more democracy

I don't know how peeps can justify staying with the First-Past-The-Post system we currently "enjoy" in Ontario. With that in mind, the upcoming referendum is much more important than the actual election. We need more democracy before we start forgetting what it really is.

I attended the Great Referendum Debate last week, held at the great MaRS facility, and Christina Blizzard from the Sun was embarrassed by Andrew Coyne. The quality of her arguments was woeful, and to makes things worse, she was offended on a personal level when the audience laughed. Repeatedly, she was dared to suggest that the current system always ended up reflecting the will of the people. Even if this claim had a modicum of truth, there wouldn't be any way to prove it. (We vote for a reason.) At one point she used the sports metaphor of winner-takes-all: if the Leafs and the Canadiens faced off in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and Montreal won 7-6, the winner is still Montreal and it doesn't matter how close the Leafs were. No one responded to this idiocy, but it was an opportunity missed: the winning team, freshly victorious, would not have the match score adjusted to 9-1 after being crowned champions. She partially made up for herself when she blasted Marilyn Churley for reducing MMP to a kind of affirmative action plan for female politicians.

As for Andrew Coyne, mad props.