[fvc-wat-disc] Fwd: Great work by Waterloo Region chapter - shout out to Jenn who called Luisa

[Jennifer Ross]

Bookkeeping Services
519-501-2736
No other Western democratic country concentrates as much political power in
the hands of one person as Canada does with her Prime Minister.


---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Anita Nickerson <anita.nickerson at fairvote.ca>
Date: Wed, Aug 25, 2021 at 4:02 PM
Subject: Great work by Waterloo Region chapter

In addition to this below, Sharon will be on the 570 news talk show
tomorrow morning at 11:05 to talk about electoral reform!
https://www.570news.com/


https://www.therecord.com/news/federal-election/opinion/2021/08/25/a-new-political-party-is-being-started-that-focuses-on-electoral-reform-cementing-waterloo-region-as-a-stronghold-for-this-issue-luisa-damato-writes.html
A new political party is being started that focuses on electoral reform,
cementing Waterloo Region as a stronghold for this issue, Luisa D’Amato
writesLUISA D’AMATO AUGUST 25, 2021

Does this election leave you feeling both angry and apathetic at the same
time?

That’s how many of us feel as we contemplate the trap of holding our noses
and voting — not for the candidate who really inspires us, but for whoever
is representing the party that is most likely to stop the group we really
dislike.

A more elegant name for this situation is “strategic voting.”

And Peter House wants to stop it.

In a YouTube <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqGNEIgmRl0> video earlier
this month, House said he will be running in Waterloo riding, and he is
starting a new political party, the Electoral Reform Party of Canada.

“We like to think of ourselves as having a superior democracy to the
Americans, with half a dozen different parties,” House said.

But that diverse range of parties doesn’t mean much. With our “first past
the post” electoral system, in which the candidate with the most votes is
the one that wins, it’s effectively a two-way, two-party race. If your
preferred candidate didn’t win, your vote is disregarded.

That’s how a winning political party can get 39 per cent of the vote, 51
per cent of the seats, and 100 per cent of the power in the House of
Commons.

That’s also how the New Democratic Party earned 16 per cent of the vote in
the 2019 federal election, but got just seven per cent of the seats.

There were just 24 New Democratic Party MPs elected in 2019. If seats were
portioned out by share of the vote, the party would have received 54 MPs.

Here’s how House’s new political party would change the climate:

   - A proportional representation voting system, as is already the case in
   the vast majority of OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
   Development) countries, which would make every vote count;


   - MPs would be required to host monthly town hall meetings, face to face
   with their constituents;


   - All MPs would be required to blog, broadcast, or write a weekly
   newspaper column, communicating with constituents about what they’re doing;

When he made this announcement, House was still seeking some of the 250
signatures he needs to make his party official. If that doesn’t happen, he
will run anyway as an independent candidate.

House said he voted Liberal in 2015 because he was attracted by two
promises made by party leader Justin Trudeau. One, pledging the
legalization of marijuana, Trudeau kept. The other promise, that 2015 would
be the last time an election was run on “first-past-the-post” rules,
Trudeau broke. And a lot of people have never forgiven him for it.

If it gets formed, House’s new political party would cement Waterloo Region
as a stronghold of the electoral reform movement in Canada. There’s a
strong grassroots presence here, and Anita Nickerson, executive director of
Fair Vote Canada, lives in Kitchener.

That organization is using the occasion of this election campaign to hang
thousands of notices on people’s front doors to remind people how unfair
our present voting system is and how it needs to change, said Jennifer Ross
of Fair Vote Waterloo Region.

“This is not about left-right politics,” House said. “This is strictly
about accountability of government and the electoral system at the core of
our democracy.”

If we get that part right, then we can have confidence in the outcome,
whatever it is.

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