Some thoughts on Conservatives and the MMP system

As bad as the Conservatives are, and as much of the tactics they copy from the Republicans, I have to give them at least some credit. They still do things like creating new national parks, building infrastructure, and stuff like that. Their inaction on global warming and lack of concern for the poor is still there, make no mistake, but at least they have to make some concessions or the Canadian public would most assuredly give them the boot. So while they model themselves after the Republicans, they can't get away with nearly as much. And yeah the Republicans win hands-down when it comes to whack-job policy and pushing for a theocratic oligarchy.

I really, really wish people would get rid of first-past-the-post voting though, both in Canada and the U.S. Even more here than there (since it's less 50-50) you can see the failures of a system where 60% of the people want liberal policy, but because there's only 1 conservative party and 4 liberal parties the person with only 40% support gets to rule. (It doesn't help that he considers this a "mandate" and refuses to work with the other parties voted in by the other 60%.) We can do better than that. Here in Ontario last November, they tried to get through a mixed-member proportional (MMP) system. But since they didn't do nearly enough to educate the public about what it is (I imagine they didn't have sufficient funding, for one thing), a lot of people just voted against it without even knowing what it is.

Case in point: I was in the polling station voting for it, and there was a lady in there asking the workers about it. They explained it in simple neutral terms, and she just said, "Ehhh I dunno what all that is, just keep it the same." And she proceeded to vote against it.

If there's one thing that really drags down a democracy, it's when people know nothing about a given issue and decide to go ahead and vote on it anyway. Ontario is a big province with lots of influence here due to its comparatively large population. If the MMP referendum would have passed it could have changed the direction of the whole country. Just goes to show - if you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

Maybe U.S. politics have made me an incurable cynic, but I have my sneaky suspicions that the anti-MMP campaign was secretly funded by the two parties who stand to lose the most from such an arrangement. This system would have handed a proportional number of seats to smaller parties such as the NDPs and Greens, which would otherwise have gone to the Conservatives and Liberals due to the failings of first-past-the-post. One of the alarmist arguments cited against MMP is that, !GASP! some of the MP's will be chosen by the parties and therefore not directly chosen by the people! Omigod it's undemocratic! Well hello, isn't that how the PM gets in? The party that wins the most seats chooses who the PM will be, no? I don't hear anyone sounding the alarm bells over that.

It really irks me when people use misinformation as the means to their desired political outcome. This is an old trick, a perennial favourite of Republicans and Conservatives, might I add. And it irks me even more when the public is sufficiently uninformed to fall for it. The anti-MMP campaign had the Conservatives' signature alarmist misinformation tactic written all over it, but don't be surprised if the Libs got into bed with them on this one.