Pollster Nik Nanos.The Globe and Mail
Nik Nanos is The Globe and Mail's pollster and chairman of Nanos Research.
In his election platform, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised Canadians that the 2015 election would be the last to feature a first-past-the-post system, the very system that gave the Liberals a majority government.
Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef recently set out the expected election reform journey at an i-Vote je-Vote event hosted at the University of Ottawa. Setting aside the goodwill of the minister and the government to deliver on their election-reform promises, it may very well be the political and election clocks rather than the opposition parties that are the greatest stumbling blocks to changing how Canadians elect their politicians.
The Liberal platform set a delivery date for electoral-reform legislation of 18 months after forming a government. This is an ambitious time frame. To keep that promise, the government will need to introduce legislation by the spring of 2017, since it is already about six months into its mandate.
The first challenge is that the all-party committee to consider and hammer out an electoral-reform package for the House of Commons has not even been struck. There are only 12 months left to launch the committee, begin deliberations, engage Canadians and put together some sort of package. This is no mean feat. Even more so since, in addition to engaging Canadians, the government will have to sell the package to an electorate more likely to be focused on jobs and health care than the minutiae of electing federal politicians.
Second, effective communications will also be difficult. The field of electoral reform is littered with a litany of initials (FPTP, or first past the post; MMP, or mixed member proportional; PR, or proportional representation) that are more likely to disengage rather than engage Canadians. Distilling the initiative, whatever it may be, to a consumable, understandable and seemingly reasonable proposal will be another central challenge, as will telling Canadians why there is such an urgency to reform our democracy.
Although not likely to be a big hurdle, the third challenge relates to having political cover for proposed electoral reform. The Liberals will need at least one other party to support the legislation in order to ensure it doesn't look like legislation that was designed, baked and backed solely by a majority Liberal government. Judging by the comments of Nathan Cullen, the NDP's democratic reform critic, and Elizabeth May, the Leader of the Green Party of Canada, there are at least two parties that are genuinely committed to an electoral-reform dialogue with the Liberals.
Let's assume the Liberals make their ambitious timeline of spring 2017 and get an opposition party or two to support the legislation. The next hurdle will be the reality of making it happen in time for the next federal election. Even factoring in that Elections Canada is a world-class organization, right now all they can do is start to game out possibilities; getting boots on the ground to deliver on a revamped electoral system adds another level of uncertainty.
All this leads to the simple fact that, for the Liberals to succeed, they have to first focus on answers to "Why now?" and "Why so fast?" It's an election promise, so the Liberals have a rationale for moving forward. But when Canadians support promises, it is more about the direction than the letter of the promise. Canadians would likely be more impressed by getting it right than by meeting a political timeline. On that front, perhaps the Liberals should stick to their electoral-reform aspirations but keep some flexibility in order to make Canadians comfortable with change.