In recent issue of an Albertan magazine, an Albertan professor disparaged Donald Savoie's call for electoral reform in his recent book Democracy in Canada The Disintegration of our Institutions.
The professor does not seem to see that the regional grievances are mostly aroused by our FPTP system, which inflates the difference of political sentiment from region to region.
Canadians in Ontario are more similar to Canadians in Alberta than the present make-up of the House of Commons makes it appear.
In the 2019 federal election:
First off, the NDP is under-represented across the country, except BC, and that inflates the number of Conservative seats, making Alberta appear more Conservative than is true.
The NDP was due six seats in AB/Sask and got just one.
In Saskatchewan, 111,000 votes were cast for the NDP, electing no one.
In Nova Scotia, 100,000 votes were cast for the NDP, electing no one.
In PEI, 6000 votes were cast for the NDP electing no one.
In New Brunswick, 41,000 votes were cast for the NDP, electing no one.
It took 235,000 votes to win a NDP seat in Alberta.
350,000 Liberal votes in AB/SK was not enough to win one seat.
These results show up badly when you consider that a Liberal and a Conservative MP were elected with less than 11,000 votes each (in Cardigan, PEI and in the Saskatchewan riding of Desnethe--Missinippi--Churchill River).
Liberals were under-represented in AB/SK, which inflates the strength of the Conservative vote.
Liberals in Alberta with 14 percent of the vote deserved 5 seats but got none. The undemocratic FPTP voting system threw their votes in the trash.
Thus, FPTP creates feelings of regionalism.
Adoption of proportional representation of any type (party-list MMP, STV) in the Canadian context would mean that each good-sized province would elect a mixed crop of MPs, each party getting its due share of seats proportional to the vote tallies. Thus the apparent regionalism would pretty much evaporate as it would be seen that Canadians in each region vote muchly for the big four parties (with the BQ being a fifth party in Quebec), although to different degrees.
The writer criticized Canadian institutions for not addressing regionalism, at the same time denying the importance of the coast-to-coast cries for electoral reform. He obviously does not see that electoral reform is a way to address regionalism.
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