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This week, legislative hearings began in the National Assembly on reforming Quebec’s electoral system. Generally, electoral reform in Canada has not been a stunning success: three failed attempts in British Columbia, one in Ontario, and two in Prince Edward Island. Not to mention the federal Liberal Party’s abandonment of electoral reform in 2017 — but then, that was only an election promise. Canadians simply don’t seem to like these alternative systems. Or, so it seemed until a recent Angus Reid Institute poll suggested that support for proportional representation in Canada rose significantly from 47 per cent in January 2016 to 68 per cent in November 2019.

So let’s consider Quebec. Here, maybe, there is hope.

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Tabled by the Coalition Avenir Québec government in September, Bill 39 — “An Act to establish a new electoral system” — deals with a problem that needs fixing (unlike the CAQ’s Bill 21 on secularism, Bill 40 scrapping school boards and Bill 17 deregulating the taxi industry).