As I've suggested, the higher normative principle that votes should count is what authorizes me to make the claim I do. The fact is that votes should be equal. That is a fundamental democratic idea.
We use the voting system we do not because it was authorized by the people. Elections precede the democratic era by many centuries. Our challenge is how we change the original political institutions to embody the democratic values Canadians have. In 1867, we were not a democracy, right? Very few people could vote. There was open voting. There was violence at the polls. There followed a very long process of attempting to impose some democratic values on our political system.
I have to say, with all respect to Stéphane Dion, who is a brilliant man, that he's wrong about the precedent. We've had 10 voting system reforms that were successful and that were passed by simple majorities of their legislatures. Almost no voting systems in western countries have been introduced by referendum. This is a very recent phenomenon.
More to the point, the normative rationale behind the referendums was not any kind of belief or embrace that the people should be the authors of this; it was cynical political posturing by parties that were trying to avoid their commitments. That is as true in New Zealand as it was in Italy as it was in the three provinces that had referendums here, so—