Is PM wavering on electoral reform?
PM MUST MAKE CLEAR WHETHER HIS PROMISE IS STILL INTACT — OR RISK A VOTER BACKLASH
Look, maybe it’s nothing. Maybe, when Justin Trudeau told Le Devoir that “if we’re going to change the electoral system, people have to be open to it,” he meant to suggest nothing more than respect for the public’s wishes — no bad thing, in a democracy.
Maybe when he explained how he was “not going to prejudge” what level of support would be required — how a small change would require less support, while “a bigger change, that would take more support” — he was only articulating standard democratic principle: the bigger the change, the broader the consensus that is needed. That’s why, for example, constitutional amendments require not just the support of Parliament, but also the provincial legislatures.
And maybe, when he offered the observation that the public’s appetite for reform seems to have waned since the election — how “under Mr. Harper, there were so many people who were upset with the government and his approach that people were saying, ‘it takes electoral reform to no longer have a government we dislike,’ ” whereas “now that they have a government with which they are more satisfied … the motivation to want to change the system is less compelling” — maybe he was simply stating a fact.
On the other hand, maybe he’s up to something. Politicians, the successful ones at any rate, are not often in the habit of saying things without a reason. Even if — especially if — what comes out of their mouths is the most anodyne truism (children are our future … the Earth is our home …), there’s usually a point. And the point many people are taking from Trudeau’s comments is that he is backing away from his promise to reform the electoral system.
If, after all, you were preparing to renege on one of the central promises in your platform, a black-letter pledge (“2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system”) that allowed no possible room for weaseling, would you not begin by suggesting it was not your own support for the idea that had wavered, but the public’s?
Or, if you were trying to steer the discussion towards some less-than-real reform, something that could be presented as change but that did not begin to meet your oft-stated commitment to “make every vote count” — something like ranked ballots, Trudeau’s original preference and the option widely held to be most favourable to the Liberals — would you not try to plant the idea that this was the only reform that could pass muster with the public?
Or, if you had decided to kill reform outright, but did not want your fingerprints to be found at the scene, would it not be convenient to hand the murder weapon to the public? Would you not discover a desire for some tangible expression of the “substantial support” for reform Trudeau now regards as essential, his own election on precisely that platform no longer being sufficient? Might you then reluctantly accede to demands for, say, a referendum?
Who can say? Trudeau’s intentions are as opaque as his comments were ambiguous. But if he wants to allay suspicions that he is trying to pull a fast one, he should at least say as much; that he has thus far declined to do so — in question period, he did not directly respond to Tom Mulcair’s accusation that he was “backing away from his solemn promise to Canadians” — is alarming, to say the least.
Understand that this was no ordinary promise, not only because of the unusually forthright language in which it was expressed, but because junking one electoral system for another is, by definition, a big change. Trudeau has, it is true, no mandate for any particular model of reform, but he absolutely has a mandate for reform.
I say mandate, not in the sense of a majority — for the Liberals, like the Conservatives before them, like every majority government but one since 1958, took a majority of the seats with the support of a minority of the voters — but in the sense that that was the offer they made to the public. Regardless of how many people voted for the Liberals expressly on that basis, it was part of the deal, a pitch to NDP-leaning voters, a display of the Liberals’ progressive credentials: that’s why it was in the platform.
The prime minister should immediately make clear, then, whether the promise is still in effect, or whether, having safely delivered the Liberals into power, the status quo is now back on the table, if not the only item on it. Otherwise many voters may conclude that they have once again, as they have on so many previous occasions, been had; that “this will be the last election under FPTP” was only the new “zap, you’re frozen.” At the same time, he should clarify whether, in musing about the “motivation” for reform being “less compelling” now that his blessed self is in power, he is describing the public’s opinion or his own.
For to argue, as the Liberals have done, that the system that elected Stephen Harper with the support of just 39 per cent of the voters was unfair and unrepresentative, only to argue that the same system was made miraculously fair and representative by virtue of having elected the Liberals — with the same support — is the kind of hypocrisy that would be fully deserving of former NDP leader Ed Broadbent’s description of it: outrageous.