Make your vote count on October 10

To the Editor:

The voters of the Province of Ontario, particularly rural Ontario, have two good reasons to get out and vote on Oct. 10, 2007.

We have had sufficient time to judge that the Liberals under McGuinty cannot be trusted to keep a promise and are not worthy of our support for the future.

The question of electoral reform is even more pressing. If we vote for the mixed member proportional (MMP) system then we will get:

• A reduction from 107 to 90 riding seats, many of these seats will come from rural areas, particularly Northern Ontario;

• Our elected member will have a larger geographical area to cover, a larger population and less time to spend on individual problems;

• 39 members will be party appointers, not responsible to a riding and half the work of their counterparts;

• We, as taxpayers, will pay more for the 22 extra members but will get little in return;

• 39/90 members, or 43 per cent, will represent the ‘party’ not the constituent.
Under our present system, although far from perfect, an elected member must represent all voters in the riding, not just party members.

With this in mind we should first look at the members right to vote in accordance with their riding’s wishes and then start to discuss the representation problem.

For the present I can only suggest that for our rural Northern benefit that we don’t vote Liberal and we don’t vote for the proportional system.

Make sure you make your vote count on Oct. 10, 2007.

K.H. Jorgensen
Burk’s Falls