Unity Without Uniformity: The Case Against One-Party Rule

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Think Canada is a sharply divided country? You’d be forgiven for believing so based on riding maps of last week’s election results. Whether it’s the GTA draped in red, the blue wall in the prairies or BC’s orange exterior, our First Past the Post electoral system produces a distorted picture of political diversity, regional uniformity, and national disunity.

This democratic deception is the result of our “winner-controls-all” electoral system which forces everyone within a riding to be represented by the same MP in parliament. With each riding painted a single colour, we are unable to see the rich palette of political perspectives that permeate communities across the country. In short, Canada’s political diversity has been plastered over by one-party rule.

That diversity of thought exists in every riding is actually what unites a nation as large as ours. True unity would be celebrating these differences by giving groups within each riding the freedom of independent representation rather than the subjugation of one-party rule.

What our enduring political diversity reveals is that Canadians want to be united by freedom instead of divided by control. In other words, Canadians desire national unity without political uniformity.

First Past the Post—an electoral system built solely of single-member ridings—is wholly inadequate to achieve such a goal. To represent the true scope of our country’s political diversity, we need a system that provides citizens with the freedom of multi-member ridings.

Such freedom is found in Proportional Representation, a family of voting systems where the number of seats a party has in parliament approximately matches the percentage of people who voted for that party. By adopting local or regional multi-member ridings, we would solve the problem of dissimilar groups and individuals being bundled into one political community when what they really desire is their own autonomy.

If Canadians truly believe recognizing and appreciating each other’s differences creates communities we can be proud of, then why don’t we embrace an electoral system that can do the same for parliament and the country as a whole?

It’s time we stopped painting everyone in a riding with the same political brush. If Canada’s national unity is to be built on diversity, then our house of democracy should share a similar design.


Action Needed: Send a Message to Party Leaders

Canadians have had enough of First Past the Post! This election wouldn’t have happened if the system didn’t make it worthwhile for parties to gamble for 100% of the power with only 35% of the vote.

If we want an end to the political games, we need to call on our leaders for a National Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform!

Click here to send your letter.


Electoral Reform in the News

In the aftermath of last week’s federal election, newspapers, television, online media and social media across the country have been buzzing with articles on electoral reform and proportional representation. Here are some links to a sample of what is being said:


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There have been 15 federal minority governments since Canada’s Confederation, with the first occurring in 1873 after Sir John A. Macdonald was forced out of office. This was followed by William Lyon Mackenzie King’s elected minority government from 1921 to 1925 – incidentally, 1921 was also the first time Canadians were promised electoral reform during an election campaign.

While there were only 10 federal minority governments from 1867 to 2000, three successive elections in recent years – 2004, 2006, 2008 – produced minority results. With the last two federal elections also being minorities, it seems what was once a rare occurrence has since become the rule.

With Canada firmly in the “Age of Minority Governments,” it’s time we recognized that First Past the Post doesn’t provide the stability it was once contended to bring.

“But in Canada, for one reason or another, the grip of two-party politics has been broken – irrevocably, it seems. As a result, something else that is not supposed to happen under first past the post has been happening, with remarkable frequency: minority governments. This is not just the second straight federal election to produce a Parliament without a majority party: it is the fifth in the past seven, 11th in the past 22.”

“Is this the end of majority governments in Canada – or the beginning?” – Andrew Coyne, The Globe and Mail, September 23, 2021