A week after the Trudeau government scrapped its promise to change Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system in time for the next federal election, the new Minister of Democratic Institutions Karina Gould defended the current voting system before the House Affairs Committee Tuesday, saying it “advances a number of democratic values. The first-past-the-post system may not be perfect, but no electoral system is. But it has served this country for 150 years and advances a number of democratic values Canadians hold dear, such as strong local representation, stability, and accountability,” said Ms. Gould (Burlington, Ont.) whose new mandate letter states that “changing the electoral system will not be in your mandate.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) broke his election campaign promise last week when Ms. Gould’s cabinet minister’s letter was publicly released, along with a number of other cabinet ministers’ mandate letters, and after the government spent an estimated $4.1-million on cross country special House committee hearings and launched a national consultations process through the mydemocracy.ca platform on the subject of electoral reform. Mr. Trudeau said in his mandate letter to Ms. Gould, who replaced Maryam Monsef (Peterborough-Kawartha, Ont.) as the new minister of Democratic Institutions on Jan. 10, that “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.”
Ms. Gould had the same message after she was sworn in. “If we were to change the electoral system, something as foundational as how we decide to govern ourselves, that we need to do it with the support of Canadians,” she said.