Hi there.
I support proportional representation. I think that a mixed member system sounds like a good idea. I don't tend to think referendums are a good idea. I think online voting and mandatory voting need more reflection than I know anything about.
I want to try to offer some thoughts towards the value of proportional representation that maybe haven't been offered. I'm certainly not a political scientist.
The notion of a representative democracy, which is what we have, is bad. There are too many people in the country for everybody to directly run the country. All the representatives go to the House and they debate amongst themselves. In some sense, at the moment that the election is finished, it should be a time for all of the members to act in the interest of all Canadians. No decision should be made on the basis of the fact that a certain party has the majority; it should be made on the basis of the fact that it's a good decision for all Canadians. But that view is not a broad...that is, many people are much more cynical about what's going on in the House than that.
I'm sure that all of you who spend your lives working to do the best for Canadians understand that that's a difficulty. That cynicism that's out there is a difficulty.
I am in support of proportional representation because I know many young people need to see a new system. I see 20-something-year-olds come in front of me as a teacher every year. They need some impetus for change.
I agree with many of the points as to why proportional representation might be more fair, but the opportunity that we have here is to say that this is the way that not all geographic regions will be represented, but all ideas, conceptual spaces, will be represented. They'll go into the mixture, the compromise, that the House is supposed to be.