Fair Vote Toronto: New Projects, People, and Priorities

Proportional Representation in a Pandemic

Here’s to the essential workers that have helped us survive the past five months! The brave health care professionals, the underpaid grocery clerks, the harried civil servants, and…the politicians? Yes, in fact. Governments have been “essential workers” too. Our elected representatives have shown more resolve and cooperation than usual in steering us through this pandemic. But what’s next? Well, other critical issues have waited years for this kind of urgent attention, and are still waiting. 

People calling for a #GreenNewDeal, a #JustRecovery, to #BuildBackBetter and #BetterThanNormal – to name but a few – are joining with #BlackLivesMatter and #Indigenous movements to demand real change. Our message is simple: that lasting improvements require more democracy, more diverse voices at the table. This requires proportional representation. 

 

What PR can do for you… AND what you can do for PR!

The nine members of our Fair Vote Toronto Action Team have been busy these recent months making plans to build our grassroots movement here in Toronto. We’ll be sending more regular newsletters, improving our presence on social media, hosting webinars, writing letters, and lobbying politicians. 

Last month we held our first two Virtual Volunteer Rendezvous to welcome new members. Twenty five volunteers attended, and many have joined our virtual workspace to begin working together on projects. We look forward to holding another rendezvous in September!

Writing letters-to-the-editor is one of our key strategies for placing PR in the media. If you have time to write an occasional letter, join our writer’s group! Our first Letter Writing Workshop is next Thursday, August 27th at 7pm.

We’re also excited to announce our first in a series of monthly webinars on Wednesday, September 16th. The guest speaker will be Dennis Pilon, an Associate Professor of Politics at York University in Toronto, presenting “Friends and Enemies: Who Wants Proportional Representation in Canada and Who Does Not. And Why.” 

Our activities can only grow as our volunteers do, so we hope that you’ll join us!

 

CONGRATULATIONS!

Two members of our Fair Vote Toronto Action Team, John Baumann and Michelle Clifford, have just been elected to the National Council of Fair Vote Canada!

John Baumann and Michelle Clifford

John and Michelle aim to build stronger links between the local and national organizations, and are working with team members of both groups to develop new ideas and projects to bring PR to Toronto, Ontario and Canada! Congrats to both of them and thank you to everyone who voted!

 

fair vote toronto newsletter
 

Our electoral system was undemocratic from the very start. A History of the Vote in Canada states that voting rights established by the 1885 Electoral Franchise Act depended on “being male, having reached the age of 21, and being a British subject”. In most provinces, you also needed to own property or money. In other words, voting was for a privileged few. By design, women, immigrants, working-class and Indigenous people were excluded.