Ontario PC leader Doug Ford, second left, reacts with his family after winning the Ontario Provincial election to become the new premier in Toronto, on Thursday, June 7, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

It was a surprise to many when Ontario’s progressive conservative leader Doug Ford lead the party to a blue sweep across the province on June 7.

Media organizations declared a Ford majority 20 minutes after the polls closed, even though Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats were ahead in the polls for weeks leading up to election day.

Ford gave a jubilant speech in front of a crowd of conservative supporters in Toronto shortly after his victory was confirmed.

“My friends, this victory belongs to you — this victory belongs to the people,” Doug Ford shouted over the ecstatic crowd. “And tonight, the people of Ontario have spoken.”

But will it really be a government for the people? The Conservatives swept Queen’s Park with a decisive 76 seats, despite the fact the party only received 40.5 per cent of the popular vote. Sixty per cent of all Ontarians who turned up at the polls did not elect anyone to office.

Experts are saying the results of the Ontario election, coupled with the Trudeau government’s broken promise on electoral reform, could put wind in the sails for a renewed electoral reform movement across the country.

“We have … a perfect storm coming out of this election,” Réal Lavergne, president of Fair Vote Canada, told iPolitics in an interview.

Premier-designate Doug Ford received ‘unbridled power’ under a false majority, Lavergne continued.

False majorities occur when vote splitting allows a minority party to win over 50 per cent of the total seats with less than that half of the popular vote. The party also receives 100 per cent of the power over the legislature.

This phenomenon could lead Liberal, NDP or Green voters to look at this Conservative majority government from the other side of the political spectrum and question the legitimacy of the electoral system itself, Lavergne said.

The other problem with Ford’s victory, Lavergne continued, are the large number of “unknowns” about his leadership.

Ford did not release a costed platform of ideas during the election campaign unlike the other leaders of the other major parties. He told reporters his budget was coming in the last few days of the campaign, but so far nothing has been released to the public.

“People are more aware now than they might have been in other situations about the deficiencies of our electoral system,” Lavergne said.

For Dennis Pilon, an associate professor at York University, the results of the Ontario election speak to a national call for electoral reform.

“This is something that just isn’t going away,” he said.

This is not the first time Canada has tried to impose some sort of representational voting system. In 2004, the NDP said they would push the Liberal minority government to hold a national referendum on changing Canada’s electoral system to one of proportional representation.

“The Canadian electoral system is sputtering and struggling right now,” late NDP leader Jack Layton told the CBC at the time. “We think citizens should decide their own electoral future.”

The NDP got close to their promises — Prime Minister Paul Martin’s Throne Speech alluded to what the NDP had already promised. But still, the issue of representational voting could not take hold in the House of Commons.

Enter Justin Trudeau

The Prime Minister rode into power after the 2015 election partially on a promise to abolish the first-past-the-post federal voting system. The government went as far as creating the special committee on electoral reform to investigate public desire to change the electoral process to include any type of proportional representation.

The December 2016 report recommends a federal referendum on electoral reform after 22,000 Canadians weighed in by speaking to their MPs across the country. Several months later, the government released another report saying ‘there is no perfect electoral system,’ because witnesses could not come to an agreement about what type of representation they wanted on the ballot.

“A clear preference for a new electoral system, let alone a consensus, has not emerged,” the report concluded. “Furthermore, without a clear preference or a clear question, a referendum would not be in Canada’s interest.”

Green Party leader Elizabeth May was sitting on the electoral reform committee during the consultation process. The committee travelled 30,000 kilometres over several weeks on a sweeping tour of the country, fielding questions about electoral reform.

“People came out in droves,” she said. “The overwhelming message was we want to change our voting system to one that’s fair.”

Other provinces will take notice

Far outside Ford’s blue Ontario, May’s British Columbia is a hot bed of conversation for electoral reform. Beginning October 22, B.C. residents will have one month to vote on a new electoral system in their province. The referendum will ask voters two questions: what electoral system should be used to determine election results and what type of proportional voting system should be used?

According to May, the results in Ontario are ‘very relevant’ to the upcoming referendum in British Columbia about representational voting.

“Once any province changes our voting system to something that is not perverse, I think voters will see the advantage and it will be impossible to hold to first-past-the-post when something better is available,” she said.

That influence could also extend to conversations happening in Quebec and P.E.I. — two other provinces looking to change the way voters select their leaders.

Every party in the upcoming provincial election in Quebec has said they will implement representational government when they are elected, Pilon said.

The conversation is much more heated in P.E.I, after legislators approved the Electoral System Referendum Act on June 12. Early advocates for electoral reform say the birthplace of Confederation is fertile ground for stemming support for reform across the country.

“I think our electoral system is an 18th century system and we need to bring it into the 21st century,” ‘Yes’ vote advocate Leo Cheverie told the Canadian Press.

If P.E.I. voters say ‘Yes’ to electoral reform, they will be creating a system of votes where 18 will be chosen in new electoral districts and nine more will be elected by province-wide ballots to fill ‘list seats’. These nine seats will be filled proportionally based on the popular vote each party receives on the second ballot.

The time is now

Because the momentum for change is growing in provinces across the country, May said if Trudeau does not call a national referendum on electoral reform, it could hurt Trudeau’s chances at winning the next federal election.

“[First past the post] is not just a bad system, it’s a dangerous one,” she said.

Back in Ontario, the beginnings of a movement for electoral reform started before the dust from the June 7 election had even settled. Kelly Carmichael is putting together a ‘Make Every Vote Count’ campaign to use the discontent of some Ontario voters to push for change so the same results do not happen again in 2022.

“I definitely think there is an appetite for this,” she said. “Just after the election, it became really apparent that citizens are engaged.

“What happened in Ontario is shocking … but really, that’s how the system works.”

But for all of Charmichael’s efforts, Ford will still be sworn in to the Premier’s office on June 29. It will only be then that Ontario and the country will find out if Ford’s ‘government for the people’ actually serves them, or just the 40 per cent of true blue voters.