Mr. Mayrand, I thank you for your recommendations on pages 9 and 10 of your speech. I think they make eminent good sense, and I hope the committee will consider them in our deliberations.
On the issue of the single transferable vote, if a consultation panel became necessary during the transition period--the two years or three years that you suggest--we would have to use a system other than the single transferable vote. If we hold an election in conjunction with the provinces, you've indicated that no provinces utilize the single transferable vote at this time, so conceivably we could, at any given time in the future, be using the federal election rules or we could be using the provincial election rules at the same time--say, five years from now. Would that not constitute a lot of confusion? That's my first question.
Second, would there be any potential significant differences if we used a system other than the single transferable vote, such as the first-past-the-post system? If you needed a panel of three Senate appointments and there were four candidates, then the top three would get the nod. Is there any magic in utilizing the single transferable vote? What are its advantages?