Dear Editor:
Last year, on the weekend before the federal elections, we did our very last pre-election-ferry-line-blitz and handed out over 500 small flyers.
Flyers that informed folks that they had a choice to vote for electoral reform by voting for a party that had made this promise part of their election platform. The Liberals, NDP and Greens all did.
What I picked up from that blitz was that people really do not like having to vote strategically, and, except for a very few, are done with the current election system of first past the post. And so it seems, is the new government.
At least that’s what Prime Minister Trudeau has been exclaiming for well over a year now.
“We are committed to ensuring that 2015 will be the last election using first past the post,” Trudeau stated June 2015.
All very encouraging of course, but it is the “committed to ensuring” where things seem to be stuck now.
Just before the summer, the Committee on Electoral Reform was created and its members have been hearing from experts, and Liberal MPs have been busy consulting with the public at town hall meetings ever since.
Right from the start it was unclear how conclusions were to be distilled from the town halls. This wasn’t another poll. After all the election outcome gave a clear mandate for electoral reform.
In number of votes: more than 63 per cent voted for parties, including the Liberals, that have committed to replace first past the post with a different election system.
Unlike at committee meetings, it appeared that any certified method of minute taking or reporting was absent from the town hall meetings. MPs took their own minutes next to facilitating.
It was a bit messy, and I didn’t know what to make of it, attending the meeting in West Vancouver.
Maybe this is why Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef could suggest that, “There hasn’t been a consensus on any specific system.” coming out of them.
Thank goodness for Fair Vote Canada, a grassroots multi-partisan citizens’ campaign for voting system reform. These people knew what was coming and decided to do their own reporting at the town halls and committee hearings.
They found that in contrast to what the minister had suggested, nine out of 10 witnesses who appeared before the committee, and who had a position on voting systems, recommended proportional representation to replace first past the post.
From the 173 town halls it was reported that at 121 of them, seven out of 10 was in favour of some form of proportional representation to replace First Past the Post.
Confronted with this clear preference for proportional representation, are Trudeau and Monsef back pedalling?
You expect some courage from our political leaders facing the prospects of a little bit of political white water. They seemed so brave at first.
Of course we respect a choice to portage, but back pedalling on this strong river flow of electoral reform is out of the question.
Anton Van Walraven
