Are referendums good for democracy?

Residents of Metro Vancouver recently got to vote on a proposed tax increase for transit funding. The results were tabulated last week and found the people solidly against raising taxes. Now politicians must go back to the drawing board to determine how to fund transit expansion in the region. 

Depending on where you stand, the plebiscite was a marvelous exercise in direct democracy - or a total failure of leadership. 

Proponents of referendums see them as a way to cut through politics and let citizens decide policy. Critics say they're a way for leaders to duck difficult choices. That sounds like the makings of a great 180 debate. 

Patrick Boyer is a former Progressive Conservative member of parliament and has written three books in favour of referendums in Canada.

Sometimes the real value of a ballot question is it lets everybody across the land know, 'Okay, that's the mess that the government in Ottawa is trying to resolve'.- Patrick Boyer

    
Chris Cochrane is an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto. He has reservations about the way plebiscites are used in this country.

People's preferences are often very complex, as are the issues that they're asked to decide about, and it is very difficult to get a firm, definitive sense of what people want from the binary choices that we usually submit to them in referendums.- Chris Cochrane