To the editor,
Winston Churchill once observed, “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
When he offered his observation, about 75 years ago, just after the end of the Second World War, the world was a much simpler place. In the British parliament of the day there were two parties – Conservative and Labour – vying for supremacy at the polls, the Liberals having faded somewhat after the early 1900s.
I wonder what he would think of our current situation here in Canada. According to the Elections Canada website, there are 22 registered political parties in Canada from the Animal Protection Party to the Veterans Coalition Party. That’s one for each letter from A to V. Alas it’s not so simple.
Theoretically (consider that word capitalized, italicized, and underlined) then, given our reliance on the “first-past-the-post” election system, it would be possible for one of those parties (for argument’s sake I’ll take my favourite: Rhinoceros Party) to form a majority government by gaining 4.55 per cent of the votes in 170 of the 338 ridings. Not a very likely scenario to be sure, it is possible though.
First-past-the-post means you merely have to get more votes than anybody else in the riding. You don’t need most of the votes, just more than the person who comes second. It’s a bit like that observation about escaping from some predator (lion, tiger, shark, grizzly, whatever) and your survival depends simply on being faster than one other person in your group.
The basic difficulty is that one of those things in the previous paragraph is a joke and the other is an amusing anecdote.
There must be a better way of doing things.
John Finlay
Walkerton
