M

First of all - most Canadians probably didn’t back the Bloc Quebecois platform, not out of informed disagreement, but out of a lack of personal relevance (because there was no BQ candidate in their riding), which made it easier to stick a stereotype view of what their platform probably was.

For example, from the Ottawa Citizen, here is a summary of the BQ platform from the last election. Does it accurately represent what they were campaigning on? I haven’t the foggiest notion. http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/decisioncanada/story.html?id=4fec8278-1e0c-4232-9af9-ef9e5c2594be

Not a mention of independence. The “Other” is about decentralization and transfer of power within Canada, similar to a lot of sentiment in the US. Their “justice” platform contains some rather objectionably fasco-populist elements. Their environment, education, and “families” platforms read as entirely progressive. Not a thing of this was I aware of before reading that article.

Secondly, a comment to the proportional representation question.

PR has its problems, as I’m sure you’re aware. The main one from my point of view is the lack of answerability to a single riding, which can allow petty crooks to hang on to their positions by fooling enough of the people enough of the time.

My preferred approach would be a Single Transferable Vote (STV) system. Each ballot ranks candidates for a particular riding by preference, and the votes are counted in a way as to eliminate as many wasted votes as possible. So, if I support the Green party, hate the Conservatives, and live in a riding where the best shot to beat the Conservatives is the Liberals, I can both vote with my conscience - give first preference to a Green party candidate - and strategically - give a later preference to a Liberal - and know that my vote will very likely end up counting for the Liberal, but still give some perceived legitimacy to the Greens by letting the media report a truer count of Green party supporters.

The methods of figuring which ballots to count, and which to transfer based on later choices, get rather complex rather quickly when you have multi-candidate ridings. For this reason, I prefer the single-candidate riding version, also known as Instant Runoff.

It’s aptly named - basically your ranking comes down to specifying in one trip to the polls who you vote for in a first round, then, assuming if your first choice were to be eliminated, who you’d vote for in a first runoff, then a second, etc. The result is that whoever wins has at least the grudging support of at least 50% of the voters in the riding. This generally would eliminate those candidates supported by the most extremist 28% of their riding and loathed by the other 72%, who unfortunately have divided their votes nearly evenly among 3 more moderate candidates.

The STV version recently proposed in BC (it got about 58% support at a referendum, but the government had decided not to be bound by less than 60% support) was to have multiple candidates per riding, and to transfer surplus votes fractionally based on the amount by which each candidate was over the threshold for election. It’s also a good system, and especially impressive that it got the support it did, given the maths involved.

I was Vic-President of Calgary East. I am very upset

with the liberal party even thinking of joining with a BUNCH

OF SOCIALISTS’S

Pierre Trudeau is turning over and over in his grave.

I truly believe that Justin could take this party on and

win - especially as long as the current people who are

running for the leadership are involved!!

I’m shaking my head in resignation over the election results too. Damn waste of money for nothing.

M

Vote NDP

http://theimpolitecanadian.wordpress.com/

Stephen Harper has his head so far up George Bush’s back passage that George could get a gig as the two-headed freak at a traveling sideshow.

(and sorry for the recent loss of your kitty)

M

M