Opinion

15 Big Ideas from 2005 (Part 2)

Seven last ones for Canada and BC. Tell us yours!

By Peter MacLeod, 30 Dec 2005, TheTyee.ca

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[Editor's note: To read the first eight big ideas, published yesterday, go here.]

MORE BIG IDEAS FOR CANADA

The Other Special Relationship

The grammar of Canada-US relations places a heavy emphasis on acknowledging mutual interest, on being good neighbors, stout allies and maintaining the world's longest undefended border. When Paul Martin chastises the American administration, as he did most recently at the climate change conference in Montreal, he's careful to convey his criticism in terms of friends simply needing to be honest with one another. And, like a friend, it didn't take long before the American ambassador returned the favor.

This rhetoric of brotherly diplomacy helps to smooth over sticky grievances and maintain a kind of fraternal politesse. Behind the scenes, however, the federal and provincial governments are going out of their way to court a new ally: China.

In 2005, various Canadian trade missions landed in Beijing, hoping to sign deals and secure investment in everything from manufacturing to basic research to raw energy. First, by supply, and now, by demand, Canada is cultivating a special Chinese relationship as a counterweight to its dependency on the US economy - putting itself squarely between two elephants, rather than next to one.

There's still a long way to go. Forty percent of Canada's GDP is dependent on trade with the US, which receives 80 percent of Canada's exports. China doesn't begin to compare with that. As for human rights -- the longstanding foil to expanded trade -- the consensus appears to have shifted, with western countries preferring practical engagement (and profit), to an arguably more principled stand.

Either way, the sheer gravitational power of the Chinese economy is impossible to ignore. As NYT columnist Thomas Friedman pointed out in this year's best-selling account of globalization and trade, The World is Flat: This isn't a race to the bottom, but the top.

Future-proofing

First, it was Jane Jacobs' 2004 book, Dark Age Ahead. Then came Jared Diamond's Collapse. Then Ronald Wright's 2004 Massey Lecture, A Short History of Progress. By 2005, the idea of thinking forward and learning from both the dumb and the doomed had come fully into vogue. One solution to not repeating yesterday's mistakes? Future-proofing, an inane and irritating bit of marketing hokum ready to leech any residual value from genuine thoughtfulness and package it as a ready-today solutions for everything from better condo development to technological obsolescence. Taken to its logical conclusion, a future-proofed future implies a smiley kind of stasis where, both impervious and omniscient to the locomotive around the next bend, tomorrow will unfold with the soothing predictability of a first-quarter business plan.

But for deeper thinking about what's ahead, consider the Long Now Foundation which is building a clock to last ten thousand years in a Nevada mountain range. Or Italy's Slow Food movement, that is restoring both character and custom to regional cuisine. Or the scenario builders at Shell. And closer to home, Imagine BC, an initiative dedicated to thinking about the future of the province over the course of the generation to come.

BIG IDEAS FOR BRITISH COLUMBIA

Golden Decade

Is this to be British Columbia's 'Golden Decade?' It depends who you ask. Talk to any BC Liberal cabinet minister and they'll surely agree. The phrase became a rallying call during this year's provincial election. Just look ahead , they said, and see all the fortune the next ten years will bring: a strong resource sector, a white hot real estate market, new advances in power technologies, software and genomics, an influx of immigrants from abroad and other parts of Canada, and to cap it off, the Olympics, taking place in what Premier Gordon Campbell promises will be the healthiest jurisdiction in the world.

Others point out the recent economic surge is illusory: built from the concessions of a quickly polarizing labour market, fired by environmental negligence and bloated by speculative investment that has created a bubble bound to burst.

What's not in question is that the idea of a 'golden decade', when not deepening political cynicism, is a powerful attempt by powerful interests to change the popular story about British Columbia.

The Berkley professor and linguist George Lakoff made headlines and became the reigning guru to the US Democratic Party this year with a thin book called Don't Think of the Elephant. According to Lakoff, all political and popular ideas exist within what he calls, a 'frame': an accepted set of beliefs or convictions that give veracity to our experience of society and each other. In public life, we look to politicians to confirm and reassure us with popular mythologies. Political success depends on capturing and manipulating these narratives. Says Lakoff, simply trading words like 'environmentalism' with its heavy baggage for the fresher, less threatening 'sustainability' can move mountains. It all sounds a bit Field of Dreams: If you say it, they will come. We'll see how long BC's golden decade can keep its shine.

Cut and Cover

Don't talk to the business owners, residents and thousands of daily commuters who rely on the Cambie corridor for their livelihoods, their neighbourhood or simply to get to work. They just don't like it and no increase in property values - not even in property-mad Vancouver - is going to make it better.

"Cut and cover" will probably go down as a born-in-BC contribution to the national lexicon. As in, "This job's a real cut and cover." Or "just cut and cover." Make a mess, damn the consequences.

At least that was the thinking that led Vancouver City Council and Translink to literally ditch their original plans for carefully boring a train-sized tunnel to the airport. Both Council and Translink say their cut and cover method will shave serious money from the construction budget. Those affected say the savings are on their backs.

Residents of Boston, who endured that city's "Big Dig," - the largest civil engineering feat in American history -- might have a few tips and a bit of sympathy for their Vanland brethren. Recently completed, the Big Dig excavated millions of tons of dirt and rock from beneath the city, periodically opening vast canyons stories deep next to sidewalks and thoroughfares, as construction workers installed new subway lines and buried Boston's notorious waterfront highway.

To STV or Not to STV?

It was supposed to be "a good way to a good place": the informal motto for those who work at Simon Fraser University's Centre for Dialogue, host to the province's Citizen's Assembly on Electoral Reform. Bring together a randomly selected jury of 100 BC residents, call in the experts, and banish the politicians from the room.

The assembly studied electoral systems from around the world, commissioned new research, deliberated for nearly a year and ultimately produced a homegrown electoral model called BC-STV. Experts claimed it was demonstrably superior, evening out the all-or-nothing consequences of the current single member plurality system, and giving voters a wider range of choices at the ballot booth. But after all that deliberating, money spent and a referendum, the result was tantalizingly close, just not close enough.

Part of the problem was that the Assembly's proposal was impossible to explain. Say what you will about the inequities of the current system, but the logic and transparency of "vote once and the person who gets the most votes wins" is at least reassuring. No such luck with BC-STV, which had an embarrassing habit of baffling pundits and politicians who tried to explain it on air.

Efforts to get out the yes vote were also hampered by the fact that the government's commitment to hold a referendum didn't include much in the way of funding to educate the public about the new system. A small working group within the Attorney General's office tried to get the message out, but with few advocates in government, BC-STV never really found its clear-throated champion.

In time, electoral reform is likely to still happen. In most jurisdictions that have ditched old voting systems, it's taken two or more tries. But what if we've had our eye on the wrong prize?

If the real aim of reform is to renew democracy by creating a more engaged public, maybe what the province really needs isn't just a new voting system, but more assemblies made up of citizens. In countries like Denmark, citizen juries are routinely convened to inspect and recommend policy on everything from the environment, to education to their national future. In this light, the Citizen's Assembly could be the stirring of a more consensual democratic model that would rely less on voting - and better still, less on politicians.

Hard to COPE

COPE was the electoral force that turned out the establishment NPA and made Vancouver politics a byword for left-leaning progressivism. Its achievements were many: a plan to revitalize the old Woodward's, a safe injection site that could serve as a centerpiece for a real, comprehensive harm reduction approach to drug and crime, and other policies that have urban and social policy planners across North America routinely touting the Vancouver Model for its originality, sustainability and excellence.

But a conflict broke out between the old and new guard - so called COPE Classic and COPE Light -- and the result, a splinter party called Vision Vancouver very much splintered the leftish vote. In the end, the election was a rout as COPE lost control of City Council, the School Board and the Park Board. Only a single member of COPE occupies a city council seat, forming, along with four Vision members, the opposition to a renewed NPA regime.

The final chapter has yet to be written; COPE may live to fight another day. But for now, it's simply the coalition that forgot to coalesce, proving sadly, that the left rarely has a worst enemy then itself. United they stand…

Hockey

Right. Hockey. An idea we all thought may have come and gone has come back with a vengeance. With new rules, a new salary cap and maybe another chance to become a big idea for people south of North America's snow belt.

It took Canadians one long, dark season of withdrawal to rediscover the other rinks not covered on TV: The women's league with its new Clarkson Cup; the sterling college teams and little leagues and pick up games in your neighbor's backyard. Now, as we head back to the stadiums and tune in and hear that reassuring Ba-ba-da-ba-da of Ron Maclean and Don Cherry, we can be happy again, on big ice and small. The state of hockey nation is once again strong.

Peter MacLeod writes the ReState column on new ideas in governing for The Tyee. He is a doctoral candidate at the London School of Economics and convenor of The Planning Desk, an evolving studio for public systems design.

Please add your own suggestions for big ideas of 2005 by posting a comment below. [Tyee]

22 Comments:

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  • Grumpy

    6 years ago

    Comments on "15 Big Ideas from 2005 (Part 2)"

    Cut and cover - a big idea? No, just a method of underground construction. The big idea will be all the lawsuits etc. that will spring up during cut and cover construction.

    Happy New Year.

  • Colin

    6 years ago

    To bad they didn't cut and cover the road in Stanely park back in the 50's

  • skeptikool

    6 years ago

    Cut and cover? Here's an idea. You plant posts on each side of a street - steel or concrete. Put joists across the posts. If the street is too wide you add posts down the median. You lay track across the joists - even a path for cyclists. Voila! You've procured yourself a railway line out of airspace.

    It may have been done before. I think something like it exists in NY City, called the EL.

  • Grumpy

    6 years ago

    Um......sorry to say, we have in Vancouver too, it's called SkyTrain.

  • Tony

    6 years ago

    I regard the STV referendum outcome as close enough - given a two-choice option, the voters chose STV 58:42. A hugely important question for the government is why they don't accept that.

    I also take issue with the idea that STV is too hard to explain. Admittedly, it's unfamiliar, but the following short explanation is all most people need to get the conversation rolling:

    "STV is a proportional representation voting method recommended by a randomly selected Citizens' Assembly of 160 ordinary citizens. STV achieves its proportionality by pooling candidates from 2-7 geographically adjacent ridings and electing any that have their fair share of the voters' support. Each voter indicates their preferences (1,2,3,etc) for as many candidates as they'd be willing to have represent them. In the vote counting process, candidates who get the needed support are declared elected. If none of the remaining candidates have enough votes, the one with the least support is dropped and those ballots transferred to the next listed choices. This repeats until all the seats are filled."

    Sure I've avoided a technical discussion of exactly how the fractional votes are counted, but the key features and behaviours are fully contained in the brief explanation above. If anyone needs to know more, there are plenty of resources available, and I'm happy to discuss the details.

    I agree that there's far more that we can do to encourage direct democracy, but I see passing STV as being far more helpful to that broader cause than rejecting STV, which would send the message that voters are content with the current situation. None of the other proposed reforms are any more difficult with STV in place; on the contrary, if it passes, I expect we will have better and more responsive representatives in place who will listen to calls to further improve our legislative processes.

  • rotlin

    6 years ago

    With STV it hopefully would be possible to break
    Duverger's law.
    Essentially the law states that a first-past-the-post election system
    leads to a two-party system. It's not an absolute law but it claims FPTP
    tends to to delay the emergence of a new political force, and accelerate the elimination of a weakening force.

    You can see that here in BC where the voters are mostly polarized between the NDP and the Liberals. Or with our southern neighbours with the Democrats and the Republicans. Canada's federal level is a bit of an aberration with 4 main poitical partys but the BQ is a regional one and Quebec is a duopoly. Any vote for other than the two main contendors is a "wasted vote".

    One thing about STV that didn't get much publicity is that a form of
    it was used in the 1952 and 1953 BC provincial elections.

    Alternative Voting

    That was the election where after years of either Liberal or Conservative governments a former Conservative member, William Andrew Cecil (W.A.C.) Bennet, running for the Social Credit Party won a minority government as they were the
    second choice for many people voting for the CCF (forerunner of the NDP).
    In the 1953 BC election the socreds won a majority and BC then went back
    to FPTP for elections.

  • Tony

    6 years ago

    There seems to be some confusion about what we used to have in BC in 1952 & 1953. In fact, it wasn't STV but the Alternative Vote (essentially the same as Instant Runoff Voting) - you could express preferences, but there was only one seat up for grabs, so there was no proportionality. In multi-member ridings, each voter received multiple ballots - one for each seat - so the same set of voters tended to control all the seats; under STV, voters would only get to cast one vote for all the seats.

  • herbie

    6 years ago

    We held a plebescite on STV and a majority said yes to it. It didn't get implemented as it was held to impossible rules and poorly explained. That amounted to democracy denied.
    Implement it, now. No need for discussion or re-voting.

  • skeptikool

    6 years ago

    herbie,

    Quote:
    Implement it, now. No need for discussion or re-voting.

    I agree. There was also breaking of the rules - cheating, if you will.

  • Birch

    6 years ago

    I'm glad someone out there has at least peripherally brought STV back into the public eye. We SHOULD try again.

    However, despite the merits of the system proposed by the Citizens' Assembly, the comments about its being impossible to explain properly themselves explain the failure of its adoption.

    Any change to the voting system has to be reasonably clear and must lead to a transparent method or it simply won't fly. The proposed system deserved to fail because it wasn't clear and it certainly didn't seem like its implementation would lead to transparent practice. (This from someone who voted for it.)

  • Wilf Day

    6 years ago

    Since the general public in Canada favours PR by something like 71% or 62%, depending which poll you read, and BC-STV had the additional virtue of having been designed by an independent Citizens' Assembly, it should have been adopted by well over 60%, if not well over 75%.

    So far, I know of three reasons why it wasn't.

    1. The lack of public information, and lack of public funding for the CA Alumni who drove all over the place at their own cost (not even getting mileage) to explain what they had done.

    2. The uncertainty about district size. Those concerned about full representation of voters for smaller parties were worried that most districts might be 5-MLAs or smaller, which give Irish Republic governments a serious large-party bonus, and cause the same "false majority" governments we're trying to get away from. Meanwhile, those concerned about local representation in more remote districts were worried they might be swamped in a 7-MLA district. This will now be clear before the next referendum.

    3. Many groups like the BC Federation of Labour, lots of New Democrats and Greens, and others, were taken by surprise, and jumped to conclusions that BC-STV was an anti-party system, which some of its over-zealous supporters also claimed. Actually it features the Tasmanian ballot, a key measure to make it more party-friendly. And in Northern Ireland, even without the Tasmanian ballot, it's never called an anti-party system. It's just called PR. Before the next referendum, people will have lots of time to find out more.

  • Chris H

    6 years ago

    Tony: "STV is a proportional representation voting method...."

    That is a lie. There is no mechanism in STV to ensure proportional representation. It tends more that way on average than FPTP, but no one should be calling STV proportional representation because it is not.

  • mojo

    6 years ago

    Opportunities like the Citizens Assembly are precisely what we need to re-engage people in democracy, except for one thing - it needs to have teeth.

    Why put 100 random citizens together for a year of learning from the experts to then have it put to a vote by the rest of the public that has to pick up bits and pieces of the whole story!? Surely, we should entrust bodies like the Citizens Assembly to represent the best wishes of the entire group - as well as any electoral referendum would - being as it was a random collection across BC communities. In fact it is likely to be more representative of BCers wants from just those who actually make it to the poles.

    I think the true shift in our democracy will come - and must come - via true devolution of important democratic powers to independant citizens groups. One example where this has proven successful is The Participatory Budget of Porto Alegre in Brazil, which truely devolves local budget decisions to the community. This process has been found to deliver unexpected benefits to local democracy in Porto Alegre, including a tremendous increase in the involvement in democracy by the poor. Credit is thought to be given to the unexpectedly powerful force such participatory democratic opportunites have in educating the normal citizen about democracy. In addition, there has been a measured increase in the citizens belief and involvement in democracy both locally and nationally.

    For more info on Participatory Democratic models see:

    http://fcis.oise.utoronto.ca/~daniel_schugurensky/lclp/lclp_home.html

    For WIKI discussion on improving democracy in Canada see:

    http://www.lobbygov.org

  • David Huntley

    6 years ago

    The argument about district size (technically district magnitude) is phony. It is similar to the argument that STV is not a strictly proportional representation system (which is true - but no practical system is exactly proportional). The proper question is whether or not BC-STV is better than the system we have now, and the answer is clearly yes. Even a 2-member riding is an improvement over our present system. If one considers the Burnaby North and Burnaby Willingdon ridings as an example, one finds that in the 2005 election they both returned Liberal MLAs with very small majorities. Had they been combined into a 2-member riding with BC-STV, we would have had one Liberal and one NDP elected. This result would have been a much better representation of the voters wishes than the one we got.
    One does, however, need a district magnitude of 5 or more to have a reasonable chance for election of an independent or a candidate from a small to medium-sized party. This is why the choice of districts will feature a compromise between wanting large district magnitudes to get proportional representation and a desire to maintain local representation in large remote regions. This is why the Citizens' Assembly recommended 2 MLAs for ridings in large remote regions, 7 MLAs for urban ridings with high population densities, and other numbers in between.

    I am having difficulty with the comment that "Those concerned about full representation of voters for smaller parties were worried that most districts might be 5-MLAs or smaller, which give Irish Republic governments a serious large-party bonus, and cause the same "false majority" governments we're trying to get away from." In the 2001 BC election the Liberals got 97% of the MLAs with 57% of the vote, a difference of 40%. In the 2005 election the Liberals got 58% of the MLAs with 46% of the votes a difference of 12%, and the Green party got 0 MLAs with 9 % of the votes. These last differences are not unusual. Compare these with the results of the 15 Irish elections between 1951 and 1997 in which the largest difference was 7% and a typical difference was 3% or less. The Labour party typically received 10% of the vote, and in all but one of the 15 elections the % of seats obtained was less than 1% different than the % of votes. The two larger parties did get more seats than votes, on a percentage basis, the differences being typically 1-3 %, and at the expense of the parties that gained less than 5% of the vote, and the independent candidates. Note that both larger parties gained. This example shows clearly that STV gives a result much closer to proportional representation than our present system.

  • Tony

    6 years ago

    Tony: "STV is a proportional representation voting method...."

    Chris H: "That is a lie. There is no mechanism in STV to ensure proportional representation. It tends more that way on average than FPTP, but no one should be calling STV proportional representation because it is not."

    It's not a lie - STV is widely regarded as one of the class of proportional representation systems. See for example Accurate Democracy (accuratedemocracy.com), wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote), the Irish government's website (http://oasis.gov.ie/government_in_ireland/elections/proportional_representation.html?la=en), the Electoral Council of Australia (http://www.eca.gov.au/systems/proportional/proportion_rep.htm), the ACE Project (http://www.aceproject.org/main/english/bd/bda01d.htm), and the Electoral Reform Society (http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/votingsystems/systems3.htm) for starters.

    STV has no mechanism for explicitly assessing a party vote because its focus is on individual candidates, but to the extent that voters make party affiliation an important component of their decision, it is proportional in each district to a resolution of 1/number of seats. Over a larger aggregation of districts, it tends to be even more proportional because individual parties tend to have more or fewer votes than needed to win seats in individual districts and these differences balance out.

    In the Demochoice virtual federal election (http://demochoice.ca) which I coordinate, we have just assessed the results of the first 750 votes - provincewide, no party is winning more than 1 seat more or less than they'd expect on the basis of their share of the popular vote as expressed by first preferences on ballots. Since there are 38 full seats in the Demochoice simulation, this means that no party is winning more than about 3% more or less than they 'deserve' (keeping in mind that STV doesn't actually pay attention to party labels directly). With a resolution of 1/38, you couldn't do better than this with any other kind of PR system.

    Incidentally, any PR system that allocates equal voting power in the legislature to each seat won can be accused of not being 'perfectly' proportional - the resolution will be 1/# of seats.

    STV balances proportionality against two other key values: local representation and voter choice of the candidate. It's possible to come up with party list systems that offer some of this, but it's also possible to add a regional layer to STV to increase province- or nation-wide proportionality, so I stand by my original claim.

    In any case, given a straight choice between FPTP and STV on the grounds of proportionality, there's simply no contest.

  • circa4780

    6 years ago

    "The Other Special Relationship"

    Obviously, the US is acutely aware of the fact that (again to use Trudeau's Sleeping With the Elephant analogy) Canada is sneaking out after bedtime, so to speak, to fraternise and schmooze with the other big-shot-boys, in hopes for some “counterweight” to its dependency on the US. You'd think Canada would have learned its lesson (like so many abused women have been forced to do) and stop playing out of its league in the games of the big-boys who are only out to satisfy their base desires (in this case, money. Not the other. I know what you were thinking.), and look seriously at who we are rather than riding on the shirttails of the powerful.

    I think the first thing we must do is realise how Canada truly does parallel the historical plight of women under the financial power dynamics of men. (This is not meant to be derogatory to males, rather, it is only meant to regurgitate a particular rendition of history, by analogy.)

    One way women were able to gain a foothold in autonomy was by simply asserting it, along with finding (what were at first only a few) male advocates in the cause. I say “advocates” because there needs to be a distinction between being an advocate and being dependent financially.

    I dare say that very few women have helped gain autonomy for 51% of the population by simply attaching themselves to powerful men. It may give/have given them a greater degree autonomy individually, but it did not free females from male financial dominance or control, since that is the issue in the discussion with China and trade with the US.

    Canada needs to realign herself with numerous advocates worldwide; not attach herself to them and become dependant primarily on any in particular. A large part of ability to break away lies in her capacity to take another look at herself in the mirror, and to recognise her valuable attributes and abilities.

    She needs to maintain professional affiliations with numerous supporters, not engage in sleazy relationships with a few big players, at least if she wants to avoid being put into a nasty power dynamic - that she can only lose if she plays.

  • Chris H

    6 years ago

    Tony, if you consider STV proportional representation because it tends to give more proportionality than FPTP, can I consider FPTP to be proportional representation because it tends more towards proportionality than another system of electing candidates? I have no problem with proponents of STV telling what they like about it, but please don't tell blantant lies about it. Since STV has no mechanism to ensure proportionality, and could easily produce a less proportional result than our last provincial election, your flogging STV as PR is misleading at best.

  • Bailey

    6 years ago

    Whoever you vote for you get a rich white guy, or a wannabe.

    Whatever system you use to count yer votes you get a fat rich guy.

    In fact, the greatest problem we have in the Western Democracies is the predomninence of the rich in the systems. They screw with production, they screw with consumption, they really screw with conservation. They're corrupt, ignorant, greedy, stupid. They tend to be overrepresented with sociopaths and psychopaths, because those qualities are great assets if you want to accumulate money. You know, ruthlessness and lack of conscience and all that. Plus the fact that you can't lock up a rich guy, even if he's obviously crackers, or obviously crooked.

    We could make great strides toward true civilization if we just cook and eat everyone with more than, say, a billion dollars.

    I mean, the mere posession of a thousand million dollars in a world where thousands of children are dying for want of three bucks worth of food and medicine seems a good argument in favour of a fricasee.

    How's this for an idea? A nice homey recipe book like ladies church groups make so well, with everybody's best recipe ideas, and a slight change in the hunting regulations, and Bob's yer uncle.

    Cull the herd, improve the breed. Ya think?

  • circa4780

    6 years ago

    I take it neither you nor your dad was/is "a rich white guy, or a wannabe [rich guy]". My next guess is that your mom falls in the non-existent rich person too. I'd be willing to guess that you are not even looking forward to a distant inheritance. I bet you're not fat, either.

    Just wondering if we would kill for food the new rich lotto winners, especially any who dare to run for office?

    BTW I can also bet that you are not (or at least do not see yourself as) "corrupt, ignorant, greedy, stupid".

    Funnies aside, I agree with you in a fundamental way, though.

    We are inherently selfish as human beings. You're right, for those who are "in, the mere posession of a thousand million dollars in a world where thousands of children are dying for want of three bucks worth of food and medicine", this is a serious problem.

    Looking at the world through others' eyes might just paint a different picture.

    But I doubt it. We all, no matter how good we are, are so capable of the flaw of our ability to justify.

    How many hours should we sleep at night before we get up to tend to the needs of starving people on the other side of the planet? At what point should we feel guilty? When we are without a sustainable car? With simply bare sustenance?

    I think as inherently selfish people we will allot our "extras" to those less fortunate, and keep the first mainstay for ourselves. For example, do we ever give up to others our most prized grocery shopping possessions (whatever our fancy - T-bone, shrimp, salmon, whatever our craving may be) and put it in the food bank coffers? Usually we, if we bother or can afford to, put in the extras. Not give the very thing that we would like to have - regardless of the expense or non-expense of it.

    Nothing personal. It's just our "nature".

  • Step easy

    6 years ago

    Bailey,
    I appreciate your frustration. When we look at some of the examples you provide it is enough to make anyone crazy with the sense of injustice.

    circa4780,
    Your comments are both humane and I believe very forward thinking.

    the real problem is, knowing these things, discussing them is one thing........but what in all honesty does one individual do about it?

    I've come to the conclusion that it all starts with the individual, carrying out one small act at a time. As an example, providing socks to homeless people. So simple, and yet who knows where it may lead to?

    My ears are always open to new ideas.

  • Tony

    6 years ago

    Chris,

    Check out this paper by Arend Lijphart, who wrote Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999.

    http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/pubs/pops/pop34/c04.pdf

    It contains a table showing the disproportionality index for these countries. Note that the two STV countries come in at 5th and 13th on this list, while Canada is 26th. Ireland's score of 3.45 is roughly a quarter of Canada's score of 11.72, and both Ireland and Malta are below the scores of 5 of 16 PR countries, and Malta in particular has a very low score. Incidentally, the measure for the STV elections of the Australian Senate is 4.15%, also typical of PR systems. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, ...

    Netherlands 1.30 - PR
    Denmark 1.83 - PR
    Sweden 2.09 - PR
    Israel 2.27 1.75 PR/(PM)
    Malta 2.36 - PR-STV
    Austria 2.47 - PR
    Germany 2.52 2.58 PR
    Switzerland 2.53 - PR
    Finland 2.93 - PR
    Belgium 3.24 3.23 PR
    Italy 3.25 3.49 PR
    Luxembourg 3.26 - PR
    Ireland 3.45 - PR-STV
    Portugal 4.04 - PR
    Iceland 4.25 - PR
    Norway 4.93 - PR
    Japan 5.03 5.30 SNTV
    Greece 8.08 - PR
    Spain 8.15 - PR
    Australia 9.26 9.57 AV
    Papua New Guinea 10.06 - Plur.
    United Kingdom 10.33 - Plur.
    Colombia 10.62 3.38 PR/Pres
    New Zealand 11.11 - Plur
    India 11.38 12.37 Plur
    Canada 11.72 - Plur

    If you want to claim that FPTP is more proportional than some other system, be my guest. I just don't know of any other democratic system that produces a less proportional result.

    Finally, I really think you should justify your claim that STV could easily produce a less proportional result than our last provincial election - I know of no STV election in history that has produced a 12% bonus for the winning party. Feel free to enlighten me.

  • seanorr

    6 years ago

    Big Ideas?

    Divestment. Divest in the illegal Israeli occupation, the illegal war on Iraq. SNC Lavalin sells bullets to Iraq, and most BC pension plans invest in SNC Lavalin.

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