We’ve been hearing it a lot from some candidates in the May 2 federal election as they attend all-candidate forums, a refrain which crops up at every election.
“The biggest problem is with those politicians in Ottawa who don’t care about the average Canadian. They’re only in for themselves.”
The implication is clear. The current MP cares absolutely nothing about the riding and won’t lift a finger to help anyone in the riding after he or she gets elected.
There’s only one problem with the statement: You’re tarring yourself with the same brush.
Like it or not, as soon as you signed those nomination papers and agreed to let your name appear on the ballot we’ll be looking at a week from Monday (yes, it is coming that fast), you became a politician.
One of the first things you find after you get elected is that you can no longer speak for your riding, if by ‘your riding’ you mean every single person in it. There will always be differences of opinion among the voters as to what is the best course of action. As soon as you cast your vote in the House of Commons, the people who held a contrary opinion will be screaming about how ‘politicians’ don’t care about the people in their riding.
A point brought up at a recent all-candidates forum also spoke to the fact that most MPs are elected by fewer than 50 per cent of the voters. The way it was phrased at the forum was that most MPs had more people vote against them than for them.
This is true. A check of the election results from the 2008 general election shows only 118 of the 308 MPs received 50 pr cent or more of the votes cast in their riding.
Of course, given that almost every riding in the country outside of Quebec will have at least four candidates (Conservative, Green, Liberal and NDP) and that all ridings in Quebec will also have a Bloc Quebecois candidate, some people might consider it more impressive that 118 candidates managed to get a majority of the voters in their riding to support them.
If we somehow managed to pass a law stating that only those candidates who won a majority of the votes in their riding (meaning 50 per cent or more), Parliament would have had a very different look after the last election.
Ontario would sill have had the most seats, with 30 MPs. Alberta, however, would have the second-most with 18. The only other provinces with 10 or more MPs would be Quebec (18), B.C. (14) and Saskatchewan (10).
There would be MPs from Nunavut, the Northwest Territories or the Yukon Territories. The Maritime provinces and Newfoundland combined would have 13 seats.
There would be an even more dramatic change in the composition of the House along party lines. There would be one Independent and just seven NDP members. The Bloc Quebecois would have 13 members and the Liberal party would have 17.
The overwhelming majority of the MPs would be Conservatives, with 80 of the 118 seats in the house of majority rules.
Having to win a majority, however, is not the Canadian way. We simply say you have to have more votes than any other candidate in the riding.
And that’s the way it should be – because that’s democracy.
Prince George Free Press staff writer