Hyer, we’ll remember, quit the New Democrat caucus back in April, not long after Thomas Mulcair won leadership. Hyer told CBC at the time that his decision was based on his annoyance at how parties control MPs, citing the vote on the long-gun registry specifically. Hyer voted in favour of the government’s legislation that effectively killed the registry – a position that diametrically opposed much of the rest of the NDP. Shortly before his defection, Hyer was also left off the shadow cabinet.
On Tuesday, Hyer took the opportunity to air some of his grievances to Mayrand. During the question-and-answer portion of the lunch, he stood up and said this:
My frist thought is the vast majority of democracies in the world have some kind of proportional representation and very, very few have our antiquated system of first-past-the-post – the only ones I’m aware of … are Great Britain, the United States, Canada, India and that bastion of democracy, Zimbabwe. So if Canadians had really gotten what they’d voted for, instead of the false majority we have now, with less than 40 per cent of the vote, we would have 122 Conservatives. Instead of 34 Liberals, we’d have 58 Liberals in the House of Commons. We would have 96 NDP instead of 103 and, most egregious of all, is instead of one Green, we would have 12 Greens in the House of Commons. So people aren’t getting what they voted for, and I can see why after you voted for either a member or a party for either years or decades, you’d give up and decide not to vote anymore.
The second concern that I have is it’s not widely known that from Confederation in 1867 until the 1970s, only the name of the candidate was on the ballot. The voters actually know who the candidate was, if they represented a party, they had to know that instead of, ‘Well, my granddad voted for the purple party, I guess I’ll vote for the purple party’. And since the 70s, when we added the name of the parties to the ballot, we gave control to the party leader in that they sign our nomination papers, and if we don’t behave, they’d threaten to not sign our nomination papers. So, I hope that in your ongoing reports and your proactivity, which I’m pleased to see, you’ll seriously consider addressing both these issues. Because instead of rearranging and tinkering deck chairs on the Titanic, I hope we deal with the really fundamental issues as to why Canadians feel disengaged.
Mayrand responded:
Good points. It’s interesting, there’s often discussion about proportional representation maybe as a solution for better representation and more civic engagement on the part of citizens. There is some evidence, but it’s not overwhelming, that it would affect civic engagement. That’s one thing. The other thing is that in Canada, we’ve had several attempts to change the system, essentially at the provincial level. There was a referendum – two referendums [sic], in fact – in British Columbia in the last decade. There was one in Ontario, and there was one I believe in P.E.I. at some point in the last few years. And all of those referendum [sic] were defeated. So there’s something there.
It’s interesting also when you look at how those referenda were run, the political parties, which play a key role in reforming our systems, did not advocate changes, and that’s a fundamental dilemma we have. It’s been often left to electoral bodies to explain the change. Well, try to change something without advocating it, preserving your independence and impartiality. Crossing that line is very easy, and very risky… So, I think it has to come from the citizens themselves, that’s one of my messages I give to youth. We also expect that things will be taken care of by government, elected officials, or some other solution. Democracy belongs to citizens. Citizens have to re-appropriate their democracy – it’s the only way that they will be listened to.
Source: iPolitics
Author: Colin Horgan
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