Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Boulerice, for nominating me.
I want to thank our new chair and commend him for his work and experience.
I also want to congratulate Mr. Reid and commend him for his experience.
I will also attempt to be very brief, as brief as politicians are able to be in our role.
I very much look forward to this conversation with my colleagues. I can easily determine by the quality of the people around this table that each of our respective parties takes this issue of democratic reform extremely seriously. I look forward to working with colleagues I've long known and some colleagues I'm just getting to know.
Similar to Mr. Reid's case, my party, though not I, certainly has a long history on this issue. We were going back through some editions of Hansard, and for even longer than 40 years, people like Ed Broadbent and other New Democrats have been talking about electoral reform. We feel that sense of history and shared responsibility, and I also see it reflected in the nature and composition of this committee, the likes of which I don't believe Parliament has ever seen before.
We appreciate that this is the form selected by the government for this important and historic conversation. Not only in the form but also in the outcome and in the process that we choose, we hope to always be thinking of Canadians first and thinking of what is best for their democracy, for our democracy. We hope that this committee will instruct us to do that. No one party, no one political aspirant, can have it one way. It is going to require our best to work together to come out with the best outcome.
With that, Mr. Chair, I look forward to working with you, and to the conversations today and to those to come.