Editorial, John Deverell, Catch 22 central team

=================================

As Elizabeth May knows, the standard for “free and fair” elections in Canada is low.

In Canada about one million supporters of her party – one in 12 voters – can mark their ballots for Green Party candidates without electing a single member of Parliament. Their fair representation, if all citizens were equal, would be 24 Members of Parliament.

Canadian citizens know they are not equal. In the separate election contests in 308 little bits of the country, about half the voters -- six million, many of them Liberal and Conservative, will elect nobody. The other half -- the lucky six million who get a representative -- will pick too many Bloquistes from Quebec, too many Conservatives from Alberta, too many Liberals from Toronto, too few New Democrats,  no Greens, and overall, a Parliament which represents the country very poorly -- and levies taxes on it anyway.

In an election year the political parties presiding over this misrepresentation are financed 85 per cent from the taxpayer pocket.  Academics call them a self-dealing political cartel -- because that’s what it is.

The cartel’s hocus pocus is particularly opaque when it comes to allocating public television broadcast time during the election period. The political parties pretend that faceless television executives  decide who will speak to voters in the televised leadership debate. The party leaders are supposedly helpless in the matter. How does the charade unfold?

May wants to debate,  no surprise there. Stephen Harper, the leader with the most to gain from letting her in, for tactical purposes says keep her out. Jack Layton and Michael Ignatieff, the leaders with the most to lose, for the sake of appearances say let her in. Voters are overwhelmingly in favour of hearing what Elizabeth May has to say – without taking into account that  they are  handicapped by an unfair voting system.

Catch 22 forecasts that Stephen Harper, in the name of democratic decency, will yield to the combined demands of the Canadian people, the punditocracy, Elizabeth May, Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton.  With feigned reluctance the Conservative leader will allow the TV brass to let Ms May into the televised leadership debate.

The gloating and celebration in the Conservative war room, as its denizens anticipate the additional splitting of the anti-Harper vote, will be unrestrained.  Ignatieff and Layton will have to swallow their chagrin, knowing that Stephen Harper has again maneuvered one sneaky step closer to his phony majority government.

Catch 22 supporters will watch the TV leadership debate-- and crank up their efforts in the swing ridings, the Catch 22 target ridings.