For immediate release
Canadians have reason to celebrate. On December 3rd, 110 MPs voted in favour of making ALL our votes count.
NDP, Bloc, Green and Forces et Démocratie MPs were joined by a majority of Liberals and Independents in voting in favour of implementing mixed member proportional representation for Canadians, after an impassioned and respectful debate.
“Fair Vote Canada celebrates the independence of MPs putting their constituents and democracy first” says Doug Bailie, president of Fair Vote Canada. ” We also congratulate three independent MPs, including Brent Rathgeber, for joining the multipartisan consensus.”
“We were pleased to see Justin Trudeau did the right thing, allowing his caucus a free vote” said Doug Bailie. “We’re pleased that 16 Liberal MPs voted for the motion, but note that 15 did not. Hopefully, the Liberal caucus will continue to move towards Canadian public opinion that wants all votes to count.”
Craig Scott, NDP Electoral Reform Critic presented a motion to his colleagues that asked them to support a proportional representation system for Canada:
That, in the opinion of the House: (a) the next federal election should be the last conducted under the current first-past-the-post electoral system which has repeatedly delivered a majority of seats to parties supported by a minority of voters, or under any other winner-take-all electoral system; and (b) a form of mixed-member proportional representation would be the best electoral system for Canada.
While not included in the motion, Craig Scott stated the NDP position that “we would form a special all-party task force upon becoming government and then would legislate to a deadline that would produce a proportional-representation system of a mixed sort by 2019.” An all-party process is compatible with recommendations made by Fair Vote Canada and the Liberals’ Priority Resolution 31 for democratic reform.
Under the recommended system, everybody would have a local, directly accountable MP, and elected regional MPs to make sure that the voters for all parties are represented according to the popular vote.
Scott Simms, Liberal critic for Democratic Reform, despite expressing misgivings about the wording of the motion, said “if we are going to look at a form of proportional representation, the one the New Democrats are proposing is probably one of the more favourable ones.” He further said that, “The critic from the NDP pointed out inflated majorities, and I agree with him. Numbers such as gaining 41% of the vote but getting 60% of the seats are troubling to all Canadians, and they want to rectify that.”
Craig Scott outlined several problems with our winner-take-all voting system:
It exaggerates regional differences; diminishes the diversity of viewpoints; promotes false majorities where a Prime Minister can wield 100% of the power with only 39% of the vote or less; under-represents women, visible minority groups and Aboriginal peoples; promotes adversarialism and hyper-partisanship; leads to tunnel vision and rigid ideologies; disenfranchises citizens and reduces voter turnout.
“Approximately half of all votes in every election are ineffective and don’t provide representation,” says Doug Bailie, president of Fair Vote Canada.
“Canadians want democracy and that is about working together to produce the strongest system that will provide fair, equal representation for ALL,” adds Fair Vote Canada’s Executive Director, Kelly Carmichael. “We encourage all MPs to continue the dialogue and build a system that puts constituents first.
MPs from five of six parties were able to come together and agree on electoral reform, and this is an important step in building consensus among all Canadians on how to fix our democracy.”
Fair Vote Canada is a grassroots, multi-partisan citizens’ campaign for voting reform. We promote the introduction of an element of proportional representation into elections for all levels of government and throughout civil society.
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