for good morning welcome to changes the program on sustainability i'm susan gregory the coordinating producer of the show and as we look ahead to two thousand and fifteen one of the issues facing hess is that there will be a federal election for those who don't vote because you don't think that your vote makes a difference here's a fact that even you may not be familiar with since world war one canada has had sixteen so called majority governments only four of which actually won a majority of the votes according to the fair vote canada website in the two thousand and eleven election as many of us recall thirty nine percent of the votes went to the conservatives giving them fifty four percent of the seats and there for  hundred percent of the power because the opposition simply doesn't have enough votes to vote them in parliament and i happened to notice at the time that in calgary which of course is a conservative stronghold the concern is actually only got sixty percent of the vote but they got one hundred percent of the seats i don't recall how many hacks will writings are in that area but they got all of them anyway so here to talk about what can be done this is reverend jordan ellis who's a mostly retired unity church minister he's been a long time activist with deep passion for the environmentalists social and democratic values many of us hold dear supports many of the organizations that are active in those areas such as the middle and council of canadians he's a local coordinator for fair vote canada and many may remember him as the coordinator of the popular green drinks environmental group for six years actually he was heavily involved in promoting the b c s t v referendum which was something that we can talk about a little bit later in the show and he joins us today representing fair vote canada which is a nonpartisan national association promoting fundamental electoral reform so good morning jordan ok and he's joined jordan is joined by paul manley who is well known to our listeners as a documentary filmmaker chair of the local chapter of the council of canadians and a well known activist on a number of issues such as watersheds investor state dispute provisions in international trade deals which is what i think you talked about last time you were on the show and the impact it's on our coast of proposed bitumen pipelines and tankers among many other things the good morning paul good morning thanks for having me and let's talk first about the purposes of fair vote canada and the council of canadians jordan i guess we'll start with you and fair vote yeah all can it is a group of citizens essentially concerned citizens who recognize that we are not being well served by our the way our present voting system is working for us and i've noticed over specially over the last number of years a lot the last eight years particularly that people are getting pretty disenfranchised and i think that's one of the reasons for the low voter turnout so fair vote count is about promoting the idea of moving to a better and fairer representative system so that everybody's vote counts in any election no matter what it may be and so we're trying to move that idea of proportional voting systems and all that will survive all of our society by hand in canada because we're way behind times in terms of finding a system that really works thank you council of canadians paul well the council committee and has a much broader agenda but the council supports initiatives we have a number of campaigns water trade energy health care and democracy which is you know one of the campaigns we've been pretty strong on we've been working on the  court case and we're working with their vote count of the on this campaign to get everybody to sign on to changing our electoral system so that it's fair so that people's votes count now back when i did that little bit of an introduction there was a mention of majority governments and the word government is used in different ways isn't it because many of us think of the government as the bureaucracy like god a canada revenue agency immigration i for example where as majority government actually means something else when we talk about the a government in an electoral sense what do we actually mean i think you mean what we're talking about is our members of parliament that serve in the house of commons so the government is who we elect into that chamber the most important one in our country and they then set the policies for all of the programs that you suspension and the a majority government is actually the party that is in power right on the other parties are the opposition accept the majority a majority government generally means that the government has elected that runs the government has a majority of votes so this is one of the very basic problems that once a government is in that position once a party is in  position of a majority government they become all powerful and can never be defeated on any of their legislation because of the way the system has evolved into working they have the majority of m p s in the house based on a first pas system where the current majority government has only thirty nine percent of the sixty percent of the electorate the bother to vote so really there stephen harper is running a majority government with the majority of members of parliament with only twenty five percent of the electorate supporting actually yes you know he considers himself to be appropriate to be able to do that when the government exactly who he wants because he thinks he has the support to do so but the support has actually been thin and similar things could be said at the provincial level too i don't sometimes people get confused between federal and provincial but this same issue arises in both cases doesn't that yeah they both run on first past post race politics i guess that would be the definition of first past the post where you had whoever gets the most votes in a particular riding wins the seat even if the total across the country is still less than an actual majority you can still have a majority government in ottawa or in victoria yeah and that's why i think people have to some feeling disenfranchised th under first past the post if the person you voted for didn't win that seat whether it be an n p c in the house of commons or an m l a seat in our provincial legislature your vote essentially has been waged if you feel you are not being represented by that individual that didn't win in that writing that you happen to live now that raises something i noticed on the fair vote counted a website that says that in every federal election seven million votes don't elect anyone perfectly clear on how that what that actually means but it does raise an issue because i think a lot of people feel that or have the impression that democracy means winners  losers it means majority rule and therefore they minority in this case it happens to be the majority of canadians are the losers and that to me is not actually what democracy means is that democracy according to a definition that i found in the dictionary is ruled by the people either directly or through representatives that would be in contrast to an absolute monarchy for example a dictatorship an oligarchy is another form of government where just a few people run the whole thing or a plu our system is sometimes referred to l which basically means government by the wealthy and we could you know we could talk about that or not depending on how much time we have but really democracy should be about the people calling the shots if you would be zero yes our system is really put the mock in democracy where we were told we can vote every four years and then we should shut up and go home and let the people that we've elected a rule and we in effect elect dictators people who say well i've been given the power to make these decisions and i'm not going to consult with people you know the public anymore about this we're going to move forward with the agenda that we were elected on and sometimes you know what that agenda is and sometimes you don't sometimes it's very vague and so you get situations in the middle between elections where the public can be very upset by the moves that governments are making and sometimes that backlash to those moves will push the government to backtrack such as that of the spy bill that they had where everybody was tweeting you know tell everything about yourself because they wanted they wanted all this access to your social media accounts and websites and information and everything else and people will push back and and when those things but more often than not the government pushes forward an agenda and we're stuck without agenda the next time we get that one moment in a ballot where we can put a check beside a politician's name in their party and then we're told to go home again you know news poll says we often are very not aware of what the hidden agenda is this going to be coming forward over the next four years and so really we're voting for a few of us a do voter voting blind for what we hope is going to be the result that we want in the end and so often it's turning out that it's not being sure well i think people sometimes vote based on maybe not the best information or not the best thinking you have sort of the problem is that people get started by how much well the system works and how hard it is to kind of understand it particularly when there's side issues going on all the time and we're called  representative democracy as you mentioned suzanne and that means that we do in fact our system is set up to represent us we we allow representatives to go but that's with the idea of goodwill behind it that in fact we're going to carry our voice forward and make those things that we have interest in covered and known and it's just turned out because of the way things have evolved that's not the way the system works and the longer our system goes back to way back to the twelfth century i think it was and you know what the world belief was in the twelfth century the theory is this flat and that maybe is a good analogy of kind of how our government is working right now they think of us as people that think that the world is still flat and they'll take over and run things for us in the time in between elections and as elections come up they'll start to try and convince you that their view is still right and don't try anything different because we want to keep it exactly the same yes part of the problem here of course is that so much party policy comes from the leader's office or from perhaps the party executives and not from the grassroots in the party in spite of perhaps probably most parties do kind of make a show of asking you can vent a little survey yeah policy conventions yeah i know that the all the parties have policy conventions and have policies where the members are determining the policies of the party but that doesn't mean that those policies will be emphasized by the leader or that they'll be followed by the leader often policies get ditched or that are just outright ignored and so yes and that plays out in parliament of course with what's known as whipping which the homes are pretty brutal but actually each party well i don't know about us as party like the greens who have two  right now but the bigger parties have party whips who tell the m p s in their party how they have to vote and to me that wouldn't be such a bad thing if the policies had in fact been arrived at by a consensus of the party caucuses with the end put from the membership from for example party conventions like paul was just talking about or even online surveys and things like that if everybody in a particular party actually agreed on certain issues and if a bill came up in parliament that in needed to be voted on it seems to me then at least those who support the party would generally know which side they were on in a particular vote but that's not the case if the grassroots and even the caucus the caucus being the collection of members of parliament and senators usually heavyweight in each party if they're just told how to vote then it really is dictatorship from the leadership isn't  yeah that's what fair vote counters trying to change by moving toward a proportional system that the m p s our representatives that we elect will be more freed up to have what they call sometimes call free votes where they can vote their conscience or they can vote the way their representatives in the home writing indicated they wanted them to vote on a certain policy and so you're not so tied to the system as it's evolved in the present way that just isn't working for the majority of canadians most governments in the world are elected through proportional representation and what ends up happening is that parties need to work together in order to implement agendas and that means that they have to come towards compromise and they have to work together and they have to listen to each other's ideas we you know you're talking about the whip vote a prime example of that was the fee per agreement between kind of bench i know many conservative members of parliament were opposed to that agreement but they were whipped into line to vote for it and the people that spoke out about it publicly changed their mind really quickly you know in a day and that's because the party leaders have the right under election count of the legislation which was changed in the early seventies to sign the nomination papers of anybody wishing to be a candidate including sitting m p s and so if sitting m p s do not follow the whip what the whip tells them to do and do not do what their toll to do in parliament they can have their nomination papers refused to be signed by the leader and basically then they can't run for the party again michael chong had has a bill that was going before parliament he's a conservative member of parliament to to change that that bill is since been watered down so that it's not going to change the fact that leaders can make those decisions it's going to become a suggestion so but parliamentary reform is also key to the cent we'll get parliamentary reform when we have electoral reform as well because coalition governments governments with multiple parties to working together to implement policy and to run the government you will get compromise and you'll get a better system of government overall that's it the idea of compromise was what i thought you were speaking to in your question and paul just made a really good point i think the general public when it hears the word compromise or coalition particularly see that as something really evil and bad and against what they understand democracy to be about when in fact it's work the opposite that coalitions can and do in many countries and in many smaller jer's dictions work very well and they do create a more open representation and a more even way to have people represented in what they want to have happen and so it's really a good thing but especially governments that are in power at a given time speaking federally when the conservatives for example when if you raise the idea of a coalition as a couple of the parties did a few elections back they were just told that that was a really you know they were it was a scare tactic to move you away from even considering that idea because the party in power wants things to stay exactly as it is them in power yes but they had the conservatives had a minority government at that point wish means they had the most seats but not a majority of this that's right and so the other the other parties could only take power by actually forming a coalition where parties that had less m p s than the conservatives got together to defeat the conservatives and that you know that's a situation that happens in democracies in europe very functional democracies in europe where you'll see that the government has done something really unpopular they're in a minority position a coalition of other parties will come forward and say we have a different proposition for how we want to do things and they will take over power based on the minority governments and coalition governments we've had some of the best policy and can of them based on minority governments we got health care universal health care in this country because we had a liberal minority government and at the time tommy douglas was in a minority was in a position as holding the balance of power and his compromise for working with the liberals and supporting their budgets and not letting that liberal minority government fall was to bring in universal health care and that's how we got it we got it based on compromise based on the liberals saying ok if you support us on these things we'll support this initiative that you have and great things that happen in this country based on minority governments and parties working together parties with different ideas about how we want to are now working as paul just said coalitions work and have worked successfully and in fact our system is set up such things as what he mentioned can happen or a group can get together and go and ask the governor general to give them the opportunity to become government the system has turned out to be such that the governor general who is appointed by the prime minister of course doesn't take that power that he's given in legislation to actually go ahead and offer a coalition of other parties to have a have a crack at it twice now or three times maybe he's been asked to take that power that is in fact his main job and move with it and he's chosen not because he didn't want to affect the relationship he has by the person that put him in his place or she yeah so stephen harper actually prorogue parliament that was when i learned about prorogue i didn't even know that sort of thing exist coalition of the opposition parties would have represent has a majority would have had a majority of seats in the house anyway and would presumably we don't i really don't know the math of this but presumably might have representative them would jordi of canadians therefore so in fact could have had the right to become the government one of their leaders would have become the prime minister but the problem still is as you're saying as we peel this onion back to look at how it works if the parties each still have a dictator at the head of them and people in the party whether m p or just have to conventions don't follow along the whole system isn't going to work and hasn't worked anyway because the power is all centralized in the one or two people at the top terms of the government a lot of those people are civil servants are not even elected people and they're making policies that get put through other individuals that maybe are elected that just you know don't even know what they're talking about when they stand up and post a comment so what's the cure for that because the representation of ok so how would head proportional representation cure that particular problem what we're inviting every candidate that's going to be running in this riding and i think we're trying to do this across the country in two thousand and fifteen is have them commit to actually being open to proposing proportional representation as a whole new way of doing business when that gets in place from so called grassroots we're in each party in the whole power structure within the parties  evolved and the whole power structure of parliament will change if you had people there like not to be partisan at all but like the green party because they aren't in any real position of power in terms of government at this point in time those two individuals are now stand up and say what they believe in and people pay attention because they're not just hearing that old party line that really means nothing to us that are hearing the nine hundred b c when they're talking about fisheries in the east coast or something they can still cover the whole country and be a representative and i think is with me has kind of very good reputation developed a very good reputation because she approaches things in exactly that way she has actually written as well about the bad behavior in question period and that sort of a lot of that's the show too but it isn't to say i'm reading a book actually called tragedy in the commons which is a sort of takeoff and tragedy of the commons which you may be familiar with it's written by alison lote and michael mcmillan and they interviewed eighty former members of parliament about their experiences and some of the problems some of the most commonly mention problems were that question period is a form of partisan theater really and not much more it's almost a waste of time but it's what gets on television and it's what gives politicians a bad reputation actually because of the behavior there was one survey apparently which found that politicians were just above psychics in terms of the respect to give vent to their profession so that was kind of interesting to read m p s all do committee work but they're not necessarily assigned to commit cities based on what they are good at who are interested in what their experiences for an example that they  give is the chartered accountant might not get onto the finance committee for example or a committee having to do with money and in any way and how do they get in those committees that are appointed by the leader political party yes exactly and that of course the third thing that i've noticed is the the whipping of the votes which we've talked about and the other thing is that a majority government because just simply of the numbers the party in power is in the present situation the conservatives always are going to have more members in those committees than any of the other armies and so if all you're doing is following the policies of the government leader guess how the committee goes really not it's really not doing our citizens business it's playing the political game as it's now structured in exactly yeah so let's get back to other countries that do have coalitions and proportional representation room presumably the coalitions arise out of the fact that they have proportional representation so they have more parties with more seats in their parliament or whatever they call their legislative assembly can you mention perhaps some really good example actually the u k is the one that does have a coalition government now right like to take it one step further sometimes and look closer to home in the northwest territories has a unique way of running their legislature and not even sure what the technical name is for it but those people that are elected as representatives don't come with any party agenda that they're bringing forward they all get together in what would be a coalition of everybody in their legislature and then they elect the leader the prime minister from that group so that's kind of a real pure and simple way and it works very well up there so the individuals are empowered to carry forward the voice of the people that elected them and then they have a way of electing a leader that's going to be responsible to them too so i think another example i know of is in new zealand has worked very well they've had proportional representation in part of their legislature they sometimes switch back and forth on that but very seldom that any country that ever finally moved to a more modern way like proportional representation never backs up and says this doesn't work we're going back to the old dictatorship model right what are the chances do you think of dissolving the party system entirely at the federal level when canada and just having members of parliament elected from each riding based on their own policies but it wasn't until the seventy's that you actually had party names on the ballot but just individual names on the ballot so there were the parties weren't represented on the ballot i think the party system is very entrenched in kind of the right now also  a long process to change that but changing the way that the voting system works would be a start to that just because you would see devolution of power from parties and party leaders back to  s which is where it should be him you should have m p s that represent their constituents in their regions and work together to represent the country in the best way possible through getting paid to do that or getting a very good salary to just be a rubber stamp yeah it frustrates them to judging from the eighty m p s who were interviewed for that book that i mentioned they were very frustrated by that whole thing they get their notes that tell them how they're going to vote each day and what questions they're going to lob what from the questions they're going to law or which questions are going to unfriendly questions they're going to lobby i mean they're very scripted and tightly controlled and what we need from elected representatives is people who are able to think freely and independently and take the research and listen to what their constituents have to say and listen to the concerns of their constituents and vote accordingly you can have we have a huge country here you can have a difference within a party on a policy based on what region of the country you live in because we have different economic interests in d c than people in quebec too so what might fly there might be really detrimental to citizens here and so to force m p s to vote against the interests of their own citizens who elected them i think it's trade agreement which might work well for meat and dairy producers and co back meat producers in alberta but it's horrible for auto workers in ontario and here on the island where we have a whole bunch of coal mine proposals that are heavily invested in by korean companies when you have investors stayed in a treaty trade agreement like not work all the communities are solidly behind blocking those coal mines we face paying out korean companies to not do something that they want to do and a for the loss of potential profit of what those call mines could mean for them so some of the things that pull reasons as these issues with trade agreements for example look to me simplistically shows that shows me that things aren't again working well the way it is now structured set up in fact it's working against us so much so that parties in power in parties wanting to be in power will go so far as to commit criminal acts to maintain themselves in power that's certainly not what handle that the conservatives used during the two thousand and eight election and then in the two thousand and eleven election and that deemed elm ostrow has just been convicted for overspending and shuffling the books the conservatives pleaded guilty and paid off a fine for what they did in two thousand and eight oh i think it's going to jail for what he's done and has to pay off a huge fine so there you know that's one exe election scam in the whole robo call scam where we've seen one party operative at a very low level michael stone who's taken the fall for the pierre putin robo calls in wealth but this was happening in writings right across canada and the include complainants from six different writings where people were disenfranchised of their vote based on getting calls fake calls from somebody saying they were with elections canada telling them that their polling place a change in thinking about it systemically from the way things work as paul said what happened in that case was to use that political phrase this low level operative was thrown under the bus by the party to be the sacrific lamb sacrificial goat to pay for that indiscretion so called but as the judge said in the judgment for that individual he said the evidence a cage that he did not likely act alone so the party in power was trying to get out of any responsibility for all of that stuff by blaming it on one low level person the judge couldn't see it in any other way because they were stuck with the law in that case but it was really clear to him that this was a higher up party an initiative that was carried forward with everybody's blessing to illegally try and change our electoral system to their benefit essentially what one of the things about proportional representation party support for proportional representation is that it's always shifting so the conservatives were in favor of proportional representation when their vote was split between progressive conservatives and reform party they thought it was a good idea until they got into majority position we've just had a vote on december third with the opposition party so the n d p the liberals the greens and the block all voting in favor of proportional representation but the problem is is if we get a majority government that majority government is going to think as they have in the past that they can do it again that they will get that trick pony pos the finish line again and so why would they change the system which would guarantee you that they would only get you know a percentage based on the number of votes that they got a percentage of the the seats in the house and so the i think the only way that we're actually going to get proportional representation is again with a minority government or a coalition government of minority parties because it's really in the interest of all canadians it's in the interest of the electorate to have a proportional representation system but when you get a party that has a majority position and they're able to dictate and rule and the power has been consolidated in the prime minister's office incrementally from trudeau to the crutch and harper is just taking it to new levels of elected dictatorship that when they're in the opposition they're not going to want to change the way the system works and so the only way we're going to get that is that really i think is in twenty fifteen if we have minority parliament and if the parties agree that this if we're going to run a government as a minority the first priority has to be going into a process of changing the electoral system the other priority of course needs to be actually doing something about climate change because we've just been scofflaws internationally under the har regime to the point where we're at a crisis and so those two things i think are the most important things that any minority government could and should tackle and i think it's really the only way we're go proportional representation is with a minority or qualifying government and then we're going to see change in important things like climate changes if there is one because the present government in its majority position obviously isn't interested at all  changing the things that supports the way you know put them in power in and gets them to stay there yes so once again i think the the citizens need to hear the voting public needs to hear that this is a really important election coming up because they have the opportunity now to go out and ask every one of the people that are asking to be their representatives where they stand on proportional representation and if they don't support it as most conservatives i'm sure won't then that's information that you can take with you to the bell box and say well what system do i really want that's going to represent me and represent the best interests of canada overall i think at this point so just mention to our listeners that you are listening to c h l why want to one point seven f m your campus and community station based in downtown and imo but heard wherever there's an internet connection at c h l y dot ca where we stream live and podcast and i will mention just well a few events actually along these lines here just so you have some information the federal green party will announce it's in and i'm a lady smith candidate for the two thousand and fifteen election this coming monday january fifth at noon at moped issue one o one commercial street in mean maybe i should just digress here for a second to mention that of course we've had writing redistribution yes for this upcoming election so in the past we had minimal cowichan writing jean crowder is the right so if you live in any of those areas you are now in the i'm a lady smith and this will be your green party candidate being announced on monday are there any fair vote or coun canadian events coming up the council of canadians we have an event coming up january twenty eighth it's a public forum on gas fracking and l n g liquefied natural gas or frocked gases we we want to have a property named and we have damien gillis who's been working on a film called fractured land that looks at the impacts of what's going on with all the g infrastructure in gas exports when we have to frack for that gas and people will tell you oh we've been fracking for fifty years in this province yes we've been doing vertical fracking where they drill straight down now they're doing horizontal to try to extract more gas because the vertical fracking has kind of run its course and horizontal fracking creates all kinds of additional problems they're pumping like twelve hundred different chemicals into fracking fluid into the ground this is leaking into aquifers as poising aquifers they're using millions of gallons of water to do this fracking process and horizontal fracking leads to methane leaks and so methane is seven times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas and we're releasing tons of it into the atmosphere and it's exacerbating the problem not this is not a solution to climate change  solution and it's not something we should be allowing for billions of dollars worth of infrastructure to be built in this province that will guarantee that we will be fracking the province for decades to come so i would suggest people come out this is it going to be at the bone road social center to hear daming q o s and on fan speak about this is going to be a really interesting presentation i've seen damien speak before of this he's very knowledgeable he's with commonsense canadian with rafe mer so you can see his stuff online but come here speaking powerful he knows what he's talking about and it's going to be very interesting so that's january twenty eighth now bolen road is that bowen park  point seven f m is changes and today our guests are jordan ellis and paul manley talking about electoral reform that is proportional representation paul i would just like to jump back for a second to your mention of a vote on december third in parliament where the n d p green bloc and independent m p s plus maybe half the liberals actually voted can work out some of these things i was just going to tell listeners that they want to find out more that they should go to fair vote dot ca and there's a declaration on there that they can sign and they can see who else to sign it but it it gives you all kinds of information about the campaign for twenty fifteen what you can to how you can get involved and as we get closer to an election how you can push local politicians who are seeking election to sign on to the declaration and you know act we have a there's a petition not only for individuals to sign on but we will canada will be asking as i said every candidate running to sign a pledge that they will support the idea of proportional representation should they be elected as m p and if they want to do that as a party person now may i just take this moment to could do a commercial for fair vote canada we are a very grassroots organization in the night and we've only been going a few months and we're certainly looking for help the small group that we have together is only six or eight people there now that that have this has a main interest so we're going to be doing a number of initiatives as we go forward into two thousand and fifteen and to please paul mentioned the national website there's some contact information in there that if you have an interest in this particular subject you're certainly welcome to come and join our group and get more involved we're going to be doing public events such as showing films and public speaking events those kinds of things mainly it's going to be pushing this idea of this petition so that federal candidate could have a representative through one of the m p s i suppose present that of the house of commons at some point to share will hopefully millions of signatures that are interested in proportional representation to be carried forward and all sorts of those kinds of things education is a big part of it we've mentioned the idea of coalitions and minority governments so somehow over time those words have become really evil when people are very afraid of them they say hold that's just going to make parliament non operational they're going to be all mucked up in arguments all the time when the facts are that it works the opposite that they agree and get along and and move things forward because they understand it's in their best interests as well as the interests of all the citizens of canada to have that happen so feral got his looking for volunteers please contact our website and get in touch with us and i'd love to see a lot more a tory next meeting and the website for the local group i'm not sure we have one set up yet think we're just in the process of doing that ok with that it can be contacted through the national website which is more of the information about the purpose of our group and what we're trying to accomplish is all this that they're yeah and that's fair vote dot ca or  we could talk for a moment about vote splitting you know going back to that in strategic voting all the conservatives got away from the vote splitting as paul was mentioning between the progressive conservatives and the reform party simply by merging the two basically the reform party took over the progressive conservatives but they were originally split off from the conservative party but then in order to really gain power i mean one could think of it perhaps no other way they decided to get together again so now there's no other major party on the right that's really there to oppose them whereas on the other side if you would there are a number of parties who don't seem inclined to merge in the same way although they could form a coalition if the conservatives got a minority in the next election but that leaves voters with the uncomfortable prospect of having to maybe try to figure out which candidate it is the most likely to beat the conservative if you're inclined to want to do that and it's a kind of a guessing game you know it actually than and i'm a lady smith writing is really unknown at this point i think because the north end currently is represented by a conservative in the south and is currently represented by an n d p m p so what the combined voters in the next election are going to do is anybody's guess so it becomes a problem and sometimes i think people will vote maybe not for the candidate they maul most want to vote  because they feel they need to vote for the person most likely to win and be the conservative so proportional representation of course is one way out of this i'm just wondering what your comments might be well i guess the thing i would say first of all is when you mention the idea of people not voting for who they really want to that voting kind of on a strategic basis doesn't really bear out in fact because of the way the system is set up even if you vote for the person that ends up winning that m p has no power within that party hardly and i think our local one of our local m p s that you mentioned isn't particularly in that position and so you're not really gaining what you think the representation is you watched by voting for just trying to guess what the winning party is going to be so from my perspective working toward proportional representation gives some of that power back to the individual voter and allows him to feel that indeed his vote did count whereas in so many other instances it doesn't count even if you pick the winner sometimes because of the way things are structured i think it's important for people to vote for what they do want rather than trying to vote against what they don't want it's hugely problematic politics in this country has become so distorted and people have become so cynical that almost forty percent of the electorate in these ridings didn't bother voting last time around and so i would encourage people to vote their conscience and vote for what they want we've had a conservative majority government and we had a liberal majority government before that and in many ways they weren't that different they had a different approach to policy but a lot of the things that happened came along the same agenda same international trade  agenda the same agenda on tar sands and pipelines and harper is pushing harder on those things but both of the old established parties we've had for one hundred plus years are deeply  canadian council of chief executives so you know going between one and the other continually trying to block one from the other doesn't make a whole lot of sense and i think what people need to do is look at the candidates look at the party platform and vote based on what they want hopefully with the promise that in terms of proportional representation the person they vote for will carry that idea forward on their own  be better able to represent the individuals that decide to order them by giving them their vote so we can look forward one hopes to a future where this idea event breaks through i guess you could say now is the time now's the time indeed do you define proportional representation i know there are a number of different forms that it can take and that gets complicated and maybe we don't want to get in to that exactly but is there an overall definition if you would of proportional representation that everyone can embrace regardless of which specific system ends up being chosen well yeah certainly some of the systems are rather complicated and that's a change that people are sometimes afraid of but the definition is really simple it's to have your individual vote count for something as well it comes down to this empowering the individual that casts a vote how that count as opposed to just hoping is like throwing a dart at a dart board when you happen to hit the right spot this time so yeah i feel that your vote counted when as i mentioned a moment ago often it doesn't even in that case the way it would work is if you have a party that got thirty nine percent of the vote across canada they would have thirty nine percent of the members of parliament sitting in parliament right so the conservatives would have thirty nine percent of the members of parliament sitting in parliament rather than having whatever it is fifty five percent of the members of parliament sitting in parliament based on the thirty nine percent of the vote that they got that's why the strategy that federal candidates proposing is to at this point in time just skip all parties and hopefully candidates committed to the idea of proportional representation then between twenty fifteen and twenty nineteen leave it up to our representatives that we send to water or to come up with a recommendation of what they think is the very best proportional representation plan that would fit with canada's unique way of life there's different systems and you can see them operating in different places all over the world but you can look at me i don't example like germany which is an advanced economic powerhouse runs with partial representation system of governance and they have stable governments they have a stable economy they're moving forward they're doing things to alleviate climate change and they're an economic powerhouse and there are examples of different systems that governments have adopted where it's a little more dysfunctional and so i think the research needs to be done we need to push for the change and figure out exactly what that change is going to look like after we've made the decision to and with the experts put in their input into that in the four years they would have to study it sure sure people who don't want but it's in the recommendation comes back yes and perhaps leave it open to being tweaked as well if necessary in the future yeah excellent thank you so much and i know we could get on to there was a proportional representation thing that happened in b c and few years ago but we're out of time so i just need to thank you jordan ellis and paul manley for being here today to talk about proportional representation once again the web site to check is fair vote dot ca and changes is heard every tuesday morning at eleven here on c h check us out on facebook and on behalf of our production team thank you so much for joining us