I generally
try to keep politics out of my blog posts. Sometimes I wonder why and quickly
remind myself it’s because that’s one of those topics we’re not supposed to
talk about. Politics and religion. It’s too easy to upset people. Besides, that's not what I (or my blog) is about.
Unfortunately,
right now, Canadian politics are frustrating me so much that I can’t get them
off my mind. I’ve just spent the last half hour trying to find something else
to talk about, but my mind kept circling back to this.
Canadian democracy.
How it’s supposed to work vs how it actually works.
Let’s
pretend for a moment that Canada is much smaller than it is. Let’s say there
are ten cities governed by one body. The government is supposed to be
representative of what the people want, so each city sends one person in to
represent them. This person is elected from a selection of candidates, each of
which presents their ideas on how the country should be run. People vote for
the person who they feel best represents their ideals whoever wins becomes part
of the government.
We now have
a government made up of ten people. Those ten elect one of their members to be
their chairperson and spokesperson. That person doesn’t have much more power
than the rest; they’re just in charge of keeping the meetings running smoothly.
The ten of them discuss issues, vote and deliver their decisions.
That’s how
it’s supposed to work, only on a much larger scale. That’s where it starts to
fall apart. The first problem is that there are too many cities, so the country
is divided into districts. Each representative now represents far more people,
too many for them to possibly get to know everyone personally.
The second
problem is that, even separated into districts, there are still 338
representatives. That’s a whole lot of people who have to agree upon one
spokesperson, the Prime Minister, from amongst themselves, or to come to any
decision for that matter.
The
solution? The candidates arrange themselves into parties, networking themselves
with people with similar ideals and working together to earn a victory. They
pre-pick who will be the Prime Minister if their party if their party wins more
seats than the others.
The idea is
solid and it worked to a certain extent, except for the part where three major
parties rose to the top. With these three parties playing tug-of-war over the majority
of votes, a problem began to arise. Each party obtained loyal supporters, who
will vote for them no matter what. Then, in the middle, there are the swing
votes – the people who like to believe they are more politically informed and
will vote based on the issues.
But, rather
than voting for the individual they want to represent themselves, they vote for
the party and the Prime Minister they think will do the best job. In fact, most
Canadians don’t even realise they’re supposed
to be voting for their local representative rather than the Prime Minister – or
that those representatives, if they win, aren’t supposed to follow the Prime
Minister blindly.
While the
representatives are supposed to vote based on what they believe is best for the
country and for the people they represent, as part of a party they are expected
to follow the pack. If their party wants an issue voted on one way, that’s how
they’re expected to vote. With all the pressure, how many will actually vote
against their party if they believe their party is wrong?
So, what we
end up with is a room full of people elected by the swing votes. Those people
mostly vote in pre-determined ways. Now, if we have a minority government
(going back to the ten representative example) with one party with four
representatives and the other two with three, we see a government that functions
mostly as it should. There is an even distribution of views and so changes are
only made if two of the parties agree. Not as much happens, but more Canadians
are happy.
On the
other hand, with a majority government (say, five, three and two representatives)
the party in power can do pretty much whatever it wants. The only thing to
stand in their way are the few representatives willing to go against the flow.
Of course,
this is where things start to get really messed up. All it takes to get voted
in is to have the most votes in your district. This means if 35% of the people
vote for you, and the majority of the votes are split between your opponents,
you still get in.
And so
starts the dirty politics. The focus shifts from sharing your great ideas for
the country to making your opponents look bad. It won’t work for all their
supporters, but you just have to sway them enough to keep the votes split
between them. As long as you don’t look as bad as they do, you can win with 34%
of the voters behind you – less, if your district has smaller parties and independent
candidates to absorb more of your opponents’ votes.
Here, we
come to Canada’s greatest problem. We have one right-wing party, two major
left-wing parties and a further two less substantial left-wing parties. The
vast majority of Canadians voted for left-wing parties, yet we ended up with a
right-wing majority government. How? Because with four left-wing parties to
choose from, the single right-wing party just had to keep their loyal supporters,
win a handful of the swing vote (using manipulative fear tactics to scare them
away from the opposition), and make the other parties split the vote.
The worst
part is that the left-wing parities perpetuate the problem. In their struggle to
rise to the top, they further split the vote. The majority of Canadians are
sick of our right-wing government and our Prime Minister who thinks he should
be allowed to do whatever he wants. Our left-wing parties know this, so they
are fighting harder than ever to win, knowing that they have the support of the
country.
Yet, they
are further splitting the vote. They are even helping the right-wing party by attacking their left-wing fellows
on petty details when they should really be teaming up. All it would take for
them is for them to work together a little – to have some candidates drop out
of key swing districts so the vote won’t be split. Then we’d end up with a
government we’re at least reasonably happy with.
Since both
major left-wing parties want to alter the electoral system so that more votes
actually count in the end result of elections, they would only have to do this
once. Then they could work together to implement the better voting system they’ve
promised and Canadians will actually end up with governments the majority of
them are happy with.
Well, as
happy with as is possible.
I’m just
tilting at windmills, though, aren’t I? All I can do is shout out to my fellow
Canadians and encourage them to vote. You all know who not to vote for – although, I suppose if you’re voting for them
already, nothing I say is going to change that (and, for those people, I want
to assure you that I’m not saying the right-wing should be out of the
government. Everyone deserves their representation. That representation should
just be proportional to what the people want, and that is not a majority
right-wing government.)
So, really, this is for the 9
million Canadians who didn’t vote in the last election because they thought they wouldn't make a difference.
Vote.
Because this is probably the most important election in Canadian history and
you can make a difference.
If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.
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