Liberals on defensive on election reform promise: Analysis
A week that could have kicked Trudeau's electoral reform promise into gear instead sees the Liberals flailing, on the defensive.

Thestar.com
By ALEX BOUTILIER
Dec. 12, 2016

A week that should have kicked the Liberals’ pledge to overhaul Canada’s election system into gear instead saw the government skidding along on the defensive, calling into question the Liberals’ commitment to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s election promise.

And with roughly six months left for the Liberals to make good on that promise, the government does not appear to have an answer for how they’ll move reforms forward.

Over the past 10 days, the Liberals have attacked an all-party committee, quickly apologized for that attack, recommitted to electoral reform, launched a widely-criticized online survey on the issue, dug-in against that criticism, and fumbled more than one response on the file under repeated opposition questioning.

In the process, the government has transformed the issue into a major millstone around their neck and threatened the credibility of a young cabinet minister.

While the Liberals’ handling of the electoral reform file over the past week and a half seemed to come out of nowhere, there’s a case to be made that it has its roots in Trudeau’s original promise to reform the system in the first place.

So how did we get here?

The promise

Trudeau pledged in the lead up to the 2015 campaign, which his party entered in third place, that the fall election would be Canada’s last under first-past-the-post.

Critics of first-past-the-post, which has governed Canada’s elections for 149 years, argue it skews the “popular vote,” meaning parties can form majority governments with less than 40 per cent of the vote. Whether you agree with the criticisms or not, Trudeau’s promise was unambiguous.

The problem was he didn’t say what he’d replace first-past-the-post with.

Trudeau mused that he liked the idea of ranked ballots - where voters rank candidates by their preference. The newly-elected prime minister quickly backed away from stating a preference, in no small part due to criticism that ranked ballots would benefit the Liberals.

The Conservatives, while not explicitly championing the status quo, demanded that any reform be put to Canadians in a nationwide referendum.

The New Democrats, still licking their wounds from a devastating elections loss, poured their energy into pushing for a “proportional representation” system - where seats in the House of Commons would more closely reflect the popular vote.

The committee

Six months after the election, Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef had still not made any moves on electoral reform.

When Monsef finally did strike a committee in May, she was immediately criticized for basing it on the first-past-the-post system Trudeau had pledged to change - with a “false majority,” the Liberals would retain final say on the committee’s recommendations.

At the time, the Liberals were taking a beating. Former House Leader Dominic Leblanc had just introduced Motion 6, which would have given the Liberals near-complete control over the House. Ottawa was in the midst of a highly-emotional debate over assisted dying. Two weeks later, Trudeau was forced to apologize after grabbing a Conservative MP in an attempt to speed up votes and elbowing an NDP MP in the process.

The Liberals were losing the “Sunny Ways” narrative, and Ottawa was tense.

Against that backdrop, the Liberals relented to pressure and adopted a model for the electoral reform committee put forward by NDP MP Nathan Cullen - the opposition parties, including the Greens and the Bloc Québecois, had a majority of seats.

The thinking was that the Liberals would need the support of at least one other party, likely the NDP, to get their recommendations through. But it didn’t quite turn out that way.

The report

The committee’s 333-page report, released Dec. 1, appeared to come to a consensus: the government should proceed with electoral reform, and Canadians should be given a vote between first-past-the-post and a new proportional system of the Liberals’ own design.

Despite the appearance of consensus, though, it turned out that the Liberals, NDP, and Green MPs on the committee didn’t exactly agree with those recommendations.

The Liberal MPs, in a “supplemental” report, recommended the government shelve the whole idea because Canadians weren’t sufficiently engaged on the issue.

The NDP and Greens said they didn’t think a referendum was necessary at all - despite at least one of those parties, likely both of them, supporting that recommendation in the main report.

The very bad week

Monsef blasted the committee in the House of Commons later that day, saying they hadn’t “done the hard work” of coming up with a new system - which she never asked them to do in the first place. Opposition parties were at first confused and then apoplectic, accusing her of outright lying.

The following day, Monsef apologized for her comments. Speaking to the Star’s editorial board, Trudeau called the episode an “outburst” and was forced to recommit to his electoral reform promise.

The Liberals turned their attention to a new online survey, mydemocracy.ca, to give them more guidance on how to move forward. But when the survey went live on Monday, critics were quick to point out that it didn’t explicitly mention alternative systems at all - instead focusing on Canadians’ “values” and how they’d like parliament to function.

Whatever the results of the survey, it won’t give the Liberals a clear alternative to first-past-the-post - the exact problem Monsef had with the committee’s report.

Where do we go from here?

Monsef still hopes to bring forward legislation early next year - the rough deadline for Elections Canada to prepare for whatever the Liberals ultimately recommend.

But she also wants to wait for the results of the mydemocracy.ca survey, which remains open until the end of December.

That puts us, at least, in January before the government moves. The Star asked on Monday if the Privy Council Office, the department that supports Monsef and Trudeau, is working on alternative systems in the meantime. Monsef’s office could not say by Friday.

The Liberals have very little time to build an entirely new electoral system, draft legislation, introduce a bill and shepherd it through the House of Commons and the Senate by June - the rough deadline needed by Elections Canada to prepare for a new system by 2019.

With the holidays fast approaching, the Liberals can expect some breathing room to regroup. But their choices seem to be holding a referendum, which they don’t seem to want, cutting a deal with the NDP, which would drive the Conservatives wild, and abandoning their promise. Politically, abandoning their promise might be easiest, but will no doubt carry a price.

Whatever their ultimate decision, they’ll have to avoid weeks like we just saw - where opposition parties seem more interested in making good on the Liberals’ own election promise, and the Liberals seem to have no plan whatsoever.