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Of course the Trudeau Liberals don’t want a referendum on a cockamamie new voting system that would give them a huge advantage, forever. They would lose any such referendum and they know it.

Instead, they, by themselves, will simply impose comprehensive change on this very cornerstone of our Canadian democracy. They, by themselves, will scrap a simple, straightforward electoral system that only has served the country well for 149 years and replace it with a much more convoluted system that, in this last election, would have given them 40 more seats than they actually won.

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Why would they bother with a referendum when they can take all those extra seats without asking?

To achieve this level of arrogance usually takes a government years. The Liberals have arrived there in just weeks. The Harper government on its worst day was not so high-handed as to rejig our electoral system to its own benefit.

Yes, the Liberals did campaign on a promise to change the way we elect our federal government. They also campaigned on a promise to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by Christmas. About 1,800 is what they managed, of which all but a few hundred were privately sponsored and would have come anyway. Canadians are not excessively dismayed by the enormous discrepancy. Promises that discount reality are not to be taken seriously. In the case at hand, the reality is that our electoral system belongs to Canadians, not to the government. It is for Canadians, not the government, to say if it needs changing, whatever promises government might have made. You cannot promise away what belongs to others.