Article content

OTTAWA — The Liberals’ electoral reform exercise — which we learned last week won’t come to fruition — cost a minimum of $4.1 million, according to an analysis of government expenses.

During the campaign, and after being elected, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau repeatedly stated 2015 would mark the last federal election to use the first-past-the-post voting system. The naming of a democratic institutions minister in November 2015 set off more than a year of work related to that promise.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Liberals spent at least $4.1 million consulting Canadians on the electoral reform policy that would never be Back to video

But last week a mandate letter for Karina Gould, the new minister, revealed the government is no longer pursuing a change to Canada’s voting system.

The about-face is more than symbolic. A significant amount of government money went towards consulting on a policy that would never come to be.

Long hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars went toward a special parliamentary committee that spent months studying the issue. It produced a 300-plus page report in December that recommended the government hold a referendum on whether to adopt a proportional representation system, which aligns parties’ seat counts more closely to vote share.