Thank you.
It will be fun to look on Hansard later. I have a bunch of friends who do that. I'm in political science at the University of Winnipeg and I am glad that they will look up my name after this.
Many people have raised points that I will not go over again. A majority of people voted for parties that wanted change in this last election. There are benefits to proportional representation that I will not go over again.
However, I want to be clear on one point. The alternative vote is not a solution for Canada, and it's not a solution for most countries in the world. Only two countries have any part of alternative voting in their system. They are Australia and Papua New Guinea.
Australia has been thinking about changing that. In the 2014 election, there was a riding where the Australian Motor Enthusiast Party got 0.5%, that's 5 votes out of every 1,000, on the first choice. Then, by eliminating a bunch of candidates, they won that riding.
There are other very wonkish reasons why alternative vote doesn't work. If you switch preferences in some places, you can get the same result, which is baffling to me. Also, alternative vote will not guarantee representation for regions across Canada. You would need to have 50% of the vote to pass that post instead of merely a plurality, so regions such as Atlantic Canada would not be guaranteed a Conservative or NDP voice. Likewise, in regions such as Alberta, Liberals and NDP would not be guaranteed a voice, as has happened in elections in the past.