Thank you for allowing me to speak.
My name is Jane Anweiler, and I'm speaking on my own behalf.
I want to make four brief points, hopefully.
The first one is making my vote count. This one is near and dear to my heart, because I have not had the opportunity to make my vote count lately and I believe making votes count is also one of this committee's prime goals.
During the last federal election I knocked on doors with a candidate, did leaflet drops, made phone calls from the constituency office, and cast my ballot, all for a party that I did not belong to. I felt that working for the party that I am a card-sharing member of and that I donate cash to monthly would be a waste, as my party's candidate did not have a chance of winning, and if I voted for him, my vote would not count. I was voting against a party I did not want to win instead of voting for the party I did want to win. In other words, I voted strategically.
The good news is that the candidate I worked for and voted for won, but it was not my party, and that makes me sad. I want my vote to count, and I want to vote for something and not against something. I ask you to please make that possible.
My second point is about proportional representation. Until two or three months ago, I had no real idea what this meant and I certainly did not know that many countries in the world use this system. Frankly, I thought most countries used first past the post and that only some tiny, mostly unknown countries used different voting systems. Boy, was I ever wrong. Now I know that only five or six countries still use first past the post and that a large number of countries use various proportional representation systems. My personal favourite is now called mixed member proportional representation with open lists.
The last few months have been very educational for me. I've heard that explaining and understanding proportional representation voting is very complex and confusing for voters. I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer and I've managed to figure it out, so it can't be that hard.
Anyway, are we saying that all those people in all those countries that use proportional representation are smarter than Canadians? I think we can figure it out. Proportional representation seems the best electoral system to help this committee meet its goals of more gender equality, ethnic diversity, and regional representation.