Voting in Canada

I was discussing the Canadian voting system recently, and I am absolutely shocked. They have no preferential voting scheme! Do you know what that means?

• In Canada, if you vote for a minor party, and that party does not win, then your vote will be tossed in the garbage. I'm not joking. There is no incentive for voting for the party that most accurately represent your views. Worse, if there are two parties with similar policies, then they will probably split their constituents evenly between them and neither will win. For example, if 60% of voters are left-wing, and there are two left-wing parties and one right-wing party, then the right-wing party would win (the two left-wing parties would get 30% each, and the right-wing party would get 40%). How stupid is that?
• In Australia, if you vote for a minor party, and that party does not win, then your vote will be attributed towards some larger party selected in advance by the minor party. This lets me vote for a minor party but, on the chance they lose the election, my vote will be attributed to the next closest party in terms of policies. For example, I can vote for the minority Greens party, with the assurance that my vote will be attributed to whichever party has created policies that are closest to the Greens.

Voting in Canada is also completely optional. People are not encouraged to consider each party on its merits - they only bother to vote if the policies of one party will somehow affect their personal lives. The voting system implicitly discourages a government that is "for the benefit of all", because a large number of people with "moderate socialist" views would not bother to vote.

To be honest, I'm not very interested in voting in Canada. I'm more interested in changing the voting system so that my vote would count. :(