The third annual Canada West Foundation Student Essay Contest invited students attending a post-secondary institution in BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, or Manitoba during the Fall 2008 or Winter 2009 semester to write an essay in response to the following question: Should Canadians switch to a system of proportional representation? A $5,000 cash prize for the best undergraduate essay and a $5,000 cash prize for the best graduate essay were the incentives.
The Canada West Foundation wishes to congratulate and thank the two winners, the two runners-up, and all of the students who submitted essays. It is hard to think of a more important topic to democracy than how we select our elected representatives. The essays we received demonstrate that this issue is one that resonates among students in western Canada and that there is a wide range of views on this critical issue.
Funding for the Student Essay Contest has been provided by the Canada West Foundation Founders’ Endowment Fund. Many thanks to Dr. Kari Roberts for managing the essay contest and to Robert Roach for his input. Thanks are also due to our panel of judges:
Loleen Berdahl, University of Saskatchewan
Peter Loewen, University of British Columbia
Peter McCormick, University of Lethbridge
Jared Wesley, University of Manitoba
It should be noted that the judges reviewed the essays without knowing the names or schools of the writers.
Winning essays:
Wasted Ballots
Brian Baker, University of British Columbia
Shared Destiny: A Common Sense Approach to Strengthening Canada Through Proportional Representation
Matthew Sharp, Simon Fraser University
Runner-ups:
Systems for Sanity: The Processes Toward Democracy
Luke Freeman, Simon Fraser University
Canada and Proportional Representation: The Rhetoric of Voting Reform versus the Reality of Representative Democracy
Michael Kulicki, University of Alberta