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BC Citizens' Assembly Alumni News Release

May 10, 2008

Andrew Coyne Speech

The following is the Keynote Address given to delegates at the Yes Campaign Planning Conference held at the University of Victoria, May 10-12. Mr. Coyne is one Canada's top political journalists, and writes a regular column in Maclean's Magazine.

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION: LESSONS FROM ONTARIO

Were I in charge of the Yes campaign in Ontario's referendum on electoral reform, the morning after winning 37% of the vote, I would have issued a press release saying: "The people have spoken, and we accept their verdict with humility. Clearly, we have been given a sweeping mandate to implement our platform, and we pledge to put our majority to good use."

Well, why not? The 37% of Ontario voters who voted in favour of the proposed mixed member proportional (MMP) scheme is within a few percentage points of the 42% who voted for Dalton McGuinty's Liberals, who were variously said to have won a massive, historic, decisive majority. It was about as many as voted for the "majority" NDP government in 1990, or the "majority" federal Liberal government in 1997.

Actually, what is remarkable is that the vote was as high as it was. Consider that few voters, according to the polls, even knew there was a referendum on, or that of those who did only a fraction would have known the provenance of the proposal before them -- that it had not just popped out of somebody's head, but had emerged from months of deliberation, study and debate by the Citizens' Assembly, whose proceedings received virtually no coverage from the major media.

And this very knowledgeable and engaged minority, had it followed the debate in the papers -- so far as there was a debate in the papers -- would have been confronted with a uniformly negative view of the proposal. Every one of the Toronto broadsheets weighed in heavily against it, and every columnist for those papers did likewise -- all except me, and Rick Salutin.

Voters were told that PR would mean a parliament filled with dozens of wacky fringe parties, or worse. Extremists, racists, separatists, every conceivable demon was summoned out of the pundits' imagination to frighten the public: governments held hostage by radical fringe groups; clusters of appointed hacks permanently....

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