The year Trudeau first ran he talked a big game. The Conservative party was unpopular after being in power for a decade and the NDP and Greens were in the best shape they’d been in for quite a while and for the first time it seemed like anybody’s game. The NDP/Greens with McNair and May respectively spoke eloquently about the need for representive voting systems and Trudeau on national television during debate made it an election promise for the Liberal party he represented (Liberal here is a brand though the party is pretty generally pretty lower case liberal as well). When he got in despite the support of those other parties it never materialized.

Here in British Columbia trying to capitalize on the sentiments the Provincial government ran a lame horse of a referendum campaign where they brought forward three really complicated systems that largely dealt with how ridings were weighted by representation which was better than nothing but because it took two hours to explain how the three systems worked most people checked out of it and voted for first past the post to remain. It was like it was constructed by acedemics who had never spoken to a person before. They didn’t need a referendum. They could have just passed something, any of the three options and we would be better off than we were.

I have remained salty about this since 2017.