Trudeau also commented on the form of electoral reform:
He said one of his mistakes was leaving the door open to proportional representation when he did not plan to pursue it. The other, he said, was “not using my majority to bring in the model that I wanted”—the ranked ballot.
Trudeau said he believes a ranked ballot is the most effective at reducing polarization because it causes parties to moderate their message in an effort to pitch to be the second choice of supporters of other parties.
However, the system was dismissed by many of the Liberals’ opponents who noted that as a centrist party the Liberals were likely to receive more second-choice votes and be the primary beneficiaries of such a model.He regrets not using his first-past-the-post majority to push through a change to the electoral system that would mainly benefit his own party.
And he should. That was fucking stupid. I don’t care if the Liberals would have benefited from from ranked choice vs prop rep, because either of those options would have been far, far better than first past the post. Perfect is the enemy of good, and because of their stupidity (and the stupidity of the NDP and other parties supporting electoral reform for not just saying “Fuck it, do whatever you want as long as it’s not FPTP”) we probably won’t see another chance at this for a decade or more.
First-past-the-post does need to go, but what gets me is that Trudeau started an electoral reform process involving public consultations and buy-in from the other parties, and what he regrets is not that he shut it down when it wasn’t going towards his preferred system, but that he didn’t just skip all that and use his majority to implement his preferred aystem.
First past the post has benefitted the Liberals more than any other party in federal politics. I read an analysis that said something like 65% of the elections where the popular vote was upside down to the MP count has been in Liberal majorities.
Funny. I remember him saying it wasn’t feasible to get something set up and working for the population when he first won his majority. Now, when he’s so unpopular, look at what he says.
Equality for mee but not for thee
An election must be in the air, he’s saying the thing again.
Maybe they should have passed electoral reform instead of just thinking about skeevy ways to hold onto power
Trudeau wanted IRV because it benefits the Liberals. Everyone else wanted PR because it is fair.
Trudeau wasn’t willing to reconsider and IRV is not an upgrade over FPTP.
Forcing through IRV was not and is not a good idea.
That’s what I said
I wish STV came up in articles like this. I feel like it’s the perfect system for Canada since it fits so naturally with our constitutionally-required geographic restrictions on seats for the provinces.
In short: all ridings are merged to have 3-5 seats* (same number in total as now). Parties can run as many candidates as there are seats. Cheers can give ranked votes to individuals or to parties. If someone gets 20/25/33% of the votes, they get a seat. If nobody does, the person with the least votes is eliminated, and their votes are distributed to the next-highest-ranked option. There’s a bit of extra math for fractional votes to ensure fair splitting of next-choice votes that are “extra” beyond what’s needed to win a seat.
No party lists/corruption by being beholden to the party. No regional shenanigans about representation from listless MMP. Roughly proportional representation locally so most Canadians will have an MP that represents their interests well, while still keeping fringe parties from fracturing things too much.
And it’s been done successfully in Ireland for over a century, too, so it’s well tested.
*The territories would effectively just get ranked ballot (= STV with 1-seat ridings) to ensure they retain 1 seat each.
Same old conversations about elections …
Non-election period (which usually lasts years): … we need to talk about electoral reform but we have time so we’ll ignore it for now
Election period (which usually lasts months): … we need to talk about electoral reform but we don’t have time to do anything about it
Part of the problem is that every party wants a different form of electoral reform. This means either one rams it through with a majority and the others spend forever calling foul or they just bicker amongst themselves forever.
He’s still in power. Could ram it through right now…
How did he get away with snc lavalin corruption scandal?
Jean Chretien, Shawinigan scandal.
Brian Mulroney, Airbus scandal.
Oddly, I couldn’t find a really big thing for Stephen Harper, but there are many lists of smaller things he did that are objectionable to one degree or another. My biggest gripe was him calling coalition governments undemocratic. When your whole philosophy goes against working with other groups to achieve the goals of the citizens that you believe the whole concept has to be wrong, it says more about you than the people you’re complaining about.
Justin Trudeau had the lavalin scandal, as well as some very hypocritical situations in the first year of his leadership, as well as either botching or throwing the voting reform promise.
Pierre Poilievre has already gone on the record as intending to pass laws he knows are unconstitutional, and using the notwithstanding clause to keep them in force, which, while not illegal, I feel is deplorable, and he isn’t even in power yet.
I miss the days when conservatives fought for freedom and not control. I’m willing to admit the difference may be my perception and not their intentions.
https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2015/08/10/Harper-Abuses-of-Power-Final/
Prorogating the parliament in order to keep the Conservatives in power by preventing an alliance of the other three major parties, i.e. going against democracy?
Silencing scientists?
Using G8 funds outside of the G8 premises to fund projects unrelated to the G8?
There’s a whole bunch of scandals from the Harper era…
It just doesn’t involve Montreal corporation, so it’s not corruption, just sparkling scandals.
Yeah, doesn’t count unless Quebecois are involved or something
Like I said, plenty of smaller scandals and ethics violations. Proroguing parliament was something the PM could always do, and it is only a delay, not a complete removal of the democratic process. I absolutely agree it was unethical and an abuse of power, but not necessarily on the scale of some of the other things I mentioned. I’m sure we could all pick our favorite abuse or scandal, there were plenty, and the aggregate could be argued is worse than any of the specific ones I listed for other leaders.
Eh… Yes it was a complete removal of the democratic process, the parliamentary system allows for parties that have a majority to form an alliance and form the government, just because it has never happened in Canada doesn’t mean it can’t and shouldn’t. Harper decided to go against the democratic will of the majority and shut down the parliament instead. Then there’s the robocall scandal (which led to prison), prisoner torture (which led to another parliament shutdown), meetings with the oil industry while writing a law that got rid of environmental legislations, millions spent to promote tar sand.
Them silencing scientists and their handling of environmental legislations killed people, it’s not smaller scandals, they just managed to make it seem so by never talking to the press about anything while they were in power so people wouldn’t pay them no mind.
