One almost feels sorry for Maryam Monsef, battered and bruised after so totally messing up the electoral reform file that the prime minister had her walk the plank.

Worse, it was Justin Trudeau’s very own broken plank she was forced to walk.

He could have waited to save her face, but didn’t.

It was Trudeau’s oft-stated promise way back when he was leader of the third party that, if elected PM, the 2015 federal election that ultimately gave his Liberals their majority would be the last ever conducted via the first-past-the-post voting system that had served Canadians since 1867.

It was so important that, after firing Monsef, he appointed a 29-year-old MP from Burlington, Ont., Karina Gould, to take her place, making her the youngest ever female cabinet minister in Canadian history.

Before Gould could find a rug for her new office, however, Trudeau pulled it out from under her by breaking his promise on electoral reform, and cancelling it altogether in his mandate letter to Gould.

He had played Canadians for suckers.

If electoral reform was actually a serious plank in his platform, eyebrows should have been raised at the outset when he named a rookie like Monsef as his Democratic Institutions Minister.

Looking back, that was Clue No. 1 that he was jacking Canadians around, even as he began spending millions of taxpayers’ money to send a special committee of MPs around the country to take the pulse of Canadians on their preferred voting system.

Clue No. 2 that he was not serious about electoral reform unless it was the system he wanted — which is a ranked ballot — was the appointment of another rookie in Gould to take Monsef’s place.

As Green Party Leader Elizabeth May put it, “As a woman leader of a federal political party in this country, I am deeply ashamed that our feminist prime minister threw two young women cabinet ministers under the bus on a key election promise, and that he left them twisting in the wind.”

A ranked ballot favours centrist political parties, of course, and as such would result in the Liberals being re-elected until the end of days, even better than the current first-past-the-post system that has historically favoured the Liberals.

It is Trudeau’s contention that the special committee garnered no consensus on electoral reform.

This is patently untrue.

Tens of thousands from across the country attended town-hall events on electoral reform and, in December, the special committee tabled its report that the majority of Canadians are in favour of a proportional representation ballot.

In the 2015 election, the Liberals captured 184 of the 338 seats in the House of Commons, despite only winning 40% of the vote.

Under proportional representation, their seat count would drop to 135, the Conservatives would rise from 99 to 108, and the NDP would have increased their seat number from 44 to 68.

The result would be a Liberal minority.

This, clearly, was not what Trudeau wanted, so he quashed the entire process.

This had the NDP’s Nathan Cullen calling Trudeau a “liar” for clearly promising electoral reform, and then breaking that promise.

Cullen is not wrong.

Trudeau lied through his teeth, and did it with a face so straight that credit must be given to his previous career as a drama teacher.

It was quite the performance.

That said, the reviews were rightly savage, and should not be forgotten come the next election.

markbonokoski@gmail.com