WELLINGTON-HALTON HILLS – The lone independent provincial candidate for Wellington-Halton Hills believes he would only win in the event of a computer glitch.
Despite running with no expectation of actually getting elected, Georgetown resident Ron Patava said he feels it is important to get the word out about consensus democracy.
“There’s an old expression, you find a great idea, realize it may not happen in your lifetime but advocate for it anyway,” Patava said in a phone interview.
Although he will be listed as an independent, Patava is the party leader of Consensus Ontario which looks to tackle the growing political polarization through consensus government which essentially does away with political parties in the government itself, although they would still exist outside of government.
It’s a big ask but Patava pointed out that is how it works at the municipal level and the Northwest Territories and Nunavut have a similar system too.
He explained in the Northwest Territories all 19 MLAs are elected as independents and those members elect the premier, speaker and six cabinet ministers leaving the remaining members as the unofficial opposition.
Patava said this leaves a permanent minority government requiring the MLAs to have to work together and be more collaborative with each other to pass legislation and be more accountable to constituents rather than to their party.
“What we see now in the house is attack each other and shout and back and forth outside in the media, personal attacks like ‘Doug Ford’s buddies’ or ‘Bonnie Crombie spends’ this kind of culture to me is toxic,” he said. “We should be looking at our elected officials to act in a more civilized manner.”
Patava ran for the first time in the 2022 provincial election receiving 250 votes, coming sixth on a six-person ballot. He is expecting a similar result this year but is running anyways to create more civic engagement which he said is needed as democracy backslides when looking at the bigger picture globally.
“I look at it this way, I’m not running to necessarily win, I’m running to engage the voters, the citizens of Wellington-Halton Hills in a broader conversation on how our system runs and what we could do here ourselves,” he said. “We don’t need to rely on the premier and his cabinet coming up for a model for all of Ontario.”
Patava will be on the ballot alongside Alex Hilson for the Liberals, Simone Kent for the NDP, Stephen Kitras for New Blue, Jason Medland for the Ontario Party, Joseph Racinsky for the Progressive Conservatives and Bronwynne Wilton for the Greens.
Election day is Feb. 27.