Thank you. I'll try to be brief and as non-partisan as possible. I was the Green Party candidate for the Manitoba election in Wolseley and I got within 400 votes of winning.
Aside from the partisan stuff, I knocked on thousands of doors and talked with hundreds of people. I was able to get an idea of the hangover from the federal election, which was only six months previous. A lot of people felt that if they didn't vote for someone who was going to win, their votes would be wasted. In the federal election the whole idea was to vote out Harper. I believe a lot of people felt their votes were wasted because they had to vote out someone and didn't get to vote for someone. That was a persistent theme.
I helped Andrew Park, who is here, campaign for Winnipeg South Centre for the Green Party. We ran into so many people who said, “Oh, I'd vote for you, but we have to get rid of the Conservative candidate in this riding.” I have a little bit of perspective on that because I talked to so many people.
My second point, and I don't want to take up too much time, is that I'm leaning toward compulsory voting because we also force people to get drivers' licences. We use coercion as the government to force people to do all sorts of things, and perhaps doing so with voting wouldn't be so bad because then it would be part of the culture.
In a sense, politically, my background is more radical. I think we need to have a change in society and a change in the culture. If people were obligated to vote, then the voter turnout would be much more.
There are problems with that. I have a lot of friends who are aboriginal people, and they're sovereignists. They don't believe they're part of Canada, and there could be legitimate reasons they didn't vote. I think the majority of people should vote.
That's all. Thanks for listening.