There's A Sucker Born Every Minute...

[NDP Newbie]

I can see it now:

Liberals win 140 - 145 seats and need NDP support to govern.

Jack Layton offers to let the Liberals govern any way they want, provided Martin is willing to support an electoral reform plan that produces either proportional representation or proportional/constituency mixed (Preferrably the latter, but that's besides the point.).

If the Liberals do this, however, they're tombstoning their years of lopsided political dominance.

Who's over-represented in Parliament?

The Liberals (To the point where it's lmost as ridiculous as the Union Nazional (sic) winning a 6 seat majority in Quebec's 1966 election while losing the popular vote by nearly 7%.) and the Bloc Québécois.

Now who's under-represented?

But of course, the CPC and the NDP.

What does this mean?

ALLELUIA!!!!!

Our political parties, knowing that no amount of snap elections will ever be likely to yield a majority govrnment, will finally be forced to learn to work together in coalitions, adding more integrity and accountability to the political process. (After years of Mulroney and Chrétien, God knows it's needed.)

Sadly, I can nearly guarantee that every goddamn electoral policy wonk in the LPC has already thought this through.

[August1991]

1) Would the Liberals necessarily turn to the NDP for support?

2) Layton has said he wants electoral reform. Push then shove, would he really? Would the PLC do it? Is it constitutional?

3) We've had minority government before without such major change.

4) Change the rules as you want but ultimately, the question is whether ordinary people can throw the buggers out.

5) The reason we have such a divided House (five parties until a few weeks ago) is because people in Quebec can't decide whether they want to be Canadian, and Canadians can't decide whether they've had enough of this indecision. No amount of electoral rule changing is going to change this fundamental "Canadian" fact.