Andrew Coyne was on the At Issue Panel claiming once again that world peace would break out if only we had a proportional system of election. Okay, he only claimed that parliament would be more functional. The only semi-rational argument here is that the incentive to seek a majority is removed, encouraging stronger levels of cooperation. Coyne of course ignores the fact that no matter what electoral system is in place, a relatively even level of support between the two major parties combined with around 10% of the electorate electing a politically inert separatist party is going to cause parliamentary difficulties. Belgium which uses a form of PR (albeit a complicated one), has suffered political crises of a similar nature because of the strong support for a Flemish separatist party. However, I will indulge Mr. Coyne's fantasy and present a seat projection for the current polling. I have assumed that the Constitutional provisions for provincial-based seats has meant a province by province PR division. I've left the North as is.
Here's the federal picture:
CPC 103
LPC 100
NDP 51
BQ 28
GPC 26
Now isn't that refreshingly stable. There's no chance the Liberals would want to bring down a parliament with a commanding 3 seat Conservative plurality. Oh and look, natural coalition partners for the Tories have magically emerged. Yes, PR has solved all of our problems. Thanks, Andrew Coyne.
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3 comments:
A system like this would ensure that parties learn to work together and form coalitions, which would indeed be more stable.
26 seats for the Green party.
LMAO...........
I don't really see how parties would "learn" to work together more under that system than the current one.
Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems to me they'd be just as likely to learn to work together under the current system as under that one.
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