The Liberal government is signaling it won’t reform Canada’s federal electoral system by referendum.

In an interview with Vancouver-based news website The Tyee, new Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau isn’t talking about making changes through a popular vote.

In an interview on his past research into electoral reform, Dion describes his personal views on the topic while adding the caveat that they won’t necessarily be reflected in the Liberal government’s reforms.

The article’s author, David Ball, doesn’t quote Dion directly on the possibility of a referendum. Ball provided the new minister’s complete response to his question on any plans to put reforms to a referendum to iPolitics.

“That’s not something Mr. Trudeau has mentioned,” Dion told Ball. “He wants to have a committee come up with results, and one those results will be to enact a law. They will review the file with experts and with Canadians, and come back with recommendations to Parliament in order to have a new act enacted within 18 months.”

Prince Edward Island, Ontario and British Columbia all failed at trying to change their first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting methods through a referendum. While not holding a popular vote on the matter could ignite a political backlash, experts say a referendum isn’t legally necessary or the norm among other Commonwealth countries.

Canada’s election laws do not stem from a constitutional document and therefore can easily be changed through legislation, said Max Cameron, director of the Centre for the Study of Democratic Institutions at the University of British Columbia (UBC).

But such a technical reading of the rules neglects the powerful sentiments that can be roused when politicians tinker with how people vote, said Cameron.

“It goes the institutional architecture of our democracy,” he said about dropping FPTP. “There is a valid presumption that what we do enjoys broad support — and that support should be broad in the sense of the public — but also broadly seen to be non-partisan or cross-partisan.”

The Liberals have promised to engage the opposition with an all-Parliamentary committee that would provide recommendations for legislation. That legislation will be introduced by May 2017, the Liberals have said.

The fact that the parties and the media will focus on how reforms might benefit one party over the others means it will be critical that the discussion at the committee is steered toward the problem it will be aiming to resolve, said Cameron.

The big problem with FPTP is that it leads to false majorities whereby a party wins a majority of seats in the House of Commons while winning much less than half of the popular vote. Using a ranked balloting system or proportional representation would even out the differences between the two.

Achieving popular support for the reforms doesn’t necessarily need to go through a referendum, said Cameron. The committee would run extensive public consultations or create a citizen’s assembly to debate the issue, which is what B.C. did when it attempted to reform its voting method, he said.

Canada is unique for discussing electoral change strictly through the lens of an eventual popular vote, said Campbell Sharman, an adjunct professor of political science at UBC.

“It’s only Canada that’s had an obsession in the last few years with a referendum,” said Sharman.

He blames incumbent governments for arguing that referendums are necessary because they’re scared of a system that might not win them as much support.

“The reason why governments have used referendums is to stop electoral change,” said Sharman.

Australia has never made major reforms to its state or federal elections through a popular vote, said Sharman. It’s gone through multiple rounds of change simply through legislation, he said.

New Zealand has also made many reforms without holding a vote, though it did hold two major referendums in the 1990s on the issue, he said.