Editor:
Re: Voters have an opportunity to modernize our democracy, Community Comment, July 5
ML Burke appears to be confused with respect to what Ontario voters "came away with." Moreover, perhaps she ought to rethink her idea of what democracy is and how it is obtained and protected.
In Ontario, as she states, "60 per cent ... came away empty handed." Rather than what she suggests, my view is that those 60 per-centers plus the 40 per-centers "came away" with more money in their pockets due to Doug Ford's orders to cut the fat out of the provincial budget and return some semblance of sanity to the provincial public service by getting rid of the unnecessary individuals and frills entrenched by the spendthrift Liberals better known as socialists.
Attempting to connect her favourite proportional representation with democracy is not only a farce but also an insult to those who fought for Canada's democracy. For Burke's edification, democracy is defined as being "a system of government by the whole population, usually through elected representatives."
Regardless of the system in use, that is what an election determines. To suggest "the current system ... is outdated and under siege" is more than merely being facetious, it is demeaning. How, one wonders, is the very act of voting for a representative "outdated and under siege."
It is only the political losers who attempt to find fault with the current first past the post system and demand a switch to proportional representation.
Granted, with the first past the post method there can be, and often are, majority governments elected by a minority of the total but that in and of itself is not a crime, nor is it a fault of the system; what it means is the majority of voters opted to support a different party of which there were too few to gain the majority such as was the case in Ontario but not the case currently in BC where the socialist three-member tail is wagging the dog and in so doing is creating a mess. Twice previously, B.C. has said a resounding no to proportional representation and hopefully will again.
As to the poor turnout at election time, perhaps if the competing political parties presented reasonable, well-thought-out programs to the electorate that engaged more people, then more people would turn out to vote.
As it is, most elections in this country are poor cousins of common sense and elicit about as much thought as which pair of socks one ought to wear on any given day.
SM Cruickshank
