Voting system failing us

Another election, producing another fake-majority majority government most of the people do not want, and conducted a year before it was mandated, by law.

Having lived in a country for more than twenty years where they have had Proportional style of government for decades, and then being told daily that Canada is a democracy is becoming a bit of a challenge.

It’s called parliamentary democracy, produced by our colonial electoral system, and the party or coalition with the greatest number of elected Members form the government, usually representing only a minority of the people.

That is very different from the true democratic governments they have in Scandinavian and European countries, where the political power is vested and exercised by the people directly or indirectly through the elected Members of government.

The colonial system continues to produce results that border the bizarre, north and south of the Canada-US border, while truly democratic systems are more fair and inclusive, promoting productivity and long-term stability.

While voting is a democratic function, it does not make a county a democracy.

The people vote in elections in Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia, but none of those countries are by any measure democratic.

There is more than one good reason for getting rid of this destructive and un-democratic FPTP electoral system beginning with the ballot that makes voting extremely challenging and unfair, because voters are forced to chose between party or candidate.

While the US and Canada both are using the same colonial system, the are some very significantly differences between how it is being administered in the two countries.

The US has had a two-party system for a long time, while Canada has become a very dysfunctional multi-party system, that continues to erode any semblance of democracy.

In the US the Senators are elected, and many of them are long-term career politicians with a wealth of political experience, well prepared to give ‘sober second thought’ to any and all legislation proposed by the Representatives.

In Canada the Senators are randomly appointed by the incumbent government, and many of them have very little if any political experience.

Not only are they poorly qualified to vote, it’s also tempting to suggest that not being elected by the people they should not be able to vote on any proposed legislation as the people never gave them a mandate to make decisions on their behalf.

Trump’s incessant and unprofessional tirades on Twitter, regularly ridiculing people and calling soldiers suckers and losers, has put a dark cloud over the Office of The Presidency of the United States.

Trudeau will be remembered as having lied about giving the people a Proportional ballot, the SNC Lavalin corruption, millions given to the Aga Khan, the WE scandal that is being unravelled, and billions of dollars spent and committed to fight that COVID-19 virus, without applying caution and due diligence. 

Redacting documents that should be readily available to all elected Members, using taxpayers hard earned money to finance their elections, proroguing Parliament instead of answering questions, buying and building massive multi billion-dollar infrastructures like pipelines, dams, and LNG plants without public input and debate is not acceptable.

Many of these decisions were not democratic, consensus-based decisions, they were brokered by our government leaders, special interests and lobby groups in the Prime Ministers Office.

Keeping that destructive and divisive FPTP colonial political system is leaving the doors wide-open for another Trump – another Trudeau.

Andy Thomsen, Kelowna