Good evening. I am honoured and truly excited to be able to address the committee tonight. Your being here and your mandate are amazing. It gives me hope.
I have three points I want to make. I hope I can make them in two minutes.
First, regarding the proposal to have the decision ultimately put to a referendum, which I understand is being floated by at least one party, I strongly oppose this. I think this is really a backdoor and slightly cowardly way of trying to avoid change to the system. The Liberals were elected on a clear platform for change of the electoral system, and that is all the mandate that is needed to actually change the electoral system.
Second, I am strongly in favour of proportional representation. I do not have a specific system I'm endorsing, as I'm not an expert in that, but I do want to share with you my experience with first past the post. I have voted in every election that I was eligible to vote in except for this last one, when I was travelling. I have never had someone for whom I voted get elected. That could be because my values do not align with those of a lot of Canadians. At the same time, my values, my opinions, and what I want to see our government do—I think I should have a voice in that.
Third, just because a large number of the committee members seem to be focused on the issue of local versus proportional representation, and on Mr. McKinnon's testimony specifically, I want to address that. In our current system, with votes and centralized power in the PM's office, I do not personally place a large degree of importance on local representation, and certainly not in having a proportional representation system implemented.
I would note that I worked with Fair Vote Yukon for a number of years. We got hundreds of signatures to petition the territorial government to look at electoral reform, so I'm not alone in prioritizing, if it comes down to a choice, electoral reform over having perhaps strong local representation.
Thank you.