Thank you.
The first-past-the-post system has been in place in Canada for quite some time, and now we want a change. We want to adopt a proportional or mixed member proportional representation system.
People are afraid of change, generally speaking. That's to be expected given that change represents the unknown. We are used to the current system, which elects majority or minority governments. In the case of a majority government, the system works well. But in the case of a minority government, a coalition, it doesn't work so well.
As a teacher, I've been to Quebec City, Victoria, and Ottawa with my students. I'm sorry to say this, but when we look at the way MPs work in Parliament, it becomes clear that you aren't the best role models.
Our Prime Minister, who was also a teacher, almost surely never told his students that, when working together, they should work against one another and not listen to what the other person has to say. No way. As teachers and parents, we tell our students and children to work together in the spirit of co-operation and not against one another because that gets us nowhere. Conversely, by working together, we would get farther than we are now.
The politics we practice—and it's worse in the United States; we won't get into that—do nothing to advance Canada's political movement or Canadians' ideas. Given the statistics cited by other speakers, I think that, if we opt for a system that supports mutual assistance and adopt a proportional system, we will begin to think differently, in the hope that members will work together. They won't have a choice if they actually want the country to make progress.
Thank you.