Representative democracy is a simple concept. Citizens elect their representatives. The majority win the right to make decisions. But do Canadians actually have representative democracy?
The electoral system in Saskatchewan is the same as it is everywhere else in Canada. It is called first-past-the-post. This system hurts Saskatchewan voters as much as it does in other provinces. We are in the process of researching how this system has skewed Saskatchewan elections but in the mean time take a look at the October 2008 federal election:
940,000 voters supporting the Green Party sent no one to Parliament, setting a new record for the most votes cast for any party that gained no parliamentary representation. By comparison, 813,000 Conservative voters in Alberta alone were able to elect 27 MPs.
Here on the prairies, Conservatives received roughly twice the vote of the Liberals and NDP, but took seven times as many seats.
Similar to the last election, a quarter-million Conservative voters in Toronto elected no one and neither did Conservative voters in Montreal.
New Democrats: The NDP attracted 1.1 million more votes than the Bloc, but the voting system gave the Bloc 49 seats, the NDP 37.
Do these results sound right to you? No? Well they are typical of elections taking place right across this country, federally and provincially.
