Electoral reform will cost Trudeau

‘Amassive political deception” is how NDP leader Tom Mulcair, portrayed the Liberal government’s abandonment of electoral reform.

Mulcair’s claim suggests that when Justin Trudeau committed — unequivocally and without reservation — to make the 2015 election the last to be conducted under the first-past-the-post system, he knew he was lying.

On first inspection, it smacks of George Stephanopoulos’ cynical defence of his former boss, Bill Clinton: “The president has kept all the promises he intended to keep.”

But I’m not so sure. That would indicate a level of premeditated mendacity we haven’t seen yet, even from a government that is becoming more elastic in the application of its principles by the day.

Opinion polls suggest a plurality of Canadians want changes to the way they elect governments, but there is no agreement on what kind of change.

A special committee of MPs that studied electoral reform recommended a referendum, pitting the current system against an unspecified form of proportional representation. The Liberals dissented, while the NDP and Green members added a supplementary report that also questioned the need for a referendum.

The Liberals’ preferred option was a ranked ballot system that would have kept them in power until one of the prime minister’s progeny was old enough to continue his dynastic rule.

But it quickly became apparent that this was a non-starter without a referendum, which would likely have opted for the status quo in any case.

So, I don’t believe the Liberals planned to lie all along.

But there is no doubt that they have broken a campaign promise — and not one of the little ones, like creating a more detailed parliamentary expense form.

As Mulcair pointed out, the pledge was made 1,813 times. It helped get the Liberals elected and there will be many voters who will never give Trudeau the benefit of the doubt again.

“How can Canadians believe anything this prime minister says after he so blatantly and intentionally betrayed his own words?” asked Mulcair.

The evidence that this was a very bad day indeed for the government was apparent on the glum faces on the Liberal backbench, where many MPs looked as if they’d just been told the government planned to wipe out the Canadian moose.

Opposition members who spent much of their summer criss-crossing Canada gauging opinion on electoral reform were incandescent.

“I’m frustrated, angered and saddened,” said NDP democratic reform critic Nathan Cullen, whose mood will be brightened when he sees the next polling report.

Yet, even in his distress, he extended his sympathies to the hapless figure of new Democratic Reform Minister Karina Gould, whose marching orders from the prime minister were released just before she had to deliver the news to Canadians. “Changing the electoral system will not be in your mandate,” the letter said.

Earlier this month, the Burlington, Ont., MP was elevated to cabinet. In a remarkable act of self-sacrifice, she marched toward the cameras Wednesday to announce her job has become all but redundant.

She did passably well defending the indefensible, although she would probably like to erase the clip where she said “MOST of our electoral promises have (been) kept.”

The Ekos poll from last November, which suggested a plurality of Canadians believe the current electoral system does not do a good job of representing what voters want, also tracked trust in government. The poll suggested that trust doubled with Trudeau’s electoral victory, from near historic lows under Stephen Harper.

But after this news, confidence and faith in the promises made by this government will crumble.

Trudeau made clear promises, with no provisos, that have turned to ashes. The new minister blustered that “time and time again we have said there needed to be consensus.”

But to suggest this was always the case is nonsense. The caveat about consensus first emerged in an interview given by the accident-prone former minister, Maryam Monsef, last May.

Monsef was lampooned for claiming to want evidence of “broad buy-in” while rejecting a referendum, because it would exclude young people, women, minorities and people with “exceptionalities,” because they don’t vote in large numbers. Instead, the government would listen to Canadians via Twitter, “the 21st-century way.”

There followed the pointless town-hall listening exercise and the asinine mydemocracy.ca online survey.

This costly consultation concluded Wednesday with news that, if the Liberals couldn’t get the system that would guarantee them power in perpetuity, they’d stick with the one that delivered them a whopping majority last time.

For those of us who prefer strong, stable governments that directly elect MPs to represent their communities, the decision to leave this hornets’ nest unstirred is welcome news.

But for those who voted for Trudeau as an antidote to political cynicism — and in the hope that he would overturn what they consider an unjust electoral system — it is nothing short of a betrayal.

CHANGING ELECTORAL SYSTEM NOT IN YOUR MANDATE.