For Immediate Release
It’s the first-past-the-post system, not the voters, that enables Ford to overrule the Charter, says Fair Vote Canada
“See what happens when a Premier wins 40% of the votes, 60% of the seats and 100% of the power? He thinks he has a mandate to overrule your Charter Rights” says Réal Lavergne, President of Fair Vote Canada, the national citizens’ campaign for proportional representation.
As Prof. Dennis Pilon wrote recently “The results of the 2018 Ontario provincial election and the subsequent actions by the Ford PCs demonstrate clearly why the first-past-the-post voting system is a danger to the survival of democracy itself.”
“When Justin Trudeau broke his promise, his excuse was that proportional representation would let extremists win a share of power. Obviously he got it backwards. It’s the winner-take-all system that is letting an extremist override the Charter of Rights” says Réal Lavergne.
“Under any good proportional representation system, on the votes cast this June the Ontario legislature would now have 51 PC members, 42 NDP, 25 Liberals and 6 Greens” says lawyer Wilfred Day, national secretary of Fair Vote Canada. “With the Liberals holding the balance of power, even if they had let Doug Ford become Premier, he would not be able to overrule the Charter of Rights without the support of a true majority. And any good PR system will make every MPP face the voters and be personally accountable.”
As Prof. Pilon says “The most urgent reform is for the immediate introduction of a proportional voting system for provincial elections. The opposition parties in Ontario should declare their commitment now to introduce proportional representation after the next election, if they are elected.”