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So it would be the easiest thing in the world to say, of their new democratic reform plan, that they don’t mean it, or that if they do they’re naive fools, because everybody knows nobody cares about “process questions.” Or if you really want to boil it down, because Michael Ignatieff.

You may remember him: tall fellow, brazen eyebrows, beseeched Canadians to “rise up,” was never heard from again. The lesson, to many observers, was “never try.” Nobody cares. Ignatieff had tried to make an issue of the alarming state of our democracy, the weakness of Parliament, the centralization of power in the Prime Minister’s Office, and the public had shrugged.

Of course they had. Academic elite! Ottawa bubble! What had this to do with taxes or jobs? And if we like, we can all have that laugh again.

But then, what did Ignatieff’s party really offer them in the way of reform? Can anyone even remember what the Liberals proposed in 2011? It’s one thing to rail against the state of Canadian democracy, but unless you actually lay out some serious proposals to change things, people will quite rightly turn over in their beds.

Indeed, without experience of a functioning democracy, they would be a hard sell to even the most determined reformer. In its current state of disrepair, it’s logical not to bother about Parliament. What have they got to compare it to? How should they know what they’re missing?

The virtue of the plan the Liberals have just released, then, is its radicalism. It does not always go as far as it should, it is often light on details, it contains some significant omissions, but it is impossible to dismiss this reform package as mere show. Indeed, the plan would be transformative in its implications if it only contained the one line: “We are committed to ensuring that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system.”