Welcome to our third set of hearings today at the special committee on electoral reform, the evening edition.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here on a Wednesday evening in August in Ottawa.
We have with us three witnesses. I will read short biographies of each before we get going.
We have Jane Hilderman, Dominic Vézina, and Taylor Gunn with us this evening.
Jane Hilderman is the executive director of Samara, an organization seeking to reconnect citizens and politics. Ms. Hilderman has worked on Parliament Hill for both government and opposition MPs, and currently focuses on researching Canadian participation in democracy, how members of Parliament do their jobs, and the citizen perceptions of politics.
In 2011, Ms. Hilderman contributed to a report released by Samara featuring the voices of Canadians who feel disempowered by politics.
Dominc Vézina is a strategic advisor at the Institut du Nouveau Monde, a non-partisan organization whose mission is to increase citizen participation in democratic life. Mr. Vézina has experience in the areas of psychology and communications. He was manager of the educational resources service of a school board in Montreal at a time when the board implemented educational pilot projects on governance and citizenship. In 2010, the National Assembly of Quebec awarded Mr. Vézina the Prix du mérite municipal, recognizing the commitment of those who establish programs in their communities.
Finally, we have Taylor Gunn, the president and co-founder of Civix, spelt with an x, a non-partisan charity seeking to build skills and habits of citizenship among Canadian youth. One of this organization's longest running and most successful programs is Student Vote, which is a parallel election for students under the legal voting age. In April, Mr. Gunn received the 2016 Greer Award for outstanding contributions to publicly funded education in Ontario.
We will follow the order in the notice of meeting, meaning that we will start with Ms. Hilderman for 10 minutes. Each witness will speak for 10 minutes and then we'll have two rounds of questions in each round,
In each round of questions, each member will have the opportunity to talk to the witnesses of his or her choice for five minutes. It is very important to emphasize that the time includes the questions and the answers. If by chance witnesses have not had the time to answer a question because the five minutes are up, they should not worry. They will have the opportunity to answer the same question the next time they speak.
Without further delay, I would ask Ms. Hilderman to make her presentation on electoral reform.
Thank you.