Three cases of that statement that caught my eye this evening.

First, Harper’s statements on climate change and declaring that Kyoto was ” a mistake” earned him a unanimous disassociation of that statement in the Quebec legislature by all 3 parties. Regardless of what Chantal Hebert opines, I believe Dion should be hammering on that issue everywhere, but particularly in Quebec come next election.

Secondly, and on a related note, the UN issues about as unsubtle a diplomatic rebuke as you can do with regards to Harper and Canada’s position on Climate Change.

Thirdly, the decision by the NDP and Jack Layton to support the Cons. motion on prohibiting veiled voters from casting ballots has enraged traditional NDP supporting bloggers, and unaffiliated blogs on the progressive left who are normally sympathetic to the NDP today, although with the NDP’s view on blogging regarding it as  the black sheep of the family, one wonders what if any effect it will have, or if anyone in NDP HQ even notices the discomfiture this has caused amongst their normally very loyal supporters.

Liberal and Con. blogs and the netroots for those parties may have no more influence on their respective parties, but we do know they get read up on the Hill by the MP’s and staffers. I’m not sure the same can be said of the NDP MP’s and staffers for the NDP bloggers, whose party seems to treat the venue and those who use it as pariahs. Perhaps the better way to get their attention is to get the media notice their rumblings, like say, Kady O’Mally, who wrote today wondering who exactly came up with this strategy to vote for this in the NDP backroom. People like her and others in the media could make a few NDP’ers rather uncomfortable when its pointed out to them that their netroots/grassroots supporters aren’t too happy about this.

And I support their stance, by the way. How can we have a problem with MAYBE a few hundred veiled voters, when we have thousands of Canadians sending in absentee mail-in ballots who apparently are just fine and dandy and we have no problem trusting who they are? The appearance of fearmongering against Muslims is way too obvious here.

The title of course is referring to the comment that Conservative House Leader Peter Van Loan made about Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty when the Premier protested about the unfairness of Albertan and BC getting seat redistribution that would accurately reflect representation by population for them, while Ontario got shortchanged of seats.

I have said prior that this was nothing more then a gerrymandering exercise to get more seats in provinces that the Cons have a better shot of winning then in urban Ontario, and it appears via Impolitical, the Premier of Quebec and the Premier of Manitoba agree with Dalton’s position on this.

I am willing to bet you won’t hear Premier Charest getting called a “small man of Confederation” by Van Loan - not in a province where they need to make a breakthrough if they have any hope of forming a majority government. I also doubt Premier Doer will get insulted either; he’s a popular premier out that way, and it’s another swing province where the Cons must maintain the seats they have to help form a government the next time an election rolls around.

As you can guess, I’m amused that Van Loan’s stupid comment (and the Cons. weak not-very-transparent attempt to isolate Ontario on this issue) has utterly blown up in his and the Cons. face and failed.

The best way to summarize Conservative House Leader Peter Van Loan and the Harper Government’s attitude to the province of Ontario on their complaints of being short-changed on the proposed seat re-distribution in Canada where BC and Alberta are getting seats that will accurately reflect their increase in population. while Ontario does not is this:

“We don’t understand why Ontario would be crybabies over our attempts to add more seats in areas of the country where we are more likely to win them”

As we saw yesterday, this continues a pattern of attempting to demonize a rival by the Cons government - it’s painfully obvious to others as well, and I’d add it’s rather obvious that this is a rather blatant attempt to gerrymander the seat additions to the Cons. benefit in future elections.

BC and Alberta certainly deserve seat additions to reflect representation by population standings in the House of Commons in Ottawa, but if you’re going to do it for them, you have to do it for Ontario as well, and not just offer them token seat additions in an attempt to disguise the real motive behind this move, as the Cons. are doing.

I have to disagree slightly with Impolitical. I don’t think Jack Layton and the NDP are being used at all by Harper. I think they’re using each other in another partisan attempt to embarrass the Liberals over this motion to hold a referendum to abolish the Senate (which would have no legal standing, since it requires the majority of provinces and the feds to agree to make such a change). I think Jack was well aware that Harper and the Cons would probably support this motion when he put it forward. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a not-so-disguised joint effort - even if not formally talked about by the two of them.

If you’re wondering, I’m rather indifferent to the fate of the Senate. Abolish it, or reform it to make Senators electable - it doesn’t matter to me either way what is proposed. What I do know is that it will be virtually impossible to implement any change with that body, because of the strict constitutional requirements. Where the reform is needed is in the way the House of Commons MP’s are voted on, and I’ll note that in 2005, after the Martin minority government, one of the first things Jack Layton said in his election night speech was that he and the NDP would be pushing for electoral reform - specifically, proportional representation reform for the House of Commons. A laudable goal, but one that has gone almost deathly silent the last couple of years from Jack. If Jack wasn’t playing partisan games, he’d be introducing a motion to bring THAT type of electoral reform up, rather then wasting time over the Senate.

And I’ll repeat again (at the risk of boring my fellow Liberal bloggers and party members yet again with my championed cause) that if Dion and the Liberals want to neutralize this Senate reform issue and being portrayed as anti-electoral reform/anti-democratic and so on, they would be pushing the type of electoral reform Dion has occasionally raised in public chats and interviews but never as official Liberal Party policy: a promise or proposal for said electoral reforms to the House voting, whatever that may be.

Proof that electoral reform isn’t dead, Part 2. This from Stephane Dion at a Q&A session in Winnipeg is very encouraging:

During a 90-minute question and answer session with the audience at the Gas Station Theatre, Dion was asked to give his thoughts on electoral reform…The Liberal leader mused out loud about how a preferential ballot would be better…Dion finished by saying this would lead to more respectful debate between parties and leaders since “if you’re a Green or NDP voter, I don’t want to insult you so you’ll consider me as your second choice.” Then, he said he wouldn’t want to make this part of an election campaign promise, but would rather put it to a national referendum after taking office.

Very wise of Dion to put such a question to a referendum separate from any election campaign, where it would get drowned out, as we saw what happened in Ontario. As I’ve talked about previously, there is at least 1 recent poll where there is plurality support for holding such a referendum on electoral reform. Where Dion’s views on the electoral system reform may differ from the public is that same poll showed a plurality would support electoral reform that involved using some type of system of proportional representation. Preferential ballot or Instant Runoff Voting is used in the Single-Transferable-Vote setup that BC is again voting on in 2009 (which is a proportional system), or it can be used as stand-alone, where it definitely isn’t proportional… so it will be interesting to see how a hypothetical referendum question is worded, or how Dion and the Liberals would decide what system to propose. Still, it’s encouraging that it has not disappeared from the radar screen.

I do disagree slightly with Dion though, on not wanting to make it a campaign promise. I think that Dion should mention such a proposal/promise in his election campaign, if only to counter Harper’s claims he is the democratic reformer because of his wanting to make the Senate elected. We know the NDP and Greens support electoral reform in the House. It would be a good plank for the Liberal Party to have in their platform too, I think, by publicly promising this referendum on electoral reform.

One point that is well taken however - someone else said that Dion may be in support of this, but how many of the Liberal Party and his advisers are? It’ll be interesting to see how many reformers and how many status quo’ers there are when and if that decision or proposed idea is talked about.

I hope Ian Urquhart and the Toronto Star editorial board have a subscription to the Hill Times. It might make their heads explode after reading the results of this poll:

When asked whether there should be a national referendum on PR in Canada’s next general election, 48 per cent said yes nationally, 32 per cent said no, and 20 per cent said they don’t know. When asked how they would vote if a such referendum was held, 45 per cent said they would support a system of PR, 28 per cent said keep the current First Past the Post system, and 27 per cent didn’t know.

Very impressive, but surely support in Ontario, where voters recently rejected Mixed-Member Proportional by a 63% margin, would be on the low end of this, right? Not so:

The poll shows significant support for a system of proportional representation in Ontario and Quebec, where, respectively, 46 per cent and 52 per cent said they would vote in support of PR if a national referendum were held in the next general election.

That tells me that Ontarions weren’t necessarily resistant to electoral reform. I believe they either had misgivings about this particular version of mixed member, or they weren’t informed enough about it, and decided they weren’t going to make a switch from the current system without knowing more about a proposed system that they’re being asked to switch to. As the poll shows, they are willing to look at the idea of switching to a PR-based electoral system.

Another interesting aspect of the poll; minority governments aren’t hated:

When asked whether they prefer majority or minority governments, 37 per cent said minority governments, 20 per cent said majority governments, and 38 per cent said it depends on which party forms the government.

Now, there are systems of electoral reform out there that don’t necessarily disqualify majority government as a possibility (the Globe’s version of Mixed Member that they laid out as a model in May 2005 and supported is one such system), but this poll shows that more Canadians then one might think support the idea of a government being forced to take into account other parties views and work with them to get legislation passed.

The conclusion of this particular pollster?

“A lot of people are looking at PR as dead in Ontario right now, whereas it may just be sleeping,” Greg Lyle, managing director of Innovative Research, said in an interview. “The rejection of this particular proposal for PR in Ontario is not the end of the road for change. It just illustrates the challenge in change because it’s hard to get a majority in any specific proposal”

And the political scientists think the same thing:

Stephen Clarkson, a professor of political science at the University of Toronto.. acknowledged that momentum for some form of PR seems to be growing. “It’s on the agenda now,” he said, adding that effective lobbying has helped identify electoral reform as a priority.

This might be wishful thinking on my part, but I’d love to see the federal Liberal Party propose electoral reform as one of their platform planks.

If people were to listen to the Toronto Star editorial board and some of their columnists like Ian Urquhart, the defeat of the proposed MMP electoral reform in Ontario means those of us who believe that electoral reform is needed should all disappear and go away and stop talking about it, and the current system is just fine and dandy, and nothing needs fixing.

Well, Toronto Star and Ian Urquhart, my particular response is, we aren’t going to disappear into the night, and the current electoral system is definitely in need of fixing. Some proof of that are the following:

- When only 52% of eligible voters bother to show up to vote, that indicates a problem.

- When only 22% of eligible voters are able to vote for the Liberals and give them a majority government with 2/3 of the seats, that indicates a problem.

- When we see a study that indicates 3/4 of all political candidates in Ontario were male, and over 90% of them white, that indicates the system does nothing to promote our true diversity in this province, nor represents that diversity in the legislature.

With all that said, reform is definitely needed with the current system, whether or not some of our media folks want to close their eyes and refuse to acknowledge these problems are there and inherent in our current system, and getting worse, not better. Thus, it is with all this in mind that the former Liberals For MMP site is now re-vamping itself as Liberals For Electoral Reform.

We’re using the same URL address, but without stealing their thunder over there, (a more formal announcement comes on Monday about the group’s new focus) our aim will now be a more general goal that electoral reform is still needed, regardless of the Ontario outcome, and we as a group of Liberals who believe that to be the case will be fighting in other provinces of Canada and federally as well to bring much those much-needed reforms (whatever they might be) to our archaic electoral system. BC’s next referendum in 2009 is an obvious one to be aiming at specifically.

Just to repeat to the Toronto Star editorial board and the Ian Urquharts of this world, we aren’t going anywhere, and its a pretty sad commentary on this supposedly progressive paper when - despite opposing this particular model of MMP - the supposedly staid/centrist Globe and Mail comes out with an editorial that shows it’s much more progressive then the Star is on electoral reform.

Quite remarkably, the Toronto Star has decided to attack MMP a 2nd time within a week in their editorial section and again recommend it be rejected. This time in their editorial, they decided to stay away from charging there would be “appointed MPP’s”, a feature of their column last week, but they repeated the “unstable government” theme, as well as the fear of radical fringe parties holding the legislature hostage.

I’m not going to get into attacking their charges; they’ve used the same stuff before which has been easily refuted - what I find of interest is that they are so concerned about MMP that despite some polls showing it won’t likely pass, they felt the need to attack it again. I believe the clue to the reasoning behind this is in their last sentence of this editorial: Our system does not need a “fix,” because it isn’t broken. They have indicated in this column (and last week’s) that the Star editors have no desire for electoral reform of ANY kind, and I believe they want the “status quo” vote to be so overwhelming, that it will end any talk of electoral reform for at least a decade. At least with the Globe, they indicated that they like MMP, just not this particular version of it - and they advocated another go at it. The Star has become the status-quo champion on the other hand - a disappointment from a normally progressive-minded paper.

Another Canadian electoral reform expert - Professor Dennis Pilon from the University of Victoria - urges Ontarions to vote for MMP in the referendum:

The proportional representation system that Ontarians have an opportunity to approve during the Oct. 10 referendum is simple, modest, and addresses many of the major problems with contemporary Ontario democracy that have long been identified by academics and political commentators from right to left. Imagine more accurate election tallies, a more competitive political environment where every vote would count for something, and better representation of Ontario’s diversity. These are not hypothetical possibilities, but the actual experience of countries similar to Canada that have proportional representation, as documented in a considerable body of academic research.

Professor Pilon goes on in his special op-ed column in the Star to debunk some fables he says are being used to defend the current First-Past-The-Post system as well as to attack MMP. A good column well worth the read.

Some of our anti-MMP folk are chortling because all of the major Toronto newspapers have rejected MMP in their editorials. I’m not particularly surprised that mainstream establishment papers would do so - but what is more important to me is that several grassroots groups have officially endorsed it.

Amongst our minority groups/ethnic communities, MMP was given a strong endorsement by several groups, including the South Asian community, Chinese-Canadian groups, and the Canadian Tamil Congress.

Student groups across the province are also recognizing MMP as a system they can get behind. 16 student unions across Ontario have endorsed MMP, as has the Canadian Federation Of Students Ontario branch, believing that with MMP, many students will be re-attracted to voting and have their votes count.

It is grassroots groups like these that I much more stock in their endorsements then a newspaper endorsement, or not.