Our electoral system limits our choice of government
Guest post by Fair Vote Toronto
Due to the First Past the Post electoral system, we strategically elected a federal Liberal party government, but, de facto, have a Conservative government instead. For many of us, neither party's policies are what we actually want.
In the province of Ontario, we also have major problems with true representation. Bill 5 has given the Conservative government the power to ignore policies that have lawfully been passed by the legislature putting our agreements with Indigenous peoples and our climate plans at extreme risk.
Although the Indigenous peoples seem to be well organized and present a resolute front, the voices for protecting our planet now seem to be weak and scattered. The Green Party should be loudly leading the march with continued rallies as well as constant support for a system of electing our representatives that gives almost every voter the chance for their vote to count. Although all votes are counted, after the "winner" is selected, all other votes really don't matter.
The one major way to change this inadequacy is to keep on loudly advocating for a proportional electoral system.
Time and time again, the present Conservative Ford government of Ontario has gone against the majority of voters' wishes, even though they have less than 50% of the votes- only 43%, in fact-, in the last provincial election. Our First Past The Post electoral system encourages this since, in most constituencies, a representative is elected with much less than 50% of the votes. An average of between 35-45% is the norm and a true majority of votes (50% +1) is rarely achieved.
Political parties like the Green Party are constantly under-represented in parliament because our present electoral system tends to favour larger, better-funded parties. Unless there is a continued concerted effort to change our electoral system to one that uses proportionality, this present bias towards the big tent monied parties will continue. The Green party received 4.8% in the last election which only led to 2 seats. (What is even worse is that the Liberals had 29.9% of the votes and only gained 14 seats, whereas the NDP had only 18.6% of the votes but garnered 27 seats.)
More than 6% of Canadian voters in 2019 chose the Green Party, but this resulted in only 1% of the seats being Green.
If we had a proportional voting system, the way citizens voted would also change since strategic voting wouldn't be on everyone's mind. Since voters would elect more than one representative in their constituency, they would feel freer to vote as they wished. Citizens would vote for a representative/party rather than against one that they didn't want to acquire power.
To achieve a truer democracy, a change in our electoral system is essential. If you are not yet convinced, why not check out the Fair Vote Canada web site at fairvote.ca. There is strength in numbers in order to achieve true representation, fairness, equity, and democracy. Isn't that what we all want? A proportional electoral system will help achieve this.
