Friends are Electric

Background: cbc.ca

Beyond that, especially the level of ignorance in comments.  My serious question is whether or not anyone reads anymore, or if they just have a knee jerk reaction and run with it.

Elections Canada decided that it was against religious freedom to force people to remove veils in public for the purpose of voting.  They would be required to reveal their face in private to an official prior to getting their ballot.  This was to prevent, for example, men seeing a woman’s face if she did not wish it to happen.  This was an enabling decision made to allow greater participation by every Canadian citizen.

And let me repeat: this was an interpretation of a longstanding law.  Not a new law.  Not rewriting laws.  This was the interpretation of the existing law.

What was announced today was the highly controversial policy to change the existing election laws to prevent this from happening.  I have theories about why such a policy might have been brought forward in the first place, but these are my own personal opinions about the matter and are irrelevant to present discussion.

So let us review the facts:

Elections Canada announces interprets existing law and decides that veiled voting is permissible in our democracy.  The Conservative Party of Canada presents a plan to change the law, realize that there is no will in the House of Commons, which was democratically elected by the entire country, to bring forth such a plan.  The Conservative Party of Canada kills the plan in a huge show of public relations.

An example people might understand:

What if it was illegal (impossible for it to be so, I would not support it) to vote with a cross showing.  Why, I don’t know.  Just say this was the case.  Would we be up in arms?  Yes.  Everyone in the country aught to be, I don’t know if they all would be, but I know that I would oppose such action.  Yes, are other issues with a veil.  No, I am not saying the situation is identical.  Or even related.  There are issues with veils, I honestly think there is a gender issue related to it.  But if a person wants to wear one, they should not be prevented from doing so.

Which brings us to the politics of it.

If the majority of the house does not want to pursue a piece of legislation, then (theoretically) the majority of Canadians do not want a piece of legislation.  We can debate whether or not our MPs represent us until the proverbial cows come home, it changes nothing (I know mine does not represent me) .

The Conservative Party of Canada is in minority government, which means there are more opposition members than government members.  They cannot do whatever they want, which is good for Canadians (the same can be said of any other party, minority governments are inherently much more democratic than majorities).

But I digress.  The point is: read to become informed, avoid knee jerk reactions, think, think, THINK.  An informed and thinking citizen is what this country needs, not clients.

Just when I thought I was free I get dragged back into it.

So I keep hearing the arguments that people `did not vote for a coalition.’  This is true.  The fact is that they did not vote for the Conservative party either.

We vote for a person, not a party.  Now, most of us do vote based on the party of our choice, however we must realise that our perceptions will not change the reality of our electoral system.  You did not vote for a coalition.  You also did not vote for the Liberals, the Conservatives, the Marxist-Leninist or the Bloc Quebecois.  You vote for a single person who is theoretically supposed to represent your ideas.

Of course, not even I do this.  But I am mature and reasonable enough to realise what my vote actually means.  Please people, stop pretending that intention colours the meaning of the vote.  No individual belief or thought changes that you vote for a person, not a party.

Now we must understand this.  Anyone saying that they did not vote for a coalition is stating a fact, yes, but it does not carry the meaning they wish it to.  They are only revealing their ignorance to our electoral system or, perhaps, merely stating the obvious.  No one voted for a coalition, no one voted for the Conservative Party, no one voted for the Liberals, just as no one voted for any party.

Its just the way our government works.

Now that Parliament has been suspended for a month, it is time to examine the entire crisis as a whole.

Rick Mercer had a number of intelligent things to say on the subject.  He is essentially saying that Harper screwed up and is now clinging to power, while Dion is hell-bent on having his revenge on the Conservative Leader.

Werner Patels is saying that the NDP and its supporters are the biggest losers in the crisis, since as a member of the coalition, no one cares what Mr. Layton has to say.

I have seen people on both sides of the debate call the opposite fascists.

And I’ve seen Americans trying to explain the crisis.

On the whole, I am glad we now have a break.  Although I wish that all parties would stop spewing lies all over the place.  I can now sit back and digest exactly what happened, and perhaps muse on the best way to solve it all.  I’m still hoping that everyone can work together, but I somehow doubt that will happen.

Anyone in Canada over the last week will know what this is about.  The Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, issued an economic update to the budget he released last year.  The update’s purpose was to reflect the changing world economic situation and its effect on Canada.  Some information can be found here.

I am not going to say anything on the reaction to this, enough has been said.  However, I have not heard one particular argument as to why dropping the $1.95 per vote subsidy that each party gets to fund their operations.  The argument relates to our plurality system.

Like the United States and Great Briton, Canada runs on a plurality, rather than proportional, system.  This means that a candidate in a riding must only receive one more vote than the candidate with the second highest number of votes to be declared the winner in that riding and represent it in Parliament.  Even if 10 parties run and split the vote roughly equally, with one party receiving a few votes more than the others, that party gets the whole seat.  The other parties get nothing.  Except, of course, this subsidy.

It is a commonly known fact that in plurality based systems, votes are wasted.  What most people don’t realise is that they are wasted both ways.  Most people understand that if one party gets 40% of the vote, the second place one receives 35%, and a third party has 25%, then a full 60% of the people in that riding did not have their voices heard, since total popular vote doesn’t mean anything.  However, if there are three or more parties in a given riding, then every vote over the bare plurality of the second place parties vote count + 1 also counts to nothing, since the party already has been granted the seat.

Now, the person who’s vote was wasted on the winning side might not mind, since their vote might just as well have been one of the votes which allowed the candidate to win, but this still poses an interesting problem.  If the government is supposed to be democratically elected, yet in Canada’s roughly three party system up to 66% of the population could have no say in the formation of government.  (A truly frightening statistic is that, in such a three party system, a party can receive a majority if they get a bare plurality of about 34% in only 50% + 1 of the ridings, which works out to approximately 17% of the popular vote.)

So here is where the economic update comes in, specifically the fate of the $1.95.  So long as this subsidy exists then the otherwise wasted votes have meaning.  The Green Party may have gotten no seats, but they did receive a fairly large share of the popular vote, meaning they will receive a fair amount of money to keep their party alive to mount a campaign again another day.  By garnering roughly 7% of the national vote, they have proven that their platform has a level of support unheard of by most other niche issue parties.

I have seen a few comments around stating that the Conservative Party has the most to lose by this measure, and it is true that they will lose the largest dollar amount of all the parties.  However, they will be losing the lowest percentage amount compared to their total income intake in a given year.  Some have argued that the other parties should focus more on raising funds in other ways, especially donations.  My only thought on this is that a fiscally conservative party would likely have the wealthiest voter base.  There is nothing wrong with this.  Social Democratic parties like the NDP tend to focus more on those who would not be able to afford donations to political parties, while the Greens tend to be a party of the young, people who are using what money they have for schooling.  While these parties should probably focus more on fundraising, especially in light of this event, the fact remains that the Conservatives are better based to receive large amounts of funding from private persons.  We must remember that government must speak for everyone, not only those who can afford to keep their choice party afloat.

This issue, like so many others in Canadian democracy, should really not exist.  A diverse group of political parties ensures that all beliefs have the chance of being represented.   So long as a belief receives votes it is worthy of a continued existence, no matter if the people pushing it are willing or capable of funding it personally.  That is the true tragedy of this, Canada has a comparatively diverse political landscape when compared to other plurality countries.  This funding helps contribute to that, without it we would have fewer parties, fewer new ideas and a much more bland political culture.