Columns

National Column: Electoral reform left lying in ruins

Cut through the spin that has attended the publication this week of the much-awaited conclusions of a special parliamentary committee on electoral reform and what you find is a collective failure to rise above partisan self-interest.
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Columns

National Column: Liberals are taking a gamble by reversing election promises

What’s a government to do when promises start to unravel? We’re about to find out.

The Trudeau Liberals’ 2015 platform took quite a knocking this month. Electoral reform? Not if Canadians don’t want it, says Justin Trudeau, while continuing to resist the obvious mechanism – a referendum – for finding out whether they do. More generosity on health care? […]

Columns

National Column: NDP brief keeps electoral reform wide open

If one had to take away just one thing from the NDP’s just-released submission on electoral reform, it is that it strenuously avoids tracing a party line in the sand.

As leader, Thomas Mulcair campaigned on a mixed-member proportional system. But in its brief, the NDP carefully avoids pinning itself down to a specific system to the exclusion of others, or to a process to achieve a reform. […]

Columns

National Column: Coffee, tea or electoral reform?

“Congratulations! You have decided to host a dialogue on Canadian federal electoral reform,” I read in the federal government’s new handbook, Your Guide to Hosting a Successful Dialogue on Canadian Federal Electoral Reform, as I walked up Parliament Hill on Thursday. […]

Columns

National Column: Electoral reform appears destined to fail

Among Justin Trudeau’s commitments, few are as time-sensitive as his promise to have a new voting system in place for the 2019 federal election.

And so, as the weeks turned into months and eventually into more than half a year without any action from the new government, questions arose as to how committed the Liberals were to a promise they had made when they were twice-removed from power. […]