THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM OUR ARTICLE WITH THE WALRUS. READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE.
In April, almost a year after last spring’s federal election delivered a minority government, Mark Carney’s Liberal Party inched its way to a majority by poaching a string of floor crossers from opposition parties. The new-found majority further strengthens the hold of a party that has been in power for 60 percent of Canadian electoral history. This makes them among the most successful political parties in the Western democratic world.
The way the Liberals win so consistently is simple: Canada’s first-past-the-post system advantages them as their support is broad and across Canada, allowing them victories in a plurality of ridings, as opposed to the Conservatives, who have their vote concentrated in the west. Under a different system, they may still form government often, but other parties would stand a stronger chance, thus better representing Canadians everywhere.
And it almost happened.
Toward the end of the 2015 election campaign, Carney’s predecessor, Justin Trudeau, tweeted that, if elected, he’d “make sure the 2015 election will be the last under first-past-the-post system” (FPTP). Trudeau acknowledged FPTP was often not representative of the will of the electorate.
Once in government, Trudeau convened an all-party special committee on electoral reform. The committee strongly endorsed a move toward some version of proportional representation, but members couldn’t agree on what form that should take. This despite strong support from experts for proportional representation by single-transferable vote (PR-STV) as used in Ireland and Malta. The committee also recommended that a referendum be held to confirm any change to the electoral system.
But Trudeau had no intention of allowing a potentially messy referendum to darken the political skies of his “sunny ways” honeymoon period. The plug was unceremoniously pulled on the whole initiative. FPTP had just delivered an unexpected majority after all. Presented with the traumatic proposition of a referendum, the Liberals found their excuse not to follow through on a high-profile election promise. That was the closest Canada ever came to reforming our electoral system.
A decade later, his tweet came to represent the tendency to overpromise and underdeliver on progressive issues that had become a hallmark of the Trudeau era. On his way out of office, Trudeau even claimed that not following through on his promise of electoral reform was the biggest regret of his near decade in power. It was strikingly cynical given that, with him at the helm, the party had won two more elections largely thanks to the distortions of the electoral system he claimed to oppose.
In those elections of 2019 and 2021, Trudeau’s Liberals came close to winning majority governments despite the Conservatives winning the popular vote on both occasions. Under Carney in 2025, Liberals won the popular vote, despite a stronger showing from the Conservatives, and came within touching distance of a majority. Now, as Carney settles into a majority achieved beyond the ballot box, Conservatives will have racked up a total of fourteen years in opposition before their next chance to contest for power.
What would Canada’s electoral map look like under a different system? Political pundits have debated that for years. We designed an algorithm to show how a proportional representation system might transform Canada. The data is clear: this system—PR-STV—will better represent the electorate. Our model shows that other parties, particularly the Conservatives, would be able to consistently win federally and provincially. In fact, it would have given the Conservatives seat counts in 2019 and 2021 that would have led them to form government.