Northerners beware

Dear editor:
The ballot for the provincial election will include a referendum question on the proposed new voting method to be used in the province.
As important as the election is in determining who will run the province for another four years, perhaps the referendum question is of even greater importance because of its long-lasting impact on democracy, on the north, and on other critical issues.
Voters will be asked to choose between the existing first-past-the-post system (i.e., the party that receives a simple majority forms the government) or an alternative electoral system, called the Mixed Member Proportional (MMP).
Under the proposed new method, the number of electoral districts would be reduced from 107 to 90. Thus there may be fewer electoral districts in the north and therefore a reduced number of MPPs from the north.
But that is only part of the problem for the north.
Under the new system, voters will vote twice on one ballot: once for a “Local Member” and once for a political party. Voters will elect 90 MPPs and political parties will appoint another 39 MPPs in proportion to each party’s share of the popular vote.
The critical question for northerners is, “Will any of these 39 appointed MPPs come from the north or will they all come from the densely-populated areas in the Golden Horseshoe.”
Since the stated purpose of the new system is to get closer to proportional representation, it seems clear that all of the appointed MPPs will come from heavily-populated areas.
But the weakened voice of the north is only one of several flaws of the proposed new voting method. Serious defects have emerged wherever the system has been implemented.
In an article in thestar.com of Sept. 28 entitled “Why I’m voting against MMP,” Ian Urquhart argues that any reasonable “analysis suggests the number of parties in the legislature would multiply with proportional representation and the political consequences would be quite unpredictable.”
He takes New Zealand as an example. It used to have an electoral system just like ours, with two parties (Labour and National) trading places at the top and a third party occasionally winning a seat or two.
But in 1993, New Zealand switched to a new system—MMP. Now New Zealand has eight different parties in its parliament.
New Zealand is a relatively homogenous place compared to Ontario. Here, if MMP were adopted as our electoral system, one could easily envisage the emergence of parties based on an even greater variety of factors than in New Zealand.
Under the MMP model, these parties would need just three percent of the popular vote—about 150,000 votes—to gain four seats in the legislature.
The MMP system also is in place in Germany. Italy, which has had proportional representation since World War II, has just experienced its 62nd government and now is looking at ways to return to the more stable first-past-the-post voting system.
Electoral reform has wide support. But surely the proposed MMP voting system is quite the opposite of reform.
Yours truly,
Jack McMillan
Espanola, Ont.
Editor’s note: Jack McMillan is a former resident of Fort Frances.