I’ve been thinking about this a bit since I read it this morning, and I think the only reason they were able to get rid of STV is because it was only STV for Calgary and Edmonton. With a single party still able to sweep the rural ridings, they were given solid majority governments, which shouldn’t be the case with “real” STV.
I have no idea how we’ll get either half of the LPC/CPC to enact STV, when FPTP has them oscillating between consecutive usually majority governments, but I expect STV will be hard to get rid of once we’ve had a single election with it. Not much incentive for minority partners in a coalition government to accept moving back to FPTP, right?
A parallel system with some seats proportional and the rest FPTP are easy for politicians to take away as not everyone experiences the benefits.
The LPC/CPC did not face enough pushback for engaging in bad faith with electoral reform. We need to demand proportional representation from our representatives through a multi-party agreement more often if we want to make much more progress on issues facing Canadians.
It’s more so when the whole populace actually experiences the benefits of proportional representation they refuse to go back, as evidenced in other places in the world like New Zealand.
