Floor Crossings Symptom of Party Politics, Not Cause of Democratic Failure (Mill Woods Mosaic April 2026)
- Tom Monto
- Jun 3
- 22 min read
(alternative headline: Floor Crossings Not Cause of Our Weak Democracy)
By Tom Monto
(my article published in the Mill Woods Mosaic April 2026)
The recent floor crossings have opened a debate on the shape of our democracy. And it is not good – the shape of our democracy, that is.
Floor crossings have long been part of our Westminster system, at least potentially. Heck, our premier herself crossed the floor twice, first in 2009 and then again in 2014.
Our democracy is a representative democracy, which means we elect certain people to fill seats and in hopes that they will represent “voters.” But who do they really represent? We elect one person to represent a geographical area containing all sorts of people. So obviously some voters in the district will have someone to speak in support of their opinion, and the others will not.
Is that the best we can expect for our democracy?
A look at Europe – and many countries in Asia, Africa and South America – shows us that democracy does not have to look like this. Democracy - which can be defined as rule by the people themselves or their chosen representatives - does not have to look like this.
Democracy started in ancient Greece, in Athens. That civilization used different election systems at different times, but the pinnacle of democracy there was due to leadership of a man called Cleisthenes, who around the year 600 BC divided the electorate into ten tribes. Each tribe included a sampling of male citizens in each of the three geographical areas of Athens. The tribe's representatives were chosen by lot, and in fact those who were seen as becoming adept at working the system were ostracized (forced to live outside Athens) for ten years.
The Boule was composed of thousands of delegates, like I say chosen by lot, and acted like what we would call a Citizens Assembly today.
The idea that common persons, the general public should have input into laws is similar to the idea now becoming more and more widespread of the usefulness of Citizen’s Assemblies. One was used in BC in 2005 to consider reforms of the election system. Its suggestion to switch to Single Transferable Voting in multi-member districts was put to a referendum and endorsed by a majority of votes, but the result was ignored by the government.
And in 2020, the Citizens’ Assembly on Democratic Expression was organized and, after 40 hours of online meetings, came up with 33 recommendations. They were the basis of the Trudeau government’s Online Harms Act (Bill C-63), which unfortunately was not passed into law before his resignation.
Unlike Ancient Athens, we in Canada have never had assemblies of thousands of ordinary citizens debating policy and putting forward their ideas for approval as law.
Perhaps the closest we have had is when a government puts the power to choose law in the hands of voters in general. This is done through referendums such as we saw when Edmontonians voted to close the downtown airport in 1995, or in 2021 on whether or not to adopt permanent daylight savings time.
Those kind of direct questions to voters are also a part of democracy, because democratic politics is about people achieving the passage of government policy that they like, whether directly through Citizen Assemblies, petitions or referendums, or through fairly elected representation. In Canada we mostly hold elections and then leave the government to do what it wants until four or five years later when another election is held. Some describe this as “elective dictatorship.”
And often the MLAs or MPs who make up the majority in the chamber do not have the support of the majority of voters.
Such minority rule leads the country or a province down paths against the will of the majority of voters. The 1988 federal election was taken as a referendum on freer trade with the U.S. Mulroney’s Conservative party was re-elected to a majority of seats although more votes were cast for the Liberals and the NDP, both of whom were opposed to Free Trade. That free trade deal led to Canada’s over-dependence on just one trading partner. And now we are urgently working to get away from that.
Other historical cases include the U.S. Civil War. If the U.S. government had actually represented the will of the voters, the war could have been avoided according to one analysis.
The Second World War likewise could have been avoided if the British government had been composed based on votes cast, with more-aggressive actions taken against Hitler's early moves.
In Israel, in the last election Netanyhu’s coalition did not take a majority of votes but due to the electoral threshold, it received a majority of seats anyway. His decisions have helped cause the present destructive and expensive conflict.
The idea that one single party has overwhelming power in the House of Commons for a set period of time means deaf ears are given to those with divergent ideas. There will always be those in power and those outside power, but at least under a properly working system, the government should have the support of a majority of voters and every substantial voting block should have a voice in the chamber, to at least be listened to, even if their remarks are not directly acted on immediately.
But such is not guaranteed today. Mark Carney's success in assembling a majority in the House of Commons does not overcome the fact that the Liberal MPs that compose his caucus have less than 40 percent of the vote. The Conservative MPs have even fewer votes.
With no one party actually deserving power, what to do?
We can do what is done in most countries in Europe (and many in Asia, Africa and South America as well) – compose a working majority through forming a coalition of multiple parties. Certain parties put aside their differences and form a common platform and get things done.
The "party first" notions that lead to one-party rule prevents the general will of the people (of a majority of the people anyway) from having power and ensuring the government works for them.
The recent uproar against the floor crossings of Conservatives (and an NDP-er in one case) to the Liberals is to my mind just party machines upset at their inability to control elected members.
Because we don't simply fill slots in the parties caucus; we elect individuals.
Sure we would like the elected member to do what they promise but we actually have no hold on them between elections.
Are the constituents mad about the floor crossing? Some likely are, but others -- the many who did not vote for the elected member in the first place -- may not be, especially those who wanted to see a Liberal elected.
Parties are a convenient way to group candidates. Voters know roughly what to expect from candidates running under labels, and parties are useful forces in fighting elections. But when parties themselves are seen as the purpose of politics, they are a hindrance to democracy.
Back in the 1910s many Albertans saw that the Liberal party had "sewn up" the election process in most of the province. It was difficult to get even a Conservative elected, not to mention someone who wanted to represent workers and farmers. They pushed the Liberal government to bring in Direct Legislation where citizens could sign petitions and force the government to adopt legislation or hold a binding referendum on it.
The Alberta Prohibition law of 1915 came in through this process.
Beer sales in taverns were still allowed, and an attempt was made to collect the required number of signatures to get that banned as well. But other than Prohibition, no other initiatives were able to breach the critical threshold.
Then people said “why do this work to force the government to do what it doesn’t want to do? Why not just elect a government that wants to do the right stuff in the first place?”
The UFA were elected in 1921 due to a groundswell of "Organized Farmer" sentiment. It promised to bring in a fairer election system. It did bring in ranked voting in each district of the province and by using city-wide districts in Edmonton and Calgary, ensured that each major party would have representation in each city.
It was not the Democracy of old Athens, but it did see a Farmer MLA and a Labour MLA elected in Edmonton in 1926, which had never happened before. And a Calgary Labour MLA was named a cabinet minister in the UFA government.
We have unfortunately lost the system of proportional representation in Edmonton and Calgary that we once had. But now perhaps there is renewed interest in establishing new forms of voting and representation. And hopefully in future the will of the people, not just an assembly made up of winners of local dominance in arbitrary districts, will become the basis of our political system.
======================
In Canada we mostly hold elections and then leave the government to do what it wants until four or five years later when another election is held. Some describe this as “elective dictatorship.”
And often the MLAs or MPs who make up the majority in the chamber do not have the support of the majority of voters.
Such minority rule leads the country or a province down paths against the will of the majority of voters. The 1988 federal election was taken as a referendum on freer trade with the U.S. Mulroney’s Conservative party was re-elected to a majority of seats although more votes were cast for the Liberals and the NDP, who were opposed to Free Trade. (That free trade deal led to Canada’s over-dependence on just one trading partner. And now we are urgently working to get away from that.)
Other historical cases include the U.S. Civil War. If the U.S. government had actually represented the will of the voters, the war could have been avoided according to one analysis.
The Second World War likewise could have been avoided if the British government had been composed based on votes cast, with a more-aggressive action taken against Hitler's early moves.
In Israel, in the last election Netanyhu’s coalition did not take a majority of votes but due to the electoral threshold, it received a majority of seats anyway. His decisions helped cause the present widespread destructive conflict.
The idea that one single party has overwhelming power in the House of Commons for a set period of time means deaf ears are given to those with divergent ideas.
There will always be those in power and those outside power, but at least under a properly working system, the government should have the support of a majority of voters and every substantial voting block should have a voice in the chamber.
But such is not guaranteed today.
Mark Carney's success in assembling a majority in the House of Commons does not overcome the fact that the Liberal MPs that compose his caucus have less than 40 percent of the vote.
The Conservative MPs have even fewer votes.
With no one party actually deserving power, what to do?
We can do what is done in most countries in Europe (and many in Asia, Africa and South America as well) – compose a working majority through forming a coalition of multiple parties. Certain parties put aside their differences and form a common platform and get things done.
The idea of "party first" prevents the general will of the people (of a majority of the people anyway) from having power and ensuring the government works for them.
The recent uproar against the floor crossings of Conservatives (and an NDP-er in one case) to the Liberals is to my mind just party machines upset at their inability to control elected members.
Because we don't simply fill slots in the parties caucus; we elect individuals.
Sure we would like the elected member to do what they promise, but we actually have no hold on them between elections.
Are the constituents mad about the floor crossing? Some likely are, but others -- the many who did not vote for the elected member in the first place -- may not be, especially those who wanted to see a Liberal elected.
Parties are a convenient way to group candidates. Voters know roughly what to expect. and they are active forces in the electoral system - paying for offices, telephones, lawn signs and advertizing.
But democratic politics is really about people achieving the passage of policy that they like, whether directly through CAs, petitions or referendums, or through fair representation.
Parties, when they aid the attainment of that goal, are good, but when they themselves are seen as the purpose of politics, they are a hindrance to democracy.
Back in the 1910s many Albertans saw how the Liberal party had "sewn up" the election process in most of the province. It was difficult to get even a Conservative elected, not to mention someone who wanted to represent workers and farmers. They pushed the Liberal government to bring in Direct Legislation where citizens could sign petitions and force the government to adopt legislation or hold a binding referendum on it.
The Alberta Prohibition law of 1915 came in through this process. An initiative to get people to sign up to demand a provincially owned bank in 1921 failed to get off the ground, and no other initiatives were able to reach the critical threshold. And people said “why do this work to force the government to do what it is unwilling to do? Why not just elect a government that wants to do the right stuff in the first place?”
The UFA were elected in 1921 due to a groundswell of "Organized Farmer" sentiment, and that government promised to bring in a fairer system. It did bring in ranked voting in each district of the province and by using city-wide districts in Edmonton and Calgary, ensured that each major party would have representation in each city.
It was not the Democracy of old Athens, but it did see a Farmer MLA and a Labour MLA elected in Edmonton in 1926, which had never happened before. And a Calgary Labour MLA was named a cabinet minister in the UFA government.
We have unfortunately lost the proportional representation in Edmonton and Calgary that we once had. But now perhaps there is renewed interest in establishing new forms of voting and representation. And hopefully in future the will of the people, not just the collecting of winners of local dominance in arbitrary districts, will become the basis of our political system.
=========
there has been debate on a pr online discussion group, to which I belong, about
the meaning of political representation.
Two theories of government:
-Doctrine that believes in the greatness of the individual citizen
-The doctrine that seeks to make the government great and powerful, at the expense of the citizen. (Hunt, p. 160)
Of course “Making America Great Again” is an example of the latter. And it is possible that the project of an independent Alberta is the same.
Because voters generally want to be the centre of attention, and have their needs addressed, democracy is naturally inclined toward the first doctrine.
Churchill is oft quoted as saying that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms that have been tried.”
history of democracy in Greece,
Right to vote was given to Greek men who were not slaves nor immigrants. (thus to only about half the men, says John D. Hunt, p. 161)
Athens democracy included both a random sampling of male citizens who voted for policy questions (sort of like referendums used in Canada) and the selection of representatives from each of the tribes to serve in, or serve as officers of, the Council.
It went through reforms
Solon (in 594 BC),
Cleisthenes "the father of Athenian democracy" (in 508–07 BC), and
Cleisthenes broke up the unlimited power of the nobility by organizing citizens into ten tribes based on where they lived [with each tribe having a diverse membership], rather than on their wealth (the former four tribes).
In 510 BC, Spartan hoplites helped the Athenians overthrow the tyrant Hippias, son of Peisistratus. Cleomenes I, king of Sparta, put in place a pro-Spartan oligarchy headed by Isagoras.[6] However, Cleisthenes, with the support of the middle class and aided by democrats, took over. Cleomenes intervened in 508 and 506 BC, but could not stop Cleisthenes and his Athenian supporters.
Through Cleisthenes' reforms, the people of Athens endowed their city with isonomic institutions—equal rights for each citizen (though only free men and women were citizens)[7]—and established ostracism as a punishment.[8]
…
After this victory, Cleisthenes reformed the government of Athens. In order to forestall strife between the traditional clans, which had led to the tyranny in the first place, he changed the political organization from the four traditional tribes, which were based on family relations, and which formed the basis of the upper-class Athenian political power network, into ten tribes according to their area of residence (their deme), which would form the basis of a new democratic power structure.[18]
It is thought that there may have been 139 demes (though this is still a matter of debate),
[My understanding of the arrangement: the demes were organized into 30 trittyes ("thirds") with ten in each region, with ten tribes each covering a part of each of the three regions (a city region, asty; a coastal region, paralia; and an inland region, mesogeia)]
=====================
From Aristotle, Athenian Constitution (
Part 21
The people, therefore, had good reason to place confidence in Cleisthenes. Accordingly, now that he was the popular leader, three years after the expulsion of the tyrants, in the archonship of Isagoras, his first step was to distribute the whole population into ten tribes in place of the existing four, with the object of intermixing the members of the different tribes, and so securing that more persons might have a share in the franchise. From this arose the saying 'Do not look at the tribes', addressed to those who wished to scrutinize the lists of the old families.
Next he made the Council to consist of five hundred members instead of four hundred, each tribe now contributing fifty, whereas formerly each had sent a hundred. The reason why he did not organize the people into twelve tribes was that he might not have to use the existing division into trittyes; for the four tribes had twelve trittyes, so that he would not have achieved his object of redistributing the population in fresh combinations.
Further, he divided the country into thirty groups of demes, ten in the districts about the city, ten on the coast, and ten in the interior. These he called trittyes; and he assigned three of them by lot to each tribe, in such a way that each should have one portion in each of these three regions.
All who lived in any given deme he declared fellow-demesmen, to the end that the new citizens might not be exposed by the habitual use of family names, but that men might be officially described by the names of their demes; and accordingly it is by the names of their demes that the Athenians speak of one another. He also instituted Demarchs, who had the same duties as the previously existing Naucrari,--the demes being made to take the place of the naucraries.
He gave names to the demes, some from the localities to which they belonged, some from the persons who founded them, since some of the areas no longer corresponded to localities possessing names.
On the other hand he allowed every person to retain his family and clan and religious rites according to ancestral custom. The names given to the tribes were the ten which the Pythia appointed out of the hundred selected national heroes.”
THUS
Whole country divided into 30 trittyes (each is a group of demes)
Ten tribes – each tribe having one city trittye; one coastal trittye; one interior trittye. (The goal was to encourage unity by mixing the population in each tribe. Also the new structure broke up the old political structure and opened the door to new times.)
Thus each “trittye” (translates as third) was a third of a tribe.
Tribe put forward 50 candidates chosen by lot, to fill the 500-seat Council.
(It is like if Alberta was divided into ten districts but each district had three parts - one in the south (or just Calgary); one in the centre (the cities or just Edmonton); and one in the north, with each district electing (or choosing by lot) say 29 people, to fill the 87-seat Legislature.
Certainly this would break up the present two-party system and the 87 separate constituency associations that each party has, and the regionalism of cities versus rural areas.
But our past political history tells us that our natural inclination is to concentrate power and representation on just one party. In very few other jurisdictions do you see a party take more than half the votes, time after time, for decades.
And I don’t know the purpose of the non-contiguous tribes (or districts). The delegates likely had the right to mill around as they liked in the mass gathering so might have self-sorted into N/S/ Central anyway.
======
From “Athenian democracy”
three political bodies where citizens gathered in numbers running into the hundreds or thousands.
These are
-the assembly (in some cases with a quorum of 6,000), selected by lot
-the council of 500 (boule), (50 from each tribe as described above) and
-the courts (a minimum of 200 people, on some occasions up to 6,000).
Of these three bodies, the assembly and the courts were the true sites of power – although courts, unlike the assembly, were never simply called the demos ('the people'), as they were manned by just those citizens over thirty.
===
In 594 BC, Solon is said to have created a boule of 400 to guide the work of the assembly.[49] Due to Cleisthenes’ reforms, the Athenian Boule was expanded to 500 and was selected by lot every year. Each of Cleisthenes's 10 tribes provided 50 councilors who were at least 30 years old.
the Boule's influence on policy was probouleutic; it prepared measures for deliberation by the assembly,
its executive function, it merely executed the wishes of the assembly.
The Boule's roles in public affairs included influence over finance, maintaining the military's cavalry and fleet of ships, advising the generals, approving of newly elected magistrates, and receiving ambassadors.
Most importantly, the Boule drafted probouleumata, or deliberations for the Ecclesia to discuss and approve on. During emergencies, the Ecclesia could grant special temporary powers to the Boule.
Cleisthenes increased the size of Boule to 500.
Cleisthenes restricted the Boule's membership to those of zeugitai status (and above), presumably because these classes' financial interests gave them an incentive towards effective governance. A member (Boule candidate) had to be approved by his deme, each of which would have an incentive to select those with experience in local politics and the greatest likelihood at effective participation in government.[51]
The members from each of the ten tribes in the Boule took it in turns to act as a standing committee (the prytaneis) of the Boule for a period of thirty-six days. All fifty members of the prytaneis on duty were housed and fed in the tholos of the Prytaneion, a building adjacent to the bouleuterion, where the boule met. A chairman for each tribe was chosen by lot each day, who was required to stay in the tholos for the next 24 hours, presiding over meetings of the Boule and Assembly.[51]
The Boule served as an executive committee for the assembly, and oversaw the activities of certain other magistrates. The Boule coordinated the activities of the various boards and magistrates that carried out the administrative functions of Athens and provided from its own membership randomly selected boards of ten responsible for areas ranging from naval affairs to religious observances.[52]
Altogether, the Boule was responsible for a great portion of the administration of the state, but was granted relatively little latitude for initiative.
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From Wiki “Cleisthenes” (continued)
D.M Lewis argues that Cleisthenes established the deme system in order to balance the central unifying force that a tyranny has with the democratic concept of having the people (instead of a single person) at the peak of political power.[6]
Another by-product of the deme system was that it split up and weakened his political adversaries.[20]
Cleisthenes also abolished patronymics in favour of demonymics (a name given according to the deme to which one belongs), thus increasing Athenians' sense of belonging to a deme.[19] This and the other aforementioned reforms worked to include (wealthy, male) foreign citizens in Athenian society.[21]
He also established sortition – the random selection of citizens to fill government positions rather than kinship or heredity. It is also speculated that, in another move to lower the barriers of kinship and heredity when it comes to participation in Athenian society, Cleisthenes made it so foreign residents of Athens were eligible to become legally privileged.[22][20]
In addition, he reorganized the Boule, created with 400 members under Solon, so that it had 500 members, 50 from each tribe. He also introduced the bouleutic oath, "To advise according to the laws what was best for the people".[23]
The court system (Dikasteria – law courts) was reorganized and had from 201–5001 jurors selected each day, up to 500 from each tribe. It was the role of the Boule to propose laws to the assembly of voters, who convened in Athens around forty times a year for this purpose. The bills proposed could be rejected, passed, or returned for amendments by the assembly.
From Wiki “Cleisthenes”
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The idea that common persons, the general public should have input into laws is similar to the idea now becoming more and more widespread of the usefulness of Citizen’s Assemblies. One was used in BC in 2005 to consider reforms of the election system. (Its suggestion to switch to Single Transferable Voting in multi-member districts was put to a referendum and endorsed by a majority of votes, but the result was ignored by the government.)
Randomly chosen participants
Another interesting application of the Citizens’ Assembly idea was used in 2020 when the Citizens’ Assembly on Democratic Expression was organized and after 40 hours of online meetings came up with 33 recommendations. They were the basis of the Trudeau government’s Online Harms Act (Bill C-63), which was not passed into law before his resignation.
(Online: https://www.commissioncanada.ca/)
“In 2024, the Liberals introduced a new version of the Online Harms Act (Bill C-63), drawing significantly from the citizens’ assembly’s report. The bill was not without its critics, including the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and renowned author Margaret Atwood, neither a stranger to the threat of dystopian governments controlling speech, who worried about the law’s limits on personal liberty.
Notwithstanding the risks of regulating or criminalizing certain forms of speech and disrupting the social media marketplace, Bill C-63’s introduction implied that not taking action was worse. And that was certainly the conclusion of the citizens’ assembly itself.
Unfortunately, in the frothy cauldron of Canadian federal politics, the Online Harms Act died when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau resigned on Jan. 6, 2025, and all legislation under debate was suspended while Parliament was prorogued. It will fall to a future government to reintroduce the law. …
“The public is not simply an aggregate of personal preferences, opinions and identities but the sum of diverse communities, empathetic relationships, interactive dialogue, social knowledge and collective wisdom”
Richard Johnson and Peter MacLeod, “That Time When 42 Random Canadians Tried to Fix the Internet. Inside the citizens’ assembly that tackled online hate and lies. From the new book ‘Democracy’s Second Act.”
=========================
There are only 26 countries which are regarded as “full democracies” by the Economist Democracy Index, and Denmark is one of them
Norway
2New Zealand
Denmark
4Iceland
Finland
6Sweden
Ireland
8Switz.
Canada
10Luxembourg
Netherlands
Uruguay
Japan
Australia
Taiwan
16 Germany
Austria
UK
Costa rica
20Portugal
Mauritius
Spain
Czech
Greece
Estonia
26 France
======================
The creation of full democracies is a gradual thing.
John D. Hunt said Britain got Responsible Government under the Georges:
George II who ruled from 1727 to 1760;
George III who ruled from 1760 until his death in 1820;
George IV who ruled from 1820 to 1830.)
but others say Britain did not get responsible government (parliamentary executive composed of ministers depending collectively for their title to office on retaining the confidence of the elected house of the legislature) until the 1840s (thus under Queen Victoria).
and Britain only made a great advance toward true Representative Government with the Reform Bill of 1832, according to John D. Hunt (Dawn of a New Patriotism, p. 133).
John D. Hunt wrote that if representation and the powers of taxation go hand in hand, we have liberty. But without that congruence, we have "class oligarchy" with those in power receiving "favour and benefits, while the masses become objects for their plunder." (Dawn of a New Patriotism, p. 135).
If a party receives less than half the votes and elects a majority of seats in the chamber and thus forms government, and then rewards its friends (such as oil companies, the military-industrial complex or foreign companies) while spending as little as possible on the needs of the wider electorate, most would see this as unfair.
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DISTRICTS
People representation (representation of an “unanimous constituency”), not geographic representation
Eltweed Pomeroy was president (formerly he had been secretary of the DL League of New Jersey).
In 1897 he put article in New Times A Magazine of Social Progress
"Representation Does not Represent",
saying among other things that geographic representation is all FPTP does and that is no longer good enough.
Some say representation should be about “people, not acres and trees”
And representation should be about representatives who share the sentiment of those who they represent and not have to pretend to represent all the various opinions within a geographic area, as if they even could.
We divide Edmontonians into 8 federal ridings, 20 provincial districts and 12 civic wards
But it would make just as little sense to divide voters by age group, gender, whether natural-born citizens or naturalized citizens, homeowners or renters; the first letter of their last name, etc.
But one might respond that people don’t vote according to their age groups, or their last name.
But it is also true that people do not vote according to where they live. Each of those 40 districts include voters of a variety of opinions, and often the one member elected does not have support from even half of the voters in the district.
Edmonton’s mayor represents the whole city, so obviously it is not too large to be one district, especially with 12 or so aldermen then representing the voters in the district, instead of just one person (the mayor).
“Even after the Reform acts of 1832 and 1867 there were still many boroughs with tiny electorates. Opponents of reform had defended this inequality by arguing that parliament did not represent people but places, and more specifically “communities of interests”. Thus, the size of population was incidental to parliamentary representation, and this was still the case at the time of the reform acts of 1832 and 1867. Even after the Third Reform Act it was only a secondary consideration. With the exception of a handful of radicals, most politicians still believed that parliament represented, first and foremost, communities of interest.” (From Matthew Roberts, “Electoral reform dilemmas: are single-member constituencies out of date?”)
While many talk about the right of voters to have tan impact on who is elected, the singlemember districts used in Canada actually harken back to the idea that each district is a community of common interest.
And perhaps in old days when local farmers wanted a bridge built, this applied, but now with the infrastructure in place, and with the various means of transportation and problems of urban life and inter-related but widely varying lifestyles and means of employment we see today in just a few blocks of travel, we can see that simply living in a place does not give all voters a common interest.
Woodrow Wilson in 1910 (just a couple years before his election as U.S. president) wrote that the U.S. was founded on belief in democracy and responsible government, rather than efficiency. But by 1910 the U.S. had neither, and the common man found himself fighting political machines and political parties.
Political parties are central to our representative democracy but many are turning against Canada’s traditional two main parties. While at one time 90 percent of votes or more went to the two main parties, now the portion in many elections (2019 and 2021 federal elections for example) is closer to only two-thirds. Canadians are to a large degree already voting as if they have proportional representation even if they don’t. (The last federal election is an exception – it seems many voted strategically for Liberals, even if the local situation did not require it.)
Wilson mentioned the case of a sheriff being castigated by the governor and simply responding “it is none of your business”. He knew he was elected by local voters and did not owe his position to the governor at all. (Munro, Initiative, Referendum and Recall, p. 68-69)
I have a sinking suspicion that our elected city aldermen, upon admission to city hall, are given an orientation session where they are told that they need to represent all (or at least the common denominator) in the ward, and that the city administration knows best what the city’s needs are. When in fact each councillor owes his or her position to the voters (or at least to the group of voters in the ward that voted for them), and to no one else.
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an overview of the course of political principles in Alberta:
-drive for elected responsible government (achieved in the NWT in
and just accepting two-party system
- drive to control government through initiative, sometimes forcing a referendum
- drive for third party representation (especially since 1921) and proportional representation
============================================
Liberal National Conference in Montreal April 9-11
delegates will be debating a Proportional Representation Resolution and an instant-Runoff Voting resolution.
Court challenge appeal was denied.
==================================
- then Alberta regressed back to FPTP in 1950s amid a multi-party system.
This is not reassuring for reformers but is just part of democracies.
No government can pass any law that a later government cannot undo.
This though works both ways.
Due to the fuzzy election system we use, if just a few thousand voters shift their votes or just a few voters vote this time who did not last time, there may be a government change in government (with NDP leader Nenshi the expected replacement for Premier Smith).
The new government can undo the unhappy laws that the UCP have brought in.
Such abrupt policy reversals are wasteful but until we have a system that see the majority of voters actually represented, they will happen.
If a system actually represented the majority of voters such abrupt policy reversals would not happen - the majority of voters simply do not change their minds as much as that.
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