5 or 6 parties could emerge under pro rep

Dear editor: Electoral reform is supposed to fix a lot of things: better representation, more mutual understanding between parties, longer lasting legislation and the feeling of fairness.

What is never mentioned is how it will radically fragment B.C.’s political dialogue with more minority voices and ultimately splinter the political landscape with even more political parties.

We see a darker underbelly of democracy when lower electoral barriers can be seized by extremists as in countries like Hungary, Poland and Italy; even Germany and Sweden are showing cracks, and now Brazil has elected a right-wing militarist.

Under PR, our legislature could have five or six parties if Maxime Bernier’s new national libertarian People’s Party ignites a base in B.C. that put out almost two per cent of the vote in the last election. The BC Christian Heritage Party averaged 6.3 percent of the vote which breaks the five per cent legislative threshold. As will the BC Conservatives, along with the Greens, NDP and Liberals.

In many of our different possible combinations of two or three party coalition governments, a minority will be “kingmaker.”

True to his word, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau set up a cross-country panel on electoral reform that drew 361,000 registered attendees (one per cent of Canada’s population) and heard from 80 experts.

Most experts favoured change, but were divided on what type of system to adopt.

All experts warned voters in general do not understand how these electoral systems work and any untested system would create confusion that could weaken Canada’s political dynamic before it would strengthen it. Their final recommendation was that government just go ahead and change the system; they said the voter would eventually get used to it.

During the panel, Liberals polled across the country and found 86 per cent were satisfied with the current system, because it was easy to understand.

Conservatives polled those between 21 and 34 and found only 13 per cent put electoral reform in their top five concerns and three per cent put it at number one.

In the end, instead of finding definitive answers, changing our electoral system requires a leap of faith, rather than concrete steps towards a perceived democratic improvement, all the while Canadians had little appetite for electoral reform.

Dealing with that reality hit. Donald Trump was elected president and the political order of the past 70 years changed in the blink of an eye. The prime minister rightly and wisely put electoral reform away to concentrate on the changing political reality happening on the ground.

Jon Peter Christoff, West Kelowna