Early in February, the newly-appointed Minister of Democratic Institutions, Karina Gould, announced that she was informed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that “Changing the electoral system will not be in your mandate”. This move surprised many, as one of the key campaign promises by the PM was that 2015 “will be the last federal election conducted under the First-Past-The-Post voting system”. By one count, Justin Trudeau personally voiced this promise over 1800 times during the campaign. Many were angry at the announcement, with hundreds showing up to a protest in Toronto alone and NDP democratic reform critic Nathan Cullen calling it, “One of the most cynical displays of self-serving politics.”Perhaps the move should not have been a surprise. In January, Mr. Trudeau suggested that Canadians were less interested in electoral reform because they were now under a Liberal government that they liked. How the Prime Minister was able to determine Canadians’ interest in electoral reformm was not mentioned. The Special Committee on Electoral Reform (ERRE) –a diverse body of elected officials commissioned by the government to study the issue – finished six months of consultations with experts and the public in a series of town halls across the country, and came back to the government with a recommendation: a referendum on whether or not to move to some form of proportional representation. The government rejected this recommendation, claiming that there was no clear consensus on what Canadians wanted, that a referendum would be too divisive, and that extremist parties would proliferate under a proportional representation system. The fact that 88% of testimony to the ERRE was in favour of proportional representation and that Canadians could have made their wishes clear in a referendum, was apparently not taken into account by the Prime Minister. (Along with the fact that fringe parties could be kept out by a minimum vote threshold).Cynics have suggested that the reason for the rejection was that the committee did not recommend the Liberal Party’s preferred system of ranked ballots. This system would have led to the centrist Liberals being the second-choice for many on the right and left and guaranteed the formation of successive Liberal governments. Whether or not this was the case cannot be determined from outside the party’s inner circle.One direct product of this broken promise will be an increase in general voter dissatisfaction. When combined with other broken Liberal promises: the approval of the Trans-Mountain pipeline, no free, prior, and informed consent from communities affected by pipeline construction, and a refusal to ratify the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – distrust of the government and in politics increases. This may have led to the results from a recent poll where only 43% of Canadians said that their government could be trusted.Most people are familiar with self-interested leaders strengthening their position at the expense of their organization. By acting in their own self-interest, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberals may well have damaged democracy in Canada.