Blessed by the Potato

Well, from the preliminary results here before I head off to bed, it looks like the Liberals have won with a handy majority. However, I have to wonder how many people actually voted for the Liberals, rather than against the Conservatives? How many ridings were hotly contested, and how many people would have been better represented by some degree of proportional representation?

These issues didn’t seem to trouble voters, as it looks like the referendum failed miserably. I don’t quite understand why. Yes, the education and awareness campaign was pathetic, and most people were talking about religious schools rather than electoral reform. People were writing letters to the editor every day to the local paper with misconceptions and FUD about how the list MPP system would work (and not understanding how the current system of getting your name on the ballot as a local candidate works, either), so even people interested (and irate) enough to pester the paper couldn’t (or wouldn’t) learn what it was about. And with a budget of under $7 million (something like fifty cents a person — I’d like to tell you what the parties spent on advertising, but I can’t find that figure; I know the limit is something like 70 cents per voter province-wide, plus another $1 per voter for local candidates), and a somewhat complicated/subtle/boring change to explain, it’s not too surprising that the education campaign wasn’t very effective. But at the same time, I figured people would be hungry for electoral reform, as I am most of the time. The referendum in BC was not that long ago and it was so close*. And in fact, I believe that BC is going to re-hold their referendum in 2009 (with more education campaigns, and more details fleshed out, such as the proposed boundaries of the new electoral districts).

I’m disappointed, Ontario.

* – granted, their proposed system was STV, which I personally preferred over MMP, even if it does make voting and counting more complicated.

The referendum (and election) is just a few days away, and I still haven’t seen much in the way of coverage on the referendum topic. I figured a lot of people were hungry for electoral reform, but there doesn’t seem to be much interest at all. And what I have seen worries me: there’s a lot of FUD out there about the proposed MMP system, particularly over two points. The first being the increase in the size of the legislature. People don’t want there to be more MPP’s who suckle at the taxpayer teat, especially given their propensity to vote themselves raises. However, as has been pointed out elsewhere, the larger legislature will allow for more proportional representation, and will still be smaller than it was in the pre-Harris days. Ontario will still have the fewest MPPs per population of any province.

The second is the idea of list MPPs. Many people dislike the notion of a party getting to pick which MPPs get to sit in the legislature without them facing the voters individually. They fear that it will give the parties too much power, without really giving more to the voters, which is what this whole electoral reform thing is really all about. I have to admit, that was one of my concerns as well (and why I wrote the Citizen’s Assembly to recommend STV). However, it looks like Elections Ontario will get some oversight in how the lists are created, and they must be public and open. Plus, the beauty of having two votes is that if you don’t like the way a party creates its lists, but otherwise like the party and/or the local candidate, you can vote for the local candidate, but not for the cronies on the list.

There have been other concerns I’ve heard with the list system, for example that a party that can garner around 3% of the vote could get an MPP into the legislature. That might lead to crazy fringe one-issue parties: one theoretical example was what if there was a “anti-abortion” party and they got an MPP in power, and that one MPP held the balance of power and teamed up with the already batshit-crazy tories to get their twisted agenda passed. Well… there’s not much I can say to that. Unfortunately one-issue fringe parties can be an issue with proportional representation, but if 3% of Ontarians want a one-issue party to represent them, then shouldn’t they have that option? IMHO, the ability to avoid the phoney, radical majorities we do have would be worth it. An increase in minority/coalition governments might result, yes, but again that’s not necessarily such a bad thing. It would probably help moderate some of the swings we have between left and right at the moment…

So, take a look at MMP before election/referendum day. Get to know it. Hopefully you’ll see that it is an improvement over the old first-past-the-post system. If you have any other questions or concerns about it, feel free to post them here, and see www.voteformmp.ca.

Edit: One more point talked about is that MMP will lead to more unstable/ineffective minority governments, rather than the stable majorities that we tend to see today. I have a few issues with this point of view. The first is that it is not the responsibility of our electoral system to create false majorities: most Ontarians can’t agree on a single party to rule them, so we shouldn’t be getting majority governments at all. If MMP brings more minority governments, then that’s probably what Ontarians want (or, at least, all they can agree to as a whole). Also, while majority governments can pass legislation willy-nilly, without any heed to the opposition, that’s really only stable in the short term. Sure, you get 4 years of decisive leadership, but if it’s leadership you don’t want, then you vote in a new government to do things differently. Is it really stable to keep flip-flopping between Liberals, Conservatives, and the NDP? Do we really save a ton of money if we cut deeply into healthcare, fire thousands of nurses, and then just hire them back a few years later with the next regime change? A minority or coalition government may take longer to get things done because they have to deliberate more to find a consensus, but it should be more effective in the long term because the legislation they come up with should be more agreeable to all, so it won’t get shit-canned after the next election. Also, part of the reason why minority governments in our current system are so ineffective is because it’s so easy to call another election and so easy to get a majority (indeed, most of the time we get a majority legislature, even when only something like 40% of the people support the party). So rather than try to work together to get things done, the parties instead focus on braying and posturing for the next election, hoping that they’ll be able to round up a majority then. But if a party can’t reasonably expect an election call to change anything because the electoral system tends to result in minority governments, then they’ll have to buckle down and get to work.

David Shiner is currently a city councillor for Toronto, and running in the provincial election as a conservative (pthew!). While campaigning, he’s not really focusing on his job as a councillor, and it has become the custom in Toronto politics for councillors to go on unpaid leave when campaigning in other elections. Shiner didn’t, and for the past few weeks has continued to collect his rather substantial salary, raising a minor controversy. Attempting to make things right,

“Shiner also announced the pay he’s received since the election campaign began Sept. 10 will go to charity. His unpaid leave of absence will begin when he formally submits a letter to the city, which he expected to do Thursday or Friday.”

That really isn’t good enough. The city of Toronto is hurting for cash at the moment, it’s all over the news lately. The money should go back into the city coffers, not to some random charity (and in that case, I wouldn’t be too surprised if he got a tax receipt for the donation).

Well, one of the busiest highways in the world has a new name (at least for a section of it). It’s a name befitting a hair metal band.

I don’t really care for the name change, after all, we already have several Veteran’s Highways (the former Airport Rd. in London, and the 416 near Ottawa). And it’s a pretty cheesy name, I don’t know how much it really honours our soldiers (and other domestic heroes). The quotes in the article make little sense to me:

Capt. Mark Bossi, who served in Afghanistan, fought back tears as he rode along the stretch with CTV Toronto.

“That’s amazing — it really is,” Bossi said when he saw one of the signs. “It’s on (Highway) 401 — people are going to see them everyday.”

The signs are in response to an online petition in support of renaming the highway that was overwhelmed with responses.

Bossi understands why the grassroots movement to dedicate the stretch grew so quickly.

“If you think about it, every soldier has a mom and dad,” he said, his voice trembling.

“A lot of guys have wives and children. I think that’s one of the reasons Canadians wanted the highway renamed.”

So seeing the highway renamed made this captain so emotional he had to fight back tears? That makes little sense to me, the highway would probably have to be named after me personally to get that involved in it, and even then… of course, I haven’t suffered unknown amounts of PTSD. The last part of his quote makes even less sense. Every grad student has a mom and dad, and many have wives and children, but that really doesn’t make any sense for a reason to rename a highway. In fact, he seems to imply that the highway was renamed to appease/coddle the survivors of soldiers killed rather than to actually honour the soldiers themselves.

At least it’s not something that’s really going to affect me. For brevity’s sake alone, I think most people will still call it the 401 in everyday usage, similar to how nearly everyone still calls that stadium beneath the CN Tower “Skydome”.

Vote-grabbing new measures is an unfortunate reality in the run-up to an election, and it seems to have affected the Ontario Liberals pretty hard this year. That said, a holiday in February is a great idea, one that’s been bounced around for years (if mostly just in the press as a filler story for February).