I would be a little concerned—and again this is a personal view, a normative view—about the implications for the party system itself, and to what extent we might see a proliferation of fairly narrow single-issue parties.
Quite frankly, if we move to a PR system, one or two of the parties that are represented in this room might not exist in 10 or 15 years. What are the implications of that? In a regional country like Canada, does it place further tensions on national unity if we see some of these parties crop up as regional parties, such as a Saskatchewan First Party, or what have you? These regional parties are certainly possible under first past the post as well, but under PR, all the incentives change.
The incentives for brokerage just aren't there, because you know that you can leverage your national vote share and it will result in seats. That's not the case under single-member plurality. You have to co-operate under larger umbrellas. More parties might mean more problems. It changes the nature of democracy in Canada from the voters' perspective, because they can no longer have any confidence that what they see in party platforms is what the government ends up implementing, even if that party is part of the government. It could become a mishmash of whatever negotiation happens post-election.
That's what I mean when I say there are arguably less clear or direct lines of accountability for what government ends up doing under a PR system compared to the current system.