Do as we say, not as we did.

That, in a nutshell, is Conservative MP Scott Reid’s message to the Liberal government over its plans to change how federal elections are won and lost.

Reid said that Liberal misbehaviour cannot be condoned just because “the Conservatives behaved badly when they were in government.” In an interview with iPolitics, Reid added that “the Fair Elections Act was not talking about changing the electoral system itself.”

With the Liberals having promised to abolish first-past-the-post federal elections within the next four years, Reid is sponsoring a petition calling for a national referendum on future electoral reforms. NDP MP Kennedy Stewart’s bill before the last election allows Canadians — with an MP’s sponsorship — to launch non-binding e-petitions for parliamentarians’ consideration. The petition sponsored by Reid is among the first of its kind.

Reid says Canadians should beware of any party wanting to rush through electoral reform without first putting it to citizens to decide.

The Liberals are rumoured to be considering a ranked-ballot system, which, as a centrist party with appeal across the political spectrum, could benefit them disproportionately in the next federal election.

“I think that’s a real possibility … (the Liberals would) design a system that would be to their advantage,” said Reid, the MP for Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston and the Conservatives’ democratic reform critic.

The petition “is meant to pre-empt the government taking a recommendation made by a committee on which it has a majority of members and enacting that particular electoral system.”

But, Reid cautioned, “it’s not necessarily as advantageous to the Liberals as some people have been thinking.”

He cites as an example the B.C. Liberals, who changed the province’s electoral system ahead of the 1951 election.

“They believed it would be of assistance to them, and they said, ‘We’re right in the middle of the spectrum; there’s Social Credit on our right, there’s the CCF on our left. We will benefit if we set up a system that allows us to benefit from the second preferences of both those groups.’”

The B.C. Liberals’ gambit backfired, he says, as irate voters on both ends of the spectrum ranked each others’ parties second on their ballots. The Social Credit Party came up the middle and its government then undid its predecessors’ reforms.

“If you try to design a system to favour yourself, it can backfire,” Reid said. “Agree that you will call a referendum on the result. Do not pretend — because nobody else buys this story — that you got a mandate to change the system to something over which you have complete discretion based on the October 19 election.”