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It was just one short sentence. “It’s not our plan to have a referendum,” Government House Leader Dominic LeBlanc told Bob Fife on CTV’s Question Period last Sunday. Eight words — more than enough to unleash the furies.

No one in the Liberal cabinet is closer to Justin Trudeau than LeBlanc, a friend of the prime minister since boyhood. When LeBlanc speaks, he speaks for the prime minister. In this case he was saying the Liberals would not hold a referendum to ratify an electoral reform plan that would replace the first-past-the-post system.

Trudeau said it early and often during the election campaign, and repeated it in the throne speech: “(We) will take action to ensure that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system.” The speech made no mention of asking voters to ratify changes in a referendum. “Our plan is to use Parliament and consult Canadians,” LeBlanc told CTV.

OK. How?

The answer is in Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef’s mandate letter, which tasks her with “bringing forward a proposal to establish a parliamentary committee to consult on electoral reform, including preferential ballots, proportional representation, mandatory voting and online voting.”

It’s interesting that ‘preferential ballots’ comes first on Monsef’s list of options. It’s clearly the first choice of Trudeau and the Liberals, who would stand to benefit most from a ranked ballot that asks voters to name a second and third choice in their riding. The Liberals are normally the second choice of NDP voters — as they were in October, when strategic voters moved from the orange to the red team in the closing days of the campaign, giving the Grits their majority.

For that matter, the Liberals are also the second choice of most Conservative voters, who are far more likely to vote for them than for the NDP. The Conservatives are the second choice only of some ‘Blue Grits’ who worry about fiscal frameworks.

The NDP’s obvious electoral reform preference, as Tom Mulcair told the Ottawa Citizen in a Q&A this week, is proportional representation, “in which every vote counts equally”.

“If the Liberals do like the Conservatives,” Mulcair warned, “and come in with something that’s only fair to the Liberals, obviously we’re going to fight tooth and nail. To say that you’re going to get rid of the first-past-the-post system is half the problem. Then you have to come up with something that’s fair for everyone.”

That was just the beginning of the blowback. By New Year’s Eve the Globe and Mail‘s front-page headline was all about how the Tories were vowing to block any electoral legislation going forward without a referendum.

“We would look at all avenues” to block such legislation, said interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose — an obvious reference to a filibuster. “My hope is that the Liberals will come to their senses.”

And if they don’t, the Conservatives are threatening to use their majority in the Senate to thwart any electoral reform bill going ahead without consulting voters directly.

It’s clear that a preferential ballot system would favour the Liberals. Proportional representation or partial PR might result in permanent minority governments. It’s clear that a preferential ballot system would favour the Liberals. Proportional representation or partial PR might result in permanent minority governments.

“The entire Conservative caucus, both in the House and the Senate, will be opposing any radical changes to the electoral system without a referendum,” said Senate Conservative Whip Don Plett.

So the unelected Senate could be used to delay or deny the will of a majority government in the elected House — for enacting something the Liberals campaigned on. If that happens, expect a very interesting and important reference to the Supreme Court.

The Commons is absolutely the master of its own House. There is no requirement for either a constitutional amendment or a referendum to approve parliamentary reform. But in the 2014 Senate reference, the high court ruled that an appointed Senate representing the regions was “foundational” to Parliament as a bi-cameral legislature.

Right now, the Conservatives hold 45 Senate seats; the Liberals tossed from caucus by Trudeau in 2014 number 29 and there are 10 independents, with 22 vacancies to be filled by Trudeau this year on the recommendation of a new independent advisory board yet to be assembled. Some of the Senate Liberals, still annoyed with Trudeau for exiling them, could well vote with the Conservatives against a parliamentary reform bill supported by the Liberal majority in the House. The new Senate appointees supposedly would sit as independents, and thus would not be bound by party discipline.

The Liberals promised a democratic reform bill within 18 months of taking office, by May 2017. But it’s not at all clear how they’re going to get there.

For starters, we don’t know the composition of the special committee. Normally, only recognized parties in the House have members on standing committees. This would exclude the Bloc Québécois with its 10 MPs, and Green Leader Elizabeth May, the sole member of her party in the House. Any special committee should include both the Bloc and the Greens.

Would the Liberals elect one of their own as the committee chair, and would they use their majority to pack the special committee, or allow the opposition parties more representation?

Then there’s the overriding question of whether the reform model that ends up being approved by the Commons should be put to the people in a vote. Again, there’s no legal requirement — but moral legitimacy is another matter entirely.

Three provinces — Prince Edward Island in 2005, Ontario in 2007 and B.C. in 2005 and 2009 — have held referendums on parliamentary reform. All required “super majorities” of 60 per cent for approval — and all failed (though B.C. came close with a 57 per cent Yes vote in 2005).

The architect of the 2005 B.C. referendum process, as head of its Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, was provincial Liberal Gordon Gibson, a onetime assistant to Pierre Trudeau. In a Globe and Mail oped piece Thursday, Gibson had some harsh things to say about the federal Liberals’ intent to reform Parliament without consulting the voters. “We were promised ‘sunny ways,’ not a dark and evasive manipulation of our right to vote,” he wrote. “We must have direct consent. A course correction on this one cannot come too soon. The voting system belongs to the people. Not the politicians. Period.”

It’s clear that a preferential ballot system would favour the Liberals. Proportional representation or partial PR might result in permanent minority governments. As historian and former Public Policy Forum president David Mitchell points out in a Policy magazine article on democratic reform, “only two of the last 10 majority governments in Canada garnered more than 50 per cent of the vote.”

Indeed, the Liberals — with 39.5 per cent of the vote — won 54.5 per cent of the seats in October. As former Dalhousie University political science chair Jennifer Smith points out in another Policy piece, the Conservatives won their 2011 majority with 39.5 per cent of the vote and 54.4 per cent of the seats — “almost exactly the result the Liberals got this time around.”

Perhaps there’s a case to be made for keeping the status quo — as in ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’

L. Ian MacDonald is editor of Policy, the bi-monthly magazine of Canadian politics and public policy. He is the author of five books. He served as chief speechwriter to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney from 1985-88, and later as head of the public affairs division of the Canadian Embassy in Washington from 1992-94. The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.