Voting reform will save money, bring stability

Canadians should spare no effort to support electoral reform, given the low voter turnout and lack of trust in our elected representatives demonstrated in the past spate of provincial and federal elections. Constituents are sick of wasteful adversarial attitudes, and want our members of Parliament to work collaboratively to find the best solutions to Canada’s challenges.

This cannot be achieved by continuing with our present first-past-the-post system. It results in false majorities, where the winner, with 40 per cent of the votes, can capture 60 per cent of the seats and 100 per cent of the power for four years. This has many negative consequences, the biggest of which is the failure to ensure that all laws are approved by MPs representing a majority of voters.

Our current system is also wasteful of time and money as political power swings back and forth between parties. This results in policy lurch where each new governing party spends considerable resources rescinding the legislation of the previous party.

There is a better way. All proportional representation systems are based on the idea that the number of seats a party earns should reflect the percentage of votes obtained by that party. Much peerreviewed research and many surveys show that PR systems are more fiscally responsible, as well as more stable, effective and accountable to voters. Suzanne Wilkinson Duncan