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In hindsight, despite what were, for the most part, reasonably good if not always best intentions on the part of all involved, the special committee on electoral reform was almost certainly doomed from the start.

But at the time, even the unorthodox way that it came into being – via a New Democrat-backed initiative the Liberals were ultimately obliged to accept to defuse simmering cross-aisle tensions – seemed downright serendipitous.

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By scrapping the traditional committee template in order to divvy up the seats according to the share of the vote the five recognized parties in the House had received in the last election, the newly struck committee not only provided a working model of how a more proportionally representative parliament could work, but also ensured no one party could control the outcome of the process.

In fact, it still seems like a good idea, at least in theory.

The Liberals, however, decided to go one step further in eschewing conventional political practice: Instead of stacking their side of the table with wily veteran MPs, they assigned four first-timers to the task, while the other parties took the opposite – and, arguably, far more sensible – approach.