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Article: Case for proportional representation in Canada.
- Article from:
- Inroads: A Journal of Opinion
- Article date:
- January 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Inroads, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Henry Milner is a political scientist living in Montreal and a co-editor of Inroads. He spent the fall of 1996 in New Zealand studying the implementation and effects of proportional representation.
A bit of history
The principles of electoral democracy had been accepted by 1867, when three of the remaining British colonies in North America federated to form the Dominion of Canada. This was the same year Britain extended its suffrage to 10 percent of the electorate. While Canada's founding fathers accepted a form of American-invented federalism, they, in contrast with their Australian counterparts two generations later, took for granted the electoral ...