On Sunday, October 2nd the The Brantford-Brant Women’s, Youth and Seniors’ Liberal Clubs hosted the multi-partisan Brantford-Brant Electoral Reform Community Forum in the Odeon Building at the Laurier Brantford campus.
[Note: the CPC MP attended and spoke at the LPC event, and of course Greens were there by invitation as well. Where was the NDP I wonder?]
Temara Brown described the six different electoral systems, a fairly difficult task, particularly when being challenged by unruly audience members at every turn. But she carried it off. 
The event followed the usual Library of Parliament script for Community Dialogue suggested by ERRE.
The Brantford Expositor covered the event in Forum puts spotlight on electoral reform
Unfortunately there are some errors in the Expositor article. For instance, Michele Braniff was the 2015 GPC candidate. As well as being a GPO Candidate, Temara Brown is the GPO’s Shadow Cabinet member for the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change.
The article gives a capsule rundown of the 6 electoral Systems discussed, where the worst error in the article mischaracterizes the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system as “A variation of the preferential vote”. Electoral systems are complex, which is one of the many reasons why a referendum would be a bad idea at the best of times.
Historically, STV predates AV by a few decades, so it would be more correct to say AV is a variation of STV. But that’s just semantics. The real problem is that STV is perhaps the best system of Proportional Representation, while AV is a winner-take-all system much like our First Past The Post.
Even so, it was nice to see some balanced coverage of the ERRE event. For the most part, Canada’s Main Stream Media is making no bones about it’s desire to retain the status quo. That is perhaps the biggest reason Canadians are so woefully uninformed about electoral reform options. Instead of informing Canadians of our options, or even actually reporting on the ERRE consultation process, the media tables at ERRE consultation events are standing empty. So kudos to the Expositor for reporting the news!
In spite of the Main Stream Media obstructionism, the process marches quietly on.
And a good thing, too.
Sunday at Laurier
The federal Liberal government has set up a wide ranging consultation process to inform the all-party committee in Parliament which will be making recommendations to the government in December. A report will be submitted to the committee based on input received at this event.
