A Small Portion

The referendum on Mixed Member Proportional voting is finally getting people’s attention. There seems to be some real fears that we in the northern part of the province will lose representation if we adopt the MMP system. According to some local folk who have banded together to oppose the change in how we elect our members of parliament, we will end up with fewer seats in the north and we will have fractious minority governments.

First, we have to realize that electoral districts are supposedly based on a formula that gives every person an equal say in elections; that is one person, one vote. To do this, we have to divide the province into blocks that hold approximately the same number of voters. We do not divide by land area. Nor by the number of trees, lakes or rocks. There is little use in us begging, “Sir, can I have some more?” because equal representation is what we all believed in for our version of democracy. Since the population is centralized in southern Ontario, we in the north must resign ourselves to fewer voices speaking up for our interests.

Southern Ontario is filling up with voters, especially in the GTA and that is where the rule of the majority is going to be decided in any vote. Just as we have to fight for every penny coming out of Queens Park in the so-called equalization grants, we are going to have to fight to have our voices heard in an election. Does the present ‘first-past-the-post’ system work for us now? In a country that has only two parties, it is the answer, but today many people are looking for some alternative to the Grits and Tories.

If you were dissatisfied with the broken promises of the Dalton reign or the kept promises of the Harris era, then you might find yourself amenable to a system that hears more voices in the form of the NDP, Greens or other party. The safeguard of having only lists of parties that garner more than 3% of the popular vote ought guard against a fractious parliament typified by the Italian governments in the past.

Minority governments are not necessarily a bad thing as our parliamentarians will soon learn to work with each other to pass legislation that is meaningful to the whole population. In fact, it is the minority position of the Federal Conservatives that may have sheltered us from some of the wild right-wing thinking of the current MPs. Moreover, much to the dismay of the Liberals, Harper’s Bizarre is getting some things right.

Proportional Representation, under the proposed Mixed Member Proportional system, should be a good move for democracy in Ontario. Change for the sake of change is not necessarily good, but let us not be stuck in the old two-party mentality because we refuse to consider other options. Who knows, maybe the old Northern Ontario Party could be resurrected and garnering 3% of the vote, give us some true representation in Toronto. It would be better than holding out our tin cup and begging, “Please, sir, can I have more?”