Gee, if only a major prime minister candidate were to promise to end first-past-the-post voting as a major campaign issue, and I was to vote for said candidate’s party on that basis, and they were to not flagrantly renege on that promise right after being elected.
There are times when I find myself in grudging sympathy for those “fuck Trudeau” bumper stickers. There weren’t better options at the time and he did accomplish a few other things that were good, but that one was really important IMO. Fundamental to the long-term health of Canadian democracy.
I think the promise was “the last unfair election”
The problem is JT (or, probably, more accurately, Gerald Butts) thought that Ranked Ballot was a fairer system.
But pure RB is still a majoritarian system, and is even less proportional (thus less fair IMHO) than FPTP. Once the ERRE made that assessment, it was the end of any “reform”.
getting rid of First-Past-The-Post alleviates the drive toward a 2-party system. The author mentions this (they have written extensively on it).
I remember when 2015 was going to be the last election under FPTP 🤦
I not only still remember, I will never forget. I am an NDP supporter for life now, until and unless they betray us too.
Obligatory !fairvote@lemmy.ca
We need a strong and vibrant NDP party at the very least. It would definitely be nicer to have a bigger spread.
Maybe the NDP should focus on being a labor party with some basic common sense around housing shortage, wage supression, and mass immigration?
Clearly running as a duplicate Liberal party isnt working out.
It’s already a 1.5 party system. Our liberal party is just conservatives who aren’t openly racist or bigoted.
They’re so unracist they tripled what the UN defined as modern slaves to prop up Canada’s GDP. Would a racist bring non-white wage slaves into an existing housing shortage just to serve them cheaper Tim Hortons?
It’s not racist if they were doing it to prop up the GDP, it’s just a practical way to suppress wages and get cheap labour. If they openly said it was a way to avoid having our precious whites sully themselves by performing menial tasks, then it would be racist.
Ignoring the lack of basic living standards of those brownies sure isn’t, and I’m an expert in racism.
Basic living standards are very expensive, you see. We would like to do something but we can’t
There’s a good chance the NDP will be back with a vengeance.
We should absolutely get rid of FPTP in favour of proportional representation, however, I don’t know that the current polling situation is actually a result of FPTP. I’m a pretty consistent NDP voter, but I’ve voted Liberal twice - Trudeau once (to bring in proportional rep… lol), and Carney this last time. I know this is unpopular but I didn’t “lend” my vote to Carney to beat the CPC, I genuinely think he’s doing great and will happily vote for Liberals again so long as he’s at the helm.
This and how hard it would be to ever amend the constitution (y’know, to move away from FPTP, for example) are the biggest problems for Canadian democracy going forwards.
It won’t sink us in the next 10 years, but past that who knows. History has a way of turning heroes into villains, and vice-verse.
Except the Constitution doesn’t stipulate FPTP. It defines how seats are allocated based on population and provinces and all but doesn’t say how to decide what MPs go in what seats. It doesn’t mention parties either.
What? Really? I guess it’s in the Elections Act, then.
Yup, checks out. There’s certain ridings and they all have to produce one member, but it doesn’t say how. Wonders of living in a country that wasn’t really a democracy originally, I guess. One member representing each riding limits options quite a bit, but there are proportional systems that could be made to work that way.
It doesn’t mention parties either.
Which isn’t necessarily unusual. It wasn’t a designed part of the US system, for example - if anything it undercuts the original intention of it. Proportional systems have to recognise them at least a bit, though.
