Ontario Election

I have a few thoughts on it, and yes, it's late, but whatever.

There's one theme that really struck me during the campaign (and within politics in general): people with good intentions who don't realize that they're patronizing minorities.

John Tory (apparently) assumed that his school proposal would get him more votes from minorities. Here's how I think about it: We leave other countries and come here for many reasons, one of the main ones being the education system (which has its flaws but is still great, especially compared to what we've left behind). A lot of recent immigrants (and/or minorities) are secular. Like myself, they don't want (more) public funding for religious schooling. You can't assume that a lot of us want this just because a vocal minority (within the minority) is demanding it. When I read about the proposal, I did a double take, but I was even more surprised after learning that Tory somehow thought it would get him votes from people like me.

Note to politicians: Minorities will vote for you if you have good policies. You don't need to target them specifically. It makes some feel special, but most of us feel like we're being singled out and separated from other voters (and thus other Canadians).

MMP was overwhelmingly defeated, as it should have been. One point its proponents constantly made is that we could use it to put more women and minorities in the legislature. I don't know how most women feel about this, but as a brown guy, I was quite offended. I don't care how well intentioned you are, but you're patronizing and insulting me if you're telling me that people who look like me are not capable of being elected under the current system. Apparently a back-door (like MMP) is necessary to get more of us into the legislature. Thanks, but no thanks. If I want to be an elected politician, I'll go about it the normal way. I don't need special policies enacted to make it easier for me; all I need is equal opportunity.

I'm really curious as to what would've happened if Tory had proposed making all of Ontario's schools secular. Just as the Liberals abolished religious arbitration in the legal system, they should abolish funding for Catholic education. Note to D-Mac: If you try and use your new majority to do this, you'll win over a whole lot of minorities like me.

Electoral Reform in Ontario

I'll be voting No to MMP in the referendum to be held ten days. I have several reasons:

1 - There will be two classes of MPPs, one set will be accountable to their electorate (like they all are right now), and one class will only be accountable to the person(s) who appointed them. I don't like that.

2 - More MPPs = More money for their salaries, staff, etc. I really don't like that.

3 - There are many countries where it hasn't worked well and has resulted in legislative gridlock. Supporters tend to name the countries where it works and ignore the rest.

The Star is surprisingly coming out against MMP, and their editorial explains the negative aspects of MMP quite well.

This is not to say that I don't support electoral reform. I personally prefer the Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) system. As always, Wikipedia has an excellent collection of articles on different voting systems.