From what I understand, a coalition between the Liberals and the NDP (and more parties if the libs have that poor of a performance), where the Liberals aren't really strong electorally speaking is probably how we would get PR federally (right?).

How do we do it provincially though? Ontario seems to be moving towards that direction, with opinion polls being in favor of PR, and the Liberals and the NDP being wiped out due to a lack of PR.

What about the other provinces? Eby's being a little bitch in BC about this. Same goes with the Alberta NDP. There is no strong third party with enough leverage in either of these provinces to ram this demand through using a coalition. Not so familiar with the politics of other provinces and territories, so no idea what the status there looks like.

What do you think we should do instead? Fairvote's "email a sternly worded letter to your MP/MLA" sounds woefully ineffective.

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[–] Foxer@lemmy.ca -3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Proportional representation is a bad idea, and in every case where it's been examined on a provincial level when the voters take a long hard look they walk away from it

Would be better for sure to look at the reasons why you want it and then find other ways to achieve that which would be more acceptable to the public. If the public isn't on board then you're going to have a tough time making it happen and there's been nothing to stop someone in the future from going back to first past the post

And you had a coalition between the liberals and NDP for 4 years, and that didn't help.

[–] timbyte@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

You're being disingenuous saying voters walk away every time. There are over half a dozen different ways of implementing PR. Show me an example for each type of PR where the voters walked away.

Also, out of the 74 democratic countries in the world, 2/3rds of them use some type of PR voting, so how about you show the reasons why these Canadian voters walked away from PR when 2/3rds of the world's democracies have it and want it.

[–] Foxer@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 hours ago

There's nothing disingenuous about it, voters walked away from it every time. That's entirely a fact and you can do your own research on the various models that were proposed, I'm not here to compile a book for you. It's a matter of public record, these were voted on. We've seen mixed proportional proportional and a few others.

And every flavor that gets proposed gets shot down. British Columbia itself alone had three freaking referendums on it and launched a citizens committee to study it before one of them and it still got shot down

When people take a look at it they don't like it. It's a bad idea

And who cares how many other countries use pR? Israel's one of them and they've been constantly criticized as having a horrible government. PR is a crappy system

But it's an especially crappy system for a country as large and as diverse as ours is. The problems with PR are minimized when you have a smaller more homogeneous population. You have a population like ours it Magnifies all of the problems with PR 100 fold

As for the reasons why Canadians walked away from it it doesn't really matter. The records are there and you can look it up if you want but the fact is they did walk away from it. Ontario, the Atlantic provinces, british Columbia, all toll groups that represent more than half of our population and they all shot it down some of them multiple times

You sold yourself on the idea that it's good and you're not looking at the problems that come along with it. But when people give it serious consideration they see those problems and they say no

The best you would ever sell in Canada is some form of limited proportional representation where the majority of the MPS are elected first pass the post but then a small number of seats are awarded to each party based on their percentage of vote to try and balance things a little bit and even that's a bad idea. But it's an idea that at least some people might accept. But it doesn't actually address any of the issues people who support PR reportedly claim to care about

There are other ways to improve representation in our democracy that would be effective. PR is not one of them

[–] wraekscadu@vargar.org 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Proportional representation is a bad idea, and in every case where it's been examined on a provincial level when the voters take a long hard look they walk away from it

Won't present the case for PR, as I don't think I can make a better case than the ones already presented by other people. Don't have the energy for it.

As for public support, 68% support it nationally according to an EKOS poll conducted in 2025.

I know this isn't a provincial poll as you stated, but still. Also, if other important bills can pass without majority support of the electorate, why not PR? If we agree that the current FPTP system is fair, then why can't reform passed through the same system be considered "fair"?

Would be better for sure to look at the reasons why you want it

I don't to be forced to vote strategically.
I don't want to be totally unrepresented in parliament and my LA.
I don't want a government that DOES NOT have majority support of the electorate passing laws as if it has majority support.

And you had a coalition between the liberals and NDP for 4 years, and that didn't help.

True, sadly. It is also true that the NDP wasn't that strong, and the Liberals weren't that weak.

A precondition for this is a weak liberals, where an annoying snap election ends up drawing votes to the CPC or the NDP from the Liberals. If it's the other way round, where NDP votes go to the libs, then electoral reform ain't happening.

there's been nothing to stop someone in the future from going back to first past the post

Not true. It is very very difficult for a single party to get a total majority in PR. No junior coalition partner would be stupid to roll back to FPTP.

Once PR happens, it would be very very difficult to get it rolled back.

[–] Foxer@lemmy.ca -1 points 23 hours ago

PR is not a good method and as I've said every single time it gets a solid look by the people it gets turned down. What has it been, four or five referendums now? 6?

It's not popular the moment people give it some real thought. And obviously the people of the provinces make up Canada. Even Ontario, our largest province, shot the idea down

As far as your reasoning goes as to why you want it I can understand that and I'm not saying it's invalid. But there are other ways to achieve that and to be honest proportional representation will achieve the opposite in some of those cases Proportional representation means you have no local representative and you will be totally unrepresented in parliament directly. Furthermore the Idea of pR is to create fewer majorities. Which means that you never have a government that has majority support. It's a coalition of people who don't have majority support and didn't run on a unified platform.

So by it's very nature it doesn't do what you want it to do. There are other ways to tackle some of those problems that would be better.

As to the liberals the liberals were plenty weak. The results are often however not what you thought they would be. Very often these coalitions become about personal power and achieve wealth for their members but don't do much for Canada or the country they serve. Jack meet his pension and a bunch of business contacts, he will be very wealthy. Justin is making tens of millions of dollars with the connections he laid. Both left Canada in a mess. That is proportional representation and it's core

And I hate to break it to you but it's actually not that hard to get a majority under PR. It happens less frequently but it does happen and worse you're thinking that only one party would want to go back to first pass the post. But chances are that's not true. The liberals and conservatives could easily look at moving back to a first past the post if they don't like sharing power with people like the NDP. Or did you forget about that?

Even the block might very well be happy to work with a minority government leader to bring back first past the post considering that proportional representation would probably hurt them the most

It would be very easy for it to be rolled back, so you're not really changing anything

In short PR does not do what you want it to, and people realize that when they're forced to take a long hard look at it and make a choice. Your concerns are valid but there are other ways to tackle them. PR has been proposed on a provincial level numerous numerous times and is always shot down. It will be wiser to look at reforms that make sense and can be sold to the public