- cross-posted to:
- fairvote@lemmy.ca
- canada@lemmy.ca
- ndp@lemmy.ca
- cross-posted to:
- fairvote@lemmy.ca
- canada@lemmy.ca
- ndp@lemmy.ca
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/40034360
With Duvergerās Law (i.e., in non-PR electoral systems, a trend towards a two-parties), we are running out of time to act. Canadaās 2021 effective number of parties is 2.76 - this number will decrease over time, and will eventually end Canadian democracy as we know it today.
The only way to prevent this democratic backsliding is proportional representation: !fairvote@lemmy.ca
The OLP, ONDP, and the Greens should just work together strategically in elections to not split votes, win the election, and implement PR for the provincial electoral system. We know the NDP and Greens have been consistent with supporting PR, so thereās really just getting the OLP on the bandwagon. Theyāll continue to have little chance at winning as long as DoFo continues to be the good FPTP player he is.
That said though, I seriously donāt know what goes into the OLPās current strategy. They almost donāt seem like they have one, almost like they donāt desire to become the provincial government. Feels like theyāve been really muted, passive, and only plays within the FPTP rules.
But the Liberals benefit from keeping the system broken, and their corporate donors donāt want the strong democracy we would have under PR. This goes without saying, but obviously the Conservatives are worse.
Yes, that feeling is precisely the reality.
Similar to the Democratās strategy in the US, the Liberalsā strategy is to get as many votes as possible without significantly changing the system for their corporate donors. Party over country for both Conservatives and Liberals.
I doubt if the Ontarian Libs are actually benefiting from this, given that theyāve consecutively lost 3 terms now and is not even the official opposition, unless your suggestion is that theyāre well-fed by these corporate donors enough to do barely enough to keep splitting votes and let one of them have a chance of winning, which also means theyāre basically in cahoots with the PCs, even if indirectly.
In any case, if thatās what you believe is the situation here, then isnāt there no chance in hell would the Libs ever āmergeā or even work with the NDP?
I apologize in advance if my response isnāt as precise as expected. Iām having trouble understanding what youāre trying to convey.
The Conservatives and Liberals feel that winner-take-all such as FPTP benefits them in the long run. If this was not the case, they would be supporting PR to ensure every vote counts. Read more Fact Checking Justin Trudeau on Electoral Reform.
I donāt think itās that the Liberals are well-fed by their corporate donors, but too often they choose corporations over people. Carbon pricing and national pharma care, are examples of people first, non-corporate policy, actually ā so maybe I could be wrong. I think itās more of Liberals think the NDP is too leftwing, and PR similarly.
In terms of PR, yeah, the Liberals are basically in cahoots with the PCs.
Liberals work opportunistically with the NDP, and vice versa. But they are quite different parties. For starters, PR is a sticking point, only Greens/NDP consistently support it. Remember, pre-Justin Trudeau, abortion policy for the Liberals was not whipped, meaning MPs were free to vote their conscience. The Liberals are not as left leaning as they market themselves to be.
Sorry if my response was confusing. Iāll start off with some clarifying statements.
First off, I was trying to focus on the provincial level and not the federal level, as Iāve been led to believe thereās a good amount of distinction and separation between the two. I must admit Iām not born and raised Canadian, though Iāve lived here for many years now, and have only slowly learned of the relationships between the different political parties, federal and provincial, rather recently (last few years really). Thus, my understanding is likely flawed and imperfect. And it certainly doesnāt help that people Iām close to are somewhat apolitical.
With that said, given the topic at hand, where thereās an argument for consolidating the OLP and ONDP, my first thought was that it doesnāt seem likely to ever happen, given how far apart they are in terms of where they are on the political spectrum. At this point, it seems more likely that they would work together to form government in order to push policies that they want through. And if that is the OLPās goal at the end of the day, then I believe they should just work with the ONDP. And given that they donāt seem to have much of a chance at winning, they should feel more compelled to support PR. Thatās the point in my original comment.
On that note though, part of me is skeptical if the Liberals (OLP) actually have policies that they actually want to implement, given how incredibly vague their answers have been to virtually every question being asked of them (e.g. āwe will build more housesā, but how?). At this point in time, they donāt feel too different from the PCs; essentially just fishing for sentiments and hoping the fishes would bite.
And itās honestly unfortunate that PR is treated as a partisan sticking point; it should not. Anyone who would rather stick to FPTP over PR just seems greedy and ā I know this is over-exaggerating and over-simplifying ā shows their authoritarian tendencies, if not the inability to see the world functioning in any other way.
As far as the Liberals go both provincially and federally, my impression has been that they are really more attempting to be centrist, while playing along with certain leftist or left-leaning ideas, while being somewhat critical of the right; essentially, āweāre not the Conservativesā. Of course, I understand that some people do buy into their marketing, believing them to be more left-leaning than they are, and that because of that impression, these people also end up thinking that the NDP and Greens are much further left.
And thank you for sharing that link. I was curious about exactly happened to Trudeauās whole talk about electoral reform that eventually led into nothing. Some sources seem to claim that there was simply no consensus on which path to move forward on, but I see now that he is one of those who was against PR, be it misinformed, intentionally or not, and would rather go with ranked ballots, which seems to just be ill-informed.
Haha, I think life is more relaxing this way, look at the US, everything is politicized. I donāt have any friends who are political, either.
Yes, I made a post about this exact point: Question for @ontarioliberal.bsky.social: ā¦ for the second election in a row, youāve placed second in votes but third in seatsā¦ How many more times do you need to get burned by FPTP before backing PR?. Yet they seem to just keep going with the status quo, even with Bonnie Crombie, who wasnāt even elected in her own riding, was kept as leader unanimously.
Speaking with a lot of people on electoral reform, there are some who are anti-PR on the basis that they genuinely believe extremists will be elected. Which I say, in a democracy people are deserving of and entitled to representation, PR (and neither FPTP) doesnāt do anything to change that.
But yes, those who would rather keep
FPTPnon-PR electoral systems are either misinformed or are greedy. I believe Justin Trudeau falls under the misinformed camp, but with scandals such as the SNC-Lavalin Affair (who have rebranded under AtkinsRĆ©alis), Iām unsure. But I suppose it doesnāt matter, since instant runoff voting (IRV), is not proportional representation, which means there will still be major distortions in representation in government.To me, itās not a question of electoral reform or no electoral reform, itās more a question of proportional representation or winner-take-all. This is why I and many others see Trudeauās IRV ploy as not being a long term solution, a distraction.
Also, you can have both ranked ballots and proportional representation under single transferable vote (STV).
P.s. if you arenāt already, please subscribe to !fairvote@lemmy.ca. Iām really trying to build the community and grow the PR movement!
To be fair, I canāt say Iām super interested in politics either. Iāve only started looking at it after knowing about how there are other ways to, in a sense, āimplementā democracy through different electoral systems, and that the problem is inherently mathematical (which is what Iām interested in; seemingly simple but difficult-to-solve mathematical problems that also isnāt just a number theoretic problem). The rest of what I now know just comes from knowing how broken FPTP is and how itās essentially destroying the fabric of a democratic society, and it just makes me concerned enough to keep looking further in, hoping weāre actually doing something to save ourselves.
But yeah, I really wonder what goes into their heads, knowing that in a winner-takes-all system, everything you do can easily be undone by those on the other side, and little to no legacy can be easily left behind, assuming you can even get a chance to get back into office. Someoneās got to sit these people down and show them the reality of things, cause it just seems like they either donāt recognize the possibility of what PR would get them (which is to allow them to have a chance at pushing more centrist policies through), canāt have it figured out in their heads, or are actually just against a fairer society, in which case we call them out for it after talking to them.
And yeah, Crombie losing in her own riding should be a sign that she just doesnāt have support from even people in her own riding. Something feels incredibly wrong with the OLP to me, both from this, how theyāve campaigned, and also just how theyāve behaved over the many years weāve had the PCs. Theyāre essentially sleepwalking and hoping nobody notices it.
No electoral system can prevent extremists; as long as youāre electing people, youāre bound to have an extremist in the office at some point. We should this frame the question like so: would you rather have an extremist who has full control over your government, or a group of people with extremists mixed in such that they have to work with other people to get their extremists policies enacted? It should be a no brainer from there.
And what are the chances of you having a large group of extremists in power? Itās certainly non-zero. PR isnāt immune to politicians gaming the system by installing multiple extremist candidates that tries to capture a wide range of voters, and then betraying their voters, but it would require a large and coordinated effort for them to do so in a country to be able to effectively consolidate power. Otherwise, itās just a reflection of the voters around us, and perhaps in a polarized world, thatās a scary thought.
In any case, youāre right, electoral reform is more so the means to the end where we have a fairer electoral system through proportional representation, instead of a winner-takes-all system that encourages polarization. Itās funny to me that Trudeau has repeatedly lamented at how our world (arguably the Western world) is more fragmented and polarized while he continues to advocate for a system that squarely encourages that.
Yes, implement democracy is correct.
Look into policy lurch. Basically, a party will implement āextremeā policies because they know it will be undone in the next election. And in the case itās not undone, it could also be problematic (e.g., chronic underfunding of public services).
I actually think LPC front-runner, Mark Carney falls into this camp - against a fairer society.
Itās difficult to nail down slimy people.
I would say we already have extremists: those that believe an electoral system that ignores votes is acceptable.
When speaking about democracy, we should start with the most ideal, then work backwards for trade-offs. A direct democracy is the most ideal. And we move to representative democracy, as itās more practical. But the trade-off for FPTP - itās simplicity, which no longer is worth it since we can handle more complex electoral systems. Therefore we know that PR is the solution.
At least with PR, we only have ourselves to blame in failure. With winner-take-all, an extreme minority can, and has, taken down the majority.
Whatās not funny, unfortunately, is how effective the anti-PR crowd is. But we have principles and fairness on our side, and that will never become disliked.
Policy lurch is exactly what Iām thinking of. Thank you for bringing that term up.
My understanding of intelligence is likely different from others; being intelligent doesnāt mean you should be on the good side. Having a healthy foresight and knowing what should work better for more people over the long term are not qualities of intelligence; they are those of wisdom. Being intelligent just means that you know how to consume information and wield knowledge, not necessarily for good or bad. So I donāt doubt that Mark Carney is intelligent, but he certainly hasnāt shown the wisdom that Canada truly needs, only short-term goals. The latter isnāt always bad, but the world lacks wise visionaries, and Canada seems to be in dire needs of one.
Iāll be honest and say that while thereās a need to fight Trump from down South at the moment, I canāt say Carney has actually demonstrated any traits that makes me trust him. Thereās his somewhat question-raising profile about whether heāll actually be see national problems correctly to be able to do things for ordinary people, or if heāll just be another corporate-loving minister. Heās tried to use it to distance himself from Trudeauās government, but that seems unnecessary, especially when there seems to be plenty of ways he could make that distance clear through actually proposing solutions that are clearly different from those of Trudeauās.
I donāt disagree with the fact that we should find that sentiment abhorrent, but thatās definitely not a classification that people would think of when we say āextremistsā.
And this might be controversial to say, but there are lots of people who just donāt want to deal with whom they consider as āextremistsā, and would rather have structural barriers in place to keep these voices segregated. Anti-PR people is a mix of misinformed people, actual pro-FPTP people, and those who do view it as an effective tool (though a flawed view) at keeping voices they donāt want to hear out. Cutting people may be a viable strategy for small and/or close group settings, but itās not the way for a democratic society, and that is where I think more messaging needs to be done to make people know and weigh the benefits of a fairer society over short-term, localized social calmness. Just trying to take a hard look at reality and give my 2 cents there.
Well said.