The election issue no one is talking about, Hepburn, Sept. 11

Bob Hepburn is not right. True, we usually get a government that does not represent a majority of the population, but that is even more true with proportional representation.

In Australia, the Labour Party received 33 per cent of the vote, and the winning coalition of four parties got 41 per cent of the vote and formed the government. There are 11 parties in Australia. Do voters even know what most of them stand for?

In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu gets 25 per cent of the vote and can only form a government with a coalition of parties further to the right than he is. There are nine parties. Does the resulting coalition represent the will of the majority? Do people really want to be governed by someone who received a quarter of the votes?

In Italy, there are 11 parties, and it took a coalition of four parties to obtain 37 per cent of the vote and defeat the stand-alone party that received 33 per cent of the vote. In that coalition, no party received more than 17 per cent of the vote. Does this represent the will of the majority?

Are we ready to have a system with 10 or more parties (which is what proportional representation would produce)? In Norway, there are 24 parties, of whom only nine have seats in parliament. The government is made up of a conservative coalition, even though the Labour Party received more votes than any of the conservative parties.

Where is the majority here?