Thank you, Chair.
I'm just getting through some Twitter feed. It was asked not so much as a question from someone watching the committee as a seeking of comment on an essay that I'm now reading as well, called “Our Benign Dictatorship”, which was penned by Mr. Flanagan and Mr. Harper some years ago.
I'll read you just one quote, and perhaps we can get a comment from that:
Although we like to think of ourselves as living in a mature democracy, we live, instead, in something little better than a benign dictatorship, not under a strict one-party rule, but under a one-party-plus system beset by the factionalism, regionalism and cronyism that accompany any such system.
That was Mr. Harper in the mid- to late-nineties, before the system worked for him and he maybe didn't feel that way. There was also a suggestion on Twitter that every time my Conservative colleagues say “referendum”, people should drink, and I think that's a bad idea for everybody involved.
The question I put to you is this. Not only was that a moment in time for our most recent prime minister, who felt that way about our system leading to what he called a benign dictatorship. It seems to require three things that we need right now: the courage to see this reform through from the current government; the principle not to rig the new system in their favour; and the humility and the responsibility from all of us—and I hear this from Mr. Charbonneau—to seek compromise and to find something, as Professor Dawood has said, that would greatly enrich the legitimacy of what this committee comes to.
Has anything I've said, or even the quote from Mr. Harper and Mr. Flanagan, struck you as wrong?
I'll start with Mr. Broadbent and then head to Monsieur Charbonneau.