QUEBEC-Military police were awaiting the results of tests on drugs seized in raids at Canadian Forces Base Valcartier.

About 30 soldiers have been asked to give urine samples following a raid at the base on Monday, a Canadian Forces spokesman said.

Soldiers from the base are due to leave for Afghanistan on Friday to join a contingent of troops from CFB Valcartier, near Quebec City, who have already been deployed.

Military police isolated the 30 soldiers for about five hours while the search was conducted. Drug-sniffing dogs from the Quebec provincial police were brought in to aid in the operation.

OTTAWA — An independent legal commission will recommend to the House of Commons that Canada abolish the first-past-the-post method of electing members of Parliament, moving instead to a form of proportional representation.

"We're going to recommend that an element of proportionality be added to the system," Nathalie Des Rosiers, president of the Law Commission of Canada, confirmed yesterday in an interview.

Change is needed, Ms. Des Rosiers said. It is necessary because the country's existing electoral system "no longer responds well to a society that wants more consultation, that wants to participate more in decisions, that is not as interested in an authoritarian form of government as much as seeing Parliament express the diversity of ideas in Canada."

If implemented, the reforms would virtually eliminate the possibility of majority governments at the federal level, forcing political parties to form coalitions in order to govern.

The commission advises Parliament on issues of law and governance. It reports to the Commons through the minister of justice, who must respond to its recommendations. The report will be submitted to Parliament in early March.

[. . . .] There is another item on that agenda, one Mr. Martin has been trying to ignore. Five provinces -- British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island -- are at various stages in their evolution toward a new electoral system based on some form of proportional representation. And the Law Commission of Canada has revealed that it will recommend the same for the House of Commons.

The question is whether Mr. Martin, who wants to make Parliament more accountable to its own members and to the public, is prepared to embrace electoral reform, or whether he will shunt it aside.

[. . . .] The Liberals would have 148 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons -- impressive, but not good enough to form a government, which means Prime Minister Paul Martin would need to seek a working relationship with another party.

[. . . .] There is a bigger issue. Since Confederation, Canada has grappled with geographic, linguistic and cultural divisions. Will a move to PR foster factional parties that cater to and exploit local grievances? Or are we now mature and confident enough as a nation to elect stable coalitions that govern in the national interest? Are we, in other words, the Canada that Mr. Martin claims we are?

We are not getting this now. The West is treated as a joke or ignored. Money is shuffled down East to keep them voting Liberal and democracy as it is practiced in Canada is a sham! NJC

[. . . .] The real choice for Mr. Martin will come after the election. Assuming he wins it, he can then either let the issue languish in some committee, waiting to see how things play out in the provinces, or he can put it on a front burner, asking for public consultation and a report that could produce electoral reform in time for the 2008 election.

But for better or worse, electoral reform is now on the national agenda. The Law Commission has put it there.