Ontario’s Premier is allowing for minority rule. Infamy! Outrage! It’s ... almost like the electoral system we have now
I think Doug Ford has done us all a favour. I think we owe him a debt of gratitude.
So Mr. Ford’s decision to put a bullet into the old nag is a welcome nod to reality. We have been carrying on with the pretense that we are a democracy for some time. Now the Premier of Ontario is no longer going to pretend. This has provoked some understandable splutterings of outrage and incomprehension. What is the point of even having a council, said more than one commentator, if the mayor and a few of his pals can govern without the rest? It is a foundational principle of democracy, they thundered, that the majority rules. And of course they are right. That is very nearly the definition of it.
It’s not a system of majority rule. It’s a system of institutionalized minority rule. A government elected with the support of 40 per cent or less of the electorate is nevertheless empowered to pass legislation, over the objections of nearly two-thirds of the voters and the representatives they elected. It wasn’t always thus, of course. At the time our system came into being, there were only two parties of any standing. To win a majority of the seats then, you had to win a majority of the vote.
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