The following note was sent to the leaders of the Liberal, NDP and Green parties as well as candidates in Okanagan-Coquihalla.
The biggest issue facing Canadians in this election is not the economy, nor health care, nor the environment: it’s the Harper government, who have an amazing ability to push forward their outrageous agenda even as a minority government. If they retain such power, we’re all in trouble, but the present setup mitigates against any change.
We are in a perilous situation, requiring something extraordinary and imaginative to handle it. And what I’m seeing is same-old, same-old. This is not to impugn the motivations and talent of your candidate here, which I find quite impressive, but they are not being applied to tackle the number one problem.
So here’s an extraordinary and imaginative solution. Recognizing that the basic problem of vote-splitting applies at the riding level, the three progressive parties (Liberals, NDP, Green) agree to have one person running in each riding who will represent all three. This is intended as a temporary measure (a two-party system is not really desirable), as a way to get the system changed … the first item of business when parliament convenes would be to change the system to one of proportional representation, and once that is accomplished a new election could be called, to continue with the desired multi-party system, but under more favourable conditions. If we had proportional representation, we wouldn’t be in the fix we are now, but any government elected by the present system is not likely to introduce it.
Another election? Yes. That’s what you do in a democracy, and $300 million is a small price to pay to get away from a system that’s likely to spend multiple billions on over-priced fighter jets and ill-advised prisons. An extraordinary measure like this — or something similar — would not only get us out of the dire situation we are in now, it would prevent such a situation recurring.
It seems unlikely that the three progressive parties will get together to tackle this very serious problem. However, that is the kind of thing we need.
In the meantime we have Avaaz once again campaigning to have people vote for the candidate that they consider most likely to defeat the Conservatives in ridings where it’s close. They claim they were able to wrestle six seats away from the Conservatives in the last election by using this strategy. Personally, I find strategic voting repugnant — it’s a distortion of the democratic process — but in the present situation I don’t see any alternative.
Chris Purton
Farleigh Lake
