SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 84

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 8, 2022 02:00PM
Context: House Hansard - 84 - Jun/8/22
Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)
  • Jun/8/22 7:01:25 p.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-19 
Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for Elmwood—Transcona for a thoughtful discussion of what minority parliaments can do together. I also lament the failure to provide the disability tax benefit, as does my colleague, the member for Kitchener Centre. We expected it. It should have been in the budget and it should have been in Bill C-19. I appreciate that we have made some progress for people with type 1 diabetes, but it is not nearly enough, nor is it fast enough. The member will not be surprised that I will ask him to expand on his points about proportional representation. It is certainly timely, given the results from Ontario, where the election had the lowest voter turnout, as I understand it, in the history of that province. Barely 43% voted, which means that nearly 60% of Ontario voters did not vote. I was taken with a column in Rabble newspaper by Karl Nerenberg on all the fetishizing and coverage by the media in just looking at the polling and kind of announcing that Doug Ford was going to win before the campaign started. Does the member feel that this played a role in reducing voter turnout?
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Context: House Hansard - 84 - Jun/8/22
Mr. Daniel Blaikie
  • Jun/8/22 7:02:44 p.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-19 
Madam Speaker, I do often worry about the extent to which the publishing of polls can affect public opinion, but it is something that is accentuated in a first-past-the-post system. If there is a proportional system of some kind, then in spite of whatever polling is saying about who is going to win the most seats, people can still feel they are contributing to electing people they agree with and who are going to speak on their behalf and raise issues that are of importance to them. That effect is amplified by the voting system we have. Unfortunately, getting information about where people are at and the kind of attitude pundits have when they are predicting outcomes can affect voter turnout. I would hope that by moving toward some kind of proportional system we could diminish those effects, because people can still go and vote with confidence. I was quite disheartened by the recent comments of the Prime Minister about proportional representation and some rewriting of history in what he presented to the electorate in 2015. Perhaps someone else will want to ask me a question about that and I can elaborate a little further.
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