Huron Expositor, 2007-10-17, Page 11Page 10 The Huron Expositor • October 17, 2007
News
Greens, FCP reflect on provincial election results
Aaron
a ` l ' " " she ' you think of th
normally think
While the main contest at the polls of people voting for Greens in those."
last Wednesday may have been Serda used to be an organic farmer
between the Liberals, Conservatives and she said the Green Party is
and, to a lesser extent, the NDP, theyfocussed on making farming viable.
weren't the only ones in the arena. The farmerss are so much in debt,
Four other candidates were on the they're just fixated on trying to get
ballot in the Huron -Bruce riding, money to get out of it," she said.
including Victoria Serda of the While the Huron -Bruce results may
Ontario Green Party and Dave Joslin have disappointed her, Serda sees the i
of the Family Coalition Party. Both Provincial results as positive for the r
faced an uphill battle. party The Greens received eight per s
Serda is also the deputy leader of cent of the votes cast province -wide.
the provincial Greens "That's basically a tripling of our
"I actually consider this to be the results from the last election," she
. worst riding to run in as a Green in all said. 'We had one second place finish
the province,"she said. and 18 third place finishes."
m
With the Bruce nuclear plant one of She said they didn't do well in north- o
the major employers in Huron Bruce,oern Ontario, but "throughout southern s
she said the Green platform is orison- Ontario, we definitely did extremely air
ly as wanting to get rid of existingwell, particularly in the Bruce -Grey- sa
nuclear power plants, an idea she saiOwen Sound riding."
has cost her many votes. The Green candidate in that riding, si'
"The Green Party has a policy not to Shane Jolley, received 33 per cent of gu
build new nuclear reactors. It doesn't the vote, which Serda said is the most ar
mean we want to get rid of nuclear. a Green candidate has ever received co
That's a different thing." across the country.
"Also, the other major job sources in The Family Coalition Party's Dave
this area are agriculture and mann- Joslin, on the other hand, didn't even
facturing in the southern part of the stay up to watch the results
three things, you don't
ose ing. "'
He said he did the best he could
the time, talents, money and pe
he had and the rest was out of
hands. One of those things was
company's policy regarding elec
campaigning. It prevented him
taking any time off work to campai
"There's no election law in On
that says they have to," he said,
ng that it limited him in so
espects, stopping him from atten
chool campaign events.
On a brighter note, Joslin said
received some personal support on
campaign.
While he didn't feel•comforta
entioning names because he ha
nsulted them first, Joslin receiv
me phone calls from "a couple
f ly well-known NDPers in the
ying that they appreciated his c
stent stand over the years.
One fellow said I was a stand -
y," he said. "Considering that th
e coming from people you wou
nsider my ideological enemies,
thought that was pretty good. That,
me, makes it worthwhile. I can easi
take not winning an election if
means receiving compliments lik
ridi
with per cent of the voters would have had
ople to vote for it.
his The proposed system didn't even
his come close to passing. Only five rid -
tion ings of 107 even had more than half of
from the voters choosing MMP
gn• In Huron -Bruce, 71.5 per cent of vot-
tario ers selected FPTP and 28.5 per cent
not- selected MMP
me "Basically, it was set up to fail," said
ding Serda. 'With the super majority, that
made it almost impossible from the
he get -go."
his She said that going into the last
week before the election, most people
ble didn't even know what the referen-
dn't dum was about.
ed "A couple days before the election,
of about 80 per cent of people new there
area" was a referendum. But that's all real-
on- ly," she said, asking how people can be
expected to make an informed deci-
up sion about a slightly complicated sys-
seetem in such a short time.
Id Joslin said one good reason the ref -
I
ngs in the province, more than 60
I went to work the next day and
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everybody was
joking, saying,
'Well, how'd you
do?"'
He told them
he didn't know.
—What do you
mean you don't
know?' I said, `I
took the dog for a
walk, I piled my
fire wood that's
still sitting out in
the yard and then
I went to bed
because I knew I'd
still be coming in
here in the morn-
erendum should have gone through
to was seen in the election results.
ly "If the referendum had gone through
it and we'd had another election like we
e d'
id this time around, the Liberals,
rather than having 71 seats, would
have had 41." He went on, saying the
Conservatives would have had 31
instead of 26, the Greens would have
had eight instead of none. The NDP
would have had 16 instead of 10.
"We wouldn't have had the kind of
whopping majority that just allows
any party - Liberal, Conservative or
whatever - do whatever they want.
Both candidates were concerned
with the low voter turnout overall. Of
the 72,229 eligible voters across the
province, 52.8 per cent cast ballots.
Turnout was higher in this riding with
61.6 per cent casting ballots.
Serda finds the numbers upsetting.
"People are so disengaged," she said.
"Voter apathy is so high. We had the
lowest turnout we've had since the
30s."
She said it bothers her.
"They're looking at the major parties
and saying they don't know what to
believe anymore. I don't think democ-
racy should be like that."
"Typically, we've been around 65 per
cent in Canada and Ontario," said
Joslin. "People are becoming increas-
ingly cynical about the political
process."
Both candidates were disappointed
with the referendum outcome. The
result of the recommendation of a citi-
zen's assembly on electoral reform, the
referendum was held at the same time
as the election.
Voters were given a choice of keep-
ing the present electoral system -
known as First Past The Post (FPTP)
- or changing to the system recom-
mended by the assembly known as
Mixed Member Proportional. The
new system would have been a combi-
nation of FPTP and proportional rep-
resentation.
To be adopted, MMP needed to
receive a "super majority", meaning
that in more than 60 per cent of the
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