That's a very good question. I think it gets to our idea of citizenship and what we share as a community, and whether, even if I win the election, I care about those who don't feel they have won.
In democracy, the pendulum swings back and forth. We won't always be on the winning side. We would hope that the winning side would show the same kind of concern for our rights and our feelings that we would show if we were on the winning side, but I think that historically the sense of winning and losing an election is not the same as alienation and a feeling of disempowerment. My concern is that in many respects, we've reached that level in Canada. It's not simply "Aw, shucks. Next time we'll get you back."
There are areas of our society, segments of our society, that don't buy in to the electoral system because they don't feel that the marginal voices have any kind of proper venue and platform. It's not simply a matter of good intentions or motivations. Even for highly motivated public-spirited people, the structure has developed in a certain way that creates choke points for access to the media, access to politicians, access to the academy. The answer to the example about the universities is that we have to be absolutely conscious of the fact that we're not doing everything we think we should be doing. Everything isn't going great. That there all kinds of marginalized groups and concerns that aren't being taken seriously simply because we don't consider them part of the spectrum.
When you speak of it in those terms and you bring out the sense of fairness, which is such a basic human principle, then I think you'll find that even people who are happy with the current system would be willing and open to change. There are people who really care that much that their voices aren't being heard.