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Justin Trudeau’s play for prime minister may not be enough to revive his campaign

The benefit of having been around a while is that when Justin Trudeau accused Stephen Harper of having broken Ottawa, it’s possible to recall that the place was already in pieces when he came to power.

Granted, the Conservatives have pulverized much of what remained intact of our democratic institutions.

But Harper did not invent the concept of using the tools of state for partisan advantage.

Jean Chrétien was also of the opinion that open government was a contradiction in terms — you could have one or the other.

Chrétien was at war with the information commissioner, while both his government and that of his successor, Paul Martin, abided by the edict that the daily joust in the House of Commons was called question period, not answer period.

And, if the Liberal leader becomes prime minister, it may also be the last election in which Canadians can choose not to vote, as well as the last in which the only way to vote is by marking an X on a paper ballot.

Changing the way Canadians vote is just one element of a sweeping, 32-point plan to “restore democracy in Canada” that Trudeau announced Tuesday.

These thoughts occurred as the Liberal leader unveiled his plan for reforming Parliament and the electoral process.

Central to that plan is bringing in a new way of choosing future government.

“We are committed to ensuring that the 2015 election will be the last federal election using the first-past-the-post system,” he said, at a speech in Ottawa, backed by more than 150 of his candidates.

A “national engagement process,” including an all-party committee, will look at other systems — ranked ballots, proportional representation — and within 18 months, a Liberal government will bring forward legislation, he said.

This is a big shift for Trudeau. The New Democratic Party has been proposing a move to a mixed member proportional system for some time and just last December, Trudeau voted against an opposition day motion put forward by NDP critic Craig Scott.

Proponents of electoral reform make much of the fact that the current system’s distribution of seats is not reflective of the vote. Governing parties often win majorities with less than half the popular vote, while parties with a thinly spread vote find themselves under-represented.

But many of the alternatives have their drawbacks too. The preferential ballot system Trudeau is said to support is not proportional and would have produced a more “unfair” result in the recent British election than first-past-the-post system (under preferential ballot, voters rank first, second, third and subsequent choices — if no candidate receives a majority on the first ballot, the last place candidate is eliminated and his support re-allocated to his second choice.)

Even more overtly proportional systems have problems — mixed member PR faces the prospect of producing two classes of MPs (elected constituency and list members); more coalition governments; weaker prime ministers; and, fringe parties that hold the balance of power. The most likely outcome of PR would be a Liberal-NDP coalition and the exclusion of the Conservative party from government for a generation.

If you like that kind of thing, that’s the kind of thing you like.

My objection is not that these problems could not be resolved by reasonable people with the country’s best interests at heart — PR would un- doubtedly cure many of Parliament’s current ills, producing more powerful committees, more independent MPs and a less adversarial climate.

The fear is that the governing party would gerrymander the new system to ensure its best interests are served.

Trudeau has pledged to strike an all-party committee on electoral reform but he hasn’t said he would listen to it, far less be bound by it.

Leslie Seidle, a research director at the Institute for Research on Public Policy and former director of policy at Elections Canada, said the Liberal package of measures include some worthwhile initiatives, but many of the ideas in areas like access to information reform need to be fleshed out more clearly. “Kudos for putting it out. I am definitely in favour of studying our electoral systems, but it needs to be more than five weeks before a parliamentary committee. I would prefer an independent commission,” he said.

Perhaps more importantly for Trudeau, is this policy announcement going to be enough to revive his flagging fortunes?

I doubt it. Michael Ignatieff campaigned hard on fixing a broken Ottawa in 2011. He highlighted successive prorogations, hyper-partisanship, personal attacks, harassment of government agencies, the undermining of access to information laws, the sabotaging of committees, electoral fraud on spending limits, advisers under investigation for influence peddling, not to mention the Conservatives being found in contempt of Parliament for withholding information about spending on fighter jets and prisons. Voters knew Harper had turned Ottawa into what Trudeau called a “partisan swamp.” They knew and they didn’t care.

As Ignatieff recalled in his post-election memoir, “You would have thought contempt of Parliament and contempt for democracy would be an issue that would rouse the patriotic ire of citizens. You would be wrong.”

It’s possible that four more years of “partisanship and petty politics” have woken voters from their slumbers.

Some have undoubtedly stirred — three in four now say it’s time for change. But the preferred agent of that change is Tom Mulcair.

Many more appear convinced that each change of government simply brings forward another bunch of politicians, who they hope will do the right thing but who are more likely to betray them.