Themes from Consultation Meeting in Brampton

This is a summary of thoughts expressed by members of the public who attended this consultation meeting. If a point was made by more than one participant, it is included only once in the summary. The comments below sometimes contradict one another because they reflect the diversity of the viewpoints of participants.

Number of public participants: 27

Thoughts about Principles

Accountability

  • We don’t have accountability.
  • It is difficult to identify decision-makers.
  • Manufactured majorities allow governments to act without accountability.

Effective parliament

  • The most important thing is division of power: it is crucial to ensure that no one person or party has too much power.
  • Parliament should not be adversarial; it should work by compromise.
  • We should bring honour back to parliament.

Effective parties

  • The system should allow more small parties to develop.
  • Party platforms should take precedence over the individual personalities of politicians.

Fairness of representation

  • There should be more women, Aboriginal people, and other under-represented groups represented in the legislature.
  • Age, gender, and ethnic representation are important.
  • It is not good to simply place different groups in the legislature.
  • Results should be proportional (seat share should equal vote share).
  • The Assembly should consider proportionality as an independent principle in its deliberations.
  • I don’t like proportional representation in a pure democracy.

Legitimacy

  • Legitimacy is about reflecting the views of the population.

Simplicity & practicality

  • Voters should understand the system, but other principles are more important (e.g. fairness of representation).

Stable & effective government

  • The longer a government is in office, the better.
  • Frequent elections are wasteful and reduce effectiveness.
  • Coalitions are functional in other countries where they are familiar.
  • Coalitions force parties to co-operate; they’re slow but they produce a compromise that best reflects the view of the population.
  • Changes that produce uncertainty or coalition governments might create delays in legislation.

Stronger voter participation

  • Compulsory voting should be considered.
  • Voting incentives (e.g. a lottery or property tax break) should be considered.
  • There will be stronger voter participation if representation is fairer.
  • A new electoral system will bring voters back to democracy and get people more involved.

Voter choice

  • More parties able to win seats are needed to improve voter choice.

Thoughts about Ontario’s Current Electoral System

Participants highlighted these advantages of First Past the Post:

  • Personal choice is possible now.
  • Our system produces stable and effective majorities.
  • It produces governments with clear accountability.
  • It produces leaders with clear political platforms.
  • Our system offers geographic representation.

Participants highlighted these disadvantages of the current system:

  • Our system produces adversarial parliaments.
  • What the party is about comes second to individual candidates (it should be the other way around).
  • It produces many wasted votes.
  • It produces seat bonuses and manufactured majorities.
  • Women, Aboriginal people, and ethnic groups are under-represented.

Thoughts about Other Systems

Participants made these comments about other systems:

Proportional Representation (PR) systems

  • The details of systems are important, e.g. too few list seats or small districts would not be good enough to produce proportionality.
  • PR produces coalitions, which govern by fair compromise.
  • PR allows small parties to win seats, increasing voter choice.
  • Make the districts bigger geographically to get proportionality. Local representation is important but it might be traded off to ensure proportionality.

Other Thoughts

If the Assembly recommends a new system

  • The Assembly should consider the costs of any changes, both financial and political (e.g. uncertainty, delays in legislation).
  • The Assembly should act carefully and empirically, considering all available information.
  • If there is a referendum and few people vote, the referendum will not be legitimate.

Size of the legislature

  • We don’t need more politicians.
  • The size of the legislature matters a lot. Ours is small, but with a small increase in size, Ontarians would gain effective representation.

Electoral districts

  • Provincial districts should be aligned with municipal boundaries to avoid representatives having divided allegiances.
  • Districts should not have unfair variations in population.
  • The size of the riding matters a lot; you have to drive too far to find out who is accountable.

Other comments

  • There is too much acrimony in politics; it prevents people from entering politics.
  • Each riding should have candidate assessment meetings before elections.
  • The party nomination process should be studied.
  • Consider term limits on politicians.
  • Consider regulating contributions to electoral campaigns.
  • There is too much corruption. This reduces voter turnout.
  • There should be more political education in schools and of the electorate.
  • MPPs should be educated before they get in parliament.
  • Non-citizens should not be allowed to vote. 

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