I read with interest Mr. VanderKley’s response to my column in the October 27/16 issue of the ECA Review in the Nov. 10 issue.
His detailed response to my column did not convince me that a proportional system of electing MP’s would be fairer or more democratic than our present system.
There is no perfect system of electing a democratic government. You can look at every system, and there are many, that are used around the world today and they all have flaws.
Proportional representation as proposed has two major flaws in my opinion. The first flaw is that you are voting for a party instead of people. You have no idea who your MP might be until after the election.
In most cases they would be party hacks just like people appointed to the senate. Justin Trudeau has implemented a new system for appointing senators but as Prime Minister he still makes the choice.
So while they may not be big “L” liberals you can be sure these people will still be sympathetic to his philosophy.
The second problem I have with this system is that it would be almost guaranteed that every government would be a minority or coalition government.
In my opinion minority governments do not accomplish much. They would have unintended consequences.
Mind you every system can, as Mr. VanderKley did observe from our last provincial election. In the case of Canada, the consequence in my opinion is that the liberals and socialists would likely be governing our country for generations.
This is precisely why I think many of the European countries are in such an economic mess today.
If proportional representation or some other system of electing our government is what the people of this country want then let them decide by a referendum. That would be democratic.
Every time a proposal has been put to the people it has been defeated.
Justin Trudeau has resisted the idea of a referendum. Why? Because he knows that he would lose, so he really is not interested in more democracy.
What he is interested in is a system that would grant him a monopoly on power, so he would still be able to exercise dictatorial power.
The people of this country have not demanded a change in the way we elect our government. This was an idea of our Prime Minister and if he cannot ram it through parliament he will drop the idea.
Our present first past the post system is criticized for giving the PM dictatorial power. To some extent that is true but it need not be that way. The real power is in the hands of the party caucus, they just need to exercise the intestinal fortitude to use it.
A real dictator is one where he cannot be thrown out of office. Pierre Trudeau tried his best to be a dictator and his son has shown the same tendencies. God help this country if he ever succeeds.
The November 14/16 issue of the Maclean’s Magazine brought to light another issue where people are trying to force their idea of democracy down our throat.
The NDP introduced a private members Bill C-237 that would penalize political parties that did not have near 50 per cent of their candidates as women for an election. I would really be opposed to that.
Over 50 per cent of the voters in this country are women. If it is important to them to have more elected women then why are they not nominating and voting for more women?
From my observation more men vote for a woman than do women. Think back to when Kim Campbell was our PM.
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