Editor:
What will most Canadians remember about prime minister Justin Trudeau and his government 40 years from now?
“2015 will be the last election fought under the first-past-the-post electoral system.” At last a leader appeared who would bring Canadian democracy out of the elected dictatorships imposed on us every election, where the party with 39 per cent of the vote gets 100 per cent of the power.
Over 65 per cent of votes in 2015 were for parties who made that promise. Our government is not going to keep it. The excuses that a lack of broad consensus on what system to replace it with, or that electoral reform is not what Canadians are most concerned about seem pretty thin to me.
In 1982, most Canadians were concerned about a great many things that seemed more important at the time than repatriating our constitution, and there was no clear consensus about whether we even should. But we had a leader then who knew what we needed and seized the moment when the time was right to give us a constitution that is the envy of the world.
My hope now is that the hard work of the electoral reform committee and the thoughtful, thorough, and insightful report it produced will provide a basis for someone else to do what our current government will not. Did Justin Trudeau ever intend to keep the promise to reform our unfair electoral system or was it just something he said to get elected? Forty years from now will we remember the promise he didn’t keep?
One thing is certain: he has squandered a unique and precious opportunity to seize the moment when the time was so right to give us a real democracy and we are all poorer for it.
Yours truly,
Hilda Earl
