Dear Lowell Green

Ottawa's dearly beloved Lowell Green, (I say that wholeheartedly) has had many targets over the years, many of which can be summed up in the following categories: the tree-hugging, thug-hugging 'Left', mobile phone callers, and youth.

Seriously though, Lowell has been talking a lot lately on the referendum. Most of his phone-in callers know more about the subject than he does. A few things I've noticed over the past few days from listening to the show, 9am to 12pm EST:

1. Elected vs. selected

In the Elections Ontario pamphlet included with your election registration card it referes to list MPPs as being "elected" if a party needs a top-up of members to ensure proportionality. Lowell says it's equivalent to a snow job and insurrection of the highest order by Elections Ontario to say that these people will be "elected" since they are not exactly chosen by the people directly.

I personally don't see this being such a big deal. Lowell is latching onto this very miniscule point of symantics and blowing it out of proportion to try and show some sort of non-existent conspiracy theory.

2. Proportional representation vs. MMP

Lowell also loves to confuse the issue by saying that many of the countries with PR are unstable (yesterday it was Belgium) and that proponents of MMP list all of the countries that have a form of a PR system but not necessarily MMP. This for Lowell is also grounds for a conspiracy theory. The example of Belgium is good though, if you're comparing it to another jurisdiction that is split 50/50 along cultural lines... Ontario is not this.

3. Small parties of the Left will spring up everywhere and hold us all captive! More commies!

Lowell has also claimed that small parties or one-interest parties will arise and elected all kinds of members to Queen's Park to turn Ontario into a big lefty love-in. That is why the Ontario Citizens' Assmebly (OCA) implemented a 3% vote minimum for a party to enter Queen's Park. If we look at 2003's election results we see that under MMP there would still only be the same three traditional parties: Liberal, PC, and NDP. The GPO only got 2.8% of the vote.

4. How the OCA was formed.

One of Lowell's listener's said he was suspicious when he was selected to be on the OCA but after filling out a questionnaire was later told he was no longer needed. Instead of saying he would find out the answer he decided it would be much more fruitful to get carried away in speculation and lost in blissfully pure ignorance. The OCA chose electors from the list by random, one woman and one man from each riding in Ontario. Check out the answer here. If you still have questions then phone 1.888.ONT.VOTE.

Mini-MMP boot camp: Questions on List Members

List candidates are nominated by their party, just like the riding candidates. They get elected, or not, depending on their ability to attract votes to their party, just like the riding candidates. They are accountable to the people who elected them, just like the riding MPPs.

List MPPs have the same duties and responsibilities as riding MPPs. Most of them will be opening constituency offices where they live in order to serve their constituents, just like the riding MPPs.

In places that use MMP, voters do not distinguish between riding and list MPPs. The list MPPs are there specifically to represent the 60% of us who are not lucky enough to vote for winning candidates in our riding and who are currently unrepresented and ignored in our Legislature.

Studies show that almost all of us, even in rural ridings, vote for a party, not for a candidate. Some people will claim that they are voting for "good old Dave" (or good old Belinda), but when good old Dave switches parties for a cabinet post, suddenly he is the worst kind of traitor.

There is nothing undemocratic about electing people from party lists. Most major industrial democracies, including Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Holland, Austria, and Spain, elect ALL their MPs from party lists. These countries persist in believing that they are democracies, and that their members of Parliament are democratically elected.

The real difference is that, under MPP, every voter will have a vote that actually helps to elect somebody, every time, unlike our current system under which most of us vote for people who do not get elected, and we end up with a government that most of us voted against.

Under our current system, we get to vote only for the local candidate in our riding. Under MPP, every voter will have two votes, one to elect our riding MPP as we have always done, and a second vote for a political party, that will allow voters to pass judgment on ALL the other candidates, as well as the party leaders, platforms, and records.

List seats are not safe seats. With only 30% list seats in the Legislature, the largest party will likely not win any list seats at all. Ridings, on the other hand, are mostly safe seats. Most of us already know who will be elected in our riding NOW, before the votes are even cast.

Andrew Coyne and McGuintoryism

To paraphrase:

McGuintoryism-def. n. the practice of Ontario Conservatives and Liberals not swaying too far from the centre so as to keep as many of the same voters as possible resulting in vicious partisan bickering.

National Post columnist Andrew Coyne wrote an article on the leaders' debate as well as the referendum on electoral reform. On the latter, he says that Conservatives should embrace the MMP system since the system would encourage a wider debate due to the fact that no party could hope to get a huge "payoff" by winning 70% of the seats whilst polling at 38%. All parties would be able to take more risks in terms of policy.

Conservatives, like all parties, could have a constant impact on policy instead of waiting for the promised land of a Harris-style majority government to make whole-sale change.

Leaders' debate in October 2015

Although the referendum we'll be voting in on 10th October will be of historic and critical importance it's interesting to ponder its repercussions on the leaders' debates.
Currently, leaders' debates consist of leaders who have representation at Queen's Park. Supposing this remains the same, how would the debate change after four years of an MMP-elected Parliament? I think it would change in a couple of ways:

1. First, although tonight's debate was somewhat civil and easier to follow that other debates of late, traditionally these debates have been nasty, noisy, and generally uncivil. I believe that under MMP the leaders would see an advantage in being more civil and gentlemanly with each other because they realise they have to co-operate with each other after the election. Tory wouldn't rail against McGuinty because he would know that in a minority situation he would want McGuinty to pass some of his policies. Hampton would be slow to paint Tory in too bad a light since he may need his help on several bills in the subsequent Parliament.

2. Green Party leader Frank de Jong would be added to the equation if his party obtained the necessary 3% threshold and elected MPPs. How would the debate change with him in the fray? I think we would have definitely heard about the MMP referendum at least once or twice. None of the other leaders brought up the referendum in the debate but I somehow suspect de Jong would have seeing that it is of capital importance to the future of democracy in Ontario as well as for the future of the Greens. De Jong held his own parallel debate here.

Do only left wing groups support MMP?

Rick Anderson, Preston Manning's right-hand man during the Reform Party years, has been a long-time supporter of MMP (he was at the Ottawa chapter's opening in the Spring).
The Reform Party would have greatly benefited from MMP in its various elections gaining seats in Ontario and elsewhere.

Fair Vote Ontario Campaign

Another Vote for MMP video.

yourbigdecision.com