Londoners who are unhappy with the federal government's current electoral system are getting the chance to make their voices heard.
Over 50 communities across the country, including London, are joining together for a national day of action on Tuesday, to implore their local MPs to push for electoral reform. Those joining the day of action in London will be attending MP Kate Young’s constituency office at noon and MP Peter Fragiskatos' office at 1:30pm.
Organizer Jeff Hanks says during the last election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to get rid of the current first-past-the-post electoral system. However, he adds that the prime minister has shown signs of backpedaling from his commitment.
"We've had a few a few times where the government gets 39% of the votes and 100% of the power," says Hanks. "We want every vote to count, and we're hoping the prime minister will keep his promise."
Hanks says those participating on Tuesday afternoon will read personal statements about how the current electoral system has impacted them and how it can disenfranchise some Canadians.
"A lot of Canadians who have concerns, have no voice in Parliament, so we're hoping that this will change things," he says.
In the past eight months, an all-party parliamentary committee studied the issue of election reform, and recently recommended that a proportional representation system be introduced by way of a referendum. Proportional representation is a voting system designed to produce a representative body where the voters are represented in proportion to how they voted.
"We're hoping that the government is going to go ahead with proportional representation, because the overwhelming majority of the public and the experts agree that [it] is the best alternative to our current, broken voting system," says Hanks.
If the government were to make electoral reform a top priority, Hanks says he believes changes could be made before the next federal election.