Hi. Why do we vote? Why do we have elections? Some people would have you believe that it's to choose a government; in other words, the function of voting is to divide us up into winners and losers, which would be a few winners and lots of losers.
I would suggest to you that, even if that is what you think voting is about, our current system is not well designed for that purpose, because sometimes the party with the most votes actually loses the election. This has happened a number of times in Canada, in federal and provincial elections.
In fact, an election is not a hockey game. The purpose of having an election is to allow us to choose our representatives, and we are all entitled to be represented by somebody we actually voted for. To me, that is the definition of proportional representation.
Our current system does not do that for us, as has been pointed out. MPs get elected with 40% to 45% of the votes on average. Some of you get 70%. Some get elected with 26%. On average, 40% to 45%, which means that most of us are “represented” in Parliament by somebody we voted against. It's a screwy system.
Most MPs represent people who voted against them. When you're supposed to stand up for your constituents, which ones do you stand up for, the 40% who voted for you or the 60% who voted against you?
Proportional representation is sine qua non.
I would like to recommend to the committee that when you start your deliberations, do what the Ontario Citizens' Assembly and the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly did. Right away decide that, of course, we need a proportional voting system. Let's start with that premise and the rest of our deliberations will be about what sort of a proportional system we need, because there will be a thousand decisions to make about the bells and whistles.