Campaign built on broken promises

Re: Liberals abandon electoral reform — Feb. 2

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, by walking away from his promise to reform Canada’s first-past-thepost electoral system, has shown Canadians that he does not represent “real change,” but the same “say anything to get elected” behaviour that we’ve seen so often in the past.

He campaigned on a promise to replace first-pastthe-post before the next federal election in 2019. His promise did not include a prerequisite for a broad consensus or an overwhelming indication from the public that they care about this issue.

Leadership is more complex than simply peddling one’s own views or only undertaking actions which have broad support and interest from the public. Justin Trudeau’s father understood that when he repatriated the Constitution in Canada in 1982. Had Pierre Trudeau not demonstrated leadership at the time and instead had waited for “consensus among Canadians on how, or even whether, to ...” do so, we would still be functioning under the British North America Act of 1867.

The prime minister has stated that we cannot agree on how to, or if we should reform our electoral system, despite clear recommendations from the Law Commission of Canada in 2004 and the all-party committee in 2016.

Both recommended replacing first-past-the-post and both recommended some form of proportional representation.

Sadly, with this one major broken promise, Justin Trudeau has shown himself to be just another selfserving disingenuous politician, not a catalyst for progressive change. Ronald Bowman Kitchener