Should The Government Of Canada Change Canada's Electoral System?

Canadian Electoral Reforms Name: Institution: Course: Date: Why Canadian Government Should Do Electoral Reforms Introduction Canadian democracy has been relatively stable and fairly representative of the people as it is currently constituted. However, in the recent past, there have been more calls to change the electoral process to institute a more representative system which has a better reflection of the Canadian people diversity demographically. Canadian election and government structure is similar to its former colonialist, the British from whom they inherited the system although there are small differences. Though the system has been working for many years, it is not an accurate representation of the Canadian people’s needs, demands and demographic nature. For example, if the system was representative of the Canadian people demographically regarding gender, then the parliament would have 50% women to represent that half the population is women. This essay will, therefore, argue why Canadian electoral system should be changed and how it can be structured to increase fairness, equality, representation and equality of votes. Current Canadian Electoral Process at The Federal Level In Canada, the candidate who gets the most votes in a riding becomes a member of parliament in the house of commons. The party with majority members in the parliament forms the government. The leader of the ruling party becomes the prime minister and thus the leader of the country. If the system for electing the leader of the party is flawed, such a party would have a rigged in a leader who does not truly represent the will of the people. If the leader falls out of favor of the people in his/her party, he/she can be ousted. This happened with Margaret Thatcher who was knifed from within her own party in the United Kingdom with who have a similar electoral system as Canada. the Why It Should Change Though it is hard for the people who benefit from the first-past-the-post system to design and implement a new system that could potentially oust them or kill their political careers, there is need to adopt a system that represents the people’s diversity. Since the current system is designed to work on the principle of plurality of just over any percentage of votes that is above the other parties, it assumes the winner take all scenario is an accurate representation of the people. In the first-past-the-post system, it is possible to have zero representation of a certain major groups in parliament. It is possible for the system to produce only members from one gender which would make the other gender unrepresented. In this system, there is no ‘true’ fair representation of the people. This is because often parties form the government with less than 50% popularity. The liberal party won the popular vote by 39.5 % and went on to form the government. There is likely another almost 60% of the Canadians who never directly voted for Liberal Party leadership, and a new system can help harmonize the system to deliver the best representation of the people. Additionally, the prime minister is not the choice of the people but rather the choice of the party. The party delegates literally choose the leader of the country. Mostly, the party forming the government is not supported by over 50% of the voters. It just happens to have more seats in the parliament that the other parties. If the ruling party has 40% of the seats and hence nationwide support, it is obvious that the 40% is what is ruling and controlling the 60%. It also leads to underrepresentation of some people with other political affiliations. For example, in the past election, the Green Party garnered slightly over 605,000 votes which is 3.5% of the population. They, however, got a single seat in the house of commons which is 0.03%. The big parties in Canada, the Liberal Party (LP) and New Democratic Party (NDP), trounce over the other parties every election and they focus on influencing the public only to get the majority of seats in the house. The previous election the LP focused on strategic voting to form the government CITATION Bry15 \l 1033 (Breguet, 2015). They do not directly represent the will of the people, rather they focus on just winning over the other party to form the government. It is not and has never been a true representation in the legislature. The existing structure is very susceptible and vulnerable to tactical voting patterns which have continuously been exploited by the people to ensure they form the government. Proposal for a new system The electorate has been yearning for a change. The incumbent prime minister sought votes in the last elections pegging his promises that he will change the electoral system CITATION Tyl17 \l 1033 (Kustra, 2017). He favored a ranked or preferential election system to replace the first-past-the-post. In a preferential system, the voters rank their preferred choices in terms of numbers to the last one. The candidate who has majority votes typically over 50% wins. Sometimes the system fails to give an outright winner and therefore the candidate with least votes is dropped and his/her votes goes to the second preferred candidate for each vote. This is iteratively repeated till there is a winner. It is likely that Trudeau favored this system because of the positioning of his party in Canadian politics. Many people are likely to choose a liberal as their preferred second candidate and therefore using a ranked ballot system would favor the interest of the liberal party. A mixed proportional representation (MMP) or additional member system (AMS), can also be a better alternative for Canada. It is often called best of both worlds because it is a hybrid of two systems, one in which the people vote for the party and proportional allocation of seats done according to the votes cast and the first-past-the-post system. A proportional system will allocate the 338 seats of the parliament proportionally according to the popularity of each party. Scotland, New Zealand and Germany have been having variants of the mixed member proportional, and it can be the best alternative for Canada. The system is not perfectly representative, but it offers better representation in the government than the existing system. The system allows the people to vote for a candidate and party and often the people may like the party but prefer a different candidate or may like a candidate and the party they are using. In this system the voters cast two votes; one for their preferred candidate and the other for the preferred party. The new democratic party has been favoring an mixed member proportional system CITATION Tyl17 \l 1033 (Kustra, 2017). The party’s popularity determines the number of seats they get to have in the house. NDP favors this system because it relatively has widespread popularity in the c...