A depressing chart went around on social media this past week after it was published as part of a story in the New York Times; it showed support for democracy, as a system of government, is declining.

“Across numerous countries, including Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden and the United States, the percentage of people who say it is ‘essential’ to live in a democracy has plummeted, and it is especially low among younger generations,” the story said, and the chart showed that of those born in the 1980s, only about 30 per cent in New Zealand, the United States and Britain said living in a democracy is “essential.”

This, in itself, is horrifying.

But, recently, there has been reason to think that, locally, in Canada, and in Toronto, democracy might be getting stronger, thanks to promised reforms to the election system.

Those hopes, on a few fronts, came crashing down in a hurry.

First, and most visibly, the federal government appeared to be walking — or running — away from Justin Trudeau’s clear and unequivocal promise that the 2015 federal election would be the last one ever fought using the first-past-the-post system.

On Dec. 1, the Liberals on the committee appointed to study implementing that promise suggested breaking it.

The minister in charge of the reforms, Maryam Monsef, made a mockery of the committee’s work in rejecting the consensus recommendations of the other parties, holding up a formula and suggesting math is hard and the dweebs in all the other parties were trying to geek up elections too much.

This is not a good line of reasoning for a party whose prime minster likes to set up opportunities to, for example, publicly, showily, geek out on quantum theory, the better to prove his is the party of evidence and reason.

The whole performance by Monsef was mind-bogglingly stupid, and dishonest and cynical — she suggested she had expected the committee to come up with a specific proposal, when she very clearly had not asked for one in the committee’s mandate, and when, furthermore, the committee had come up with a specific proposal (holding a referendum on proportional representation), just not one her government prefers.

Monsef has since apologized to the committee members for some of her language in mis-portraying their work.

She also says the government will “continue to remain committed to that promise,” although it is hard to see or know exactly how it will deliver on it, or trust that it will.

And if it does deliver on it by putting forward the ranked ballot system the Liberals have long been known to prefer, instead of the proportional system the committee recommended, it will be hard to hide the manipulative motive behind what many voters hopefully embraced as a genuine democratic promise.

Closer to home, Toronto city council again all but shut the door on reforming its own electoral system.

Here, after generations of seeing politicians in seven or eight candidate races be elected with 20 per cent of the vote or less, a consensus seemed to form over the past few years around implementing a ranked ballot system that would better reflect the will of the voters.

Then, just as the province was moving to allow it, council backtracked last year, suggesting they didn’t want the option of implementing ranked balloting.

Still, last summer, Mayor John Tory said he liked the system and wanted it implemented by 2018.

Now the province has changed the rules to allow it, but the mayor’s executive committee has slammed the door shut, refusing on Dec. 1 to support a motion from Councillor Paul Ainslie to set up an independent committee of residents to study the idea.

When it comes to democratic reforms, politicians at both federal and city levels appear to be interested only in gaming the system for their own benefit. It is a story as old as politics, but it gets no less depressing with time.

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In the meantime, the city clerk advised the mayor’s committee and city council, at the same meeting, of a provincial change in election laws that will allow third-party advertisers to participate in election campaigns.

What this means is that people — or more likely, businesses and unions — can register with the elections agency, then spend money in favour of or against specific candidates.

It is a system, Councillor Gord Perks noted, that sounds a lot like the American system of SuperPACs which has generated so much controversy about the perverse influence of money in politics.

In practice, it could mean that a developer, for example, could raise money to advertise on signs and in commercials in favour of a candidate they liked, and that spending would not count towards that candidate’s campaign limits.

Or, say, a dozen developers could set up a dozen groups to do just that.

Or a trade union could have its members set up a dozen different registered groups and spend thousands or millions campaigning against a particular candidate, for example.

This is toxic, and contrary to the whole purpose of having campaign spending limits, and contrary to the thrust of all the reforms to fundraising that have been so publicly debated in the past year or two, especially those banning corporate and union donations to candidates.

We have limits on the amount of influence you can buy specifically to preserve the fairness and integrity of our elections and of government by and for the people.

At a time when people around the world are talking about threats to democracy, we in Toronto and Canada looked like we might be about to strengthen ours, or at least try.

Instead, suddenly, it appears we’re taking steps backwards.

Correction – December 5, 2016: This article is edited from a previous version that mistakenly said the most recent federal election was in 2014.