Now is the time to tell Parliament you want electoral reform.

http://www.fairvote.ca/

On Monday of this week, Garth Turner was on Don Newman's Politics to promote his new book, Sheeple. I've not read the book yet, but Turner raised a few interesting points (hardly unique ones - others have raised these issues too):

• the PM has too much power
• a lot of people (maybe most), when they vote in general elections, are actually voting for who they want as PM and not for who they really want as their MP
• because our system is based on party discipline, individual MPs, esp. backbenchers and independents, have no real power and have to toe the party line even if the party line is hurtful to their riding and constituents

Turner essentially stated that we should reconsider our form of parliamentary democracy and maybe start looking at a system similar to what they have in the US - where people could vote directly for who they'd like to see as PM, while still electing a local MP.

I'm putting this out more in the hope of generating some interesting back and forth on what you think works in our system of government, what you think could work better. Do you agree with the above points? Would you like to see less party-centric focus and give individual MPs far more freedom than they currently enjoy? I know any major changes would most likely involve having to change the constitution, and yes, i know, nobody wants to go there, but lets just forget about that for the moment. If you could wave a magic wand and reform our political system without having to worry about the constitution and all that, what would you like to change?