NDP’s insistence that PR be the only acceptable voting reform possible is a primary reason we didn’t get voting reform.
NDP could have sided with the LPC and gotten us STV or Ranked Choice, but they sided with the CPC and asked for an unnesswcary referendum and a dealers choice PR system that they knew the LPC wouldn’t be able to support,and wouldn’t pass the senate in any case.
To be fair, the Liberals wouldn’t choose a voting system that would see them lose access to power, which PR would: there would never be another election where they could get 30ish% of the vote but win a majority, which suits them just fine: they’d rather change seats with the Conservatives every few years than be forced to compromise with other parties.
The electorate in this country is much more left-wing and progressive than the politicians it elects, and PR would codify that. The Calgarian and Laurentian elites wouldn’t ever let that happen, which means that, if the NDP and BQ ever manage to form a plurality, they need to ram it through immediately.
And the Senate can pound sand: next to the Governors General, they’re a useless rubber stamp anyway.
They didn’t have a majority on the ER committee. So should they have unilaterally ignored the majority report of the other parties and just ram through their own preference for STV? Or maybe abandon their grass roots party supporters and gone with PR, despite the fact STV was party policy, reaffirmed only a year or two before? How about the referendum the NDP supported by voting with the CPC in committee, should the LPC have ignored that and if ignore that, why not the whole thing? If they ran the referendum nothing would have gotten done before the next election anyway. This was honestly more complicated that I think a lot of people give it credit for, and the NDP Alliance with the CPC is no small part of that complication.
They didn’t have a majority on the ER committee. So should they have unilaterally ignored the majority report of the other parties and just ram through their own preference for STV?
They had majority in the House. They chose how the committee was constructed.
I’m really amazed how the people with 44 seats is suppose more responsible for something than the people that had 184 seats.
The initial proposed structure of the Special Committee was three voting members allocated based on each official party’s seats in the House (six Liberal members, three Conservative members, and one New Democratic member), with a member of the Bloc Québécois and Green Party leader Elizabeth May given additional non-voting seats.[6]
The structure of the Special Committee was criticized by the opposition party leaders, as the government would have possessed a majority of the committee seats and could unilaterally recommend alterations to the electoral system without the support of any other party. Interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose, the Leader of the Official Opposition, denounced the plan as “stacking the deck”, while Nathan Cullen, the NDP critic for Democratic Institutions, urged the government to reconsider this plan as well. The Green Party and Bloc Québécois additionally objected to their lack of voting representation on the committee.[7]
On June 2, 2016, Monsef announced that the government would support a motion by Cullen to alter the structure of the committee to have seats allocated based on percentage of the nationwide popular vote in the 2015 election and give the Bloc Québécois and Greens one voting seat each on the committee.[8][9] The Liberal caucus on the committee would have in effect only four voting members, as the chair would not vote unless there was a tie.[10]
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NDP’s insistence that PR be the only acceptable voting reform possible is a primary reason we didn’t get voting reform.
NDP could have sided with the LPC and gotten us STV or Ranked Choice, but they sided with the CPC and asked for an unnesswcary referendum and a dealers choice PR system that they knew the LPC wouldn’t be able to support,and wouldn’t pass the senate in any case.
To be fair, the Liberals wouldn’t choose a voting system that would see them lose access to power, which PR would: there would never be another election where they could get 30ish% of the vote but win a majority, which suits them just fine: they’d rather change seats with the Conservatives every few years than be forced to compromise with other parties.
The electorate in this country is much more left-wing and progressive than the politicians it elects, and PR would codify that. The Calgarian and Laurentian elites wouldn’t ever let that happen, which means that, if the NDP and BQ ever manage to form a plurality, they need to ram it through immediately.
And the Senate can pound sand: next to the Governors General, they’re a useless rubber stamp anyway.
Given that the Liberals had majority at that point I think that instance is on them.
They didn’t have a majority on the ER committee. So should they have unilaterally ignored the majority report of the other parties and just ram through their own preference for STV? Or maybe abandon their grass roots party supporters and gone with PR, despite the fact STV was party policy, reaffirmed only a year or two before? How about the referendum the NDP supported by voting with the CPC in committee, should the LPC have ignored that and if ignore that, why not the whole thing? If they ran the referendum nothing would have gotten done before the next election anyway. This was honestly more complicated that I think a lot of people give it credit for, and the NDP Alliance with the CPC is no small part of that complication.
They had majority in the House. They chose how the committee was constructed.
I’m really amazed how the people with 44 seats is suppose more responsible for something than the people that had 184 seats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_House_of_Commons_Special_Committee_on_Electoral_Reform#Establishment
Further references.
2015 Election results: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Canadian_federal_election
Timeline: https://globalnews.ca/news/3102270/justin-trudeau-liberals-electoral-reform-changing-promises/
Yes, the people with 44 seats are responsible for their own actions.
That was really strange for me because ranked choice voting would almost guarantee the NDP a lot more votes and power than it currently has.