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In essence, those most offended by the system are those to whom it awards the least success. The Greens, for example, would like to bundle all the dribs and drabs of votes they get in every riding into a single number and claim more seats on that basis.

The other strong motive for change comes from a party that has been successful under FPTP, believing it could even be more successful under some more complex arrangement. Or, and this amounts to the same thing, their main rivals would do worse. They foresee a structural advantage in a changed system. That’s the Trudeau government’s motivation.

None of these “advantages” are of interest or benefit to the broad mass of voters. Discontent with FPTP is mainly a manufactured discontent, advanced by the players in the system, rather than the voters themselves.

So we must discount very greatly the certitudes put forward by the Liberals on how FPTP is regressive,and undemocratic, and — to seal the argument — so not 2015! Furthermore, the argument, such as it is, is self-denying.

In essence, the Liberals are telling Canadians that the system that had the perception and honour to install them as the government in October is not a good system. They are — and this is rich — complaining about the established voting practice that installed the Liberals as a government, and earlier gave them nearly half a century of rule, the natural governing party, recall. Well, isn’t that gratitude?

In trying to sell the specious need to change the system, they chose their spokesperson unwisely. Maryam Monsef, the minister of democratic institutions (an odd, and vaguely menacing appellation), has not been a Churchill on this subject. Her hostility to the idea of a referendum — consulting the people on the people’s right to vote — has been a perfect factory for malapropisms, bad logic, missing middles and muddled messages. She told the Canadian public that “referendums” exclude the “marginalized.” Evidently women, people of colour, the disabled — build your own list — are allergic to voting in a referendum.