Okay, thanks.
I'm going to move to Professor Macfarlane. I'd like to explore some of the comments you've made on referendums. I hopefully heard you correctly. One of the comments I heard you say was that there's no convincing argument against a referendum.
I was looking through some notes. Yesterday we had Professor Lijphart speak to us and present some comments I found to be useful. He talked about the danger of a vote being based on voter confusion and misinformation. We've heard other witnesses talk about how a referendum doesn't lend itself to complex questions, and when we get into this kind of thing, it is very complex. We've heard that results are highly volatile and unpredictable. They involve emotions and often outright lies. We've seen this in the case of the Brexit referendum with the parties that campaigned against it. One of them would take all of the money that was saved, not send it to the European Union, and put it into health care. The day afterward, they said, “Oh, well, we can't actually do that.” You have these outright lies being presented in referendum campaigns.
Other issues also come out, including general dissatisfaction with the government. A recent example was in British Columbia. We had a transit referendum in the Lower Mainland that was looking at an additional tax to pay for transit improvements. That referendum became not about the question but about the effectiveness of Translink, the body that oversees transit. What people ended up voting on was not the question being asked but something completely aside from that question. It was defeated.
To me, these start becoming compelling reasons to not have a referendum.
The last comment I have is one that came in from Twitter. The comment was from somebody in account lifestyles strategies, and they said, “I do not want to vote on something I don't understand. Can we not let government do its job and let us try the new system before voting?”
With all of that, are there any compelling reasons in there to counter your point that there are no convincing arguments against a referendum? When I see that kind of package of things, to me it says that maybe this isn't the best way to get input from Canadians. I turn it over to you for any comments.