Home Editorials Letters LETTER: Shift to proportional representation is overdue

LETTER: Shift to proportional representation is overdue

[Letters are presented as a service to readers as part of public discourse. Views expressed in Letters are not necessarily shared by the publisher.

ballot, by-election, federal
Abundance of names on the ballot for the Toronto-St Paul's by-election was a protest in support of proportional representation.
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Wednesday June 26, 2024 | KELOWNA, BC

LETTER submitted by Andy Thomsen | Posted in Island Social Trends


Political leaders around the world absolutely hate democracy. It reduces their power to zero.

Looking at that political monster just south of our border flexing its muscles has been quite an eye-opener to what can happen when a complacent and naïve society allows one person to control it.

What could save the US is the fact they are a sovereign country.

alistair macgregor, constituency

A republic, that wrote their own Constitution, that today is being tested severely, in and out of the courts, combined with a seasoned, experienced, and democratically elected Senate that has an honest mandate to write laws.

Trump will be in their history books as an ugly reminder of a man’s incredible determination to destroy a democratic society just to control it.

Canada’s political system is also being tested. While we became a sovereign country a long time ago, a king in a foreign country is still the Commander-in-Chief (CIC) of our critically under-funded Canadian armed forces.

We have a Prime Minister who is governing under the auspice of a foreign King, not as the President of a sovereign nation that we are.

The late and former Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau masterminded our political system. He included a meaningless ‘Charter’ in our Constitution, that he stated would make every lawyer a millionaire, while insisting God is supreme over our democratically elected Parliament.

A ridiculous claim, keeping in mind gods are nothing but holy spirits, figments of some people’s imagination.

tax deadline, langford, 2024

Former Prime Minister Stephen Harper denied us an elected Senate, and hi-jacked the Conservative Party’s nomination system to adopt and employ Party disciple, while he erased any semblance of democracy in our federal government, and our current Prime Minister Justin Trudeau denied us a Proportional ballot that could’ve destroyed Harper’s attacks on our democratic institutions.

Our Senators are randomly selected and appointed by the Prime Minister of the incumbent government, not seasoned and experienced politicians, democratically elected by the people, and have absolutely no legal or moral right to write laws.

seaparc, ad, summer 2024

We are using an electoral system that consistently awards incumbent governments the majority of the electoral seats representing only 40% of the people, while the remaining 60% have no voice and no representation.

A Proportional ballot, separating the party vote from the candidate vote would absolutely destroy that power-structure.

It would embrace all colours and cultures fairly and include them in the political process, but two people, our past and incumbent Liberal and Conservative government leaders, have assumed the powers of dictators, to deny forty million Canadians their human rights to have democratic governments, where the people make all major decisions and the politicians implementing them.

New Zealanders have enjoyed the rights and benefits of a multi-member Proportional ballot for almost thirty years.

In Canada democracy is DEAD.

~ LETTER by Andy Thomsen, Kelowna, BC

district of metchosin

===== EDITOR’s NOTE: We have published this letter in the context of the significant electoral events in the Toronto-St Paul’s federal by-election on June 24, 2024 wherein the long ballot of 84 candidates included a ‘protest’ in favour of proportional representation instead of first-past-the-post.

LETTERS on any topic of interest to public discourse may be sent to Island Social Trends for consideration: letters@islandsocialtrends.com

LETTERS do not necessarily reflect the views of the editor or publisher.

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