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While taking questions after announcing he would be stepping down as prime minister on Monday, Justin Trudeau was asked to give an example of a regret he had from his time in office.
The prime minister conceded that he could probably think of “many regrets,” but he listed one in particular — not moving forward on electoral reform.
“If I have one regret, particularly as we approach this election … I do wish that we’d been able to change the way we elect our governments in this country so that people could choose a second choice or a third choice on the same ballot,” he said.
“Parties would spend more time trying to be people’s second or third choices and people would be looking for things they have in common rather than trying to polarize and divide Canadians against each other.”
While announcing his resignation as prime minister and Liberal Party leader, Justin Trudeau added that he regrets not being able to push through ranked ballot electoral reform, citing a lack of consensus across party lines.
During his first federal election campaign as Liberal leader, Trudeau promised that 2015 would be the last time Canadians elect their federal government under the first-past-the-post system — where a candidate wins by simply having the most votes.
But during that campaign, Trudeau never pushed for a ranked ballot, which allows voters to list their preferred candidates in numerical order. If one person doesn’t get a clear majority on the first count, candidates are eliminated and second-choice votes are counted until someone has more than 50 per cent support.
Trudeau and the Liberals would go on to win a majority in the House of Commons — but the prime minister would soon backtrack on his promise to implement electoral reform after momentum steered away from a ranked ballot option.
In their 2015 platform, the Liberals said they would strike an all-party parliamentary committee to review a number of systems — including ranked ballot and proportional representation — and deliver recommendations on the way forward.
A committee was convened and released its report in December 2016. It recommended that a referendum be held that proposed a switch to some form of proportional representation, where the number of seats in the House more accurately reflected a party’s share of the popular vote.
The committee report had the sign-off from representatives of the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois — and the NDP and Greens offered an alternative report suggesting that a referendum may not be necessary.
Liberal MPs on the committee released their own supplementary report that disagreed with the rest of the parties entirely.
“The recommendations posed in the majority report regarding alternative electoral systems are rushed and are too radical to impose at this time as Canadians must be more engaged,” the Liberals wrote.
Those MPs seemed to have forgotten that it was the Liberal party that proposed a specific timeline for electoral reform by both promising to make 2015 the last election under the current system and by promising to bring in legislation to change the way Canadians vote within 18 months of forming government.
But in the months before the committee’s recommendations were released, Trudeau appeared to be waffling on his commitment.
In October 2016, the prime minister told Montreal’s Le Devoir newspaper that the election of the Liberal government had dampened public support for reform.
“Under the current system, they now have a government they are more satisfied with. And the motivation to want to change the electoral system is less urgent,” he said.
When the report came out, Maryam Monsef — Trudeau’s then-minister responsible for overseeing electoral reform — immediately shot down the committee’s recommendations arguing that it had failed to do its work by not offering a specific alternative. After some backlash from the other parties, Monsef apologized for her comments the next day.
A few weeks later, Monsef was replaced by Karina Gould in a cabinet shuffle. Trudeau would formally abandon his electoral reform commitment in Gould’s new mandate letter.
“A clear preference for a new electoral system, let alone a consensus, has not emerged. Furthermore, without a clear preference or a clear question, a referendum would not be in Canada’s interest. Changing the electoral system will not be in your mandate,” Trudeau wrote at the time.
Trudeau critical of proportional representation
Even though he left the door open for a proportional representation voting system in 2015, Trudeau has fairly consistently criticized the idea.
While running for the Liberal leadership in 2013, Trudeau explicitly said he preferred ranked ballots and shot down the idea of proportional voting which was being proposed by another candidate.
“I understand people want proportional representation, but too many people don’t understand the polarization and the micro issues that come through proportional representation,” he said during a leadership debate.
But after winning the leadership, Trudeau bit his tongue and didn’t mention his personal preference.
The ranked ballot system would have favoured the Liberal Party, according to most experts. A study by Fair Vote Canada showed a ranked ballot would have significantly increased the number of Liberal Party seats in the 2019 election.
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Speaking with Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith on the Uncommons podcast in the fall, Trudeau said in hindsight staying quiet on his preferred choice might have been a mistake.
The prime minister also told Erskine-Smith that he wished he had been able to use his majority to bring in a ranked ballot, but lamented that none of the opposition parties were on board.
“The consequences of changing our electoral system are so significant.… That idea of needing consensus across, and not having it, is why I chose to say, ‘Ok, I’m not going to risk an irreversible change just to fulfil a promise I made to change this,” he said.
Trudeau repeated that sentiment during his announcement on Monday — even though he had rejected the 2016 recommendation that had the support of other opposition parties.
“I could not change unilaterally — without the support of other parties — our electoral system. That wouldn’t have been responsible,” he said.
Source: cbc
