Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank the witnesses joining us today as well as those who have gone out of their way to be here for this important discussion. This is a fundamental debate that will have an impact on our democratic quality of life.
I'm very glad to be in Whitehorse today, my first trip here ever. This morning, like Mr. Deltell, I took advantage of our visit to go for a long walk and take in the incredibly impressive landscape.
I represent a riding in Montreal, probably the polar opposite of yours. My riding is home to 110,000 people who live in an area that spans 11 square kilometres.
I was going to ask a question along the same lines as those of Ms. May, Mr. Ste-Marie, and Ms. Sahota. In other words, I was going to ask about the Kingsley system and two possible ways of distributing seats within the federation. You provided a rather thorough answer, aside from the nuances still needed in terms of an MP representing a possible northern super-riding.
You could say the committee's mandate is to achieve proportionality, but its mandate is actually to replace the first-past-the-post system. One way of doing that is to combine ridings so that four, five, or six MPs represent a larger area.
Obviously, no one here is considering merging Yukon or the Northwest Territories with anything. That would be totally ridiculous. Don't worry. In Montreal or Toronto, however, that would work quite well. Voters probably wouldn't even notice.
Mr. Cameron, without setting aside seats for first nations people or the Innu, what can we do to improve voter turnout among those communities and encourage more of their members to stand as candidates? I'm referring to a system that resembles the current one. Do you have any ideas in that regard?