Bonnie, Nate, Ted & Yasir 🗳️
Voting is now over for the Ontario Liberal leadership race. Thousands of party members across the province used ranked ballots to choose their next leader. And the winner will be announced in two days!
We asked the four candidates a series of questions about democratic reform - and we're excited to share their answers with you!
1️⃣ Local Choice
Seven years ago, we secured legislation that allowed all Ontario municipalities to use ranked ballots for local elections. The legislation allowed for majority elections (with a 50% threshold) or proportional elections (with multi-member districts). Doug Ford has since banned ranked ballots entirely. We asked candidates to commit to a full re-implementation of the Ontario Municipal Election Modernization Act.
Good news: ALL FOUR candidates have committed to this!
2️⃣ Ontario Citizens Assembly
We asked candidates to endorse a process to evaluate Ontario's election system and explore alternatives. Specifically, we're asking for a randomly-selected Citizens Assembly that would produce a recommendation for Ontario.
Good news: ALL FOUR candidates support this!
3️⃣ Vote16
We support national calls for a lower voting age, primarily because data shows that it results in higher rates of life-time participation. We asked candidates if they support lowing the provincial (or municipal) voting age to 16.
Only one candidate supports this important policy: Nathaniel Erskine-Smith
4️⃣ Permanent Resident Voting
Calls are increasing across the country, for Permanent Residents to be granted full voting rights for municipal elections. Permanent residents live here, work here, pay taxes and send their kids to school here. We strongly support this cause and we're looking for political champions to move this progressive policy forward.
We're disappointment to report that none of the four Liberal candidates expressed support for this policy.
5️⃣ Removing Strong Mayor Powers
The last few decades have seen a steady erosion of municipal democracy in Ontario including forced amalgamations, shuttered city halls, ignored referendums and continuous shrinking of municipal councils. Now the Ford government has gone further, by creating "Strong Mayor" powers that make all of our locally elected Councillors weaker. It replaces democracy with top-down unilateral decisions. It transforms discourse into directive. We asked for a complete reversal of the Strong Mayor powers.
We're pleased to see three candidates supporting this policy:
6️⃣ Empowering MPPs
Legislative power has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of party leaders. As voters, if our MPs don't have a voice... then neither do we. We asked the OLP leadership candidates if they would support efforts at Queens Park to decentralize power in the legislature and strengthen the voices of Ontario MPPs.
Three candidates have declared their support for strengthening the voice of backbench legislators.
There you go! We're excited to see broad support for many of our policy goals. Stay tuned for updates!