I believe this change more so reflects a desire for Northern Ireland to be more independent from both the UK and the Republic of Ireland, rather than a desire to form a unified Ireland.

The trading border imposed by Britain has made Unionists feel like they are not treated fairly within the UK, yet at the same time unification is not desirable due to fears of the renewal of violence and terrorism.

The point is that a proportional voting system would be more democratic overall. There would still be a right and left wing split but it would allow for many more parties with differing perspectives to exist within it.

Coalitions are always a possibility but I’d rather have two left and right wing coalitions made up of 5+ parties than a two party system as coalitions are less likely to be as unified. Also more diversity probably reduces corruption and regional grassroots movements may have an easier path towards attaining political power.

And like you said, such a change wouldn’t prevent fascism from taking hold either. Fascism never respects democracy and as such it cannot be dealt with by changing our voting systems. Rather, I believe the best way to deal with it is to explicitely ban it by law, paradox of intolerance style. In other words, you shouldnt be able to vote for someone who doesn’t believe in voting or in democracy. Also education is very important in this matter like you said.

I was so jealous when I found out they have SVT in Australia. We need something like that here. I hope they at least get to have a discussion about it during these talks.

Having a good voting system means a better democracy and more accountability placed on the politicians to represent the people. With FPTP, Trudeau doesn’t have to care as much if he fucks up and gets the left wingers to dislike him because he knows that they will vote for him anyway in order to prevent a conservative majority. With SVT for instance we will just vote Trudeau away when he does some bullshit in favour of an NDP government or other.

Increased accountability is especially important because we need those fuckers to address the climate crisis and a more democratic voting system would mean there would be real consequences for the politicans if they fail to do so.

I wouldn’t feel too bad for mistaking a Canadian for an American. Our accents sound so similar that I don’t think its a big deal, especially for non native, or non North American english speakers.

That’s what I tell every Canadian I know who’s travelling anyhow. Just kindly tell them you are Canadian if they ever refer to you as American. Or carry Canadian insignia if you are concerned about it.