Why Trudeau Should Hold a Referendum on Electoral Reform to Challenge Hard-Right Populism
Ever since the disastrous by-election result in Toronto-St. Paul’s, it’s no longer a sure thing that Justin Trudeau will lead the Liberal Party of Canada into the next federal election and try to become the first PM in over 100 years to win four back-to-back mandates.
But even as the Poilievre Conservatives continue to dominate polls and disgruntled Liberal politicians test the waters about life after Trudeau, most Canadians believe Trudeau will be the standard-bearer in 2025. I tend to agree with them. So far, Trudeau’s supporters seem to be sticking with him, or at least unwilling to go on the record to say they want him out. Most of those who have spoken out the loudest never agreed with his progressive agenda in the first place.
Still, Liberals — and voters across the country — are looking for Trudeau to give them a reason why he should stay on and lead the country into a second decade. In the immediate aftermath of the by-election, Trudeau said he wanted to stay on as PM to continue the progress his party has made on behalf of Canadians. But that’s not going to cut it. 2025 will be a change election, and a “stay-the-course” or “finish-the-job” message will land with a thud. Just ask Rishi Sunak.
Challenging Hard-Right Populism
Coming out of the holiday weekend, Trudeau now seems to have found a better reason to stay: defeating the kind of hard-right populism that is gaining steam in Canada and around the world. The depth of that challenge requires an expert campaigner known for his ability to connect with people one-on-one who has a record of offering a sunnier vision for the future than the burn-it-all-down populist approach. Trudeau believes he’s the right guy for the job.
I think the jury is still out. There’s no question Trudeau used to be that guy. But the mood of the electorate has soured and voters want to know the politicians that represent them actually understand their pain, not just their dreams. Bill Clinton was famously able to make that pitch in 1992.
Trudeau has never had first-hand experience of the continued struggle voters have been through since the Great Recession. Instead of surrounding himself with advisors who do, some of his closest advisors are childhood friends who grew up in the same wealthy neighbourhoods and with access to the same halls of power that he did.
That collective lack of understanding was destined to lead to a government that was increasingly out of touch with the average voter. Worse, it also led to the impression that the Liberal Party was easily influenced by the well-off and well-connected. These voices routinely helped blunt the transformative powers of some of Trudeau’s signature policies, convincing him to instead opt for incrementalist half measures rather than full-strength universal solutions. Voters eventually recognized their voices were going unheard. And that has led to the cresting of an angry populist wave not seen since the 1930s.
To reverse this impression with voters — and stay on as Prime Minister — Trudeau would be well-served by righting one of the biggest wrongs of his tenure so that voters stop tuning him out. Only then will they allow him to make a renewed pitch that he still has what it takes to tackle the existential issues keeping Canadians up at night.
Trudeau’s Electoral Reform Failure
On June 15, 2015, Justin Trudeau — then the leader of the third-place Liberals — famously made a bold pledge: the 2015 general election would be the last in Canada to be conducted under the First-Past-the-Post system. It was part of a 32-point platform on democratic reform. And while he actually did live up to many of his other pledges (and has introduced new changes as recently as this spring), all anyone remembers nearly a decade later is that he reneged on changing how we elect our political representatives and betrayed the very voters that put him in office.
Even at the time, it was a pledge that many felt was long overdue, given no party had won the support of a majority of voters since 1984. In fact, since the end of World War I, a party has earned 50% or more of the votes cast in a federal election just four times: the Liberals under St. Laurent in 1949 and 1953; the Progressive Conservatives under Diefenbaker in 1958; and again under Mulroney in 1984. Yet throughout the last century, this is almost never reflected in the share of seats the governing party holds in Parliament.
If polling numbers hold from now until next year, the same will be true of a Conservative Government led by Prime Minister Poilievre. His party is currently expected to rack up a large majority of parliamentary seats despite never polling above 50%. The fact is that a majority of Canadians still reject hard-right populism. They simply can’t agree on the best alternative. It stands to reason, then, that the single most effective thing Trudeau could do to stop hard-right populism in its tracks in Canada is to finally reform the way our votes contribute to the final election result.
While I have always agreed with the need for reform, I didn’t agree with the way Trudeau decided to go about it back in 2015–16. It was flawed for three reasons:
- First, it was clear from the outset he had a preferred outcome and tried to engineer the structure of the electoral reform committee to deliver it.
- Second, he put the design of a replacement system in the hands of self-interested politicians rather than system design experts.
- Third, how we choose our elected representatives is a fundamental element of our democracy and any change should require sign-off from voters in a referendum, not just the rubber stamp of a parliamentary committee.
A Second Chance at Reform
Despite these failings, it’s not too late to start again. The House of Commons Special Committee on Electoral Reform (ERRE) ultimately did submit a final report that made recommendations to the government on how to proceed toward reform, including:
- That the government should hold a referendum that asks voters to choose between the current system and a different option.
- That the other option should be a proportional electoral system that achieves a Gallagher Index score of 5 or less (ie. total party seats are in good proportion to a party’s national popular vote share).
- That the Government decide on the design of the proportional option before the start of the referendum campaign period.
To make this happen, Trudeau would need to set aside his preferred method of reform (and his ego) this summer and adopt the one proposed by the committee: a system of proportional representation.
While proportional representation is not perfect (nor my preferred system after studying electoral system design for over twenty years as a nerdy hobby), it is the one recommended by nearly 90% of the experts who appeared before the committee. It is also the same system that has been recommended 13 different times that electoral system reform has been studied in Canada. It is time to stop designing and start implementing.
If legislation were passed this fall by the multi-party progressive majority in Parliament, it would give Elections Canada enough time to prepare the referendum ballot question and ballots ahead of election day. When the Government of Ontario put a similar question to voters in 2007, the ballot question was released just over 100 days before the vote. To provide a similar runway, Elections Canada would need to finalize the ballot question by June 29, 2025. Almost an entire year from now.
From a physical production standpoint, a referendum ballot with a question finalized 100 days in advance would actually be as simple to print as a normal ballot. As it stands, Elections Canada provides ballot paper to local printers about 30 days before Election Day. The final regular ballot image file with candidate names on it is sent to local printers just 20 or so days before voting commences. The referendum ballot would just have two options to choose from. That’s a far cry from the 80-plus candidates on the Toronto-St. Paul’s ballot I filled out last month. And there would be far more notice than is typically given to Elections Canada staff ahead of a by-election.
Cementing Trudeau’s Legacy
Few things a Prime Minister achieves are remembered by the history books. That’s either because their immediate predecessor erases and dismantles them or because the achievements had so little impact on the country that they are quickly forgotten.
Trudeau has arguably been the most progressive Prime Minister this country has ever seen (though Pearson might give him a run for his money). But he has also been an incrementalist, choosing half-measures like partial dental care and partial pharmacare instead of truly completing the project of universal healthcare in this country. Some might argue universality is the ultimate goal. But the country will never realize it if he loses the next election and is replaced with a man who has said he will do the opposite of Trudeau on nearly ever issue.
Many PMs only land on their signature policy in their final term in office. For Louis St. Laurent, it was creating Canada’s pension system. For Pierre Trudeau, it was repatriating the Constitution and creating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. For Paul Martin, it was legalizing same-sex marriage. And while William Lyon Mackenzie King created the welfare state as we know it, his final days in office led to the not-insubstantial policy move of creating Canadian citizenship. I can’t think of what Trudeau’s lasting legacy will be in that so far he has yet to create a policy that a hard-right Prime Minister sweeping into office wouldn’t be able to undo.
Trudeau has an opportunity to use this potential final year in office to right a broken promise to voters, help restore faith in government by having it better reflect voter intention, and prevent the hard-right from winning a majority of seats their popular support levels don’t warrant. And unlike nine years ago, choosing the full-throated electoral reform experts recommend would actually work in his favour this time around. Trudeau needs a bold idea to win back voters. He should pitch finishing the job on the one he won them over with in the first place.
Theresa has served as the Communications Coordinator for the Ontario Liberal Party, the VP Communications for the Ontario Women’s Liberal Commission, the Director of Communications to Ontario Deputy Premier Deb Matthews, and an election-speechwriter for former Premier Kathleen Wynne. As a member of ‘Team Neutral’, she helped manage the 2013 and 2020 OLP Leadership races.
