I know it was just a small slip, yet an important one. If we want to take it through another value lens, “my guy didn't win this time, but my guy might win next time”, Canada's ranking 64th in the world in terms of women represented in our Parliament.
I'm going to extend this over to what Mr. Gibson and Ms. Smoke talked about in terms of fairness. The committee is going to get sick of my referring to it, but I think it's rather insightful that Elections Manitoba just did a study on what happened in the last provincial election. Why people didn't vote is a question we're all engaged with here. Why didn't they vote? Why did 40-plus per cent not vote?
What they found in their bit of research, released today, was that people didn't think their votes could count, or thought that they wouldn't count. They felt, “I vote a certain way in this riding” or “I vote for a certain kind of person that my community doesn't want to vote for, so I'm not going to go out to the polls”.
Ms. Smoke, you talked about coming from a very unique perspective, a first nations perspective. Your mom instructed you as my mom instructed me to be involved, yet many first nations people, many people not seeing themselves reflected—women, first nations, young people, poor people—don't bother voting.
Can we do better? How can we do better?