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Further, you may point to the results of that online questionnaire that hundreds of thousands of Canadians dutifully filled out, which for all the skewed questions and tendentious summaries showed a clear willingness to entertain the idea of multi-party governments, of a kind that critics of proportional representation warn will bring disaster.

Finally, you may object that, even now, even after all the government’s dithering and manipulation and lies, there is nothing whatever to prevent it from proceeding with reform if it had any desire to: with or without a referendum, on any model or models it cared to propose. But this simply shows that you have not been listening.

For as the prime minister patiently explained — not to you, but to his minister — “without a clear preference or a clear question, a referendum would not be in Canada’s interest.” Perhaps you think framing a clear question is the government’s job. Perhaps you imagine that the point of a referendum is to find out what people prefer, that to object to a referendum on the grounds that there was no clear preference in advance is to object to ordering a meal on the grounds that the waiter should have already brought it to you.

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But that is because you are still, even at this late date, investing some literal meaning in the prime minister’s words, as if what he said and what he intended bore any relationship to each other. But if there is anything that you should have learned by now, after the two deficits of $10 billion that turned into 40 years of deficits as high as $30 billion — and the non-combat mission against ISIS that turned into troops on the ground firing and being fired upon; and the open competition to replace the F-35 that turned into another sole source contract; and the Saudi arms deal and the “revenue neutral” tax cut and all the rest — it is that you have no business believing a word that comes out of this prime minister’s mouth; that the most solemn promises, however unequivocal and however often repeated, are to him and the people around him mere bait for the gullible; and that if you ever believe anything they tell you ever again, on any matter large or small, if you ever trust them to keep their word from this day forward, then you deserve everything you have coming to you.

It is not their fault for lying to you. It is your fault for believing them.