Liberals Are Misleading Canadians On Electoral Reform
Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2016 10:44 amLiberals Are Misleading Canadians On Electoral Reform
[ http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/althia-raj ... 23352.html ]
November 21, 2016
Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef is misleading you.
She is misleading your elected representatives.
And she is casting doubt on the sincerity of the Liberal government's pledge to change the way Canadians elect their MPs.
For several months now, the minister has been an invited guest at town halls across the country. She has held her own consultations from coast to coast to coast. She has followed -- I assume -- the work of the all-party committee that she struck with a mandate to study, consult and recommend a new voting system.
Overwhelmingly, the Canadians who showed up at these town halls and at the committee hearings (and I'm not suggesting that these individuals are necessarily representative of the country as a whole) mostly said one thing: they want MPs to be elected by a proportional system.
That is, they believe that if a political party obtains 40 per cent of the popular vote, that party's members of Parliament should have 40 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons.
Everybody -- the NDP, the Conservatives, the Green Party leader, Monsef's own advisers -- agrees that this is what the people who showed up said.
Everybody, that is, except the minister.
- - - SNIP - - -
Was it because a consensus is forming not around a ranked ballot -- which is what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau previously said he preferred -- but rather around the NDP and Green Party's preferred option of a proportional system as long as Canadians, in a referendum, say they want it?
More . . . .
[ http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/althia-raj ... 23352.html ]
November 21, 2016
Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef is misleading you.
She is misleading your elected representatives.
And she is casting doubt on the sincerity of the Liberal government's pledge to change the way Canadians elect their MPs.
For several months now, the minister has been an invited guest at town halls across the country. She has held her own consultations from coast to coast to coast. She has followed -- I assume -- the work of the all-party committee that she struck with a mandate to study, consult and recommend a new voting system.
Overwhelmingly, the Canadians who showed up at these town halls and at the committee hearings (and I'm not suggesting that these individuals are necessarily representative of the country as a whole) mostly said one thing: they want MPs to be elected by a proportional system.
That is, they believe that if a political party obtains 40 per cent of the popular vote, that party's members of Parliament should have 40 per cent of the seats in the House of Commons.
Everybody -- the NDP, the Conservatives, the Green Party leader, Monsef's own advisers -- agrees that this is what the people who showed up said.
Everybody, that is, except the minister.
- - - SNIP - - -
Was it because a consensus is forming not around a ranked ballot -- which is what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau previously said he preferred -- but rather around the NDP and Green Party's preferred option of a proportional system as long as Canadians, in a referendum, say they want it?
More . . . .