Voting reform survey goes live
OTTAWA • Days after fumbling the rollout of an allparty report on reforming how Canadians vote, the Liberals are giving citizens 25 days to take part in a lengthy online survey on electoral reform.
The government is launching what it says is the next phase of its study to reform the voting system — a campaign promise Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has shown signs of backing away from lately — through an online portal, MyDemocracy.ca.
The Canadian Press has obtained details of the questions the government hopes Canadians will answer as it sends postcards to 15 million households giving details about how to participate online, or by phone if they lack the Internet.
The survey comes after last week’s flare-up in the House of Commons in which Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef accused opposition MPs on the electoral reform committee of not doing their jobs.
Monsef later apologized, but outrage over her remarks seemed to kneecap any momentum toward finding a new way for Canadians to vote after Trudeau pledged that the 2015 election would be the last one to use the firstpast-the-post system.
Opposition MPs on the committee recommended a new proportional voting system and urged a national referendum to gauge public support for it.
But in this next phase of public consultations, the word referendum does not appear in any of the 31 questions the government plans to ask Canadians.
The Liberals say MyDemocracy.ca is an “innovative way to join the conversation on electoral reform,” with the survey taking “only a few minutes” to complete. A paper print-off was more than 30 pages long.
On Sunday talk shows, two opposition MPs — who did not appear to know about this new round of public consultation — repeated accusations that the Liberals are trying to create a system that favours the party.
Monsef roundly rejected the criticism in an interview Sunday, saying the government is determined to give as many Canadians as possible a voice on a complicated but important issue that cuts to the core of their democracy.
The survey, by Torontobased Vox Pop Labs, asks respondents to rate their level of agreement with 20 “propositions.”
One proposition states: “A ballot should be easy to understand, even if it means voters have fewer options to express their preferences.”
Another proposition says: “Voters should be able to express multiple preferences on the ballot, even if this means that it takes longer to count the ballots and announce the election result.”