I have three points to make, and I'll try to be brief.
Every international ranking of democracy places Canada among the top 10, but those top 10 also include countries such as Sweden and Finland that use proportional representation. My point is that not every electoral system is good for every country.
Can a large and diverse country such as Canada need single-member constituencies? That local MP provides a vital link to Ottawa that makes government visible to people in, say, northern British Columbia or rural Quebec. Larger constituencies would be completely unwieldy, say in northern Ontario.
France provides a good example of a country that found an electoral system that suits its geography and its culture. For decades, France struggled with unstable governments and proportional representation. Along came President de Gaulle. He divided France into single-member constituencies with an alternate vote. That suits France very well. It has had stable and effective government for the last 50 years.
My second point is the fact that a diverse society such as Canada needs local MPs and constituencies. I love elections. I love going to the office of a candidate and seeing people work together to elect a local MP. You have someone in a wheelchair making phone calls; you have young people rushing out to put up signs; and you have all different people with different abilities and ethnic backgrounds working together.
If you have a list system in Canada that is so diverse, it wouldn't be long before you had a Muslim list, a Sikh list, a women's list, or whatever list there is, and it would divide our society. It would be very dangerous. We have had such success in integrating diverse populations. That's my second point.
My third point refers to the issue we've heard so many times about getting more women elected. I think it's very important in a Liberal democracy that every vote counts, that every voter is theoretically equal. Therefore, it doesn't matter. A male MP can represent women; a female MP can represent men. People from different ethnic backgrounds can represent each other. If we started having quotas for women, maybe we should have quotas for indigenous people, and then maybe we should have quotas for visible minorities, then maybe quotas for people with disabilities. Before long we would divide our electorate into different little segments.