25 days to have your say

Photo: The Canadian Press

Minister of Democratic Institutions Maryam Monsef

Days after fumbling the rollout of an all-party report on reforming how Canadians vote, the Liberals are giving Canadians 25 days to take part in a lengthy online interactive survey on electoral reform.

The Liberal government is launching what it says is the next phase of its study to reform the voting system — a campaign promise Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has shown signs of backing away from lately — through a new online portal called MyDemocracy.ca.

The Canadian Press has obtained details of the questions that the government hopes Canadians will answer as it sends postcards today to 15 million households giving details about how to participate online, or by phone if they lack the Internet.

The survey comes after the last week's flare up in the House of Commons in which Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef criticized opposition MPs on the electoral reform committee for not doing their jobs.

Opposition MPs on the committee recommended a new proportional voting system, and urged a national referendum to gauge public support for it.

But in this next phase of public consultations, the word referendum does not appear in any of the 31 questions the government plans to ask Canadians. It also urges respondents to fill out a section to help track their demographic profile. The government has given respondents a Dec. 30 deadline.

The Liberals say MyDemocracy.ca is an "innovative way to join the conversation on electoral reform," saying the survey will take "only a few minutes." A paper printoff of the section was more than 30 pages long.

The survey, by Toronto-based Vox Pop Labs, asks respondents to rate their level of agreement to 20 "propositions" labelled "values."

The five-point scale ranges from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree."

One proposition states: "A ballot should be easy to understand, even if it means voters have fewer options to express their preferences."

Another says: "Voters should be able to express multiple preferences on the ballot, even if this means that it takes longer to count the ballots and announce the election result."