Prime Minister-Elect Justin Trudeau has many promises to kee

[Oscar]

Prime Minister-Elect Justin Trudeau has many promises to keep

[ http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/karl-ne ... es-to-keep ]

By Karl Nerenberg | October 20, 2015

After one of his three majority victories, Pierre Elliott Trudeau quoted a line from New Hampshire poet Robert Frost’s Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening:

"I have promises to keep / And miles to go before I sleep."

At the late Prime Minister's funeral in 2000 his eldest son Justin paraphrased that quote:

"He kept his promises and earned his sleep."

It is Justin Trudeau who now has promises to keep.

He made many, many promises during this campaign, possibly more than his father made in his five election campaigns combined.

Here are just 16 of them:

1. To create a special, all-party parliamentary committee to study alternatives to the current first-past-the-post electoral system, and, within 18 months, introduce legislation to replace first-past-the-post, based on the committee's recommendations.

That is a key promise, and one that the power brokers and insiders of the Liberal party will not want the new Prime Minister to keep.

It will take determination and fortitude on Justin Trudeau's part to resist the many who will advise him to shelve that particular pledge.

The cynics are already saying we can forget about electoral reform.

On election night, when one member of a Radio-Canada television panel evoked Trudeau's electoral pledge, there were snickers all around.

When has it ever happened, the panellists said almost with one voice, that a party wins a majority under a voting system and turns around and changes the system?

Those who voted for the Liberals with hearts full of hope -- especially those who said theirs was a strategic vote necessitated by our unfair and unrepresentative electoral system -- might want to get ready to start actively encouraging their party of choice to honour this particular promise.

If enacted, electoral reform would change the face of Canadian democracy for generations to come. It would be a true and lasting legacy project for Justin Trudeau's new government.

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It is a big and ambitious agenda. And, of course, the list is far from exhaustive.

Those who voted for this new government were ready to put aside thoughts of Liberal scandals of the past.

On Monday October 19, and at the advanced polls earlier, the legions of Liberal voters -- many of whom had voted for Jack Layton's NDP last time -- were not thinking of the insiders and lobbyists who swarmed around previous Liberal governments.

Mostly, one suspects, they wanted to drive a stake through the heart of the loathsome Harper regime

A great many voters did not want to risk an uncertain result. They were ready to put their unqualified faith in the optimism, energy and hope of the young Liberal leader -- now the next Prime Minister.

The last time a Liberal government swept to power after nearly a decade of Conservative rule, in 1993, it too promised hope and change, anchored in a program of major infrastructure investments.

That Jean Chrétien-led government did deliver some of what it promised.

But it also slashed the CBC and other federal institutions, radically reduced health and social transfers to the provinces, and completely ended longstanding federal support for some programs, such as public housing.

Neither Chrétien nor any of his senior colleagues ever hinted at those deep and painful cuts.

Let's hope the voters have better luck with the Liberal party this time.