Canada: Liberals agree to give majority to Opposition on electoral reform committee | The Globe and Mail

The Liberals have backed down from their plan to hold the reins on a committee to study electoral reform in Canada, handing over the balance of power to the opposition and agreeing to give the Bloc Québécois and the Green Party a voice at the table. It is a major reversal from the government, which pledged to change the first-past-the-post voting system before the next federal election, but faced increasing criticism that it was trying to rig the system in the Liberal Party’s favour. Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef told the House of Commons on Thursday the government will support an NDP motion to give opposition members more say on the special committee – yet to be struck – to study voting systems and propose changes for Canada.

Canada: Did Justin Trudeau rule out one potential plan for electoral reform? | Macleans

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to study electoral reform, but comments on the topic this week raised questions about whether he has already ruled out one version of it. Trudeau told the Canadian Press on Wednesday that he doesn’t like the idea of “disconnecting any MPs from specific groups of citizens or geographic location.” “The fact that every single politician needs to earn the trust of a specific group of constituents who cover the broad range of Canadian public opinion strengthens our democracy,” Trudeau said in a long interview with CP’s Ottawa bureau.

Canada: Time will tell if Trudeau is free enough from party shackles to pursue electoral reform: Hébert | Toronto Star

It is not just Justin Trudeau’s opposition rivals who were — as the prime minister indelicately put it in a recent interview — left in the dust on election night, a generation of old-school Liberal insiders was, too. For most of the new Liberals in the House of Commons, the names of the party’s veteran power brokers ring only distant bells. Many party fixtures on Parliament Hill are unknown to the new movers-and-shakers of the Trudeau cabinet. The ghosts of a recent Liberal past still haunt the halls of Parliament but they are, for the most part, rattling their chains outside the corridors of power, with few or no IOUs to collect on. Some used to make themselves indispensable by smoothing the Liberal path to well-heeled donors. But such go-between services became obsolete after Jean Chrétien banned corporate donations a bit more than a decade ago.

Canada: Trudeau to review voting ban for long-term expats | The Canadian Press

A Canadian woman who recently met Justin Trudeau in London says the prime minister indicated a willingness to review a law disenfranchising long-term expats. In an interview from the U.K., Laura Bailey says she met Trudeau at a reception at the Canadian High Commission on Nov. 25 as he moved through the crowd and shook his hand. “I hope you can reinstate my right to vote in the next election,” Bailey said she told Trudeau. “He said to me, ‘We’ll work on that,’ with a little cutesy smile. Then I took a selfie with him.”

Editorials: How will Canada vote next time? | The Record

Of all the promises Justin Trudeau made before this week’s federal election, the promise to change how Canadians vote may come back to haunt him most. If he ignores it, the Liberal Party leader and soon-to-be-prime minister will be accused of breaking his word. If he keeps it, the majority government he just won may be his last. Trudeau and the Liberals are still celebrating their sweeping victory in Monday’s vote that left them in control of the House of Commons with 184 out of 338 MPs. But in order to carve out that 54 per cent majority in the House of Commons, the Liberals needed only 39.5 per cent of the votes cast. What’s being called a landslide win would look very different if the proportion of votes the Liberals captured translated precisely into the number of seats they hold in Parliament. Were such an electoral system in place, the Liberals would today hold 134 seats in the House of Commons — more than anyone else but far short of the commanding majority they now enjoy. And that, to state the obvious, would mean Trudeau would lead a far more unstable government that would need support from at least one other party to implement even some of the Liberal agenda and would have no guarantee of governing for even two more years, far less four.

Canada: Electoral reform looms for Canada, Justin Trudeau promises | Toronto Star

Big electoral changes loom for Canada. Prime minister-designate Justin Trudeau has promised that Monday’s election would be the final one ever conducted using the traditional first-past-the-post system. That means the “winner-takes-all” way Canadian voters have always elected their MPs will be changed in time for the 2019 federal campaign. “It was one of our commitments that this would be the last election based on this process,” Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday. “We have much work to do, to consult, to be engaged with Canadians, to study the issue so that upcoming elections are indeed done in a different way,” he said in French. Trudeau made his comments even though his Liberals won 184 seats in the 338-member Commons — or 54.4 per cent — with just 39.5 per cent of the popular vote.

Canada: Stunning Rout by Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party | The New York Times

Starting with a sweep of the Atlantic provinces, the Liberals capitalized on what many Canadians saw as Mr. Harper’s heavy-handed style, and the party went on to capture 184 of the 338 seats in the next House of Commons. The unexpected rout occurred 47 years after Mr. Trudeau’s father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, first swept to power. Justin Trudeau, who will be 44 on Christmas Day, will become Canada’s second-youngest prime minister and the first to follow a parent into office. While the Liberal Party had emerged on top in several polls over the past week, its lead was short of conclusive and Mr. Trudeau was an untested figure. There was no ambiguity, however, in Monday’s results. The Conservatives were reduced to 99 seats from 159 in the last Parliament, according to preliminary results. The New Democratic Party, which had held second place and formed the official opposition, held on to only 44 seats after suffering substantial losses in Quebec to the Liberals.