Radicals want us to adopt PR

Dear Editor: There is clearly a well financed and structured group of left-leaning activists working tirelessly to promote a “better democracy,” if we only switch to some nebulous, ill-defined, sharing of votes for every group with a belief that the majority should not have the right to choose government.

Twenty-nine of 195 countries have forms of dictatorship, theocracy or absolute monarchy systems, which are not options given Canada’s democratic history.

Eighty-nine of 195 countries use one of the many forms of proportional representation to elect their government, many, including Greece, Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic, who have all gone months without an elected parliamentary session, as have dozens of other smaller countries.

Meanwhile backroom negotiations are conducted to form a working but fragile coalition of different parties just to create a government with no cohesiveness.

Proportional representation is the dream of European radical activists that got installed in many countries to their misfortune, despite a few countries having successfully adapted this social experiment.

Fifty-eight of 195 countries use first past the post, and 19 others use FPTP to elect the leader, often a president, so 77 countries use it.

The most stable governments, like the United Kingdom, have used FPTP for hundreds of years successfully, to create longstanding democracies with the majority of seats moving from left of centre to right of centre regularly to effectively control the speed of change in social, economic and tax policies, based on the performance of the governing party.

Canadians across the board of all political and ethnic backgrounds consider Canada the “best country” in the world. We have a stable government, economy, employment, business environment and the rule of law prevails, under our first-past-the-post electoral system and the Westminster Parliamentary system.

Within the three major parties, there is plenty of room for all voices to be heard. Under proportional representation and coalitions, policy is dictated to the majority by the fringe, the radical and the extreme members of often single-purpose political parties.

Change to a risky unproven and undemocratic mixed proportional representation system from the stable and trusted governance system used by the best country in the world makes no sense except to the minority, the fringe, the radical and the extreme in it.

Vote no to the proportional representation proposal of the NDP/Green Coalition. We have the best democratic country. Changing how we vote will diminish not improve it.

Doug Waines, West Kelowna