Justin Trudeau's Liberals look to be set to move away from their electoral reform promise.CHRIS WATTIE/Reuters
POLITICS BRIEFING
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW THIS MORNING
> During the 2015 election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it would be the last vote held under the traditional "first-past-the-post" system. That promise was upheld in his government's first Speech from the Throne. Now the government seems poised to leave things the way they are. Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef laid the blame at the feet of an all-party parliamentary committee who filed their final report on Thursday. "We asked the committee to help answer very difficult questions for us. It did not do that," she said. NDP MP Nathan Cullen said the minister was tossing away the group's work without reading it. "I'm trying to even imagine under a Stephen Harper government a minister being so dismissive of the work of an independent committee of the House of Commons," he said. If you've got time today, you can read the entire 348-page report here. Ms. Monsef says the Liberals will now send out 15 million postcards to see what Canadians think.
> The Liberals say it was the previous Conservative government that left a shortage of fighter jets, leaving them no choice but to sole-source the purchase of an interim fleet of Super Hornets.
> How Mr. Trudeau is using an under-the-radar strategy to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars at the homes of wealthy Chinese-Canadian businessmen in Toronto and Vancouver.
> A week before meeting the Prime Minister and other premiers to work on a climate strategy, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall says he still fundamentally disagrees with carbon pricing and he's prepared to explore legal avenues to stop it.
> If Donald Trump goes through with large tax cuts, there will be a greater threat of brain drain among professionals leaving Canada for the U.S., David Dodge warns.
> The government will announce a new cohort of Canada Research Chairs today, with one of its highest proportions of women ever. Closing equity gaps has become a "high priority" for the program.
> And Samantha Power, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, explains how she managed the high-stress job while also having two children. "When I head to the office over the weekend, I bring my kids, pulling my Syria briefing materials off of one shelf, and jigsaw puzzles and crayons off of another," she writes.
WHAT EVERYONE'S TALKING ABOUT
Globe editorial board: "This is complicated, so we'll spell it out again: A hasty remake of the electoral system, on a predetermined deadline, is what Liberal Party 2015 ran on. Reform, rushed and radical, is what they promised. Reform, rushed and radical, is what they are now decrying. And the electoral reform committee they are now trying to disown is their own creation. What sport is this? Improv comedy? Absurdist theatre?"
Campbell Clark (Globe and Mail): "Mr. Trudeau promised electoral reform, but he never said what it was. If Mr. Trudeau wanted an instant-runoff system where voters indicate their second and third choices, then he should have proposed it and taken it to a vote. That would have focused public attention and made it easier to decide if Canadians want it. It would have gone faster. He still hasn't proposed anything. But his party knows what they don't want."
Robyn Urback (CBC): "That is a fitting end — for now — to the tire fire that is the electoral reform file. The idea of changing Canada's voting system seems just as far off as it's ever been, with a minister all but throwing out the recommendations of her committee. Why, if we didn't know any better, it would appear this might have been nothing but a lofty campaign promise all along."
Anthony Furey (Sun): "Does [electoral reform] matter? Well, you tell me. How many people in your life were grousing on and on about our supposedly unfair and inequitable electoral system? I'm going to guess slim to zero, unless you work at a progressive think-tank or live in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood."
Denise Balkissoon (Globe and Mail): "Norms change all of the time. Sometimes they're wonderful, like support for same-sex marriage. Sometimes they're benign, like how well the general public can use chopsticks. And sometimes they're unsettling, like being lulled into constantly updating multinational companies on our locations because it's handy when our phones remember what we last googled. That lulling is the issue, because acceptance happens incrementally."
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Compiled by Chris Hannay. Edited by Steven Proceviat.