Section 3 – Policy Initiatives & 2025 Deliverables
11. Democratic and Electoral Reform
The Parties will work together to create a special legislative all-party committee to evaluate and recommend policy and legislation measures to be pursued beginning in 2026 to increase democratic engagement & voter participation, address increasing political polarization, and improve the representativeness of government. The committee will review and consider preferred methods of proportional representation as part of its deliberations. The Government will work with the BCGC to establish the detailed terms of reference for this review, which are subject to the approval of both parties. The terms of reference will include the ability to receive expert and public input, provide for completion of the Special Committee’s work in Summer 2025, and public release of the Committee’s report within 45 days of completion. The committee will also review the administration of the 43rd provincial general election, including consideration of the Chief Electoral Officer’s report on the 43rd provincial general election, and make recommendations for future elections.
I was referring to the federal PC party which no longer exists. First, the right-wing populist Reform Party split from it, then eventually the two merged again to form the current CPC party, with Stephen Harper from Reform becoming the leader and eventually PM of Canada. The PC party was unable to moderate its extreme elements and it ceased to exist.
I beg to differ. Housing was a serious problem when they came to power under Trudeau in 2015. They campaigned on doing something about it. They did nothing significant for 9 years and let the problem get worse and worse to the point where Ontario has 80000 homeless people today.
People only abandoned the LPC when things got so bad they thought the CPC may do something even though they’d be worse in many other respects. Many people don’t even try voting third or fourth party because they have experiences with their votes being lost due to FPTP. Instead they keep voting for the ineffectual party they prefer till some issue gets so bad that it seems the party worse for them might do better on that issue.
What we just witnessed with the replacement of the LPC leader without an election is pretty unprecedented and exceptional. This is not how things typically work. Normally the LPC would have stayed the course, lost the next election, have the CPC for 4-8 years and maybe then have a changed LPC that has learned a lesson and ready to do something about housing. Meanwhile the CPC would have let the problem get even worse as their policies are also ineffectual in that regard.
Finally, I also believe the AfD will grow but I think there’s a chance for De Linke to grow with it and force the next-next government to do something about the issues AfD voters are facing.
Sorry, I’m a little confused then. Because you started with this about the PC:
Which yes, the PC ceased to exist, because FPTP punishes extremism. So, this seems like a pretty good example of FPTP moderating/mitigating some of the consequences of a PR system. (Under which you could easily see a moderate Conservative party continually forming coalitions with the extreme Conservative party, which would allow the moderate Conservatives to vote Conservative while not technically voting for whatever extremism an unmoderated extremist Conservative group would want.) And today’s Conservative party is a much more moderate beast.
I wasn’t sure about this so looked back at some polling from around then as well as the Liberal platform. which is absolutely worth looking at as a time capsule. You’ll note that a lot of it was about social housing and rental housing, as the concern was more about the most vulnerable.
Meanwhile, a look at CBC’s polling at the time doesn’t even list housing as an issue (presumably lumped together with the economy?) but consider how unthinkable having a poll without housing as a distinct issue would be nowadays. (It’s also an interesting reminder that for their ills, the Liberals really did try to address those top concerns by growing the economy despite Covid and trying (and getting murdered on) a Carbon Tax, which is generally acknowledged as the best and most serious approach to tackling climate change.
Yup. Sorry though, I don’t think I’m getting the connection between this and PR vs FPTP?
Maybe. But I think right now, parties that “are fighting for a change of course in politics that will open the way for a fundamental transformation of society that will overcome capitalism.” face an uphill battle. I genuinely wonder if the SPD and CDU were left to choose between the AFD and Linke, which they would go to. Do Die Linke have policies that are compatible with mainstream politics? Regardless, I don’t think lurching from being held hostage to one extreme group to another is really conducive to good or effective government.
Which, I think is why I like FPTP, governments (usually) get the ability to enact significant legislation (we can actually blame the Liberals for failing to act on housing as opposed to “well, it was those rat bastards in the other parties that wouldn’t compromise… etc”) but those parties need to appeal to a large swathe of voters in order to actually form government. (And of course, watching PR governments struggle to create significant change in the last couple of decades doesn’t really raise their appeal. )
I don’t understand your understanding of the history of the PC and CPC parties. As far as I understand the opposite occurred. The moderate party was the PC party. It ceased to exist and the leadership of the extreme party Stephen Harper of Reform became the leadership of the new CPC party. The CPC party is a more extreme right wing party than the PC party. And if you’ve followed their policy stances over the years, they’ve been getting more extreme, every time they failed to win as moderates. Pierre has much more extreme positions on the economy and climate than Harper, or Andrew Scheer had. Trudeau introduced the carbon tax scheme, originally proposed by Harper, which Andrew Scheer rejected as some radical, industry killing policy. And today they have no policy on it at all other than “no carbon tax and no cap-and-trade systems.” So I don’t see moderation, I see the opposite.
BTW, I’m not down voting you.