The YouTube channel Street Politics Canada is, by its own description, an “independent news organization that aims to cover unfiltered news.”
“Unlike other news organizations,” it writes, “we are clear and upfront about our biases.”
Since April 2022, it has published approximately 600 YouTube videos catering to an audience of Canadian conservatives, nearly all of which take aim at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. These typically consist of news clips, still photos, and basic motion graphics, accompanied by a voiceover relaying arguments and information gleaned from an assortment of Canadian sources. Titles include “Worst Prime Minister In History Gets Booed By Canadians” and “WATCH!! Trudeau Gives UNHINGED SPEECH After Protestors HECKLE him AGAIN!!” Thumbnail images often compare the prime minister to Hitler.
Just to throw an alternate take out there, but he didn’t backtrack in electrical reform, he ran the committee just like he said he would even going out of the way to give majority power to the opposition parties . The opposition parties sunk the committee report by reccomending only options that would have ensured liberals and the Senate votes would be impossible to get. They (CPC, NDP, BQ) deserve every bit of shared blame for the failure of ER in Canada.
Is there a longer-form impartial(er) treatment of this?
Hey, so this topic was near and dear to me so much so that I would follow every development, even in committee. So when it all fell apart and we lost a chance at ER it really used to grind my gears to see Trudeau get all the blame. It grinded my gears so bad that I would write long responses detailing the history to anyone that would listen. I’ve probably written a complete history of the damn thing 15 times.
Unfortunately, the narrative I tell wasn’t widely covered in media, at least not in one long form piece, and would need to be pieced together from multiple news articles and , of course , some is just my opinion.
So, I thought I would try something new here, since I don’t really have time to retell the history and find a bunch of sources (sources you are right to ask for)… I asked GPT4 to evaluate an older l, shorter, post of mine for factual accuracy, and give sources. You can read the evaluation here :
https://chat.openai.com/share/2c655851-b754-447d-b057-b869f4a9c119
I think GPT did an alright job finding sources for me, all things considered.
I appreciate your engagement as a citizen.
It absolutely was a mistake to surrender control of the committee. If opposition doesn’t like it then they don’t like FPTP.
They did undertake consultations (by setting up a compromised committee), but they didn’t take action.
I do concede that the Liberal Party is more to blame than Trudeau himself. I don’t think he was willing to fight the party hard enough.
No they didn’t take action, but I’m not sure what action they could have taken that anyone would have been satisfied with. They could have implemented the committee reccomendations (If Trudeau had forced them to), but that had big problems, not the least of which was that a referendum (including developing of the question) would not have been finished before the next election. They could have ignored the referendum bit, and implemented some proportional system, but the NDP didn’t name a specific proportional system and besides that the LPC official party policy at the time was for STV/Ranked ballot or for a consensus option, but no concensus came out of committee. On top of all that you might remember that the ISG (independent Senate group) , didn’t form a majority in the Senate until 2019, in 2016 /2017 when this all went on the CPC was still a big enough Senate caucus to block ER if they didn’t like the terms, and the CPC didn’t consider their senators independent.
Referendum:
Question 1: Given the findings of recommendations of the Electoral Reform committee which of these electoral systems should be used in the next federal election:
A STV
B MMP
C Party List (opposed by the committee)
(No option for FPTP because the FPTP system has already chosen a change)
Question 2: Should unelected bodies like the senate be able to obstruct the implementation of an electoral system chosen by referendum
Yes
No
You forgot to mention the part where the Liberals insisted on the option where they would become the default party in power just from being the second choice of the other two parties voters (with bloc voters spreading all over).
STV/Ranked choice voting gave no guarantee that the LPC would be permanently entrenched in power. We alter our voting habits based on the system, and parties change positions to adapt to the electrical system in place. What it would have done is allowed us to keep our traditional riding system, with one MP elected per riding who was directly responsible to the constituency rather than other systems where we might lose that. Besides STV/ranked voting was official Liberal party policy, rank and file members supported it at policy plenary. The LPC shouldn’t have been expected to ignore that fact
Pretending it didn’t on a technical level is disingenuous, they’re the default second choice of the majority of people who don’t vote for them.
Funny you say the party trying to improve democracy for everyone needed to listen to its own members only. “The voice of the majority needs to be heard! What? The majority doesn’t want our solution? Forget it then!”
There are many options that lets us keep the current district system, I’m partial to an improved German system, same map, two votes, one for a local candidate and one for a general party, whoever wins locally gets their seat, more seats are added to bring the chamber to as proportional a representation as possible based on the second vote. An unlected leader gets the first seat for their party then the others seats are filled in order of the districts in which the party’s candidates had the highest % of votes without winning. That means districts in which the race came very close would end up with two (or possibly more) candidates representing them.
I also always find it funny when the “candidate responsible to the constituency” argument gets brought up as if people didn’t vote for a party and party lines didn’t cancel all good intentions. How many conservatives who supported Charest and openly criticized PP left when PP became leader? One.
The CPC and NDP listened to their members, pushing referendums and proportional systems. Why should the LPC have been the only party in the house expected to ignore their own members and their own party policy?
Unfortunately, no specific proportional system was reccomended in committee so none was brought to the house to vote on. You know of a system you would like, that’s great, but you liking a system is a long way from the real political work required to get a free caucus vote to accept it, against party policy, and then a hostile Conservative Senate to do the same (they whip Senate votes and rember it’s 2016 when this happens).