this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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It wasn't a lie, they did try.
The problem was, the Liberals favoured ranked ballot but would consider STV, the NDP wouldn't support anything other than MMP, the CPC wouldn't support any change, and the Bloc just wanted to play spoiler. The Liberals were in a minority on the committee. The only system they could get agreement on was MMP, which is what the committee recommended.
MMP is good for proportionality, but it can have issues with party lists, members not tied to geographic areas can be difficult to remove, and responsibility for geographic areas is shared, making it easier to dodge. Whether MMP would even pass constitutional muster is an open question. The biggest drawback is explaining the system to a general public who only have known a one vote, one member, one riding system. Ranked or STV are much easier to explain and the current ridings wouldn't need to change.
Anyway, the Bloc and CPC were going to campaign hard on calling any change a Liberal power grab. Internal polling (not the dog and pony show web poll) showed that most voters didn't care about the issue, but the "Liberal Power Grab" would gain traction. With the CPC promising to roll back any changes, the whole thing looked more and more like an effort in futility.
In the end, they decided to take their lumps and move on. After all the heat they took for even trying, as far as the Liberals are concerned, the issue is dead. Basically a similar story arc as every time a provincial government has looked at it.
I'm sorry, but their attempt was in bad faith. They set up a committee that was doomed to fail. When the committee came up with some meaningful results, the Liberals ignored them and said "we can't agree on anything!"
Frankly, MMP is a great addition to a voting system, not a replacement. STV with a small number of MMP seats would be ideal, but straight STV would be a vast improvement.
This infographic is pretty straightforward.
Nope. This is strictly a partisan construct.
MMP is the most proportional, also the one most likely to run into constitutional challenges, and the one most likely to fail in a referendum due simply to how difficult it is to explain to people not interested in electoral reform, ie, almost everyone.
If the NDP had agreed to go to ranked ballot or single transferable vote as at least an interim measure, something could have happened. NDP went for broke and rolled snake eyes.
Electoral reform is dead for at least the next 10-20 years. The Liberals are feeling burnt for trying. The NDP are as far from power as ever. The CPC just won't. And the Bloc will remain spoilers.
I think you and I may have discussed this in the past but it's my opinion that the reason the liberals were in a minority in the committee is because they didn't want electoral reform. They should have just said heres a binding referendum on how the next election will be held.
They knew that if they didn't get buy-in from the other parties, the next time say the CPC government got in, they were going to go back to FPTP. Now they were very unlikely to get the CPC on board, but having the NDP and Bloc would have made it more politically difficult for the CPC to roll back changes.
The CPC and Bloc were absolutely going to run on any change being a Liberal power grab. Being a minority on the committee helped defuse that argument.
Any sort of referendum was going to fail. It was the CPC's poison pill. All of the parties were running internal polls telling them the same thing.