So what are the options? If you want to reform our voting system, the solution seems fairly obvious: a party that gets 12 per cent of the vote should get 12 per cent of the seats, a party that gets 39 per cent of the vote, as the Liberals did, should get 39 per cent of the seats. And so on.

Unfortunately for Justin, this would hamper the Liberals while helping the NDP. (Our current government, for example, would not be a Liberal majority. It would be a minority government with the NDP holding the balance of power.)

Instead of proportional representation, Justin favoured a “ranked ballot,” which no one has ever asked for—ever. Under this system, voters would be required to rate their choices from first to third. Elections Canada would then tally these up accordingly, because you are always hearing people say, “What really matters to me is that my second choice gets elected, even if the candidate I voted for got more votes in the first round.”

A “ranked ballot” system would, of course, keep the Liberals in power indefinitely. The Liberals, after all, are everyone’s second choice. No self-respecting NDPer would list the Conservatives as their second choice, any more than a Conservative voter would list the NDP as theirs. It was designed to keep the Liberals in government forever.

When it became clear that Justin was not going to get the results he wanted, he simply pulled the plug on the entire process without even bringing forward a vote in the House. As Andrew Coyne noted, Trudeau was fully prepared to accept his own proposal. Just not other people’s proposals.