Catherine Bell, the NDP MP spearheading the Party's latest motion, got up in Question Period yesterday and asked the government about their polling exercise on electoral reform, explained in more detail in this article.

Turns out that the almost $1 million contract to conduct polling and focus groups on democratic reform (a much broader topic than voting reform, which may mean that the electoral system is not sufficiently addressed) will be going to the Winnipeg-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Apparently, they're "independent" but also think that the "old, low-performance policy paradigm and a tax regime that renders [the Prairies] less competitive". That doesn't sound centrist or independent to me. SourceWatch paints them as a Fraser Institute clone.

Bell and the NDP seem to think that this means they can't do a good job on the aforementioned contract. To me, this doesn't necessarily follow. There are lots of small-C conservatives that support voting reform, from Walter Robinson and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation to Conservatives like Hugh Segal. And believe it or not, Prime Minister Stephen Harper even once wrote an article supporting a PR system for elections to the House of Commons.

Although if the Frontier Centre doesn't get in touch with everyone's favorite multi-partisan campaign for electoral reform before they design the consultation process, then it's fair to conclude that this democratic reform study will be questionable.

I've been thinking about dipping my toes back into the blogging waters for a while now. I've been putting it off for school and work with this fine organization but with this week being a big one for electoral reform news, I feel the need to add my thoughts to the discussion.

The past few days have been exciting ones for electoral reformers in Canada. First, this past weekend was the first weekend of the deliberation phase of the historic Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform. I'm hoping to get the chance to put on my academic hat sometime over the next few days and listen to most of the video of their discussions, which are available online at TVO's great site on the OCA.

The big news out of the weekend is that on Sunday Assembly members took a straw poll on their favoured voting system - and over 80% of them chose a mixed-member proportional (MMP) system! Democratic Space has the lowdown here and as always the incomparable Idealistic Pragmatist is all over the story as well.

This is positive news and reflects the fact a significant majority of presenters to the OCA proposed some form of MMP.

It will be interesting to see the rest of the OCA deliberations and how things may change. A paper (PDF) by noted Canadian electoral experts Blais, (the BC CA research director) and Fournier concluded that the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly became more sympathetic to the Single Transferable Vote (STV) system (which was their ultimate choice) as their deliberations progessed.

Will the same dynamics come to play in Ontario?

Also, on Monday in the House, NDP MP Catherine Bell introduced a motion related to electoral reform (see her site here). I see some problems with the motion (which I'll save for another post), but it's nice to see this crucial issue come before the federal parliament.

Haven't got the chance to read it yet, but for the keeners out there (the first day of debate is here).