I don't know about you but when I come to the end of something – a job, schooling, a vacation or whatever – I start noticing how things tend to come full circle.
Another example of this I noticed recently is that the year started with a federal election at the end of January that saw my fellow political junkies – Quinn & Christina – sitting at the Grad Club watching results come in (and being happily surprised when one of our profs, who'd we only had for a couple sessions by that point, joined us for a beer when he popped in after doing volunteer work for a local campaign.)
Now, at the end of the year, the very important federal by-election for London North-Centre will happen on Monday. Most students living in London will likely fall within the electoral boundaries and I've been told that you don't need to be pre-registered – you can simply show up at your nearest polling place with ID and proof of residence and be allowed to vote. Call the toll-free number (1 866 241-7804) to see if you're on the list already or if you have any other questions.
There is a wide field of candidates and even if you're not from London, you should probably consider voting as the results of this election will have national implications, especially since we're in a minority government. (Besides, most of the candidates aren't from London either!)
Continuing my non-partisan record of late, I'm not going to talk about who I'm going to vote for but I think a good policy for life is “always listen to Rick Mercer.” (Thanks to Barb J. for the link.)
A few of us happened upon a speech by Elizabeth May, leader and candidate for the Green Party, at the Grad Club last Wednesday and after getting over the affront that our conversation would be drowned out by her speech for ten or fifteen minutes, I decided this would be a good opportunity to ask a question.
“What do you say to people who would normally vote NDP to convince them to vote for you?”
Her response covered a variety of things. Working the question really well, she made allusion to the Green Party today being in a position similar to the early days of the CCF. (Does that make her Tommy Douglas?)
In her answer to my question and others, she made a number of points that did appeal to me – she'd become the only female leader of a political party, she'd be allowed to participate in the next leader's debates, she'd push for proportional representation so we don't have a situation where concentrated popularity like the Bloc is rewarded with 50 seats in the House while parties like the Greens who have definite national support don't end up with any seats. She pointed out that Greens are the only party that's part of an international network, she promises to be honest (but what politician doesn't say that?), electing her wouldn't affect the balance of power in the House of Commons (she'll have to run again in a year or two so it's a “try before you buy” model.) But I don't know – that all sounds good but there are some that say she's a Tory in green clothing.
On that note, did I mention that Megan Walker is running for the NDP? And she's <gasp> from London? And she's got a pretty strong bio and background herself? [Edit: Ian pointed out in the comment that Megan cut her teeth doing advocacy work on library issues, a fact that should matter if you're a library student. Whether you agree with the politics of the NDP or not, I think it's important to support candidates who have an awareness of issues that are relevant to you and your life.]
See you on Monday!
(Oh, and another thing that's come full circle – the prof who joined us in January for the election results was at the Grad Club on Wednesday and provided some interesting analysis on this by-election to help my thought processes along. I've got a tough decision to make on Monday but I think I know which way I'm leaning. Tommy Douglas would be proud.)
[Edit: here's a good story on the race from the Toronto Star.]
Comments 5
I'll resist the urge to get political, but as this is a “library student's blog” I think it should be mentioned that Megan Walker (NDP) cut her political teeth fighting for longer library hours at an LPL branch.Keeping in the spirit of the post I provide this only as an interesting informational tidbit, not an endorsement.
Perhaps showing my political stripes a little, I think it is also worth mentioning that this is Federal Liberal convention week. The CBC will have convention coverage from Wed through Sat.
Her campaign blog doesn't seem to mention this vital tidbit but Wikipedia does? What has the world come to?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Walker
Thanks for pointing the library connection out – I've added it to the main entry.
There was a story about the London race on CBC tonight and they said how the timing was bad for the Liberals since their leadership race was still to come and people might be reluctant to vote for a party without a leader. Lots of people still think Pearson will win but it the thrust of the CBC story was on how May had a real shot.
You planning to vote here? Without probing too much, I'm curious if that tidbit about Megan having a knowledge of library issues will have any impact on your thought process?
As I said in my addendum on the main page, in my experience, having elected officials who understand the issues that are most important to you can be as important as supporting a particular party. I ran into this in Calgary in the 2000 election – a Green party candidate in my riding had a long history in the arts community compared to the candidate for the party I would normally vote for (ahem.)
I won't say who I voted for in the end but that definitely made for a harder choice and in some ways, similar to the internal debate I'm having with myself about May and Walker.
Actually, this debate *is* harder because there's also a strategic voting element. In Calgary, I knew whether I voted for NDP or Green (or Liberal for that matter), my candidate wouldn't get in. But if I vote for May, it sounds like she has a better chance than Walker.
Joe Clark won in Calgary South-Centre in 2000 mainly because of a coalition of voters from all other parties voted for Clark giving him a narrow victory over the candidate from the newly minted (at the time) Canadian Alliance. Will something like that happen here to sweep May to victory as she siphons off votes from a variety of parties?
Time will tell…
That's a good question and I think it comes down to whether one truly believes in representative democracy. In a representative democracy the candidate is suppose to matter above most other considerations. I certainly see how one could argue that despite the intentions behind our system it seldom seems to operate as it should, which in turn opens the debate to other considerations beyond the individual candidate. However, I think this is somewhat self fulfilling. When we elect representatives based entirely on their party’s policies on the larger issues, their only mandate is to follow the party line. It also means we generally get to know little about the individual candidate past their agreement with the majority of the party’s core principles. These practices lead to less trust between the people and their representatives, a fact that not only hurts our government, but strikes to the very fabric of our society. Finally, I also believe that if considering the person and only the person, most people would choose intelligent reasonable people competent of doing a great many positive things while in Ottawa. However, once people begin to elect for the party, the quality of representative drops dramatically and you have situations like we have now where their aren't even enough quality MP's in the house to fill all the cabinet positions (In the current case their may be other reasons for the lack of competent MP's on the government’s benches, but I won't go there).
At the risk of going on a rant, this lack of direct representation is one of the problems I have with proportional representation. PR completely obliterates representative democracy, and with it many of the principles on which western democracy as a whole as founded. MP's are chosen via a list, or some variation, making them responsible to no one but the party. It frightens me to think that their would be people in the House whose constituency is made up, not of Canadian citizens, but only those that voted for them. I think it lends itself to factions, extremism and ultimately the gradual failure of what was once a functioning democracy.
Having said that representative democracy doesn’t seem to be functioning as it should right now. In large part I blame this on the people of Canada. They don’t vote and when they do it’s based on the ad they saw while watching “deal or no deal”. As long as this is true and people don’t vote for the candidate, representative democracy won’t work, or at least not as it was meant too. To be fair I also blame the many individuals and groups who have worked hard and long to undermine the system. One example of which was the Harris Tory’s fewer politicians legislation here in Ontario which vastly increased the size of the provincial ridings. Larger ridings means less contact which means less democracy, something the Tory’s were more then OK with. However, I don’t see any of these as inherent flaws and I don’t believe they’re insurmountable.
To answer your question, though I have a feeling you probably have figure out what I’m going to say at this point, yes, the fact that Walker is a library advocate is going to strongly effect decision. I can’t say for sure just who I’ll vote for, not because I don’t want to say, but because I’m never sure until I make my mark. I’m not shy about my Liberal bias, and I can say with almost complete certainty that the Greens and Conservatives (different colour, same party) can’t count on my vote, but I would be a hypocrite given the above if I didn’t give Walker more then due consideration.
(Just as a fun note, the Toronto Star just published a list of less then serious questions it asked each of the Liberal candidates. Their are a lot of good answers, but my favorite is Stephane Dion’s response to the question “Which Politician in another party would you most like to convert to being a Liberal”, his answer, “Bob Rae” )
You're going to make me work for this, aren't you?
Okay, I don't claim to understand the many many permutations of PR that are out there around the world or which version would be the fairest so that the problems you mention don't occur – voting for a party over a candidate, possibly not having local representation, etc.
I'm too lazy to even go to Wikipedia and get the “facts” but I remember hearing about one system (Australia? New Zealand?) where you voted twice – once for the party and once for your local candidate and somehow, presto-boingo, you get fairness in both ways. Again, I have no idea how this works (or if I'm totally making it up.)
But even that simple system brings up an issue with PR that I don't think you mentioned – most of the systems are a lot more complicated than the first past the post system we have now – both in how you vote and how results are calculated.
I think there's probably also a reflection of our ideological differences in our opinions – under a typical proportional representation scheme the Liberals would likely lose seats and the NDP would gain. Another related issue is our geographical differences – I think people in the West, no matter their political stripe, have a feeling that Ontario carries all the power and always want ways to change this (Reform's “The west wants in” and all that.) Maybe PR would do this, maybe it would make it worse (especially if it was based on a candidate list which might be biased towards candidates connected to central Canada.)
That's not just Ontario bashing either – any system where the NDP can get hundreds of thousands of votes more than the Bloc get the same number of votes but the Bloc ends up with more than twice as many seats is fatally flawed in my opinion. (Plus who doesn't want to see the Marijuana Party get a seat or two like they would've if our last election was contested under PR rules?)
I hope that addresses at least some of your points. Thanks for the lengthy and thoughtful observations – much appreciated!
Even worse than Wikipedia, here's an About.com pro-proportional representation essay I found. I haven't read the whole thing yet but the author makes a few interesting claims in the first couple pages – PR increases voter participation, reduces regional conflict and increases the representation of female candidates.
http://economics.about.com/cs/issues/a/proportionalrep.htm