Objections 3:  With the new MMP system, governments will be unstable.
by Giuseppe Gori

Our current system (Single Member Plurality, or "winner takes all") solves the problem by adding weight to the party that has the advantage in more ridings, so that a party with even a low support can form a majority government and be undisrupted in its work for four years. This gives stability to government, but only for the short term. 

What happens regularly is that the majority of voters (who never voted for the government in power) will "punish" this party and swing slightly towards another direction. This determines another (opposite) majority, which often repeals previous legislation and creates its own. 

This is very costly, in terms f bureaucracy and for industry, which sees no clear long term stability in the rules of doing business.

For example, see the economic, developmental and housing costs and availability repercussions of the Ontario Liberal "green belt" decision around the GTA.

Thus we pay for short term stability with serious changes of direction possibly every four years.

A major problem of this situation is that the government in power not only has the power to make good legislation, but also has the power to make horrible mistakes. This is why many (with the current system) want a "recall" mechanism, to send home the MPPs that messed up. It is impossible however to "recall" the Premier, if he did not maintain some 200 promises, or if he did exactly the opposite of what he has been elected for.

While with our system we sometimes suffer for four years with a "stable" government that most people despise and which could introduce and repeal legislation at will, with the MMP system we would be governed by a coalition that would have to co-operate when introducing legislation.

If no cooperation were reached, then no legislation would be passed, making the government more conservative, and less likely to introduce sudden, unjustified changes of direction.

In most cases, the new system also has an "automatic recall" mechanism. If a majority government coalition member (party leader) thinks the government is doing something seriously wrong, then he can decide to withdraw its support from government and (most of the times) cause the government to fall.

Can this happen too often? May be, if politicians are not willing to dialogue and co-operate. It is ultimately up to the voters (in the immediate election after a government failure) to "punish" the party leader that they think was not a good player in government. As a result, political leaders must adapt and become less confrontational and more co-operative. Another good spin-off of a good electoral system.

Some people are really disturbed by the fact that a government falls and another is formed. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Each time, both politicians and voters learn a democratic lesson. 
The result will be a government with a few more wise politicians which will be more careful, and less able to impose their particular view on everyone else.

I have to add that the "fear of no government" is a common fear the left has. Libertarians, of course, are perfectly happy with no government. Our government currently sits "in session" for only a few months during the year. Would Ontario fall apart, if we had "no government" for a month?

Nobody really knows why the Italian economy is so strong (one of the top seven and with a higher GNP than Canada), despite of a Latin relaxed culture, longer vacations, more holydays, continuous strikes, assassinations, kidnappings, mafia, organized crime and political strife... and, yes, a Pure Proportional system of election. A joke, circulating in Italy, says that the Italian economy really picks up when there is no government (at least businesses know that no serious damage is coming their way, for a while;-). 

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