Pffft, Trudeau would rather set himself on fire than enact electoral reform.
FPTP is too critical to Canadian neoliberalism in that it prevents coalitions (which would encourage compromise and diversity of opinion) and allows the major parties to force their will.
What a novel idea! “if you keep your campaign promises, then maybe you’ll be re-elected!”
christ on a cracker we’re collectively governed by morons.
Wow imagine if he just actually kept his campaign promise
I don’t disagree, and I’m pissed that he didn’t institute electoral reform, but not keeping campaign promises is about half of what politicians do. It would be nice to have something done about that, where politicians were fined, oh, 6 month’s salary, for each platform promise they didn’t keep, party and personal, but which politician would vote that in?
People can change.
40 Liberals have voted in favour of advancing Citizens’ Assembly, compared to 3 conservatives.
I guess I’m saying I wished he hadn’t changed, and just did the thing he said he was going to do originally.
Harper wrote a fantastic essay on electoral reform before he was elected.
I’m not impressed by a liberal or conservative supporting reform when polling shows they’d benefit from the proposed change and then immediately forget it once they’re elected w/ FPTP.
But what if Trudeau tried to recapture that significant slice of the electorate whose hearts he broke, by bringing back his pledge to reform our election system? Except this time, don’t just talk about it: do it.
If his confidence-and-supply agreement with the New Democrats endures until Fall 2025 as scheduled, Trudeau would have ample time to dust off all the work his previous ministers and committees undertook and get a bill before Parliament for debate.
The author seems to think that passing a bill is all it would take to implement electoral reform, but I suspect it would just be the beginning of a process that almost certainly could not be completed before next year’s election. The Conservatives might even try to stall the bill long enough to kill the whole thing.
How can they kill it if the liberals have the smaller parties, independents, disgruntled conservatives and undecided voters on board with proportional representation thanks to the hard public pressure from the Canadian people.
I meant kill it by stalling it in Parliament long enough to make sure implementation couldn’t happen in time for the election. If the Conservatives won the election they wouldn’t follow through with implementing the bill.
TL;DR they think he should look at electoral reform again
A huge wedge of the liberal voter base were disenfranchised when Trudeau promised electoral reform, practically guaranteed it, and then just announced they weren’t going to do it but don’t worry here’s legal weed. Many of them were youth voting for the first time, and that betrayal set the tone. If he set it in motion before the election, is it possible they’d recapture at least some of that base? Sure. Would I vote for him? Not a chance.
He needs to be pressured by the public if we want the liberals to be held accountable while preventing fascism in the mean time.
Here is a great resource if you would like to learn more about proportional representation.
