Paige Saunders: Why the US and Canada are Trapped (and how New Zealand escaped)

In this episode of The Missing Middle, Cara Stern sits down with YouTuber Paige Saunders to discuss the one structural glitch that is sabotaging Canada’s economy, healthcare, and housing market: our electoral system.

While most democracies have moved on to Proportional Representation, Canada remains stuck with a model that empowers swing ridings and ignores millions of voters. Paige explains why this monopoly on power prevents real innovation and how a simple change in how we vote could lead to a 20% performance increase across the board.

In this video:

• How our voting system benefits wealthy people
• Which voting system would a villain choose?
• Why Ranked Choice is a trap for multi-party democracies.
• The path forward: Why we need a binding Citizens' Assembly.

Check out Paige Saunders' channel: https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeMTL

Chapters:

00:37 Intro: The hidden force behind Canada’s biggest problems

01:12 What’s broken about Canada’s voting system

01:48 How swing ridings control the country

04:03 Why politicians ignore entire groups of voters

05:26 Does proportional representation hurt suburbs?

06:59 Populism, power, and lack of accountability

08:59 Why this won’t magically fix housing

10:17 Why politicians refuse to change the system

11:11 Why most Canadians don’t even notice the problem

12:58 Is Canada heading down the US/UK path?

15:13 Why electoral reform keeps failing

19:40 The real barrier to change

24:24 The AI test: which system is worst?

29:12 “I was shocked Canada still uses this”

32:28 Is Canada falling behind on democracy?

36:03 Can anything actually force reform?

40:00 What a better system could look like

42:45 Final thoughts: a more Canadian democracy

Hosted by Mike Moffatt & Cara Stern & Sabrina Maddeaux

Produced by Meredith Martin

Funded by the Neptis Foundation https://neptis.org/