home Making our Parliament more representative
Your latest editorial against proportional representation was truly
breathtaking in its leaps of logic. If I may summarize, your argument
comes down to "we are afraid of what might happen if people were able to
vote for the party of their choice." Apart from the astonishing
indictment against democracy this represents, it fails to even consider
the horrific consequences of our current system.
Under first past the post, your nightmare scenario of Canada being taken over by a right-wing coalition has actually occured many, many times. Moreover, while under proportional representation it would take a majority of voters to bring it about, our first past the post system allows it to happen with the support of little more than a third of the voters.
You compound your logical errors with arithmetical ones that even a second grader would laugh at. Your right-wing coalition of Alberta First and Conservatives could have no more seats from Alberta than the Conservatives already have from Alberta - all but one. In fact, under PR, the Conservatives' stranglehold on Alberta would be broken since almost 40% of Albertans voted NDP, Liberal or Green.
Of course, if we really feared what would happen if voters weren't afraid to vote according to their conscience, we could easily fix it. Perhaps we could allow a council of clerics to vet the candidates for their moral and political views so only the correct people can get elected, like they do in Iran. Or we could simply enforce a single party system to ensure that only those who follow the party line get to hold the reins of power, like communist nations do.
Winston Churchill once described democracy as "the worst system in the world, except for all the other systems we've tried." It appears that your editorial writers only heard the first part.
Gary Dale