[fvc-wat-disc] A Letter to the PM I had forgotten + reply

[Donald Fraser]

I wrote the following to the PM after his "fringe party" argument (ho hum)
against PR. As you can see, I got only the standard reply ... no engagement

=========================================
Friday, February 10, 2017
Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.

Hello Justin,

 Your argument yesterday in Iqaluit criticizing Proportional Representation
(PR) for allowing fringe parties to determine policy is an old one and
easily refuted as I'm sure you must know.

 Most practicing PR countries use an "Election Threshold" (ET), which is a
minimum required percentage of the national vote that a party must receive
before it can have representation in Parliament. The effect of ET is to
deny representation to fringe parties whose purpose is to destabilize
normal government procedures. In the case of Germany and New Zealand, for
example, both of which use Mixed Member PR (MMPR ... the best system for
Canada) if a party gains local directly elected seats, they are retained
regardless but those MPs are not permitted to decide a critical vote on an
important issue unless the party has achieved ET.

 Your use of this "straw man" argument is amateurish. Why not just admit
that your Party enjoys its majority and anticipates more of them under
FPTP?  This admission is at least honest if not admirable. However FPTP
leaves Canada vulnerable to a Harper-clone-Trumpist majority, the
possibility of which looms as a result of the candidates we observe
competing for the Conservative leadership.

Yours Truly,
Donald A Fraser,

===============================================

Dear Mr. Fraser:

On behalf of the Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada,
I would like to thank you for your letter regarding electoral reform.

Our government came to office committed to explore electoral reform, and we
conducted broad consultations to gauge the views of Canadians. As part of
this effort, we asked a House of Commons committee to hold hearings to
study the matter and that Members of Parliament host town halls in their
ridings.

Following these consultations, the government determined that there was a
lack of broad consensus around a specific voting system to replace the
current one. As such, we concluded it would not be responsible to move
forward with reforms to the voting system, nor to put the country through a
potentially divisive referendum. We appreciate that there are widely-held,
legitimate, and often passionate views on the subject, but we have
determined that our decision is in the country's best interest.

Canadians have been clear that they want improvements to our democracy, and
that is exactly what we will deliver. To that end, we have created a new,
non-partisan, merit-based process for Senate appointments. We have
introduced legislation to repeal the unfair aspects of the previous
government's law that made it difficult for Canadians to vote. And, in her
mandate letter, our Minister of Democratic Institutions has been assigned
two new tasks to strengthen our democracy: to protect political parties and
our electoral system from cybersecurity threats and to bring openness and
transparency to political fundraising.


Please accept my best regards.

Sincerely,

V. Dempster
Special Assistant - Prime Minister's Correspondence
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.thinkers.org/pipermail/fvc-wat-disc_listserv.thinkers.org/attachments/20170530/65bada63/attachment-0001.htm>