WHAT COULD BE BETTER THIS SUMMER THAN TO SHARPEN ONE’S HB PENCILS AND BEGIN MAPPING OUT, ON HANDCRAFTED PAPER, ONE’S PERSONAL COMMUNITY ELECTORAL REFORM DISCUSSION PLAN?

Monsef asking public to trust Liberals’ choice

As Canada continues to be back, we intermittently enjoy moments of Stephen Harper nostalgia. These are the times when the former prime minister’s anima, his innermost spirit, appears ghostlike and silver-haired over Parliament Hill in our mind’s eye, a single vein throbbing angrily in his temple.

The spectre gazes down upon Ottawa, icy blue eyes taking in the rampant consultations, policy studies without end, the burgeoning yoga days, committee work run amok. And then its head explodes.

The publication of a 38-page official guide to how we should talk about the electoral reform the government has decided we will have, without resorting to the tawdry vulgarity of a referendum, may be the best instance yet.

This may stand as the Liberal version of Harper’s quixotic, uncharacteristically romantic quest for the lost Franklin Expedition. Our explorer is Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef.

The Grail she seeks is the ideal, non-binding consultative meeting, or — to use the correct term, articulated in her guide — “electoral reform event dialogue.” It is a Platonic ideal. It glimmers out there, somewhere, should we only have the courage to seek it.

Who among us will seize upon this painstakingly crafted manifesto, devouring its insights hungrily? A better question might be, who can fail to. This is high summer — cottage time. What could be better, as the cicadas whirr, than to sharpen one’s HB pencils and begin mapping out, on handcrafted paper, one’s personal community electoral reform discussion plan — notes to be later forwarded to the Special Committee on Electoral Reform, which can then file and ignore them utterly?

Liberal stalwarts, the folks who used to lug their little backpacks around the party’s biennial policy conventions, bedecked in “Stop Harper!” pins, will jump all over this.

A dialogue can be ambitious, the guide informs us, town-hall-sized, with 50-plus participants. Or it can be a coffee klatsch around a kitchen table. It can be an outgrowth of your book club, a momentary respite from considering the problem of plot in Atwood or Ondaatje.

It can take any form at all — as long as it sets the correct tone, and careful minutes are taken. “If you plan to ask participants to register ahead of time, consider asking them to mention any special accommodations they may require, such as dietary restrictions or accessibility needs,” the manual admonishes on page 32. “This can help you plan a more inclusive, welcoming event for all participants.”

And the prize: Think of the prize! “Briefs submitted to committees become part of their public archives and therefore, may be posted on the committee’s website,” the guide enthuses; raw catnip for the politically engaged, if ever there was.

As Monsef has said before and reiterated Wednesday, her government will not introduce reforms unless it has “the broad support of Canadians.” And there really can be no better way to gauge support than this arbitrary agglomeration of gabfests, can there?

A vote, for example, should be avoided at all costs. Referendums, Monsef argues, “do not easily lend themselves to effectively deciding complex issues. They can and have often led to deep divisions within Canadian and other societies, divisions which have not easily healed.”

It was the Minister of Defence, Harjit Sajjan, who told the Huffington Post early in his tenure that Canadians “can call bulls--- very quickly.” How very true that is — and how very handy a reference point, in light of Monsef’s transparent attempt to link her arguments to the debacle of the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom.

It’s quite obvious British Prime Minister David Cameron was colossally unwise to hold his uncertainty-spawning, wealth-destroying referendum on Britain’s exit from the European Union. It’s even more obvious no such decision could have been taken without a vote. The operative question is not whether the Brexit referendum turned out badly, therefore, but whether in 2016, transformative change to a democracy can be sold without a formal consult of the popular will.

Is electoral reform transformative, in the way the Liberals envision it? Few would argue otherwise.

A gaggle of focus groups, even 338 of them, will not yield a consensus for or against reform, or for one system over another. Even if that were possible, the Liberals would be well within their purview, in the absence of a plebiscite, to ignore it and opt for their preferred system, the ranked ballot.

Therefore, Monsef is really saying, “trust us.” And why, pray, would we do that? Of course referendums can be deeply divisive and difficult. Of course, they consume untold precious political capital, and oxygen. This is why, given all else they have on the boil, the Liberals would be wiser to punt electoral reform to another day, than continue blundering down their current path. Here’s betting they will, before it’s over.

WHO AMONG US WILL SEIZE UPON THIS PAINSTAKINGLY CRAFTED MANIFESTO?