Robert at My Blahg has an interesting idea for Greens: Vote for the NDP so that you can have PR, and actually make your 5% vote matter. Of course, this idea could be stretched even further to apply to anyone who wants Proportional Representation in Canada.
There is, of course, a problem. First of all, what about people who disagree with the NDP on everything else? The NDP's platform would have to be a) bring in PR, b) dissolve parliament, c) hold new elections for new parliament, presumably bringing in a Lib-NDP majority. Fine, but why would the Greens support that endgame? Assuming, of course, that they even trusted the NDP to carry out their promise to give up power after PR was brought in.
There's an additional problem. I'm not too sure on my footing here, but PR is almost certainly unconstitutional. Provinces are guaranteed a certain number of seats in the Commons, and PR would probably attack that, if it was going to be at all fair. This means that the constitution would need to be amended, meaning the NDP would need to deal with the provinces, meaning... Charlottetown II?
Messing with the constitution is one of those things that seems to be an all-or-nothing deal (aside from minor amendments.) We can't go for PR without attacking the privileges of certain Maritime provinces. We probably can't do that without opening up a whole can of worms.
Now, I'm not opposed to doing any of that. But most of the country probably is.
We really do need to go back to the drawing board, then. But not yet.
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I don't remember any guaranteed seats.
Remember "Rep by Pop" in history? I don't think there is any constitutional reason we can;t have PR.
It's called the senatorial minimum. The gist of it is that no province can have fewer seats in the House of Commons than it has in the Senate. (Hence PEI's four seats.)
But that's no reason we can't have PR. If it's list-based PR, for instance, seats don't have to be assigned at a national level (and indeed, I doubt that voters in smaller provinces would stand for it). We could easily have provincial lists or sub-provincial lists.
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