Re: Back to the future for Liberals, Opinion Nov. 18

Fraser Harland and Mark Dance frankly related their naivete in expecting a Liberal victory under Michael Ignatieff in 2011, so swept up were they as Parliamentary interns (one of them to Justin Trudeau).

They ask what it will take for a new leader to win in 2015. But so do New Democrats, with their new leader from Quebec, Thomas Mulcair. Most members of both parties hope for a good old-first-past-the-post majority — and would take Stephen Harper’s 39.6 per cent.

The “rationality” Harland and Dance suggest the Liberals must find realistically to win is electoral reform. No, not the weak pretence of “alternative voting,” which does not undo the current system of conjuring up a majority with under 40 per cent.

Has Justin Trudeau the mind, heart and guts to entertain the real option, proportional representation? Mulcair’s party (which is mine also) has it on its policy books, but will it promote it?

Rational people in both parties realize that another Harper government could happen in 2015, thanks to non-Conservatives (who are 60 per cent of voters) splitting their votes.

Both parties should go for a majority win, with a commitment to bring in proportional representation in time for the next election — and a strategy to co-operate with each other if neither gets that majority.

November 19, 2012

Lynn McDonald, former NDP MP, university professor emerita, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Guelph

http://thestar.com/opinion/letters/article/1290079--electoral-reform-is-the-issue