Former BC Attorney General Suzanne Anton isn’t keeping quiet on her concerns of switching to Proportional Representation.
B.C residents have just over two weeks left to vote in the BC referendum (Deadline is November 30th) asking whether they favour the current First-Past-the-Post voting model or switching to a form of Proportional Representation moving forward.
Anton is the Founder and Director of the non-partisan ‘Vote No to Proportional Representation’ group advocating for the province to stick with FPTP.
In an interview with Pulse Mornings she said one of her main concerns is that voter influence will go down with Proportional Representation.
“Right no we have 87 separate elections in the Lower Mainland. In each of those communities people look at the candidates and the ones that will serve them best considering a whole bunch of reasons such as they coach my kids soccer, I know they’re a great leader, they’ve done a great job for the community and yes they’re a political party,” said Anton.” In PR there’s actually a sense where only one province-wide vote for the political party matters. The influence of voters goes down and the influence of political parties goes way up.”
She says she agrees with former BC Premier’s Ujjal Dosanjh’s comments on the dangers of Proportional Representation.
“When you look around Northern European democracies who are using PR it’s actually turning out very badly. Dosanjh knows better than most of us the problems with extremism and one of his principle arguments against Proportional Representation is it allows the rise of extremism because you’re voting for a party and not a person and I think he’s right about that.”
Visit Pulse FM’s Referendum 2018 page for all the info you need on the BC Referendum as well watch the below video to educate yourself on the difference between First-Past-the-Post and Proportional Representation.