Thank you very much for the opportunity for individuals to be respectfully heard.
I'm Jane Garthson. I'm a Toronto resident and a governance consultant to public benefit organizations.
I care who represents me in Parliament. I'm here to support the single transferable vote, which I think can produce a Parliament very close to proportionate without the downside of list-based proportional representation.
In Ireland, STVs produce mostly stable governments, highly proportionate outcomes, and representation for small parties and independents while leaving power in the hands of individual voters. It's even helped figure out with whom to form a coalition, if need be.
I want all MPs to be directly accountable to a constituency—I've seen that constituency work matters—not to a party back room. We need to reduce party control, not increase it. I don't know a single Canadian outside of party back rooms who thinks we should increase the influence that parties have on who represents us in Parliament. Don't let lists put un-electable people into Parliament. STV will greatly improve civil discourse and positive campaigning. That matters to me. Candidates can't afford to alienate the supporters of other good candidates. That is not a benefit we would get from list-based systems.
With regard to simplicity, one of your values, I have experience with ranked ballots and found people understood them very easily. I think the same will be true for STV. Software can enable fast calculations. Just pick a system from an existing jurisdiction that has it working. Don't waste time and money developing from scratch.
I'm not an expert, but I've heard that list-based PR can be the crack that opens the door to the election of extremists, which almost all Canadians would find abhorrent. I know that many proportional representation supporters are thinking about environmentalists, but they might be skinheads instead.
Just about anything you choose would be better than the unfair and unrepresentative results we sometimes get from first past the post. I never want to be out promoting strategic voting again. I ask you to make a quick decision so that I never have to do that again. I trust you, the committee, to choose wisely for all Canadians.