Thank you for coming to Winnipeg.
I want to start by talking about the last federal election. I was involved in working with a strong group of youth with Leadnow. We worked immensely hard to deal with the emergency situation we felt we were in. I believe we truly did have an impact on voter turnout. Our message was that we were begging you to vote strategically to get out of the emergency we were in, and then we would never do this again because we were promised a change in our electoral system. It would be very interesting to me to find out how many people voted for the first time last time with the idea in mind that this was the last time. It was embarrassing to knock on doors and ask people to strategically vote. It was really hard. It was not something I felt proud to do, but we were in an emergency.
I work in sustainability, and from what I can see when I'm doing research every single day, the countries that are sustainable—and when I speak about sustainability, that's environmental, but that's also social, community, and economic; I'm actually an accountant—are at the forefront of that work within a PR system. That, I believe, is the truth for the most part.
I do actually hope that you're going to fact-check some of what Mr. Thomas was saying. I lived in Scotland in 1996 and 1997. I don't believe it was a very progressive place at that time. I'm shocked to see the stuff that's coming out of there right now, and I do believe it has something to do with the change in their system.
As I say, I'm an accountant. We're talking about federal politics with federal issues, so when we're counting votes, counting them at a federal level and making that work makes sense in this system.