Growing up as a Canadian, I was often told of our privilege of being one of the greatest democracies in the world, but how democratic are we, really? Canada uses a voting system called First Past The Post (FPTP). This means that whichever candidate is in first place when all the votes have been counted […]
Growing up as a Canadian, I was often told of our privilege of being one of the greatest democracies in the world, but how democratic are we, really?
Canada uses a voting system called First Past The Post (FPTP). This means that whichever candidate is in first place when all the votes have been counted is declared the winner. This sounds democratic on paper, but in practice often leads to leads to results that are drastically divorced from the will of the voters.
For example, in the most recent provincial election (2025), Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative (PC) government received only 43% of the vote share but secured 64.5% of the total seats in the legislature, giving them 100% of the power to pass their legislative agenda, directly as a consequence of the First Past The Post voting system. To take another example, in the last federal election (2025), The Liberal Party of Canada received 43.8% of the vote share while the Conservative Party received 41.3%; a difference of only 2.5 %, and yet their seat counts saw a gap of nearly 16% in favour of the Liberals.
Most countries that have abandoned FPTP have done so in favour of systems that more accurately reflect voter distribution, such as Proportional Representation (PR) systems, which is the most popular form of democracy in the world today, used by over 130 countries globally. Proportional representation systems are used by 80% of OECD nations, including 18 of the top 20 democracies in the world, as measured by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) index, such as Denmark, Ireland, Switzerland, Sweden, and Norway. Canada ranks #33 on V-Dem’s Deliberative Democracy Index (2024), lower than the United States at #17. Only 55 countries globally use a FPTP system.
If the last provincial election had been held under a PR system, the outcome would have been drastically different. Rather than Doug Ford’s PC party receiving 64.5% of the seats, they would have only received 43%, forming a minority government, and would not be able to pass their legislative agenda without major concessions from the other parties in the assembly.
Democracies that use systems of proportional representation often have higher voter turnout, more trust in their political leaders, and government policies that are closer to the view of the median voter. They do away with “lesser evil” and strategic voting, allowing voters to vote according to the candidate they feel best represents them. According to a national poll by EKOS from January, 2025, 68% of Canadians support moving towards a system of proportional representation.
More information can be found at fairvote.ca and v-dem.net
