On the eve of the 2025 federal election call, an excerpt from Danielle Smith’s interview with Breitbart News started making the rounds on social media. On Sunday it hit mainstream media.
In the interview, Smith said: “The longer this [tariff] dispute goes on, politicians posture, and it seems to be benefiting the Liberals right now so I would hope that we could put things on pause is what I’ve told administration officials… Let’s just put things on pause so we can get through an election.”
Why should the Trump administration care about the Canadian election? Smith went on to say that she told the Americans “I would say, on balance, the perspective that Pierre [Poilievre] would bring would be very much in sync with, I think… the new direction in America. And I think we’d have a really great relationship for the period of time they’re both in (office).”
A point I don’t often see you make is that FPTP is actually a voter suppression mechanic.
You live in a riding with 65% support for Candidate A, but you support candidate B? When it’s all-or-nothing with a foregone conclusion why bother? But this skews the result: you didn’t bother to vote, so it gives the illusion Candidate A had higher support than they actually do. Maybe the 65% support wasn’t even accurate to begin with.
Maybe a better system gets 200,000 more voters into the booth, rather than praying that the winds of FPTP are in your favour.
I haven’t thought of it as voter suppression…
But it makes sense, however the connection isn’t strong. It’s hard enough as is to convince people millions of perfectly valid ballots are just discarded every single election.
I’ll keep it at the back of my mind.