Conversations That Matter

Ep 452 - Wrestling with Democracy Guest: Dennis Pilon By Stuart McNish   Justin Trudeau had promised that the 2015 federal election would be the last time a government would be chosen in Canada using the first-past-the-post voting system. That promise promptly evaporated and morphed into support for a proportional representation voting system. In the following months, the Prime Minister directed the Minister of Democratic Institutions to drop the idea.   In 2021, the Liberals set a record for the lowest vote share of a party that would go on to form government, winning 32.6 percent of the popular vote, while losing the popular vote. According to the federal Elections Canada, voter turnout numbers were just less than half of the population of the country. Only 17 million of Canada’s 35 million people voted. The Liberals only received 5.6 million votes, yet went on to form a minority government in a coalition with the NDP, which received only 2.3 percent of the popular vote.   Despite those numbers, the Liberal