A blog to give a voice to our concern about the continued erosion of our democratic processes not only within the House of Commons and within our electoral system but also throughout our society. Here you will find articles about the current problems within our parliamentary democracy, about actions both good and bad by our elected representatives, about possible solutions, opinions and debate about the state of democracy in Canada, and about our roles/responsibilities as democratic citizens. We invite your thoughtful and polite comments upon our posts and ask those who wish to post longer articles or share ideas on this subject to submit them for inclusion as a guest post.
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Sunday, October 13, 2019

Advanced Polls are open.....

I will be driving the few miles to the polling location shortly to waste my time voting for a candidate who will not be elected, its more of a protest vote against the 'party' of the fellow who will almost certainly get in in this traditional conservative riding. I have nothing against the individual, or for that matter no great affection for any of the others, I dont know them, have never met them and know very little about them. Therein lays part of the problem with our system of governance, we hear much about the 'leaders' and their 'platforms' (aspirationial lies?), a little about the more high profile individuals and 'close' riding's but considerably less about our local candidates unless one attends an 'all candidates' forum if and when organized. It matters not anyway for even if elected the chances of 'your' MP having any great influence in any decisions is minimal, are they a member of the 'winning party', are the part of 'cabinet' within that party, how much influence do even cabinet members have upon the 'leader' and his inner circle of unelected advisors.

How many of us actually vote directly for the individual as opposed to the political party they represent (they supposedly represent us but.....) or indirectly for the leader of said party?

Many of us continue to mourn the failure to adopt a new voting system in Canada and I would hope that at some point that whole idea is revisited but the greatest danger I see with such change that I see is adopting a system that is worse than the one we have now. For now we are stuck with the system we have and it looks like it will bring us a minority government (which is almost certainly what any more proportional system would bring us regularly) the question then being can our elected representatives of all stripes work TOGETHER for the benefit of all Canadians or will they be so busy fighting each other that NOTHING gets done?

Me cynical, you better believe it, and getting more so daily as the BS gets deeper each news cycle.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The potentially divisive nature of MMP system of government is why Trudeau prefers ranked ballots. Also, the Cons and indecisive NDP wanted a referendum to change from FPP voting. Referendums are also very divisive.

UU

Rural said...

The mere discussion of electoral reform is 'divisive' UU, but its one we must, and will, have again in the future.

Owen Gray said...

I agree, Rural. We're going to revisit this issue.

Rural said...

It remains to be seen how soon that will happen Owen, and where it will lead!