Canada

Saviolo

(3,321 posts) Wed Oct 19, 2016, 03:41 PM Oct 2016

Update: Trudeau abandons commitment towards electoral reform

In an interview for French newsmagazine Le Devoir, Trudeau talks about abandoning his commitment to reform Canadian elections and do away with FPTP (First Past The Post voting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting):

Au moment de célébrer le premier anniversaire de son élection au gouvernement, Justin Trudeau se tourne vers l’avenir et reconnaît les nombreux chantiers qui l’attendent. Énergie Est, les communautés autochtones, mais aussi la réforme électorale promise l’an dernier et sur laquelle le premier ministre ne garantit plus qu’il ira de l’avant.

« Si on va changer le système électoral, il faut que les gens soient ouverts à ça », a laissé tomber Justin Trudeau, en entrevue exclusive avec Le Devoir cette semaine pour faire le bilan de la dernière année. « On va regarder comment se déroulent les consultations, les réactions, les résultats des rapports. On ne va pas préjuger ce qui serait nécessaire [pour modifier le mode de scrutin]. Mais quand on dit un appui substantiel, ça veut dire quelque chose. »

What he is saying here (for Anglophones

is that he would have to take the temperature of the electorate, first. He would want to know that the voting public was open to such a change. Sounds to me like he's looking towards another referendum, or some such thing, to gauge the public's openness to a reformed voting system instead of FPTP.

Full article here: http://www.ledevoir.com/politique/canada/482514/la-reforme-electorale-n-est-plus-garantie

Elder Canadian statesman, and head of the Broadbent institute, Ed Broadbent, took to Twitter to call the Prime minister out on his backtracking over a series of tweets:

@JustinTrudeau's #electoralreform comments in @LeDevoir are outrageous & transparently self-serving. Let me explain

1st, on process. w/ #ERRE about to start final deliberations, PM Trudeau cynically undermines the whole democratic process

Now, on substance. #LPC made clear commitment that '15 fed election would be last 1 under FPTP
https://t.co/VZnctGLqu0

And @JustinTrudeau repeated commitment throughout 2015 campaign
https://t.co/mnetYE34eK

And post-election, reaffirmed promise to scrap #FPTP "to make sure that every vote counts"
https://t.co/POwJ8MCu53

You can read the entire very long and very well-referenced Twitter essay here:
https://twitter.com/broadbent/status/788789954272976897

------------UPDATE------------

Looks like I jumped on this a little early. The ink had not yet begun to spill on Trudeau's comments to Le Devoir. National Post has picked it up (because of course they did), though it seems they're more interested in banging Trudeau in the head about it, instead of much substance. However, they're not wrong when they say that Trudeau's walking back of his campaign promises on electoral reform are extremely discouraging:

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/andrew-coyne-is-trudeau-trying-to-pull-a-fast-one-on-electoral-reform