John Deverell asked me to post his response to this recent discussion for your consideration and comments:

"Those Greens who oppose an unqualified and unofficial negative voting campaign are quite right. It would confuse and harm the Green Party without any probability of success.

Those who argue that something drastic needs to be done, now, are also quite right.

The initiative to which Greens, New Democrats and Liberals should be prepared to respond enthusiastically must come from the largest opposition party, the Liberal Party of Canada. Until it accepts reality and shifts gears, the other opposition parties are indeed condemned to pursue stand-alone strategies with results we can anticipate easily by studying the last three elections.

If however Liberal Party leaders were to propose a temporary, selective (a la Catch 22+) and fair-minded pre-election voting alliance targetting enough swing ridings and, especially, all vulnerable Conservative and Bloc ridings, the likely result would be many more Liberal, Green and NDP members -- enough to form a coalition government.

If this new alliance (The Green Democratic Liberal Alliance?) were predicated on a short and well-publicized list of shared policy proposals for a coalition government, and in particular a commitment to legislate democratic voting (proportional representation) during the next Parliament -- then we would be facing an outstanding opportunity for real democratic change in Canadian politics.

If Michael Ignatieff were to make such a fundamentally hopeful proposal -- then the leaders and members of the Green Party and New Democratic Party would be crazy not to take him up on it. Yes there are still risks, but they are far smaller than the likely cost of going into another election doing nothing new or different.

To ignore a promise of many more seats for all three parties, a place in the next government, and the introduction of new voting rules which would guarantee the future and the continued or even expanded public financing of all politicians, should be unthinkable.

Will the Ignatieff Liberal Party make such a fair and reasonable offer? At the moment there is no such sign -- but the Liberal leaders are not young and can't be keen to stay in opposition. If the Liberal Party were to make the Big Offer, democrats and federalists everywhere in Canada should shout "Hallelujah, Finally A Creative Choice" followed immediately by a loud instruction to the leaders of the three parties: "A Watershed Election Is Coming. Do It Now."

Sure, not all Green, NDP and Liberal voters would take up the Unprecedented Cue -- but most would, and so would many discouraged voters, youth voters and some principled Conservative and Bloc voters.

Arguably a majority of Canadians would see enormous advantage in a one-shot opportunity to end the current sterile parliamentary impasse and, at long last, to remake Canada as a parliamentary democracy. I think they would, upon reflection and after a vigorous election campaign, reward the parties which showed they really prize Canadian unity, accountability, and democracy."

John Deverell
Pickering, Ontario