Story time: For a brief period 10 years ago the Liberals were sunk down to the point where the NDP was official opposition and leading in the polls heading into the election. Their leader (Tom Mulcair) was a fairly moderate social democrat with amazing parliamentary skills, powerful in both languages, a hardened debater and a former Quebec provincial Liberal cabinet member with a strong base in Quebec (new for the NDP) and polled reasonably well federally. Plus they were running on the sympathy and charisma from their recently well loved but deceased former leader, Jack Layton. And people were pissed at the Liberals for post-Y2K era corruption scandal, after the Liberals had ruled Canada for well over a decade under Chretien. And the Conservative prime minister at the time, Stephen Harper, a machiavellian backroom manipulator wearing a bit of a scandal himself, also basically a subtle climate change denier... was pretty hated, and had really hit his expiry date.

Things looked fantastic for the NDP, and not good for the Liberals and their new young and inexperienced leader, Justin Trudeau, who seemed to only have his name and good looks going for him.

Until the latter half of the campaign, when three things happened: 1) Mulcair took a principled stand during the debate about Islamaphobia (anti-veil laws) in Quebec... while Trudeau waffled. 2) Canadian capitalism got freaked out about the idea of an NDP government... and ... most importantly ... 3) The Liberal pivoted on policy on two popular issues: Marijuana legalization and Electoral Reform... both things they had always been opposed to, and which were NDP policy planks since its founding.

They stole the policy items from the NDP, insisted that this would be the last FPTP election, and in the last few weeks of the election the polls shifted dramatically and the NDP have never recovered.

We did get cannabis legalization, but electoral reform never happened. It never will because any party that has enough power to enact would have too much to lose from actually enacting it.

The Liberals have "died" a couple times in the last couple decades and always re-emerge. Because Canadian capitalism will never ever let the other "left" party -- the NDP -- get elected federally. When it happened provincially in Ontario in the 90s, Bay Street finance shit their pants and went on a capital strike and no matter how moderately they attempted to govern, they were railroaded and destroyed. Similar thing in Alberta, down to death threats and harassment, etc.

In any case, all that said, despite that ... one of the strengths of Canada vs the US is that we don't have the two-party trap that the US has (and Australia). It pushes policy and keeps debate options around doors that have definitely closed in the US.

You mention that in certain reform situations the focus of debate moves from party structure and representatives towards jockeying and moving within parties. And actually this is how the US system is. There's plenty of "left wing" and "socialists" activists in the Democratic party. And they exist only up until the primary level, and then their viewpoints are exterminated. They are never able to present in a legislature, to put forward bills, and to really compete on the national stage, and so they are continually taken advantage of and then strategically defeated over and over again. To the point where US politics has narrowed so intensely that the public there does not even recognize any political-economic policy as being possible left of what would be quite right-wing policy in most other western countries.

I do not want this for Canada. I actually think ranked ballots, based on the experience of places like Australia, would take us directly there.

Canada should have an MMP system, like Germany. Like Germany we are a federal system with strong provinces (Länder there). Like Germany we value local representation, and a parliamentary structure. And like Germany, I think most of us would like to keep our history of a diversity of political parties, but without it degrading into an Israel or Italy. I think Germany has a good model to offer in this regard.