Quote:
Originally posted by Thunderball@May 4 2005, 08:27 PM
Fourthly, people hate the Bloc and the old Reform Party for being too regional? Guess what you're gonna get with PR? Lots of regional parties. PR really fosters these guys... right now in Italy the Northern League (Northern Separartion/Nationalistic Party) is part of Berlusconi's "Forza Italia", dictating policy. We'd logically have the same here, and thats not good for our national unity. With our struggles with regionalism (and I'll say I'm one of the regionalists) mean that we need national parties that speak to everyone, not regions, and thats a problem now, that will spiral out of control should we switch to PR.
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This point seems to be a big one for a lot of problem. The issue for me is that I don't believe that would be the case (although I could very well be wrong.)
Let's look at things specifically now. Currently Ontario is heavy Liberal, Alberta is heavy Tory and Quebec is heavy BLOC. Under proportional representation all those parties would lose seats in their main provinces due to the smaller parties getting their fair share of the seats. Additionally the Liberals and Conservatives would probably gain ground across the country because they are a minority in other regions.
End result? BLOC just loses because nobody outside Quebec would vote for them. Conservatives and Liberals see their powerbase spread out more and become less centralized in one province or region. Conservatives would gain ground in Ontario and the Maritimes while losing ground in Alberta. Liberals would gain ground in the west and lose in Ontario. NDP would just gain ground all around.
Thus I believe proportional representation would actually help us with our regionalism problem. The power base of the parties would be less regional and more national and thus they couldn't cater as much to regional issues? Am I missing something? Is there a flaw in my logic?