What do you think of our federal political system?

Hi everyone I'm currently doing a research and i wanna know what you guys think of our federal political system. Does it work for ALL Canadians?
is it the best way to represent ALL canadians? do you think that our senators should be elected? do you think that the way we vote our MPs should be changed? should it be by popular vote and not by district population?

How well does our political system serve ALL Canadians???

tell me what you think.

it would really help if you answer!

BTW, i have some more questions on this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OvOoqen2ik

please watch and comment

I think our provincal is fine, but the federal should be more like the American system.

The biggest problem is the FPTP system we currently have. There should be some move to a mixed PR system, like the proposed BC-STV system.

One reason for voter apathy is that many feel their vote doesn't matter, simply beause they reside in a riding that is dominated by a party not of their choosing.

My view is that Canada either needs a Proportional Representation system or remake the system into a more presidential like with executive powers divested from the legislative branches. Also, party policies need to change so you can't get expelled for voting your conscience. In the current system, you are elected by your riding to express your riding's views. Its hogwash that Canada has an elected dictator.

I think mixed proportional representation works best, biancz.

You stick with the current seats and then top up the parties so the number of seats they hold represents the portion of the popular vote they got.

All of you have the wrong idea. We need to adopt a preferential voting system.

Say I have 6 registered parties/candidates in my riding:

Conservatives
Liberals
NDP
Greens
Christian Heritage

Elections Canada, gives me a ballot that looks like this:

__ Conservatives
__ Liberals
__ NDP
__ Greens
__ Christian Heritage

Then I fill out that form like this:

1 Conservatives
5 Liberals
3 NDP
2 Greens
4 Christian Heritage

Note: You don't have to give preferential scoring to each party, you could just leave a '1' by Conservatives, and leave the rest blank.

Then the way the ballot works is they tally up all the votes for everyone's #1 party, then they drop the #5 party from the running, and take everyone's #2 vote who voted for Party #5 in Round 1, and keep doing this until 1 party has over 50% of the popular vote.

This is how the system needs to work in my opinion, it's the most fair, it keeps local representation, and people have 2nd, 3rd, 4th choices, and it's just way more democratic to me.

I think our political system is idiotic, we should have run offs like they do in France. For instance in this election we would have the main five liberal, conservative, NDP, green, and bloc. Then say after the first vote the bloc gets the least votes it gets eliminated and the next vote happens and the people who voted the bloc then get to choose between those four, and it keeps eliminating parties until we get down to the final two.

I don't like MMP because it leads to constant minorities, and I don't like the idea of people who are chosen by the party, and can't be kicked out by the people of a local riding.

Thats why I prefer a Preferential Voting System, better than the status quo, but still democratic and accountable to the people

PR has no chance currently as it will require Quebec and Ontario giving power to the rest of the country and not getting anything back when they already have an effective veto on the process. They are holding the rest of the country hostage and until they are ordered under a democratic system to share power (which will never happen) things will not change. This is why we have the BQ and the Bloc and why Ontario controls the purse strings. The maritimes would end up losing a great deal as well however in no matter what setup they are voices in the wilderness as they simply do not have the economic or political/demographic clout to be much else.

Ontario has a population of 12,160,282 in 2006 and Quebec 7,546,131 (not sure when those statistics were taking). Anyways that equals up to 19,706,413. there is only 10.5 million people left in Canada. Ontario and Quebec combined almost make double the population of the rest of the country, of course they get more say. You don't want to piss off more than half the citizens of the country, it's a fact. Ontario alone has almost half the population of Canada in it so of course its going to get preference, except if Harper gets in, and Quebec is its own nation within a nation. Also Quebec has the most seats out of all the provinces because the constitution makes sure it does. So of course the two provinces with the most seats are going to dominate. It has caused some resentment towards the two provinces, especially in the west, but the fact is those two provinces probably do contribute the most money to the country as well. Quebec gets most of it back, Ontario doesn't really. I don't care that money needs to go to eastern Canada because that's how our country is made, its a confederation. The bigger provinces helping the smaller ones. But of course Ontario is going to want to control some of the federal budget, it gives in the most. It's the economic capital of this country, all major business are based here. The most population is here, with some of the highest wages therefore they always give in more taxes.