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In sum, the government is doing exactly what it promised it would do if given a majority government. So, what is wrong with this, exactly?

First, this view of government is exactly that which is rejected by advocates for reform. The Liberal party received only 40 per cent of the popular vote, but this was sufficient to win a majority of seats. This is not a virtue of our system, according to reform advocates.

Instead, it is a distortion of the democratic will. For reform advocates — and, to a lesser extent — for the government to appeal to this mandate is either disingenuous or comically obtuse.

In short, one cannot argue at once that we need reform to address false majorities and that this government has a mandate to change the electoral system. The burden here is on reform advocates, not advocates of the current system, to argue why the government has a mandate in this special case but not in those of less significant matters.

Best of luck in making that case.

Second, consider the case of the democratic reforms proposed by Stephen Harper’s Conservatives in the last Parliament. Among other reforms, they forwarded a number of changes to the administration of elections in Canada. For the most part, these reforms were pedestrian. They involved small changes in the financing of elections and requirements for identification at the polls.

They also acted to tie the hands of Elections Canada, especially in the promotion of civic engagement. My own analysis of these changes – using models of both cross-national and past election data – was that these changes would have marginal effects on Canadian elections, at best. But opposition parties were largely right about two points.