That's Two Votes For The Nice Man In Overalls

As I read Travers' column this morning I felt a rising sense of anger. He wrote about the rural urban split in the vote, using Stratford as his model and he concludes:

Seen from the theatres, bed and breakfasts and coffee shops, the ruling party's arts policies, and particularly recent cuts, are backward steps. Seen from the entrepreneurial perspective of a city that has found innovative solutions before, the national government's easygoing willingness to leave education to others is a failure to step forward.

Of course there's another view. It's from the country where there are more than enough votes to re-elect Schellenberger and where urban troubles are abstract, far away and, perhaps, just a little pleasing.

Not once in his column does Travers question the over-representation of the rural vote in our system. The undemocratic nature of this setup is just taken for granted.

Canada is in a bad way. Not only do we have a terrible electoral system, but we make the farce we call democracy even more grotesque, by weighing rural votes more than urban ones. The injustice of this situation has become so accepted by our elites that no one even thinks to raise it as an issue. Canada deserves better. We deserve representation by population, you know, democracy.

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