It's very challenging. The democracy exercises we've had have been excellent. They've shown that the public, given a chance to become informed, can make good decisions. I'm not against that idea, but that is not the situation we face now. If you go out and ask people what they think, they're going to tell you stuff they already know, which privileges the status quo. You are privileging the status quo in your process if that's what you do.
What do people know? They know what they've experienced. They don't have any experience of other methods of doing things. That's why I hear from this committee an overvaluing of how much you're going to get out of the public in the feedback that they might give you. They don't know anything about our institutions. I don't say that as a criticism. I think people are busy and they look to you to lead. They have a sense of which side they're on, of the kind of politics they want to see. That is what determines these decisions more than any of the things you're talking about.
Let me give you one quick example. Vancouver uses an at-large voting system for its city elections, which was adopted in the 1930s. There have been six referendums on whether or not to get rid of that system. They've all failed. The public, which you claim is so focused on local matters, has chosen to keep an at-large system, and it is divided strictly on partisan lines. Supporters of the right-wing party have seen that this at-large system works for them, so they want to keep it. The left-wingers think it's really bad and want to move to a ward system, but because the right-wing voters are more likely to come out and vote, they win. The less privileged voters, who are less likely to come out and vote, lose.