Congratulates Dave Meslin and RaBIT for Successful Campaign
TORONTO – Fair Vote Canada today congratulated the Ranked Ballot Initiative of Toronto (RaBIT) and its principal Dave Meslin on winning a key symbolic victory at Toronto City Council’s June 11th meeting.
“Last Tuesday, local voting reform in Ontario took a quantum leap forward,” stated Stuart Parker, Vice President of Fair Vote Canada and chairperson of its national Fair Vote City campaign. “Activists with RaBIT, Fair Vote and a number of other key civil society organizations won an important moral victory in getting Toronto City Council to make a non-binding resolution to request from the Ontario Legislature the power to use voting systems in which electors may place marks other than ‘X’ on their ballots. This is a major development for both supporters of Instant Runoff Voting and for Single Transferable Vote (STV).”
STV, the type of proportional representation used in Ireland, Malta and Australia, was supported by a majority of Vancouverites in the 2005 and 2009 provincial referenda on how legislators are chosen and is the type of PR best-suited for Canada’s major cities. Voters in multi-member wards, such as those that existed in Toronto until 2003, rank candidates in order of preference resulting in city-wide proportional representation.
“But now the real work begins,” Parker explained. “Vancouver city council has, on four occasions in the past ten years, passed resolutions like the Toronto one but BC’s legislature has not honoured those requests. Now begins the hard work of pressuring Toronto’s MPPs to honour council’s request and grant real control over the voting system, something that did not happen in the original City of Toronto Act in 2006. And we plan to work shoulder to shoulder with RaBIT and the majority of Toronto Council to make sure that the legislature gives the people of Toronto the full and unfettered power to craft a voting system that makes sense for their city.”
“Voting reformers in BC will be watching that campaign carefully because it has nation-wide implications; if Torontonians succeed in touching the conscience of their provincial government, pressure will build on Christy Clark and the BC government to honour the same requests from by Vancouverites. Now, more than ever, voting reformers of all stripes and from all organizations must come together to back the democratization of our cities and consultive, evidence-based citizen engagement processes to design fair, civic voting systems that treat all persons and communities equally and fairly.”
For more information, please contact:
Stuart Parker, Vice President, Fair Vote Canada
778-928-9431