CanPol: Mooooo

[Ben Kenobi]

St. Leo supports Prop rep, in which case they should get a seat.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Wezil


How many more decades will the Liberals have to carry the NEP baggage? What will it take to finally bring an end to Conservative governments in Alberta?

The Tory reign in Ontario (42 years iirc) was ended when Bill Davis extended full funding to Catholic high schools in the 80's. It was terribly unpopular and finally broke The Machine. Strangely John Tory thought a similar idea (fully funding religious schools) would propell the Conservatives to victory in the last vote. Doh!

The provincial Liberals aren't carrying the can for the NEP. In fact, I think they've had more success since than before. They were complete non-entities in the '79 and '82 elections.

People have been comfortable with the Tories and there hasn't been an appetite for change for the sake of change. There's a growing sense that maybe the governing party should be changed on principle, but the new guys are going to have to offer a superior alternative before they are accepted or the Tories are going to have to get tagged with a major scandal.

The Liberals should have been able to do it this time, at least in Edmonton and Calgary, but they were broke and their leader was less inspiring than Stelmach. There's no hope the NDP ever form a government in this province. Wildrose could have done it, but Stelmach managed to defuse their campaign by being the safe, steady choice with the 'New, Improved Tory' label.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Honestly, I oppose the prop rep system. All the proponents I have spoken to see it as a way to remove seats from rural areas.

If rural areas have less people, they ought to have less representation. Everyone's vote should be equal. Rural people shouldn't get more votes simply because they are rural.

[snoopy369]

That's absolutely not true, at least not in countries like the US and Canada. There is a quite reasonable argument to be made that the 'tyranny of the majority' is a real risk of prop-rep systems in countries with significant rural-urban divides. The concerns of the rural voter are vastly different from that of the urban voter; the fact that the latter outnumbers the former should not allow the latter to dictate policy to the former.

If you do that, you end up with a system that is not manageable, because the rural citizens are further and further marginalized; eventually you end up with fewer rural citizens, as fewer people are able to make a living due to governmental policy shifts, and then who's going to grow your crops and work your oil shale drills or whatever it is you do to recover oil from oil shale?

Districted representation is VERY important in countries like Canada and the US with significant urban/rural populations; while in smaller or more homogeneous nations like Belgium (I think?), it is not as important.

[Ben Kenobi]

Exactly, thanks snoopy.

I would support a mixed system, proportional representation for the cities, and first past the post for the rural areas. This way you get the best of both systems.

I really don't think it makes much sense to divide cities along arbitrary lines between one riding and another, when you simply can go to proportional representation and have every member represent the entire city.

Say, for example Vancouver

You have Vancouver-East,Centre,Quadra,South and Kingsway, instead of 5 ridings you could have 1 riding of Vancouver, with 5 representatives, likely 2 liberals, one conservative, one ndp and 1 green.

[notyoueither]

Or you assign a third or a half based on PR and have fewer, larger FPP ridings.

[snoopy369]

Indeed nye, you could certainly do that. There are lots of compromises between the two systems that could be made; the problem is that it's hard to agree on a compromise with the rurals generally pushing for no change, as they presume (probably correctly) that any change towards PPR will lead to full PPR in the not too distant future.

Ben, the problem with not dividing cities (and in the states we divide them quite a bit more) is you have distinct portions of the city - often rich areas and poor areas - and not splitting the districts would often disenfranchise the poor areas. Having a rep for an inner city poorer area has significant benefits both to the residents and to the society, as the underserved have a champion in government.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Indeed nye, you could certainly do that. There are lots of compromises between the two systems that could be made; the problem is that it's hard to agree on a compromise with the rurals generally pushing for no change, as they presume (probably correctly) that any change towards PPR will lead to full PPR in the not too distant future.

They can push for no change all they want. Change is coming. Bend with it, and shape it, or get blown away.

[Ben Kenobi]

Ben, the problem with not dividing cities (and in the states we divide them quite a bit more) is you have distinct portions of the city - often rich areas and poor areas - and not splitting the districts would often disenfranchise the poor areas.

Well that's a problem with any proportional representation system. In my example, you end up with the same number of representatives, if the poor area is large enough, then their votes will elect their own candidate. None of the poor voters are 'disenfranchised' any more so then any other person who lives in the city.

Having a rep for an inner city poorer area has significant benefits both to the residents and to the society, as the underserved have a champion in government.

Unless the poor area is extremely small, the mixed system would provide them with a candidate.

One thing that pisses me off is that the current proposal up here has my riding getting axed. There is no reason why rural areas should lose representation, they should add representatives to the high population growth areas to counterbalance.

This is really frusterating, and hopefully we can axe the commission again. There have been 2 commissions already. One which said there will be no loss of representation anywhere, but 10 seats added to the cities. The NDP here axed that because they wanted to strip rural regions of seats instead. Their commission brought back 3 seat losses in rural areas, and that one got canned, because we all said that loss of representation was unacceptable.

Then they brought it back once more and this time it's one seat that will be gone, and again that will be fail. How hard is it to get the commission to listen? Loss of representation in the north is unacceptable.