As many know, post election coalition agreements since the expansion of parliament to 338 seats have caused many issues. Despite being in a small party, and knowing that I’m biting the hand that feeds me, I think a key reason for this is that we are having parties with many seats but little human MP’s responsible for them. While I accepted democracy as democracy, one person controlling 10-20 seats on their own lends it self to entire parliaments being controlled by one or two people. I think we need a solution to this.

Here are my ideas

1. Reduce seat count so that majority of MP’s are human MP’s

While I understand that the mods are... distasteful of having to fix the spreadsheets for elections again, I believe that too many seats are NPC’s. Under previous elections, one person could only win themselves one seat, however that is no longer the case. I, as the MP for Ottawa won 5 seats as an NDP’er. While I don’t control all of them necessarily, had I been a leader of my own party, I could also won seats else where in Canada with out even needing a candidate there. This lets me punch way ahead of what my weight should be.

If we reduce the # seats in parliament, then small parties can still win seats and won’t be completely excluded from Parliament, yet they also won’t control Parliament single handily. I think somewhere between 50-100 seats is good, however the perfect amount is debatable.

1. Require parties to run more candidates.

Another issue that ties into the top point is that parties can run one human candidate and still win seats outside their riding. This compounds into small parties being far more competitive then they should be. I propose that parties be only eligible to win seats in ridings where they have candidates. That’s not to say that they can only win as many seats and they have candidates. If the Conservatives run one person in Calgary, they can still take home 6 seats if they win that, but they couldn’t win any in a riding with zero candidates. This would prevent many parties from once again, being able to punch above their weight unduly, and would also place a greater emphasis on running candidates across the country. It could also serve to push parties to recruit more, as they would want to run as many candidates as possible to win their elections.

This would also go hand in hand with reducing seats, as I’d assume that would go along with reducing the number of ridings. Thus it’s wouldn’t be impossible to run a full slate for major parties, but slightly harder for smaller parties to win tons of seats.

1. Changing the influence system

Yesyes I know this is beating a dead horse talking about it, but it’s still important. Currently, in the Parliament, some MP’s have more voting power then others. In the last parliament, a Liberals vote equaled about 4 votes (68 seats ÷ 16 humans = 4), where as a conservatives vote equaled 26 votes (107 seats ÷ 4 candidates = 26.75). As an NDP’er in last parliament’s coalition talks, we spent so much time pressing for 3 liberal votes when all we needed was a single tory to vote nay. This is incredibly unbalanced and leads to huge frustrations.

I propose that NPC’s votes are determined by riding and the human player in them. Pair this with point 2, and all NPC’s will have a corresponding human MP to control them. Sure, some MP’s may have more voted then others, but this’ll be a difference of 1-2 votes, not 22 votes. It’ll also give individuals MP’s a personal reason to campaign better, as the more seats they win for their party in their riding, the more power they’ll have. It’s unsubjecive, clear and east for whips and party leadership to calculate. As for seats where multiple human MP’s from the same party are present, they’ll just split the NPC’s votes.

Just some ideas! Please comment of DM if you have opinions or comments regarding these ideas!