Fixing the Senate
The NDP has long advocated a change to our electoral system: representation by population. A recent Globe editorial makes the good point that changing from our current system would be quite hard; regions who would ultimately be giving up seats in the House of Commons would be quite resistent.
There are advantages and disadvantage to representation by population. Often, the fact that majority governments are rare in representative schemes is seen as a disadvantage. On the contrary, this is quite advantageous, as bills will be passed only if a majority of MPs can be convinced they are good. This is much better than giving a government the power to do whatever it likes, as has been witnessed in Alberta recently with Bill 11. This lack of a single, all-powerful party could sometimes be a disadvantage, as bills might take longer to pass.
Perhaps a better solution is to kill two birds at once: the Senate, ornate watering hole for thirsty ex-politicians, could be made useful. Of course, many have suggested making the Senate an elected body (including the whining Preston Manning), but if the Senate were elected in the same manner as the House, there is no point; it would be equivilent to making the House bigger. But by making the Senate elected using a representation by population scheme, while also giving it the power to prevent bills being passed, we would gain a measure of proportional representation to balance the regional representation currently used and also make the Senate a useful institution.
Of course, this would be a huge change to our political system and would bring along its own problems. If possible, it would be better, perhaps, to simply change the House to be representation by population and get rid of the Senate altogether. Cheaper, too!
I have since thought of a better, more workable plan. Instead of keeping both a riding-elected House and making a representation by population elected Senate (and hence the disadvantages of each), the House of Commons could be expanded with some ``bonus'' seats (perhaps up to 200, thus almost doubling its size). These bonus seats would be awarded based on the popular support of the various parties elected during the normal riding-based elections. This has numerous advantages: you still have an MP whom you voted for (in a pure representative system, you would have voted for a party alone); parties which garnered a decent amount of popular support, yet no seats (traditionally a cross bared by the NDP), would still get some seats in the house; majority governments might be less frequent; and our Parliament gets a measure of proportional representation.
This is not to say that the current ridings are fair; far from it. They need to be adjusted to account for changes in population. Rural interests are currently quite over-represented, and the populations of the ridings is by no means balanced.