Canada uses a first past the post system for federal elections, which usually boils down to a two party state equilibrium
> It would seem weird for a candidate to reform how voting works knowing it could negatively affect their side, right?
Possibly, but I want to believe that politicians can put country over party (I haven't found a huge amount of evidence for this though unfortunately)
To be fair, that two-party equilibrium is the thing that keeps every minor political crisis from causing no-confidence votes and failed governments because all of the special interests involved break the coalition.
Other Parliamentary governments that don't have this kind of equilibrium end up with minor political parties holding massively outsized influence and concessions just to keep them in the coalition. See Denmark (this is pretty much the subject of every season of Borgen).
And the reason for this stability is trivial. If a party leaves a coalition and the coalition loses parliamentary majority, that party is effectively a major party. Potential prime ministers are rarely stupid enough or desperate enough to give small parties that kind of power. Instead, they prefer making the coalition a bit wider by adding another small party or two.
We also have the Swedish People's Party, which specializes as a reliable coalition partner. They are willing to collaborate with pretty much anyone. As long the coalition agrees to uphold the rights of the Swedish-speaking minority, they will give it another 4-5% support without too much drama.
That affords you the social cohesion to avoid these things. Much moreso than Denmark and orders of magntitude moreso than Canada.
You just generally agree with each other more, in your own socially-distant, Finnish way. Kippis!
Also the comments about the Swedish-speaking minority interest are a bit weird in historical context -- Swedish used to be the dominant language in Finland until the Swedish-speaking nobility decided to promote the Finnish language and identity. It isn't exactly weird that their remnants today would be able to promote their own interests...
As for the Swedish-speaking minority, it's mostly a result of colonization in the middle ages. Swedish became the dominant language in some coastal areas, while the rest of present-day Finland spoke a variety of Finnic languages. During both Swedish and Russian rule, Swedish was used as the administrative language, and the elites used it among themselves. But even among the elites, Swedish was often not their native language.
Considering it has pretty much had effectively two primary languages for the past several hundreds years that seems like a stretch? Two of the most famous Finns of all time like Linus Torvalds or Mannerheim didn't even speak Finnish as their first language. Not exactly a sign of "linguistic homogeneity"..
We use preferential voting and haven't had a minority government, that is a government formed by coalition as the result of an election since 2010. We still typically have 2 major parties and 3-4 minor parties that can (but by no means always) hold the balance of power, particularly in the senate. It means that the govt has to compromise more often to get bills passed, but the minority parties rarely hold legislation hostage (barring things like the Housing Future Fund, which was a dog's breakfast).
This means the conservative party often ends up getting more power since they're "first past the post" even though the majority of the population may not agree with them.
If the situation is as you describe, what really needs to change is that the two left parties need to merge, or one of them needs to become such a marginal player that it doesn't matter. If the leaders of those parties can't or won't do that, well, then you get the situation that you have.
That's not what they're saying. In Canada, we can easily end up with parliamentary majorities for parties that have less than 50% of the popular vote. Sometimes substantially less.
But the complaint seemed to be, not that it kept happening, but that it kept favoring the Conservatives. So, on the one hand, the fact that it keeps favoring one party is an issue. On the other hand, the way the complaint was made makes it sound like it's not coming from a position of objectivity.
Personally, I find it galling that the massive Californian population of Republicans and Texan population of Democrats frequently go unrepresented.
You seem to believe in the primacy of FPTP voting in itself. That’s the difference.
You seem to be reading things into my words that I didn't say.
I get that more representative is good. I get that FPTP isn't that.
But what I said is, when their complaint is that the Conservatives keep winning, that makes their whole argument suspect.
No longer true. Canada now also has the PPC - the People's Part of Canada (see: https://www.peoplespartyofcanada.ca/).
> even though the majority of the population may not agree with them
Well that certainly won't be true for the upcoming election.
The argument as to why electoral reform is needed is because of this distortion and the view that the FPTP system itself is resulting in peculiar outcomes that do not reflect the actual wishes of the voting public.