A collection of activists, political players and artists \u2014\u00a0including musician Neil Young \u2014 is calling on Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government to keep its promise to implement a new federal electoral system in time for the 2019 election.<\/p>\n
“We congratulate the newly appointed minister, the Hon.\u00a0Karina Gould, and urge her to move to implement the key recommendation of the parliamentary committee and move to a system of proportional representation for the next federal election,” reads a statement<\/a> signed by former chief electoral officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley, environmentalist David Suzuki, musicians Neil Young and Sarah Harmer, and artist Robert Bateman, among others.<\/p>\n The statement was issued by the Every Voter Counts Alliance, which is\u00a0sponsored by the Broadbent Institute, Fair Vote Canada and various other organizations and labour unions, including Unifor and CUPE.<\/p>\n Karina Gould was appointed minister of democratic institutions earlier this month, replacing Maryam Monsef. In joining cabinet, she inherited a file that has challenged the Trudeau government for more than a year.<\/p>\n A report by a special committee of MPs was\u00a0delivered to Parliament in December<\/a>, and recommended that the federal government hold a referendum on some form of proportional representation. But the recommendation was not unanimous and even some of those who supported it\u00a0\u2014 the New Democrats and Greens\u00a0\u2014 also questioned the necessity of a referendum.<\/p>\n Monsef subsequently launched an online consultation<\/a> that was derided by opposition MPs<\/a>.<\/p>\n Neither Gould nor Trudeau has\u00a0yet explained how the federal government will move forward.<\/p>\n “The government now has both the challenge and the opportunity to design a proportional system which it can and which it would support,” Kingsley said on Thursday, referring back to the committee’s report.<\/p>\n “The earlier the government tables its proposal, the greater the opportunity\u00a0for Canadians to consider it, to debate it and to understand it.”<\/p>\n A collection of activists, political players and artists \u2014\u00a0including musician Neil Young \u2014 is calling on Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government to keep its promise to implement a new federal electoral system in time for the 2019 election. “We congratulate the newly appointed minister, the Hon.\u00a0Karina Gould, and urge her to move to implement the key […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-63837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}