The Eternal Flame in front of the Parliament BuildingsYesterday, four WAP/PAF members responded to the call of Catch-22 to join a Democracy Rally on Parliament Hill.
There was a pro-Libyan invasion group present on the steps leading to the Parliament building, but we saw no Rally. Never mind, we thought, as we had also come to support Fair Vote and get people to sign the Declaration of Voters' Rights and distribute their Why don't politicians listen? leaflets.
With a number of Saturday tourists milling around, we managed to meet up with one gentleman who had come all the way from Pembroke to attend the Rally. He was disappointed to find no democracy meeting. He signed the Fair Vote Declaration. "However," he said, "I believe in a two party system."
We spoke about that and how the two party system excludes a great number of people from expressing themselves politically. This is undemocratic.
Fair Vote Canada wrote in 2003, "Under our current voting system, our votes only count - or have impact on the allocation of seats - when we happen to share the most popular partisan viewpoint in our riding." Furthermore, we argued, the current electoral system almost always provides distorted election results and a huge proportion of wasted votes. Finally, we concluded, the current system shuts whole regions out of cabinet. How representative is that, we asked?
Additionally, we met a woman form Nova Scotia, who also left disappointed. But we were happy to meet her as she signed our declaration form and was keen to know more about WAP/PAF. "I am happy to hear about the Women's Alliance Party," she said, "but I hope you are not affiliated to the previous Reform Alliance?" "Of course not!" we said, and explained why we have the word 'Alliance' in our name. "This is to bring people together as allies with the common goal of serving all Canadians, as opposed to the self serving partisanship model under which we currently suffer."
Let us be clear. Without electoral reform there can be no fair representation.
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