It's a pleasure to be here in this beautiful town. You have very fine baked goods. We all can confirm that, and that's important.
I represent a rural constituency in northern British Columbia, and questions of representation are very important to all of us. It looks different, depending on where you're standing in the country. My riding is a little bigger than Poland, so I take challenge to your comment, Mr. Koop, that we have relatively small ridings in this country. We have a bunch of relatively small ridings and then we have a whole bunch of massive ridings.
I want to perhaps leave you confident that one of the committee's guiding principles is direct representation. We are considering models and proposals right now that have to go through that lens. I don't think the committee has heard about too many models that have suggested wiping out direct representation, or not that I can recall. There's maybe been one or two, but certainly not the majority.
Mr. Kidd, thank you for the innovation. It's part of what we're doing here as well. There's a whole library of systems out there, but looking for a made-in-Canada solution is something we're very interested in.
Have you seen the Elections Manitoba study that is just out today, I believe? It will be good for the committee to look at this as well. They looked at the last Manitoba election. The turnout was 57%, I believe. They interviewed people who voted and people who didn't. Of those who didn't vote, 50% said they would vote if their votes counted and if all votes were treated equally. That's as opposed to some of the comments you've made.
Does that result from Elections Manitoba surprise, confirm...? What does it do for you?
I'll start with Professor Koop and then Mr. Kidd.