Thanks, Mr. Chair.
I want to reinforce something Ms. Romanado said in the very beginning of her question. I thought it was really important and I am simply summarizing what she said but, certainly the point was made very clearly that this needs to be about the interests of Canadians, the voters and the people, when this decision is being made, and not about the interests of politicians. I really wanted to congratulate her for raising that very important point, because I think it is an important one and it is the reason I believe it's so important for us to have a referendum prior to any changes being made.
Ms. Flumian, I have a couple of questions for you. You had written an article for iPolitics, I believe, or had made some comments in iPolitics about the Broadbent Institute survey, indicating the five identified goals for a voting system. Obviously those five goals were simplicity, strong and stable governments, allowing voters to directly elect an MP who represents their communities, ensuring that government has MPs from every region, and having a system that ensures a party's number of seats matches its level of support.
You indicated in your comments that it seems that only the existing single-member plurality system satisfies four of the five criteria, one through four, and that this situation shouldn't make reform impossible but it won't be easy either, especially with the tight timelines that will have to be met if everything is to be up and running at Elections Canada in time for 2019.
That brings a couple of questions to mind for me. First, could you elaborate for the committee on why the other models don't live up to those five standards?