My problem is that poor governance from the lesser of two evils almost inevitably results in a swing towards the greater of two evils.

It just delays the worst, doesn’t avert it.

We had other options, as uninspiring as they may have been. Now we’re locked into a FPTP two-party death spiral, and both parties bear the responsibility for it; the cons for being unrepentant monsters, and the libs for pandering to the right and to capital at the expense of the best interests of the majority of the electorate when they could and should be choosing policy directions that don’t perpetuate ballooning inequality and the decay of the social safety net.

Carney in particular watched (and to some extent, presided over) decades of just this kind of decline in the UK, he absolutely knows what his policy directives are going to do to this country.

Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure that appeasement has historically gone really well.

Mine’s a cabinet minister 🤢

Like I’m emailing anyway but it’s gonna be swiftly ignored.

The Migrant Rights Network is currently hosting a petition drive against this bill, you can find it here: https://migrantrights.ca/equalitynotexclusion/

BC has strata corporations, which are kiiiiind of the same thing based on my shitty surface-level understanding of HOAs.

And basically all multi-family housing has a strata.

Elections Canada is responsible for recruiting, organizing, and training volunteers, aren’t they?

Assuming so, they should know where there are staffing shoftfalls and address them accordingly.

Our democracy is already under threat and not particularly robust in terms of representation. It is absolutely critical to keep people from being further disenfranchised.

The Liberals say that transfers to provinces and individuals would be off limits, but they aim to save $28 billion over three years by cutting “wasteful” spending and making changes to the government’s internal operations, including a cap on the size of the public service.

✊

I’m happy to heap scorn on my province’s weenie premier for his constant folding to regressive bullies and wealthy lobbies, but I gotta admit that he’s got nothing on Smith, Legault, Moe, Ford, or Houston.

This country’s had some real shithead premiers in its history but it really does feel like a race to the bottom these days.

Lmao I can fit that much stuff in my Forte.

Like a manicured Ed the Sock.

I agree, but I’m also acutely aware that it is campaign season, and the LPC has a nasty habit of running left and governing right.

If we wind up with a Liberal minority with Conservatives in opposition, or with a Liberal majority, I honestly fully expect this to get dropped or strategically undermined the way electoral reform did.

In other words, we’re gonna have to be ready to fight for it.

Here’s a 2.5h investigative report of the breakup of ZA/UM. It’s worthwhile if you’ve got the time and inclination.

I can’t access the full article but if this is where I think it is, it’s near where my mom lives and she is furious about the possibility.

Politicians of all stripes have repeatedly ignored calls to make the country more competitive and increase its productivity.

Oh come the fuck on. They just couldn’t resist taking a swipe at labour, how true to form.

Sorry the government didn’t bend and spread widely enough for capital, G&M.

According to the modelling I can find, yes, the conservative party would have won the most seats in 2021 if we’d had a more proportional system. I goofed, FairVote actually has the cons winning more seats under STV, but the liberals more under MMR.

But critically, it does not mean that the Conservative Party would have formed goverment, because under a more proportional system, they would not have had the seats to form a majority.

They would have been forced to either build a coalition with another party or parties, or they would have had to allow a majority coalition to form government if they were unable to make enough concessions to do so.

Backing off a campaign promise because you come to the conclusion that it isn’t really feasible…

I’m sorry, but I do not believe that’s what happened.

This article gives a timeline of the events in line with how I recall things (and why I don’t accept that the failure to reform was the result of a good-faith attempt).

Also if you watch the electoral reform segment on Nathaniel Erskine-Smith’s podcast interviewing Trudeau, he quite literally says that PR survived the committee process further than he had hoped, and he had to put the brakes on electoral reform against the recommendations of the committee and experts because he personally was very against PR.

“I … had been very clear with caucus … how much I am opposed to the idea of proportional representation … It was something that I had to leave a little bit of a door open to, and unfortunately, because of that, it got further. … I was not going to let that move forward.”

Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Part of the Liberals’ 2015 campaign promise was to create two mechanisms to ensure democratic control over the process of reforming the electoral system. The first was the all-party House of Commons Special Committee on Electoral Reform (ERRE), which exercised representative democratic control: it guided the process, investigated the alternatives in depth, heard from expert witnesses, ensured cross-party support, and enabled parliamentary oversight. The second mechanism was made up of a range of public consultations that ensured a degree of popular democratic control: an e-consultation platform, town halls across the country, mail and phone surveys, and petitions that gave all Canadians the opportunity to participate in deciding on a new electoral system.

By the end of the process, both mechanisms favored proportional representation (PR): an electoral system where each party receives a percentage of seats in parliament equal to the percentage of the popular vote they win in an election. Based on its own investigations and the testimonies of the vast majority of expert witnesses, the ERRE recommended a referendum with two options: the current system (FPTP) or a new proportional system, to be designed by the government and explained to Canadians by Elections Canada in advance of the vote.

Public input similarly favored PR: the e-consultation platform showed a strong desire for change and support for most elements of a proportional system, and other avenues of public participation similarly backing PR and a referendum. Together, these representative and popular mechanisms provided the government with a mandate to give all Canadians the final say on whether or not to switch to PR.

And sure, I suppose that he was “told repeatedly that it wasn’t a good idea”, if you count liberal party appointees, and discount a non-partisan committee and expert opinions:

However, when the ERRE committee released its final report, the Liberals immediately began backpedaling. Maryam Monsef, then minister of democratic reform, rejected the report. Monsef was soon replaced, but the new minister only doubled down, claiming there was no consensus for change and defending the existing FPTP system.

If you’re willing to forgive this stuff, that’s fine, it’s your call to make.

But how this process unfolded convinced me that the electoral reform campaign promise had never been anything more than cynical manipulation of a very engaged interest group of voters, and the failure of the process was very messily engineered to provide cover for Trudeau to back out of it.