Push underway in northern Ontario to change Canada's electoral system

A couple in northeastern Ontario is working to educate the public about Canada's electoral system, in hopes of seeing it change.

Dan and Sarah Nicksy, from the small town of Corbeil near North Bay, have been holding public meetings for several years, in community halls and online, pushing for Canada to bring in proportional representation.

It would see the number of seats in Parliament assigned to each party correspond with the percentage of the vote they got across the country.

Under the current first-past-the-post system, whoever gets the most votes in each riding gets that seat, even if they only got less than half the votes.

"It really frustrates me seeing how many people are disenfranchised with Canada's government and with our electoral system and how many people feel like they don't have a voice, how many people say I don't vote, there's no point in voting," Sarah Nicksy said.

"So many people are just not engaged with our democracy and it's a real shame. We could be doing a lot better."

Back in 2015 when the federal Liberals first came to power, leader Justin Trudeau had promised that would be the last election under  first-past-the-post, but later changed his mind on electoral reform.

Earlier this year when Justin Trudeau stepped down as Liberal party leader, he said one regret was not moving forward with changing the electoral system.

"If I have one regret, particularly as we approach this election … I do wish that we'd been able to change the way we elect our governments in this country," he told CBC News in January.

Other countries use proportional representation

Dan Nicksy said the reaction from people who attend their information sessions has been interesting.

"There's one lady in particular that I can think of. We gave this presentation in North Bay at the Elks lodge. [She] basically spent an hour with her jaw on the floor," he said.

"She just had this shocked look the entire presentation. And afterwards she said "I've always known that something was wrong and I never knew what it was. And now I have hope for the future.'"

Sarah said the concept isn't new, as it's already implemented in other countries including Germany and New Zealand.

"They've kind of paved the way for Canadians and their citizens, have kind of pushed the politicians and educated each other as citizens enough that eventually they finally were able to vote it through in the numbers it required for the referendum to succeed," she said. 

"I think that's one of the likeliest ways that Canada can get electoral reform is just citizens educating each other on the topic and then voting it in."

Full election platforms have not been issued yet by the Liberals, the New Democrats or the Conservatives. However, the NDP has consistently pushed for electoral reform in the past.

The Green Party platform states that the "current voting system isn't fair" and promises to "change to a proportional representation voting system where every vote counts."