Referendums in Canada

National referendums are seldom used in Canada. The first two referendums saw voters in Québec and the remainder of Canada take dramatically opposing stands, the third saw most of the voters take a stand dramatically opposed to that of the politicians in power.

The majority in favour of Prohibition was so slight and turn-out so low that the government did not think it right to adopt the measure.

The Question:

Based on the result, the government adopted conscription but with a lightness of touch, it at first said that those conscripted would not be sent overseas to active fighting.

The Question:

During the 2004 federal election, the NDP stated that it would require the federal government to hold a national referendum on electoral reform (specifically proportional representation) for support from the NDP should the Liberals win a minority government. The Liberals won a minority, and the NDP announced they would press for electoral reform through a referendum. The possibility of a national referendum on electoral reform was made more likely through the Throne speech that opened Parliament in October 2004, in which former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin included electoral reform in his plan for the next Parliament. However, after Conservative Leader Stephen Harper became Prime Minister as a result of the 2006 federal election, no moves toward reform of the electoral system were taken until Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister after the 2015 federal election, in which Trudeau promised to eliminate the current "first-past-the-post" single-member plurality voting system. While Trudeau has said that he advocates a system where the distribution of seats is more in line with the popular vote on a Canada-wide basis, to be achieved by a new type of ballot that allows voters to rank the candidates in order of preference, his government announced in December 2015 that an all-party parliamentary committee would be formed in early 2016 to consider other options too, such as those based on proportional representation. During a discussion of the plan, Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef referred to it as “an open and robust process of consultation”. However, she refused to commit to the Conservative Party's demand for a public referendum that would allow Canadians to vote on their preferred electoral system, indicating that she does not want to "prejudice the outcome of that consultation process".

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