PHOTO - Planet Earth. 4.6 billion years old and still going strong. Well...still going.
Had a fascinating conversation last night with Chris Lowry, network director of Get Green Enterprise Toronto.
He was at the screening of An Inconvenient Truth at the Central Library last night (organized by MPs Omar Alghabra and Navdeep Bains). He was an expert on the panel that took questions from the audience after the movie.
While answering one question, Lowry mentioned the upcoming referendum on electoral reform.
One of the main concerns about the mixed-member proportional (MMP) system of electing MPPs is that because it will result in near-constant minority governments, strong and bold legislation will be difficult to implement since everything will need to be watered down to pass through the legislature.
"I don't think the evidence supports that," said Lowry after last night's event. "It's a less adversarial political system that leads to a diversity of voices that represents the common wisdom."
He pointed to New Zealand, which uses mixed-member proportional. They made the small island country a nuclear-free zone under a coalition government. Meanwhile, Germany's minority government introduced extended producer responsibility, in which "manufacturers...they've got to deal with the waste of the products they sell, not the consumers."
Lowry added: "I'm extremely excited about the possibility of this happening. It'll be good for the earth."
For previous blogs exploring the ins-and-outs of the referendum, go here, here, and then here.
Comments (1)
Some things to consider regarding minority governments:
First, Ontario's "flip-flop phenomenon". We give Party A the keys to the car until they make us angry, then we boot them out and pass the keys to Party B. Why? Because Party A has started to pass bills we don't like. Thank goodness Party B will come in and clean things up! Of course, this pattern repeats and we return to Party A 4-8 years later. Each government spends part of its time "cleaning up" (undoing) past legislation, which gives the impression of more being accomplished than really is. Plus, this back-and-forth is very damaging to the actual foot soldiers who do the real work for us -- the departments that have to suffer through ideologically-motivated budget cuts or restructurings.
Sweep away all of the wasted time and effort from this dance and you'll probably have something that closely resembles the "inactivity" of a minority government -- let's call it "efficiency".
Second thing to consider is the difference between a minority government and a coalition. First-past-the-post has minorities, which is shorthand for "powerless because another election is coming soon". But keep in mind, the only reason an election is coming soon is because at least one party feels they can win a majority. In a proportional system, everybody knows a majority is unlikely, so why dethrone the minority government? The best you're likely to get is your own minority, and you'll need the support of the people you just dethroned (good luck with that). This is why the term "coalition government" is more appropriate -- a group of parties decide they can live with each other and form a stable unit that can weather the full term. It might be the same thing mathematically, but attitude-wise (and results-wise) it's completely different.
Finally, understand that under proportional systems, the number of parties increases, so there are more "building blocks" with which to make a successful coalition. We aren't talking about the Liberals and Conservatives getting into bed together, which to any of us following Canadian politics is inconceivable. Each of those super-parties will likely fracture or be replaced by 2 or more smaller parties representing aspects of the larger party (e.g. Progressive Conservative vs. Traditional Conservative). This has the nice side-effect of giving the voters more than 3-5 choices with which to summarise their opinions on hundreds of issues. (Can you imagine a market research survey that worked that way? Our current number of parties is hilariously small when you think about it.)
Posted by Saul Bottcher | September 17, 2007 9:03 AM
Posted on September 17, 2007 09:03