Hello. My name is Andrew Stewart.
Ten years ago this fall I served on the Students' Assembly on Electoral Reform, representing Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound. I was at the conference of high school students from across Ontario that ran parallel to the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform.
As a group we overwhelmingly agreed that proportional representation was important for Ontario, and our findings were similar to the citizens' assembly finding that mixed member proportional would be the best system. I still believe that would be an excellent choice for Ontario and Canada.
I campaigned for the change during the referendum, but unfortunately the vote was a week before my 18th birthday, so I could not vote in it. In that campaign I found great support for MMP among people who were informed about how the system worked, but the public awareness and education campaign around the referendum was too little and too late and the awareness just wasn't there.
As a committee I think you're empowered to make the decision without a referendum, but perhaps there is such pressure to have a referendum that you have very broad and long public awareness and education campaigns so people really know what they're voting for and really understand the issue, so they're not voting no just out of ignorance.