Hey Canadians (and others who are going to be very sad to watch what happens to Canada),
Well, Trudeau has called off plans for voting reform.
Time for Kellie Leitch to win autocratic power over the nation with 33% next election. Anyone want to start an Ontario separatist movement with me?
Fuck me!
I just wrote a letter to my MP, but MPs don’t mean shit. I’ll write to the Prime Minister too, but obviously the decision was made by political operatives, not in the interest of Canadians.
If the Conservatives win and bring in an anti-muslim snitch line (for non-Canadian, yes, they fucking promised to do that last election and more than one leadership candidate says it was a good idea that wasn’t “sold right” to Canadians) then we will need to bring in a line to snitch on people who use the snitch line. Snitches get stitches.
I swear to god I will phone that line every day to report that my nation has the barbaric cultural practice of islamophobia.
Honestly, I’m pretty pissed with the NDP as well. The non-liberal parties basically worked together to make an electoral reform proposal the liberals wouldn’t like, basically scuttling the process.
AV is exactly what the Liberals want. They’re everybody’s second choice: the right wing who are disgusted with the NDP, and left wing who are disgusted with the Tories. They could stand to benefit massively from a ranked ballot.
I don’t buy that. The Liberals have a majority; they can push through any electoral reform that they want. Put simply, I think that the Liberals have decided that Canadians don’t want electoral reform, they want Trudeau. And since they were able to vote for Trudeau and elect him, then obviously the system works!
I think on electoral reform there is a paralyzing notion that it requires more than just the will of the governing party. When people talk about a referendum I lose my head. Sure, let’s have a referendum, but it passed with 35%. What, you don’t like that idea? Then you are against FTPT.
I’m still mad at the NDP, though not nearly as mad as I am at the Liberals. The NDP collaborated with the Cons to come to a consensus on that committee. Didn’t they stop and ask themselves why the Cons were doing what they were doing, when they were the only party that was against voting reform?
I agree with the referendum being a bad idea. See Brexit.
I do, however, think that some form of PR would result in a more equitable split of power than ranked ballot would. And I don’t blame the NDP for agreeing with the Conservatives on that.
But I don’t think the NDP agreed with the Conservatives on that because I don’t think the Conservatives thought that. I think the Conservatives thought that a referendum on PR would fail and nothing would change, and they are probably doing Clinton-esque shoulder dances with glee now that the whole thing has been killed and they can blame Trudeau.
I also think people greatly exaggerate how much we know about what would happen if we adopted a different system. Obviously PR generated proportional representation by definition. I think ranked ballot probably does fine. A change in the system would create a situation where existing political operatives (being mostly stupid and unable to adapt) would just have no idea what to do and parties would have to revert to trying to have good policies and govern well to get power. Ranked ballot also gives people the ability to vote against a party by putting them last. The liberals arent’ actually everyone’s second choice, they are a lot of people’s first choice and a lot of people’s hated enemies.
