Weighing In On Electoral Reform

Why electoral reform won't work
May 22, 2007
Richard Gwyn

Although it breaches the most basic rule of the punditry profession, I feel compelled to declare that at the next Ontario election, in October, I will not be voting for Premier Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals.

To restore some particle of the fig leaf that normally covers my objectivity, I must add hastily that neither will I be voting for John Tory and the Conservatives nor for Howard Hampton and the New Democrats.

My specific quarrel, though, is with McGuinty. Or, if not with him precisely, with what he's allowed to be done. He has allowed a bunch of Ontario citizens, undoubtedly all decent and capable people, to waste a lot of time and a certain amount of money.

The specific cause is the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform, comprised of 103 individuals, which has just come up with a report calling for Ontarians to vote next October for or against proportional representation (PR), formally called a Mixed Member Proportional system.

Depending on the referendum result, out will go our historic first-past-the-post system that's served us since Confederation and that has produced a series of not bad governments – among them McGuinty's.