OTTAWA—The Liberals’ pledge to overhaul Canada’s electoral system hit yet another roadblock Thursday when Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef dismissed the work of an all-party committee that recommended a national referendum on a more proportional system.

Monsef said the committee, which includes five Liberal MPs, “took a pass” on the hard work of recommending a specific alternative to replace Canada’s 149-year-old first-past-the-post system.

“I have to admit that I am a little disappointed, because what we had hoped the committee would provide us with was a specific alternative system to first-past-the-post,” Monsef said in the House of Commons.

Committee members were quick to point out that Monsef actually hadn’t asked them to do that. Instead, the committee was asked to study various alternatives and review electoral models in other countries.

“She was either lying or she didn’t understand what the committee was doing,” Nathan Cullen, the NDP’s democratic reform critic, told reporters.

“She didn’t understand (the committee’s) mandate . . . . Then somehow the fact that we fulfilled that mandate and gave the government some options, she chose that as a point of attack.”

Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose said committee members from multiple parties told her they believed Monsef insulted them and lied about the committee’s role. In question period Ambrose called the situation “an absolute disgrace.”

The exchange capped a strange and at-times tense day on Parliament Hill — one that saw the Liberals on the electoral reform committee recommend abandoning Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s promise that 2015 would be the last federal election under first-past-the-post.

In an equally unusual scenario, all opposition parties — Conservatives, New Democrats, the Green Party and the Bloc Québécois — recommended moving forward with Trudeau’s promise, through a national referendum between the status quo and a new, more proportional system of the Liberals’ own design.

Although both the NDP and the Green Party questioned the need for a referendum, both parties consented to the main report’s recommendation.

While the 333-page report was done largely on a consensus basis between the parties, the Liberals issued a “supplemental” report suggesting the Canadian public is not engaged enough of the issue to approve a new system by 2019.

The Liberal minority on the committee called their own prime minister’s deadline of 2019 “rushed,” and said the proposals put forward by the majority of committee members were too “radical.”

“Our position is that the timeline on electoral reform as proposed in the (report) is unnecessarily hasty and runs the risk of undermining the legitimacy of the process by racing toward a predetermined deadline,” they wrote.

Later, Monsef took issue with the recommendation to judge how proportional the new system would be by using what’s called the “Gallagher Index,” a mathematical formula that determines how proportionate a voting system is.

In the House of Commons, Monsef held up a piece of paper with the formula written in large font.

“The honourable member wants us to have a referendum on the following: Would Canadians like to take the square root of the sum of the squares of the difference between the percentage of the seats for each party and the percentage of votes passed,” she suggested, which is not what the committee recommended.

It’s not clear where Thursday’s developments leave the democratic reform file.

The Liberals have launched a nation-wide postcard campaign, asking Canadian households to weigh in with their opinions on electoral reform. An online survey will remain open for about a month.

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Monsef told reporters that the Liberals “continue to remain committed to that promise” that 2015 was Canada’s last federal election under first-past-the-post.

“We hope to introduce legislation in the House this spring so that Elections Canada has the time it needs to implement those changes,” Monsef said.

Monsef has said repeatedly since May that the Liberals require “broad support” from the Canadian public before they bring in any reforms, although it’s still not clear how the government intends to measure that support.

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