Dear Prime Minister,
I am profoundly shocked by your government's decision to renege on your commitment to meaningful electoral reform.
Your father and my father, the late Hon. Eugene Forsey, were friends. And so many of us trusted you. When you came to office we had hope. We thought you would respect Canadians' clear desire for an electoral system based on proportional representation – a desire on which the Special Committee found extensive agreement:
"71.5% of respondents either strongly agreed (59.1%) or agreed (12.4%) with the statement "Canada's electoral system should ensure that the number of seats held by a party in Parliament reflects the proportion of votes it received across the country":[258] (from the Committee's Report, referring to their online consultation. An even higher percentage of submissions supported some form of proportional representation.)
We thought you were committed to evidence-based policy-making and to listening to Canadians. Abandoning this crucial electoral reform does the opposite on both counts. It is an astonishing betrayal, suggestive of hypocrisy and based on lies.
If you persist in this outrageous decision, you will condemn us not only to the anti-democratic perversity of "first-past-the-post" elections, but to a dangerous hardening of political cynicism even among those of us who still believed in your promise of real change.
I appeal to you to reinstate genuine electoral reform as a major priority of your government, and direct adequate resources to developing a made-in-Canada proportional representation system, based on the fine work already carried out by the Special Committee.
With deep disappointment – but a remaining glimmer of hope,
Helen Forsey
