CIVITATENSIS

Right now, we have 5 major political parties, all but one of them being left-of-center.

This results in all the Conservative votes being consolidated into one party, and all the left-wing votes being distributed amongst the Liberals, NDP, Bloc, and Green parties. Obviously this is a problem, given that our government is elected on the basis of “most” votes, rather than the majority.

First, I shouldn’t have to explain the ridiculousness of a federal political party existing explicitly to forward the interests of one province (the Bloc Quebecois). This sort of thing doesn’t belong in a federal election.

Second, we shouldn’t be creating parties to support principles that are only marginally different from those of another party. The Liberals and NDP could be easily merged with with minimal restructuring of their political views, the Greens would likely have no qualms about joining the new Liberal-Democratic party. The Bloc will dissolve due to the ridiculousness of it’s presence in federal politics, and members will be permitted to join the Liberal-Democratic-Green party, the Conservatives, or the provincial government of Quebec.

Basically, what I’m saying is this: Canada has many very similar political parties which results in a misrepresentation of Canadians in the House of Commons. A majority of Canadians have left-wing political views, but because these voters are spread so thinly over several similar parties, we end up with a Conservative government. Due to the Green and NDP parties attracting an ever-increasing number of votes, we may soon have a Conservative majority government, despite the fact that only a minority (barely over a third) of Canadians are right-wing.

If we adopted the US political system (I’m not suggesting we do this), we would very consistently elect the Democrats.