Dalton McGuinty quashes any hopes of another referendum on electoral reform

Electoral reform may suddenly be fashionable across the pond, but Premier Dalton McGuinty insists it is passé in Ontario.

With Britain now a-twitter over talk of a referendum on changing the voting system in the wake of last Thursday’s election, McGuinty quashed the possibility of any similar move here.

“We had our go at that,” the premier said, referring to the 2007 Ontario referendum on adopting a mixed-member proportional representation (MMP) way of electing MPPs instead of the traditional first-past-the-post system.

Ontarians voted 63.1 per cent to keep the existing system with only 36.9 per cent supporting a radical revamp.

“We had a citizens’ assembly, they came forward with a specific proposal, they considered a number of models, they heard from experts, they met on weekends,” said McGuinty, who had touted electoral reform in his 2003 campaign.

“That was put to Ontarians and they rejected it,” he said Tuesday.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, whose party is the only one at Queen’s Park that backs proportional representation, said the 2007 outcome should not be the last word on the matter.

“It did lose in the referendum, but I would say that the information provided to the people of the province was not as robust as it could have been in terms of giving them the options and giving them a clear understanding of what proportional representation means,” said Horwath.

“We hope that the McGuinty government will change its opinion on that score and that the people of this province will take some time to consider what that means,” she said.

“It doesn’t mean unstable government; it means that your legislature actually reflects the will of the votes that are cast.”

But Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak said it’s a non-starter.

“I just do not like the idea of people taking a seat in the assembly who do not represent voters directly,” said Hudak, adding “an essential strength in our system is a direct connection of MPPs with the people who send them to Queen’s Park.”

“Voters clearly cast their ballots against any kind of proportional representation system. Quite frankly, they don’t want to see two tiers of MPPs – those that are directly elected in their constituencies and those that are appointed by political party insiders.”

Under the MMP scheme, which apparently confused Ontarians, there would have been a two-part ballot in which voters would directly elect MPPs in 90 larger ridings instead of the existing 107 constituencies.

On the second part of the ballot, they would have picked the political party of their choice, which would determine 39 “at large” MPPs selected from lists submitted by the parties.

Because those “list” seats would have been awarded in proportion to share of the popular vote, smaller parties like the Greens would have been represented in the Legislature for the first time.