We had a very good meeting in Ottawa a few weeks ago. Young people from the Institut du Nouveau Monde came to speak to us. It's a Quebec organization that does a lot with young people, in particular. As an aside, they are in favour of changing the voting system.
Looking at the observations they made after asking young people about their lack of interest in voting, we can see that no one necessarily spoke about the voting system or said that they felt under-represented. However, what did emerge was fairly clear.
The main reasons people 18 to 34 years of age did not vote were a lack of interest in politics, quite simply, and being too busy to vote. The third reason for not voting, according to the categories, is the problem of registering, which we are hearing a lot about in the regions. I don't think that changing the voting system will result in more or less. You can change it without changing the voting system. Adding polling stations throughout would be very simple.
We also asked seniors. The Conservative Party didn't conduct this survey, but a completely neutral organization that is in favour of a change so that we have a mixed member proportional system. Seniors gave more personal reasons, such as being outside the riding, having health problems or being disillusioned with politics altogether.
I often ask myself this question. We often come back to changing the voting system. Having said that, I'm not necessarily for or against this change, but I find that perhaps we are asking the wrong questions. Today, I'm not convinced—and I'm trying to let myself be convinced by some—that we will have greater turnout and greater interest by changing the voting system. In almost every democracy around the world, even in countries that have adopted the proportional vote, voter turnout has dropped. In New Zealand, the percentage of voters has dropped from 85% to 75% since they adopted a proportional voting system.