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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