirely counter to fiscal conservatism.
For example, a fiscal liberal will support a public health system, a public broadcaster, $10 a day childcare, and EV / electrification/greening grants.
A fiscal conservative will be more laissez faire, and not want any of those things.
I bring this up because by not recognizing the difference we set ourselves up to put conservatives back into power, after all , “both sides same”.
Now social democrats (of which many in the NDP are) tend towards mixed-economy, social-liberalism. This philosophy contains the main body of New Democrats and a contingent of LPC (the left-liberals, social liberals). It’s why we can see progress on nationalized programs under LPC-NDP governments. The NDP has a true democratic socialist rump too, but they have much fewer areas of true overlap with Liberal philosophy.
Public health/daycare
NDP
public broadcaster
Cons want this as well, but they want it to favour them
EV / electrification/greening grants.
Cons give grants to oil/gas, you’re confusing energy grants (economic) with climate change (social)
I thought the cons wanted to abolish the CBC?
They want to talk about abolishing the CBC, but if they did they’d lose their whipping boy. If they really cared, they’d also be talking about defunding RCI, but they’re too chickenshit to take that on because Quebecois conservatives like it, while their Alberta base hates the CBC because…reasons.
Only for being non-biased
No, I’m not confused. You seem married to some fairly unsophisticated ideas about political philosophy, and I’m no divorce lawyer. Sorry to waste your time.
Your argument of giving grants to energy sure
But then the Cons also give grants to energy
So if you want to say they are both fiscally liberal then youve made a point but I think it is meaningless
This would be entirely counter to fiscal conservatism
Good thing that the Conservatives and Liberals are both…neoliberals, then.
Bingo. The LPC and the CPC are two sides of the same neoliberal coin.
For all the people arguing for a third party option in the US, this is why it won’t work. The two main parties will be happy to trade roles every few years and maintain the overall status quo.
Most governments have formed with a minority for the past couple of decades. It’s already the reality.
But you’re right that they wouldn’t want to formalize it.
There’s a difference between “formed with a minority” and “no chance at a majority ever again”.
The LPC (and CPC) are quite happy with the current system. The LPC would accept AFV or ranked-ballot, but only because they’re everyone’s second choice, where the Conservatives are the first choice of ~35% of the population, but almost no one’s second.
The NDP aren’t left wing anymore under silver-spoon Jagmeet. Dude’s just another trust fund baby like Trudeau.
You don’t pay attention
The NDP are certainly not bold enough or left enough for my liking but to say they’re not left wing at all is disingenuous
They’re not very left-wing by objective standards, or compared to their roots, but by modern, Overton-window-has-shifted-to-the-right standards they’re left-wing.
But there’s a grain of truth in what the parent is saying: if you cost out the platforms of Jagmeet Singh or Andrea Horwath from the last elections, you’ll find they’re less economically liberal than Brian Mulroney or Mike Harris.
It’s not too late. I’m sure the NDP would be on board.
I’d love to see it, but
as I posted above, petition e-4701 could make it too late.(edit: deleted my other comment to avoid repetition)
I have trouble believing that petition matters since it reads like business as usual for the CPC. The only thing that stands out is that it doesn’t specifically call out the carbon tax.
Lol, true. I was just concerned as it has a lot of signers. (But maybe they’ve been doing these monthly, I have no idea.)
My wonderful internet acquaintance , the NDP are a big part of why the electoral reform change never happened. Unpopular opinion time: The CPC, NDP and GPC deserve every bit as much blame, if not more, for the failure to move away from fptp. Why? They banded together in committee to poison any hope of getting electoral reform past the Senate or even the house. Trudeau , naively I think, promised to do things differently from Harper. True to his promise he balanced the electoral reform house committee by popular vote, instead of using his majority power. This meant that the opposition parties could outvote the liberals in committee and, seemingly forgotten by everyone, the opposition parties welded that power to deliver a complete nonsensical , posion pill filled committee report / reccomendation to the house which had no real chance of passing. That document, a worst of all ideas document if I ever saw it, threw out all ideas put forward by the LPC (the majority in the house, who had a free vote on this) instead favoring CPC demands for a referendum, NDP demands for a vague and nonspecific system that wasn’t STV, but was proportional. The GPC and Bloc got in on it, and passed this report that had no chance , none, of passing the house. Even if it had passed the house it wouldn’t have got past the Senate and the committee delayed their report so long nothing could be done before the next election.
I know parliamentary procedure is boring, and most people don’t follow it, but I do and I saw what happened here. The LPC failure was only in so far as they didn’t just stomp all over the opposition to impose their changes. The LPC acted in good faith instead and got politiked so bad people still blame them, reducing the whole thing down to “Trudeau break promise”.
I fully acknowledge the intricacy of what went on but also “Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau vowed that the upcoming general election will be the last one using the first-past-the-post voting system.”
It’s also clear wants a system that favours large parties: Trudeau says, however, that he would not favour proportional representation as an alternative, because it “gives more weight to smaller parties that are perhaps fringe parties.”
I know parliamentary procedure is boring, and most people don’t follow it, but I do and I saw what happened here.
I’m not certain you intended for this to sound condescending like you’re the only here that pays attentions to what’s happening. The person you’re replying to has practically single handily held up most of the Lemmy Canadian content for a while.
Even if it had passed the house it wouldn’t have got past the Senate and the committee delayed their report so long nothing could be done before the next election.
And that was 2 elections ago.
This is interesting, and I’ve never heard about this before. That’s really disappointing, but from a game-theoretic sense it makes sense it played out like that. If Trudeau did in fact opted for a popular vote instead of using his majority power, I can respect that, even if it blew up in all our faces.
Like everything these days, I realize it’s too difficult for me to understand and keep up with the complexities of modern life 😩
Here’s the thing: he could still pass it.
The NDP would support it, as would the Bloc and Greens. Hell, the PPC would, too. He could just ram it through. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy. He has the time left in his mandate.
The problem that the the Liberal Party doesn’t want it because it would mean no more Liberal majorities. No Conservative ones, either.
If you go back through electoral history, you have to go back to 1984 to find a party that won a majority. Before that, you have to go back to 1958. It’s a little more common before that, but still the exception.
Do we really think the Big Red or Big Blue machines will abandon the system that gives them majority rule without a majority vote share? Fuck, no they won’t. Adolf Hitler himself could be running as CPC leader (or Josef Stalin vs the Cons, take your pick) and at risk of winning and they’d still avoid electoral reform because it would mean they’d be one party among many, and thusly less important to the donor class, than they are now.
The problem that the the Liberal Party doesn’t want it because it would mean no more Liberal majorities. No Conservative ones, either.
Ranked-choice only gives majorities. One of the problems with it is that it kills what gave us almost everything we’re happy about as Canadians: minority governments need buy-in at all stages and have to work together with party of similar views, and that’s how we got healthcare and peacekeeping and now dental care.
uhh… no? We would keep the parliamentary system that we currently have, but the riding level elections would be ranked choice (or some other method) vs FPTP. It would actually lead to more minority and coalition governments as smaller parties would be able to have more representation in parliament.
I don’t know if they would ever consider it, but they could split ridings with the NDP, so there would be a single main left-wing candidate in each. They could basically guarantee a win with even a few of those.
Proportional rep would be great. Still pissed that Trudeau just completely lied about that. If we do go there we should do what Norway does, where there’s no snap elections, to avoid coalition instability problems.
Going back on representational voting is what made me decide never to vote for the Liberals while Trudeau was in power again. I’m still pissed about that.
You’re mistaken in thinking the Liberals, or the NDP for that matter, care about advancing causes. They don’t. They care about getting elected.
They aren’t interested in teaming up because that puts policy ahead of party, and the apparatchiks in both parties don’t want that. Especially the Liberals: they’d rather go down in flames than risk losing political leverage by forming a coalition. They saw, quite clearly, what happened to the Progressive Conservatives when they merged with Reform.
You’re mistaken in thinking the Liberals, or the NDP for that matter, care about advancing causes. They don’t. They care about getting elected.
As a registered member of one of those parties, I actually do. However, when it comes to the politicians, you’re either partly or completely right. Getting elected butters their bread, caring about the issues is optional, although at least some do as a hobby.
As for professional staffers, I don’t have as much experience. Mostly they just seem very busy when I interact with them.
Especially the Liberals: they’d rather go down in flames than risk losing political leverage by forming a coalition.
I mean, the Liberals have been in a not-technically-a-coalition with the NDP for some time now. Some of them don’t seem to like it (of course, having all the power would be better for them personally), but from the outside it seems to be going well.
They saw, quite clearly, what happened to the Progressive Conservatives when they merged with Reform.
They continued being a highly relevant political party?
They care about getting elected.
Psst. When you’re done “both sides” -ing the issue, I bet you can find one of the two that is better than the other and cares more about Canadian happiness.
Vote for them. Then it’s a win for them (election)and a win for us (least-worse party in power). If everyone did that, there’d be no blue left.
You see how your both-sides assertion isn’t even relevant?
I do that. I do vote NDP. Every election except 2015, when I voted Liberal on the electoral-reform promise. Shame on me.
What I won’t say that I’m happy doing it, and it doesn’t mean I don’t get to criticize the NDP for putting party ahead of the electorate. I said it about Layton teaming up with Harper, I said it about Mulcair getting flanked by Trudeau, and I’ll say it about Singh’s unwillingness to really step up and own the socialist label.
It’s not “both sides’ing” when you wish your team did better.
If everyone did that, there’d be no blue left.
My riding would still be very, very blue.
At this point the main difference between Liberals and NDP is style, as far as I’m concerned. I’d vote for either, or the Greens if that ever came up.
I was thinking it’s not too late but the Bloc would never support a system with PR outcomes since it’s the FPTP system that gives regional-intense groups like them outsized power.
A shame. I still insist that a regional-based open-list MMP would be the ideal fit for Canada.
Single Transferable Vote is perfect for Canada. It’s, essentially, proportional representation within multi-member ridings. So, a Quebec riding could get 5 seats, and get 2 Bloc, 1 Con, 1 Lib, 1 NDP (for example) giving most people in the riding a representative who more accurately reflects their views.
STV perfectly meshes with our constitutionally-protected geographic representation while also giving roughly proportional representation, and without giving seats to tiny fringe parties. It’s also been used successfully in Ireland for over a century.
I love STV but imho it just doesn’t work for Canada. We have too many massive wilderness ridings. If you had a heavily-urbanized province like if Southern Ontario was its own province, I’d say it would be the perfect system for that area.
Here’s why: The northern areas of every province are extremely low-population and are enormous. For example, if BC had 5-seat-riding STV federally, the entire province north of Kamloops would be one massive riding. It’s possible all their MPs would be from the populated end of the riding, so that people in the ass-end of the riding live over 1000km from their “representative”. Ontario would look similar - Northern Ontario is probably the most sparsely-populated area outside of the Territories. That’s not an acceptable outcome – being 1000km from your MP means you are not represented.
Contrast this vs Mixed Member Proportional, where local ridings still exist - under MMP, 2/3 of the seats are normal-ass ridings that work exactly like we do today. Then we group them together in “regions” and back-fill the most popular party-members within that region to make it proportional. A lot of people get upset about non-local representatives, or “unelected party staffer MPs” in MMP, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
The plan that was floated for BC is actually really awesome – imho it should be applied Canada-wide. It’s basically a vanilla MMP plan but there are details that do great work to mitigate the main complaints about MMP:
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Take the map of Canada and carve it up into regions of 14 ridings (obviously for provinces with less than 14 ridings, just take the whole province). These are our “regions”. So, for example:
- Saskatchewan is one “region”
- Peel Region (Mississauga + Brampton + nearby towns & exurbs) is one “region”.
- Niagara Peninsula (including Hamilton) is one “region”.
- A big city like Montreal would probably be 3 different electoral “regions”.
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Within each Region we have 9 ridings (or 2/3 of the total number of Seats if the Region is smaller than 14 seats). Those are normal-ass elections. So Calgary Centre still has its own MP, and so do more remote areas like Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine. These ridings are only about 50% larger then our current ridings.
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The other 5 Seats within the Region are backfill seats, that are used to fill up the Region until the proportion of party-members roughly matches their % of the vote within the Region. So even though the back-fill people don’t represent a riding, they’re still somewhat local. Flin Flon’s non-riding members are still from Manitoba. People in Markham will still have a local MP, but also will have regional MPs from the rest of York. So locality is still good for the regional representatives, and we have a proper local riding MP, we’re not losing that guarantee of locality.
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Avoid the “nobody elected this asshole” problem with open-lists. The ballot is simple, it has 2 sections:
- A section to pick your local MP, which is exactly as it is today. Pick 1 person here.
- A section to vote for your regional MP, grouped by party, which has multiple options per-party. Pick 1 person here. As a side-effect the person you select here is also your party PR vote.
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So, we figure out how many seats to back-fill by % of votes per-party (on the regional section) - so if there are 14 seats in a Region, and one party gets half of the regional MP votes, got 5 local seats? They’ll get 2 Regional seats. And which of their Regional candidates get those 2 seats? The 2 that got the most votes.
So it’s not like they’re unelected. They still have to be the most popular people within their party and within the region.
So let’s think a concrete example - imagine Southeastern Quebec region, which includes Quebec City. Generally not a very Red area except for the city itself. The Liberals continue to run Steven Guilbeault in Quebec City itself as a local MP, but to drum up interest they also run Stephane Dion and Joël Lightbound as regional candidates in the Quebec City regional area, including a massive amount of rural and suburban area they expect to get a little support from but generally lose. To pad out the rest of the list, they also run Ricky the Pigfucker as a regional candidate. Now, this is an open list - if the Liberal voters outside of Quebec City really hate Dion, they can still vote for Ricky. And so instead of the expected three MPs for the Quebec region being Guilbuealt (elected directly by Quebec City), Dion, and Lightbound, it’s an upset and they get Guilbeault, Dion, and Ricky the Pigfucker.
And Independants “I don’t want to run as a party” types? They can still run as a local riding MP. They’re not frozen out like most people think of about in “Proportional systems” that are very “party-oriented”.
It’s not a perfect system. It’s very party-oriented in the way that STV isn’t. It’s weirdly complicated. But it works. It’s used IRL in real first-world countries like Germany and New Zealand and Scotland. There’s lots of fiddly knobs to argue about like whether it’s okay to add more top-up MPs beyond the fixed size to preserve proportionality (true-MMP vs AMS - personally I’m on the fixed-size side AKA AMS) But with Canada’s geographic considerations, I strongly think it’s our best option.
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It’s tru deau.
I thought this joke was hilarious 😂
