Dear editor,
I would like to address some of George Dennis’s concerns about proportional representation as expressed in his Letter to the Record on Oct. 23 (Biased proportional representation material being sent out gives pause for thought).
He says he has been receiving pamphlets in support of PR from anonymous sources. I confess that I am one of those pamphleteers. I am not anonymous. My name appears at the end of this letter and all the literature I distribute is prepared by an organization called Fairvote Canada and includes websites and contact phone numbers. Please do contact us. I or any of my fellow PR supporters would love to talk to you and hear about your concerns.
The rest of his letter deals with his support for the Site C dam and LNG projects in B.C. I don’t share his enthusiasm and suspect that both of these projects could be economic and environmental mistakes. But I don’t see that either of our opinions about these issues should have any bearing on the proportional representation debate.
The only topic we should be discussing is whether or not a proportional voting system would be an improvement on our current system.
And yes, the pamphlets I’m handing out are “biased.” That’s what pamphlets are. I always try to discipline myself to see both sides of an argument but in this case I’m finding it very difficult. There are simply no good reasons to hang on to an out-dated system that distorts the voting process. Any of the proposed proportional systems would be a vast improvement on our out-dated current system.
I suspect that opponents of PR are having the same difficulty which may explain why they have reduced their arguments to unfounded fear mongering and diverting attention to unrelated partisan issues.
Erik Taynen
Courtenay