Luckily for Canada, we have had a a good (not great) record of third parties being elected to government at the provincial level and many federal candidates of third parties being elected to federal office, although no third party has yet attained power at the federal level.
And this despite the use of the FPTP system, which stifles representation of all the parties except the leaders in each district. (FPTP was used in all these elections except for provincial politicians elected through STV in Edmonton, Calgary and Winnipeg from 1920s to 1950s, rural MLAs in Alberta and Manitoba elected between the 1920s and the 1950s, and a few other cases. (See my blog "Variety of electoral systems used in Canada's past" for more details.)
Sometimes third parties achieving government status has been through false majorities (unfortunately). (And sometimes it is thought a Conservative government has been installed despite the will of the other parties suffering from split-vote)
Third party politicians have even dominated a province's federal representation on occasions.
Alberta did that for many years - and there maybe other examples in the other provinces.
In 1921, Alberta elected two Labour and ten Farmer MPs, none Liberal or Conservatives. They contributed to the Liberal government being a slight majority, but shifting to minority by the end of the term due to seat turn-overs. The Canada Pension Plan was born during the 1924-1930 minority government period.
Alberta sent a majority UFA MPs to the HofC 1926 to 1935, then turned to sending Social Credit MPs in the majority of its seats for the next couple or three decades.
The UFA helped found the CCF in 1932, but no CCF MP was ever elected in Alberta (despite the CCF receiving 6 percent of the vote in 1956, enough proportionately to be due one or two seats in that election alone). And still to this day it elects one NDP MP at a time. despite getting enough votes in 2019 alone to get six seats proportionally.
It is long past time for the third-party vote to be represented fairly.
PR means that the largest party should get its fair share of the vote but no more than its fair share of the vote.
That was a point emphasized by Sir Richard Cartwright, one of Canada's longest-serving MPs.
He was an advocate of PR back in the 1800s.
The problems have always been there for those with the sight to see - and the vision to see an alternative.
Thanks for reading.
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