Why I (now) wholeheartedly support MMP
Monday, 1 October 2007
Posted by austin in: Politics, Toronto, trackback
I’ve been doing some serious thinking about the referendum question facing Ontarians this fall. Spacing Votes has been quite useful in distilling some of the issues and features of MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) as opposed to FPTP (first-past-the-post, the current system), as evidenced by an earlier post I made. They continue to do so with MMP Disproportionality, Part I (Local Seats); I’m looking forward to part two.
I have, however, been thinking about the “list” seats versus geographically-based seats (”ridings”) and come to the conclusion that the problem isn’t list seats, but ridings. My office-place is an interesting example in this problem, in that the office is in nominally in Oakville (it’s at Winston Churchill and Dundas, right at the very border between Oakville and Mississauga), but very few people live in Oakville. A lot of people live west of the office, in Hamilton, St. Catharines, or Burlington; a lot of people live in Mississauga proper. Some, like myself, live in Toronto. I spend nearly ⅓ of my life away from where I live, and of the ⅔ that I’m at home, roughly ⅓ of it is spent sleeping.
So while I care about my neighbourhood’s representation in parliament (both federally and provincially), I also care about the places where I work and (at a minimum) the transit corridor I travel to and from work every day. My concerns are less about where I live than how I get to and from work, which means that regional transit policies matter to me. I can’t effectively and efficiently use a transit system to get to work. (The local Go station is ~10 minutes from my house, the train doesn’t run that often and even less often coming home, and the nearest station is still ~15 minutes from work by bus; my total commute by car is under 35 minutes).
I care about how municipalities (who should be caring more about the local rights and responsibilities) are being run over roughshod by the OMB and developers and the province itself. Mike Harris did more damage to Toronto’s infrastructure through forced amalgamation and downloading than anyone else. He also reduced our democratic representation by cutting the number of city councillors from 57 to 44—the City of Toronto web site says this was adopted by City Council, but I recall reporting at the time was that the adoption was at electoral gunpoint, just like the almagamation itself.
In other words, 90% of my concerns aren’t limited to my relatively small geographic region of the Parkdale-High Park riding, and the concerns I do have about Parkdale-High Park should be addressed through City Council and my local councillor rather than my provincial representation.
Ultimately, I don’t know that I care whether my representation is regional, and even think that regional representation may be the oddity in today’s world. As such, I can only end up supporting MMP. It may not be perfect, and I may regret supporting it in the future, but I don’t believe that being held hostage to the past in this case is a good thing.
Update: Reading a bit more, I have found another point that puts me in favour of MMP. The claim is that regional ridings represent the will of the people. This is only partially true, in that there are plenty of examples of parties parachuting in “star” candidates. I think Ken Dryden was this way for the federal Liberal party; while the people of his riding ended up voting for him, he did not have to win his party’s nomination for the seat.
Comments»
Dear Halostatue,
I am writing to invite you to participate in Bloggers for MMP , a project of the Vote for MMP campaign to help raise awareness about the need for change, the referendum, the question and why voters should support MMP.
All you need to do is display one of our logos or banners prominently on your blog. We’ll add you to our blogroll. The voters have an historic opportunity for more effective representation, fair results and vote that counts. They like that. We can win this if we can expand into new networks. Bloggers like yourself can play an indispensible in helping to spread the word and get people involved in the last days of this once-in-a-life opportunity to make meaningful change.
Yours truly
Debra Drainie
Vote for MMP Campaign
–
On October 10th, Vote for MMP.
http://www.voteformmp.ca
a campaign by Fair Vote Canada
Have you tried biking to the GO stations form your home and to your work? If timed right, would that work out for you?
If you live in Parkdale-HP you have the Gardiner -QEW which is attractive going out of the city and understandle when faced with limited transit options since it sounds like you’re reverse-commuting.
Ms. Drainie: Thank you for the invitation. I don’t mind providing a text link in my sidebar, but I prefer not providing image banners at all. I’m not sure that I will be posting about MMP beyond this latest post.
Matt: My post elided over a number of things. I’m right at the junction of Lakeshore and the Gardiner, so the closest Go station to my home is Long Branch. Because of traffic, this is at least a five minute drive from home, and at least a ten minute bike ride (which I could do now, since I bought a bike this summer). Work is literally at Winston Churchill and Dundas, leaving me between Go stations with a 5–8km ride from either one with uncertain road access for bikes. If we assume that it takes me 20 minutes to bike from the destination Go station, I’m still much faster actually driving to work as I have done for the last three and a half years. My longest commute home has been 90 minutes because of an accident; my shortest commutes have been 22 minutes. I wish I could use transit; it doesn’t make any sense for me to do so given the sorry state of transit now.