I'm Ken Robertson from Barrie, Ontario. I feel honoured being here tonight. I didn't expect this. I was in Oakville this afternoon at a retiree's meeting. I was going to come here tonight because I knew about it, but I didn't think I'd get an opportunity to speak. I thank you for doing this and spending all day at it. A lot of people don't realize the work that MPs do put in, as well as MPPs, and I think they should know that.
The reason I got involved 15 years ago...my son had come home from doing an apprenticeship. It was the first time he was eligible to vote, and I asked him to get in the truck and we'd go vote. He said he wasn't going to go. He wasn't interested in voting because his vote wasn't going to count. He was curious as to why I was voting. He said, “I know how you vote, and your vote never counts”. I went out and voted. He didn't go. I got thinking about that. I did a bit of research and I found out about Fair Vote Canada, which had started up. I started looking at some of the stats. I saw that in most of our elections we were getting majority governments of 30%, 38%, and 40%. Bob Rae, I think, in Ontario, got 37%.
Whether it's in Alberta with Notley, or whether it's in Ontario with Wynne, or in Ottawa with Harper or Trudeau, it's the same result. It's a little insane when you think about it.
I joined the Fair Vote chapter. I lived in Oakville at the time. I'm in Simcoe now. I joined the Simcoe chapter, and we've been fairly active. We've gone into schools, we've gone to service clubs, and we've gone to union halls. The one thing that everybody gets...and I heard a comment here that electoral reform is complicated. You know when you go to service clubs, and you go to union halls, and you go to schools, and you tell them 38% represents 100%, they think that's complicated.
The one thing about our referendum—and I've heard this a lot tonight—you've got to remember a hundred years ago women got the right to vote. If there had been a referendum, then I can guarantee you men wouldn't have given them that right to vote. They wouldn't have done that.
Asian Canadians didn't get the right to vote until 1947-48. First nations Canadians didn't get the right to vote until 1960. There were no referendums. That was done without that.
I went to three town halls that our Conservative MP Alex Nuttall put on. He talked about a number of issues, including electoral reform. At those meetings he made the comment—and I heard it tonight from a gentleman who was up here to speak—that the MPs don't have the ability to make those decisions. I think you do. I have a lot of faith in him, and I have a lot of faith in you guys.