Leadnow volunteers calling for fair voting in December 2016
 

Today the government released the results of their ‘My Democracy’ survey.[1-3] Unfortunately, it seems like this expensive and time-consuming exercise doesn’t provide much guidance on how the Liberals can keep their promise to make voting reform happen.

The results of the survey are not straightforward. 67% of people said they are satisfied with our democracy, but that they also want to see improvements such as more collaboration, negotiation and power-sharing between parties. These are qualities that are often missing in our current first-past-the-post system, but that a proportional representation (PR) system would have. But it’s hard to draw conclusions from the survey because the questions were broad and the answers are open to interpretation.

Fortunately  we do have the recommendation from the special committee on voting reform (ERRE) as a guiding next step. From July to October, ERRE conducted in-depth engagement with experts and the public and Leadnow was at every stop on the committee’s tour. Overwhelmingly the committee found that experts and the public want to move to proportional voting system and have recommended this as a next step for Canada.
 
So, what’s next?