2ndwind;
Top of the morning to you sir, I hope that all things considered this finds you and yours well and thanks for reading my lengthy diatribe.
While I'm not an expert in political systems, we've got the "first past the post" system so the candidate with the highest number of votes in a particular riding gets that riding seat.
Before going further I should take a quick detour and say that in order to run for any party, one must get sign off from the party executive, which means that they'll expect you to tow party line in any parliamentary vote. So one cannot vote either with one's conscience or better still according to the majority of your constituent's wishes on many or most issues...
All that then isn't that dissimilar to the US system as I understand it, however, we have at minimum 4 major parties running in most elections - 5 inside Quebec.
They'd be:
Conservatives - who truly aren't as conservative as many Republicans, but they represent the party on the right side of the spectrum.
Liberals - they're supposed to be center left, but of course they get diluted with members from further left who aren't happy with never getting into power.
New Democratic Party - further left, socialist party who are only slightly to the right of the Canadian Communist Party
Greens - I believe they're south of the medicine line too, but up here they've made strides in provincial and federal politics. While I respect the ideals of many Greens, how they hope to get there is - I believe - not possible.
Parti Quebecois - only in Quebec - they make no bones about wanting more money and power for Quebec. The hard core ones want to separate from Canada - as long as the rest of us keep pumping transfer money into Quebec. The only charitable
thing I can say about them is that they're honest about not giving a flying flip about the rest of Canada.
There's also independents and as mentioned the Communists will sometimes field a candidate, so often there's 5 or 6 candidates to choose from on any given ballot.
Without going too far into the mess that's Canadian politics, the Members of Parliament are assigned to each region as well, emphatically not by population. That's how Quebec can keep taking western money, they have more Members than any 2 or perhaps 3 western provinces combined. Cool situation, no?
With apologies to my friends in Atlantic Canada, they're vote often counts for 4 votes in Alberta or British Columbia.
Before I go further, yes we're trying to change that and no we're not pleased. For instance up until this recent mess of Covid - the GDP of British Columbia exceeded all of the Atlantic Provinces COMBINED....
In summary then, that's how some fresh faced college student can be elected as the local member of parliament by only 30% of the voters in that riding.
As well, even ridings that have gone Conservative since time began here in rural BC, Alberta or Saskatchewan don't have the combined voting clout in the House of Commons that a few villages in Quebec have - sarcasm now duly inserted.
Hope all that made some sense sir, thanks for the interest and stay well.
Dwayne
