No Justin trudeau DID NOT break his promise on electoral reform - this is possibly the best analysis of elector options

Why Trudeau Abandoned Electoral Reform

The case against change

Should We Change How We Vote? Evaluating Canada’s Electoral System

Andrew Potter, Daniel Weinstock and Peter Loewen, editors

t was incontestably part of the Liberal platform in 2015. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau solemnly pledged to change the electoral system so that the next election, presumably in 2019, would be decided by a new way to count votes. The Special Committee on Electoral Reform was created in the spring of 2016, and it delivered its report in December. It proposed two things. The first was that Canada replace its traditional system of voting (the ­single-member plurality system known widely as the first-past-the-post model) with a proportional system of representation (where seats in the House of Commons would be allocated according to the proportion of votes each party received). Second, it recommended that the idea be put to a referendum.

Both notions were poisonous to the Liberals, and Trudeau abandoned the commitment. For one, he had consistently said that he did not want to go to the people. That position was surprising, since British Columbia had done it twice, as had Ontario and Prince Edward Island. (The United Kingdom, New Zealand and the Australian Capital Territory also put their electoral reforms to the people.) Prince Edward Island even held a second referendum in October 2016 while the issue was being debated in Ottawa.

Just as importantly, the Liberals certainly did not want a proportional system. It was never clear what Trudeau expected. There were indications that he was favourable to the idea of ranked ballots—the system whereby voters choose their favourites in descending order. It took little time for experts to predict, using past results and some imagination, that under such a system the Liberals would be guaranteed a place in government forever. It was a non-starter for the majority of non-Liberals on the committee.

That the parliamentary committee would lean this way would not be surprising to any attentive watcher of its hearings (full disclosure: I appeared before it in July 2016 to argue that a referendum was a necessity for constitutional reasons). Most of the people who addressed the committee and who spoke in favour of reform wished for a proportional system, which is used in most countries around the world. This made a number of members of the committee quite happy. The New Democrats have argued in favour of it since the founding of their party almost 60 years ago; the Greens also supported the idea. Both parties have been less well represented in the Commons than their harvest of votes would indicate, a sign that their support was “inefficient,” or too thinly spread across the ridings. With a proportional system, both parties would surely become important partners in governing coalitions, and could even hold the balance of power.

Link https://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2017/05/why-trudeau-abandoned-electoral-reform/?fbclid=IwAR1wQ51AYv4ywEcAGnZNu9xOGXSfRaSjK_vRtFNxx6M-5tq-VCsmqCUVTu0