KINGSTON – Some 50 protesters used their democratic power on Saturday to demonstrate their disappointment in the Justin Trudeau government, which recently announced that electoral reform had never been a priority.

Using a megaphone, Simon Derome, a 22-year-old actor and Green Party supporter, was the first to hype up the group gathered at Springer Market Square.

"Trudeau made a clear promise in the last election that the 2015 federal election would be the last under first-past-the-post," Derome told the Whig-Standard after the demonstration. "Making that election promise, he made a promise in good faith to Canadians and a lot of progressive voters, voters in general, voted for Trudeau in good faith that he would keep that promise."

Derome said he strongly believed the electoral system in Canada is flawed and doesn’t fully represent all Canadians.

"So when we had someone from a major party promising real change like that, the optimism and hope inside us wants that to be real," Derome said. "Then for him to break this promise, and in a way that seems like this was the plan all along, by obfuscating on the facts, being intellectually dishonest about the facts of proportional representation, it feels like this was the plan all along."

Within the crowd was city councillor Rob Hutchison, there as a voting citizen also disappointed with the recent development.

"I came out because I think a proportional representation is the fairest voting system that we can have," Hutchison said. "Not only during an election, but afterwards because parties will have a proportional number of seats to the amount of votes they got across the country. I think that means that Canadians will be better represented.

"I just think it was the height of cynicism for Trudeau to back out of his promise for electoral reform. It was only one of a number of promises made but I think people took it as a symbol of his wish to make politics better and more open, more representative for Canadians. Now he’s reneged."

Alongside his wife Laura Knap, Andrew Haydon carried their daughter Alice on his back during the event.

"It seems fairly clear that the way our current voting system is structured doesn’t allow for equal representation from all the views that are expressed," Haydon said. "In lots of places people’s votes simply don’t count, they don’t live in a place where it’s a competitive riding. First-past-the-post by its very design and structure disenfranchises a huge number of people. That’s just the way it is set up. The breakdown in parliament does not represent the breakdown of votes across the country. It’s as simple as that."

Knap agreed, noting a Green Party supporter would have little reason to vote in the Kingston and the Islands riding, which is strongly Liberal.

"The problem with that undemocratic system is that it reduces voter turnout, it reduces people’s engagement in politics and it increases cynicism around the electoral process," Knap said. "You end up with strategic voting, which is a very cynical form of voting and doesn’t allow people to actually express their preference. It creates a system where people are trying to choose the lesser of two evils."

scrosier@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/StephattheWhig