Thank you. I just want to make a couple of comments on the meeting itself. I had to show my ID to get in here, and we've talked a lot about ID and the requirements for voting and so on. Perhaps we could have a medical ID card in this country and you could get around the privacy and find a way to get that solved. I'm not sure why I needed ID to come in here tonight and speak. Without it I don't know if I could speak. I'm a little bit disappointed that we could only speak for two minutes. I'm also a little disappointed that I had a really hard time finding out about this meeting. It came through back channels. I wonder why.
My other point is that I'm very non-partisan, and belong to a group of people among whom there are different views but who come to a conclusion a lot of times. Anyway, where I want to go with that statement is that I noticed there are mostly proponents here and that if 60% voted for the NDP, Green Party, and LPC, then I would think that we'd have six here and four, but I'm not seeing that. Are we really getting a cross-section here, because to me that's what democracy is about. It's hearing everybody, even your opponents.
I could clamour about whether it's democratic or not and referendums and all that. I am for a referendum. I go back and look at when we were dealing with the Fair Elections Act and the outrage I saw from people in response. It was fair outrage too; I think the Fair Elections Act should never have occurred, but I see the same thing occurring now with electoral reform. I'm seeing the same thing happen. It seems that a lot of people just say, “No it's not the same thing”, but it is for me. I think a lot of other people see it the same way, as a sort of a railroading.
I am for a change in the electoral system, but I'd like it to happen democratically, which is by a referendum. I hear nobody wants that, but at the end of the day, that's my opinion. I don't think that skipping it is going to hurt anything. I'm not going to recite Emmett Macfarlane's column, but he put a really good column out covering everything from constitutional law, all the way through on that.
Anyways, thanks for your time.