Good evening.
My name is Dimitre Popov. I am a founder of a non-profit, non-partisan organization, Canadians for Integrity. I am also an activist with the independent campaigning community, Leadnow.
Today's times are not yesterday's. Today, Canadian voters are better informed and better organized. As a result of the actions of the Leadnow community, the current government was able to form a majority government. We will support this government only if it governs in good faith and solely in the interests of the common good. We will eject from the public office in the next election any member of Parliament who puts special interests before the interests of Canadians and Canada.
In the first past the post system, governments win power only with a portion of the vote, and a substantial number of votes go in the trash. That is not consistent with democratic principles. Any group that has more than 4% of all votes should be entitled to representation in Parliament. Canadians want their votes to count.
For that reason, as you are no doubt aware, approximately 85% of informed average Canadians want proportional representation. The government should consider this fact and implement proportional representation, something Mr. Trudeau promised to do during the election if his Liberal Party was elected. We voted the Liberals in because we believed Mr. Trudeau was sincere when making promises during the campaign. The time to implement the proportional representation system has come.
Thank you very much.