Apparently there is a provincial election coming up in Ontario on October 10 or 11. The parties themselves aren't campaigning yet, but there are a number of lobby groups whose ads are all over the tv and radio. These ads are driving me crazy. I'm not trying to be negative here, but these ads are all about how things were bad and now they're starting to get better - so be sure to not let them get bad again!
Without having the parties respond to these statements with their own statements, I feel like these lobby groups are very out of place. It's like they're jumping the gun and trying to force issues that I'm not sure exist. Even if they do exist, I don't think things are worth this kind of barrage this early in the game. Sigh. I can tell you that these lobby groups are not winning points with me; they're annoying me and I feel like they're applying too much pressure too soon.
I guess we're also going to be voting in a referendum. Apparently there's a motion put forward to provide some sort of proportional representation. If approved, the number of seats in Ontario would rise from 106 to 129, and 90 of those would be elected as usual (the party with the most votes in that electoral district would get the seat). Each ballot will have a side on which people vote for their favourite overall party, and the remaining 39 seats are allocated based on the percentage of the party vote they received.
This makes sense to me at a federal level, as a way to reduce the power of Ontario and Quebec. I'm not sure it makes sense on a provincial level. Thoughts?
3 comments:
I think it makes a lot of sense for Ontario too. The current system is so unfair to voters because most of us don't elect anyone or get the representation we deserve. Each vote should be equal. The only way to do that is with a province-wide tally that shows what the voters want.
I'll certainly be supporting MMP on October 10th. I want a vote that COUNTS. I'm tired of voting and not electing anyone.
At the moment, I live in a safe Liberal seat in Toronto. The incumbent was recently kicked out of Cabinet for giving a cricket team $1M when they only asked for $150K. He'll win again....and it won't matter who I vote for .
END this nightmare! Vote for MMP.
I think you mean reducing the power of the Liberal and Conservative parties, don't you? The "power" of ON and PQ is that they have such high populations.
Anyway, I think it makes sense at provincial and federal levels--at least in principle. Practice doesn't always work out as well as we like it to. There is proportional representation at the federal level here in NZ. There are mixed feelings about how well it's working, but it hasn't been in place too long.
I'm surprised you just heard about the referendum, though. I learned about it pretty quickly just poking around some Canadian news sites. I would have thought my tax dollars would be used left, right, and centre to put government-sponsored ads on TV to "inform" the public. I'm sure there are lots of voters that don't know what it actually means. Of course, there are probably some who couldn't name the premier....
Greg
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