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The oscillation in logic is a full 180 degrees and rests on the airy foundations of partisan self-regard and raw, unsupported assertion. Neither this government, nor any other, has the moral right to change the electoral process without prior consultation through a referendum approved by the voters. As it is, after all, the people whose sovereign power of election is the essence of any democratic system.

However, it is really not enough for the Liberals to say, now that they’re in power, that what would have been seen as deplorable, arrogant and an attack on democracy under Harper’s rule, is sweet, reasonable and much to be desired under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s. Changing the tenant of 24 Sussex does not reverse the order of nature or politics, even if those in Trudeau’s court are showing a marked tendency to regard their election as a victory, not for their party – which it was — but for the country itself.

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We see that attitude most cloyingly in the repeated Trudeau boast that “Canada is back” — a slogan that’s saccharine and weirdly jingoistic at the same time.

It must be charming to look in the mirror, or an iPhone on a stick, and see Canada staring back, but at best it’s an optical delusion; at worst a self-indulgent hubris. Canada is not the Liberal party, and electing a Liberal government with 39 per cent of the vote should not be identified, and certainly not by the Liberals themselves, as a rescue of the Canadian soul. The Liberal party is, just like the Conservative party and the New Democratic Party, a partisan vehicle. It is not Canada.

So the idea of unilaterally making a decision to change our voting system without a full debate and a referendum is just simply wrong. It is not a government’s choice to make. It is the people’s choice.

National Post