You’re invited to join the University of Toronto Runnymede Society Chapter on Tuesday, October 11th for a debate between two leading Canadian public intellectuals on the currently pending issue of electoral reform! Peter Loewen, School of Public Policy and Governance, will argue that first past the post has proven advantageous in our highly regionalized democracy, we should not be quick to abandon it. ...

Is the Liberal plan to reform the electoral system unconstitutional? Two recent pieces published in the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star suggest the answer is yes. The articles are well-written by knowledgeable individuals (respectively, a law professor and two former law clerks), but in my view their reasoning is flawed. Both pieces cite the 2014 Senate Reform Reference, in ...

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised during the recent campaign that 2015 would be the last federal election to employ “first-past-the-post.” This is the electoral system familiar to  Canadians, in which the candidate who wins a plurality of votes in each riding is elected to Parliament. In its place we would see the introduction of a more “representative” system, most likely ...