“2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system.” That statement was made during the last Federal election campaign by then-candidate Justin Trudeau. It inspired a lot of people to vote for the Liberal Party of Canada because they wanted change. That fundamental promise was reiterated after the Liberals formed government.
A Special House of Commons committee, the Special Committee on Electoral Reform – with all the political parties represented, was put in place last fall. The mandate of that committee was to study the current Canadian election system and come up with recommendations to reform it. The members of the committee held many public consultations across Canada. Numerous experts and organizations testified to explain the pros and cons of different electoral systems, such as proportional representation.
The IAM and the CLC are in favour of proportional representation because, in that system, every vote counts.
Alas, despite of those efforts, Justin Trudeau and the Liberals broke their big electoral reform promise at the beginning of February. They did this by letting a junior, recently-appointed Minister make the official announcement, instead of having the Prime Minister take full responsibility by addressing Canadians himself.
Since then, an online House of Commons petition has been launched by NDP MP Nathan Cullen to urge the Liberal Government to reconsider this disastrous decision. The IAM encourages its membership to sign it.
Our democracy is at stake and we need to hold this Liberal Government accountable whenever they break a campaign promise. The Fighting Machinists will keep doing that.
This is the first of a series of articles on broken Liberal promises.
