Good evening.
Mr. Ward, like Mr. Ste-Marie, I really liked how dynamic your presentation was.
However, there is one aspect that I cannot support. At the end of one of your comments, you referred to a third world country. I have been living in Canada for about 45 years now. When I look at the country that we have built with our governments, even if they are not perfect in representative terms, I consider that we are a long way from the third world. I just wanted to make that clear.
Professor Loewen, who testified before us when we were in Ottawa, made an observation about representation. People who talk about a proportional voting system or a mixed-member proportional system in all its forms, talk a lot about better representation in Parliament. He told us to be very careful because representation in Parliament and representation in government are two different things. The political parties might actually be better represented in Parliament in terms of votes. However, the government could be made up of a coalition of parties that failed to win a majority. We could easily be talking about one party with 45% of the votes and a small party with 6%. That is one scenario. They would then be represented in the government, which would in turn be making the decisions. However, a second party with 35% of the votes would have no representation at all in government for four years. That had an impact on me. It was the first time that anyone, a university professor in this case, had mentioned it to us.
I would like to hear your specific opinion. Are you of the same mind? He was the first witness to really mention it and it is quite important.