Thank you.
My second question is for you too. If I am not mistaken, you are saying that any proportional system would increase the participation rate of those voting in an election. Last March 12, in Parliament in Ottawa, I attended a presentation by Professor André Blais, an expert in voting systems at the Université de Montréal. He was with Antonia Maioni, from McGill University. He answered a question from the audience about whether proportional voting would lead to a higher rate of participation.
The answer that he gave, based on a number of analyses he has conducted from around the world, is that there is not really a direct effect on the voting percentage, plus or minus 3%. So it may even go down. He talked about New Zealand, where there has been a drop of 10% since a system of that kind was put in place. He said no, the effect of that model is often to increase the number of parties and to reduce the participation rate. This is not my position; here is what he said: “Studies show that the proportional model has no effect in increasing the voting rate among minorities in the way that the Liberals would like to change the trend. Generally, however—and, it is true, we see it in comments from the public—the word proportional inspires confidence in people and is perceived as more equitable.”
Do you have any documents, studies or research that you have done and that you could provide to us, to confirm your statement that any proportional method that we might put in place would increase the participation rate?