Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Campaign to defeat the "Campaign to Defeat MMP in Ontario"

Now that the Campaign to Defeat MMP in Ontario has officially begun, I thought I'd start my own little campaign to defeat these fear mongering, opportunistic, dissemblers of misinformation. There are many reasons to vote in favour of electoral reform this fall and I've provided numerous links below, so I won't rehearse what's already been stated, but simply add a couple of points I haven't heard mentioned very often.

First, we must recognize this for what it is: McGuinty paying lip service to democracy. While I commend McGuinty for setting up a Citizens' Assembly in the first place, what's transpiring in October is hardly a referendum. As far as I'm concerned a referendum requires 50% +1 to be adopted. The moment McGuinty unilaterally and without debate undermined the wishes of both Committee and the Citizens' Assembly and imposed a supermajority (60%) condition on the referendum, he simultaneously undermined any pretense to fairness in this process. McGuinty wants to sound democratic but knows that he has stacked the deck to make it virtually impossible to make this electoral reform a possibility. And for good reason, his party benefits tremendously from the existing system.

Second, notwithstanding McGuinty's hijacking of the process, I'm still thrilled that a Citizens' Assembly was established, and from all accounts it worked very well. Any feasible and workable inroads into increasing participatory democracy is always fine by me. This leads me to something I hadn't considered before and I don't know exactly how to answer. What does a vote against the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly mean? I'm not suggesting that there shouldn't be room for debate and dissent. In fact, these should always be encouraged, especially when done honestly and intelligently. Still, this is not just any proposal being put forward to the public. It's certainly not a partisan proposal. Moreover, it was the culmination of a fair, long, arduous, and well-informed process. The Assembly was composed of randomly selected jurors, guided by competent people, and the assembly's recommendation was that Ontario needs electoral reform, and that this can best be accomplished by MMP. So is a vote against electoral reform a vote against democracy? If so, was McGuinty's failure to endorse the recommendation (let alone undermine it altogether) anti-democratic? Any ideas...

Anyways, onto some informative links:

Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform
Fair Vote Canada
Vote for MMP
They Call Me "Mr Sinister"
democratic Space
Blogging for Democracy
Idealistic Pragmatist
Andrew Coyne
Dr. Dawg's Blawg

2 comments:

Bloggers for MMP said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bloggers for MMP said...

I would have e-mailed but couldn't find one.

I'm writing on behalf the Vote for MMP campaign to ask you to participate in our Bloggers for MMP project. The purpose is to network between our campaign and bloggers and their communities.

Gary
Bloggers for MMP
A project of Fair Vote Canada