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FVC President Wayne Smith's Case Study of the All-candidates' Debate, Toronto Centre

Election Canada 2006
The President's Blog: All-candidates' debate, Toronto Centre


Below you will see an excellent case study from Fair Vote Canada President Wayne Smith, as reported today in his blog.

Note that Wayne crafted the question and message to fit with specific concerns in that riding, while clearly linking PR to voter equality, voter choice and government accountability. Also see how he followed up with the Liberal and Conservative candidates ensuring that they understood how PR addressed problems faced by their own parties. And, very importantly, note that he and other volunteers did a great job of getting FVC flyers in the hands of audience members.


Posted to Election Canada 2006 - The President's Blog

http://fairvotecanada.blogspot.com/

All-candidates' debate, Toronto Centre

I went to my first election debate this evening, in the riding of Toronto Centre. The incumbent is Defence Minister Bill Graham, who got 30,000 votes last time, more than double those of his nearest opponent, NDP Michael Shapcott, who nevertheless is back to try again.

I was nimble enough to get to the mike in time to ask a question. While standing in line, I had lots of time to consider my approach. This is the most downtown riding in the country, and the questions ahead of me were about transgendered and bisexual rights, gay marriage, gun violence, and racism.

My question went like this:

I am not a member of any political party. I am a member of an organization called Fair Vote Canada, which is a national citizens' movement to change our voting system so we can get the government we vote for, for a change. ( This drew applause, as it always does.)

It has already been mentioned tonight that the candidates do not reflect the diversity in the riding, and our Parliament does not reflect the diversity of our nation. We do not have enough visible minorities in Parliament. We do not have enough Aboriginal people. We have 21% women, a national disgrace. There are forty modern democracies that have more women in their legislatures than we do, and every one of them has a proportional voting system.

What I need to know from the candidates, and I need especially to hear from Mr. Reford (Conservative) and Mr. Graham (Liberal), is what your parties will do, and in particular what will you do personally to ensure that Canada gets a modern, proportional voting system that affords voters real choices, and will allow us to hold government accountable?

The Conservative danced around the question and talked about how they endeavour to achieve diversity in their nomination process while allowing the local constituency association to pick the candidate. He neglected to mention that they have only 11% women candidates.

Bill Graham allowed as how he was once opposed to proportional representation, but his wife has been on his case about improving representation of diversity. He has discovered the German system and now thinks that there may be ways to "solve the problems" associated with PR, so he is "willing to consider" changing the voting system.

After the meeting, I thanked him for agreeing to consider proportional representation. He passed me off to his wife, so I pointed out to her that our current system is endangering national unity because the balance of power is held by separatists, not because of the votes they receive, but because of the way the voting system works. I also pointed out that with a fair voting system we might be able to elect some Liberals in Alberta, and I told her that Jean Chretien had once said that if he were ever elected Prime Minister, the first thing he would do would be to bring in proportional representation, but it must have slipped his mind.

I also spoke to the Conservative candidate, a nice young fellow who had handled himself well in a tough room. I pointed out that it is conservative voters and conservative parties who are the chief victims of our current voting system, and I reminded him that Preston Manning got a quarter of the votes in Ontario, but couldn't elect anybody because of the way the voting system works.

He expressed concern at the enormity of the task of getting Canadians to endorse fundamental change, and I agreed that we have a huge job of education ahead of us because most Canadians still don't know that there are other ways to vote. I told him our message is that we have choices.

I also pointed out that if we had a proportional voting system, they would not have had to unite the right. The PC Party and the Reform Party could have remained separate and worked together in coalition governments. I explained that countries with proportional voting tend to have stable, effective coalition governments that represent a true majority of the voters and truly have the confidence of Parliament.

When he asked what system we were proposing, I told him that we weren't in the business of designing voting systems, and that what we were asking for was a process of public education and consultation leading to a referendum. He agreed that we should let the people decide.

The Green Party and Communist Party candidates also spoke well and mentioned PR in their opening remarks. Michael Shapcott for the NDP knows his stuff and spoke out for PR when asked.

There were several Fair Vote Canada volunteers in the room distributing our flyers. In all, there were several hundred people at the meeting, and a lot of them went home with Fair Vote Canada literature. I think we had a good evening.

Wayne Smith, President
Fair Vote Canada
416-407-7009
Wayne.Smith@FairVoteCanada.org

I would just like to add a note to Wayne's post: I had just finished watching the Brampton-Springdale Riding's candidates' debate on Rogers Cable 10. The two candidates who said they are for PR via Electoral Reform are Anna Mather of the NDP and Ian Chiccio of the Green Party. Both of them mentioned it without any questions posed by the panel about PR. Kudos to these two young candidates!

posted by Annamarie at 6:44 PM