Democracy for Western Canada
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
During the recent federal election (November 2000), it became very clear that voting is a waste of time for people west of Ontario. In the West (Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Collumbia), the Canadian Alliance party won by a landslide, but the net result was still a Liberal landslide because there aren't enough people in the west.
This shows that Prime-Minister Cretien can do whatever he wants with regards to western Canada -our votes don't count anyway.
This makes the idea of splitting-up Canada appealing -the west should be split from the rest of Canada. This would allow effective voting (or more effective at any rate) and so a more resonable approximation of democracy. Western Canada easily has the resources to run at a profit (especially if the money isn't flowing uni-directionally to Ottawa and eastern Canada).
It is irritating that population is the deciding factor in deciding government here. A potentially interesting way to fix this problem of lack of voting power for low-population areas might be to have representation by area within each province, and equal weighting between provinces regardless of size. The idea is to give PEI the same power to determine the Prime-Minister as Ontario has -this would be almost the same as representation by area, but it would prevent larger provinces from having more authority.
The only problem with this is Ontario -they would never allow it, so it would never happen, and we are back to the same problem of lack of power in the west.
Because we can't argue with Ontario (short of outright mutiny...), we might as well leave. The only question would be the position of the border -Manitoba-Ontario, or Manitoba-Saskatchewan.
While this entry is disorganised, I think it has reasonable thoughts (though I am extremely tired at present).
What do other Canadians think? (I am curious)
This shows that Prime-Minister Cretien can do whatever he wants with regards to western Canada -our votes don't count anyway.
This makes the idea of splitting-up Canada appealing -the west should be split from the rest of Canada. This would allow effective voting (or more effective at any rate) and so a more resonable approximation of democracy. Western Canada easily has the resources to run at a profit (especially if the money isn't flowing uni-directionally to Ottawa and eastern Canada).
It is irritating that population is the deciding factor in deciding government here. A potentially interesting way to fix this problem of lack of voting power for low-population areas might be to have representation by area within each province, and equal weighting between provinces regardless of size. The idea is to give PEI the same power to determine the Prime-Minister as Ontario has -this would be almost the same as representation by area, but it would prevent larger provinces from having more authority.
The only problem with this is Ontario -they would never allow it, so it would never happen, and we are back to the same problem of lack of power in the west.
Because we can't argue with Ontario (short of outright mutiny...), we might as well leave. The only question would be the position of the border -Manitoba-Ontario, or Manitoba-Saskatchewan.
While this entry is disorganised, I think it has reasonable thoughts (though I am extremely tired at present).
What do other Canadians think? (I am curious)
