I was reading the Globe and Mail's article announcing that the New Brunswick primer is going to work toward having a referendum on proportional representation. Good news, that. But then I found this in the article: Other provinces are presently at various stages of electoral reform, with British Columbia and Prince Edward Island having voted to reject versions of proportional representation. This is actually untrue. In BC most people voted for it, but just because a majority voted for the system, doesn't mean to the BC government that they should get it. They needed to get over 60% ...

Canada wasn't won by war or revolution. Rather, by evolution. Canada was negotiated in to existence. Even confederation itself was slid in on champaign. But you can argue that Canada wasn't independent then. It was slow, gradual steps. And no one had to die. Yay Canada. This is not always the case with politics. Here is a selection of political phases over the past few thousand years. First was the emporers and kings. Since ancient Mesopotamia (the Bablyon Empire), empire building has been all the rage, and lasted until the 20th century. Pretty soon after that we realized that ...

I've gone off on a few rants about why Proportional Representation will fix all our problems, do our laundry, and even clean our windows. I'm not sure if it will make you breakfast in bed, however. In fact, it probably won't. I'll go on the record to say that. But, what is it? We use a system called "first past the post", aka winner takes all. It works like this. Canada is divided up in to over 300 "ridings". Each riding is over 100 000 people big. So large cities like Calgary have several ridings in them, whereas small communities have several villages and townships in one riding. ...

In 2004, a half million Canadians voted for the Green Party of Canada, but not one Green MP was elected. In the same election, half a million people in Atlantic Canada voted for the Liberal Party of Canada, and elected 22 Liberal MPs. This is made possible because in Canada we use the "First Past The Post" voting system. In 1984 the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada got 50% of the votes of Canadians, yet had 75% of the members of Parliament. They got a lot more power than Canadians actually wanted to give them. In 1993 the Liberal Party of Canada got 42% of the vote, yet still ...

A friend asked me if I'm a Liberal or a Conservative. I said, "No." I don't toe the line of the Liberal Party of Canada or the Conservative Party of Canada. And I don't vote for either. There are between 4 and 5 large political parties in Canada: The Liberal, Conservatives, NDP, the Bloc Quebecois, and the Green Party. However, the Bloc is questionable, since it's not a national party; you can only vote for it in Quebec, the other 4 have people running in every riding across Canada. What is the difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives? Not as much as you might think. ...