There’s about to be a major recommendation from the all-party committee studying voting reform. The committee is wrapping up their study soon, and we expect them to make an announcement before December 1st. We wanted to take the opportunity to send you a report back on what the Leadnow community has been working on with voting reform, and then give you an update on what to expect in the next few months. 

Here’s a quick summary:

• The Leadnow community showed up strongly at the consultations held across the country. You spoke clearly and firmly in favour of proportional representation (PR)
• Lots of other people agree with you - and the committee got a clear recommendation from the public for a PR system 
• Prime Minister Trudeau made a promise to make every vote count.  We’re closer than we’ve ever been, but we need to hold the Liberals to their word. 

The Committee

The government struck the voting reform committee (ERRE) in early May which met with experts, representatives from civil society, and the general public in Ottawa and in cities across the country. The Leadnow community showed up strongly throughout the committee consultation process. 

• We testified before the committee in Ottawa on August 30th and submitted a brief on behalf of the Leadnow community.[1]
• Hundreds of Leadnow members attended the committee stops held across Canada and spoke strongly and persuasively for PR. [2]
• And, thousands of you filled out the committee’s online survey!

Town Halls

Throughout the summer MPs held town halls across the country on voting reform, and our teams of volunteers in Toronto and Vancouver worked hard to spread the word.

• Leadnow volunteers signed up 6045 people to the Vote Better campaign at events and festivals.
• We promoted 64 different town halls and consultations on voting reform and made over 4000 phone calls to people on the Leadnow list to come to an event.
• Between 5000 and 6000 people attended one of the 64 town halls we promoted. People at most of these events were strongly in favour of proportional representation and Leadnow members got up to speak for PR at events from coast to coast to coast. 

Youth town halls

Between September 27th and October 4th, Leadnow held four town halls specifically for people under the age of 30 in Vancouver, Winnipeg and Toronto. 

• Approximately 225 youth ages 13-30 took part
• We found that 86% of participants in Vancouver, 93% of participants in Winnipeg, and 88% of participants in Toronto reported that they felt that the current system does not represent youth well. 
• We wrote a brief on our findings from the town halls and delivered it to the voting reform committee.[3]

Online

While Leadnow volunteers and staff were busy getting people out to town halls, we were also able to mobilize online thanks to donations from the Leadnow community: 

• We launched VoteBetter.ca which has had tens of thousands of visitors since July
• We’ve sent over 26 800 messages directly to Justin Trudeau, Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef and various other MPs calling on them to implement PR.

What’s next

It’s been a big couple of months for the Vote Better campaign - and it’s all been building to this:

On or before December 1st the committee studying voting reform will make an official recommendation on how to reform our broken first-past-the-post system. Honestly, we don’t know what’s going to happen. The committee could recommend proportional representation - but they could also opt for the status quo. 

The NDP have already publicly stated that they will be recommending proportional representation, and the Greens are also known to support it. [4] No one party has a majority on the committee, so we need another party to work together with the Greens and NDP to recommend PR. 

If we get a positive recommendation on December 1st we’ll have cleared a major hurdle in our work to win a fair voting system for Canada. But the fight won’t be over at that point. Once the recommendation is made, it will be up to the Liberals to decide whether and how to introduce legislation on voting reform. 

The media have been both cynical and at times hostile towards this process, and now some are even calling on the government to back down from their promise to enact voting reform.[5] It’s clear that there’s a real risk that if we don’t speak up for voting reform and hold the Liberals to their word, we could still get nothing out of this process. 

But we know that Prime Minister Trudeau promised in 2015 to make every vote count - and now it’s up to us to hold him to that promise. Trudeau might feel pressured to back down because of the negativity in the media, so we'll be following up soon with a toolkit to help you get the word out to local media and encourage the Prime Minister to keep his word. We’ll also be in touch when the recommendation comes in late November or early December with a way for you to connect directly to key decision makers on this file. 

Because of the hard work and dedication of the Leadnow community, we’re closer than ever to joining other advanced democracies and introducing a fair and proportional voting system. Thanks for your donations, phone calls, emails and volunteer time - it all adds up.  
Let’s do this.

This work was made possible because of small donations from Leadnow members like you. Chip in today to help the Leadnow community hold this government to their word on voting reform.

Sources:

[1] Leadnow at the voting reform committee: http://www.votebetter.ca/errespeech/ 
[2] Here’s one volunteer from Vancouver reading her speech that she prepared for the committee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7B0ArdGJ1E 
[3] Leadnow’s brief on youth town halls: 
[4] Canadians want proportional representation when it comes to electoral reform, NDP says http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ndp-electoral-reform-1.3801615
[5] Time for Trudeau to cut his losses on electoral reform (iPolitics): http://ipolitics.ca/2016/10/04/time-for-trudeau-to-cut-his-losses-on-electoral-reform/