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The Trudeau government promised legislation to adopt some form of proportional representation (PR) to replace the first past the post (FPTP) system within 18 months. Some say no government should have the unilateral power to overthrow the current electoral regime without first holding a referendum. Others say calls for a referendum are a ploy to avoid actual reform of the voting system.

But all this must stop. Nothing can or should be undertaken — either at the Senate or to replace FPTP — without first launching an objective national review of all the issues. And there is only one way to do this. The current apparatus must be dismantled and replaced. We need a new beginning. We need a Royal Commission on Electoral Reform of Parliament to initiate a comprehensive study of all aspects of democratic reform and make recommendations. Then, maybe, we can have a referendum — or two. Or maybe no referendum, given the rocky consequences of the Brexit vote.

There is no conceivable way to hold a rational discussion – let alone a referendum — on PR in Canada or engage in Senate reform while 99 per cent of Canadians are likely clueless as to what the current political babbling points mean.

The reform initiatives have already been hijacked by partisan sloganeers and activists, all claiming to have solutions to problems — democratic deficits, diversity gaps, gender inequities, aboriginal exclusion — that may or may not be genuine. The Senate is portrayed as a menacing and undemocratic bastion of uselessness and sleaze that can only be repaired by changing the appointment process. The leading popular voice for electoral reform is Fair Vote Canada, a labour union-Greenpeace-leftist movement whose objective is a radical re-shaping of Parliament to make it more radical.