Thank you.
My name is David Merner. I ran for the Liberals in the last federal election in Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, the next riding over. I'm also the national vice-president of Fair Vote Canada, but I'm here speaking as a citizen.
I would, though, like to ask this committee to really consider how you're going to come to a unanimous compromise on the issues that have been raised today. It's not an easy thing. To the Liberals, I say that we campaigned on real change, and that means something. We also campaigned on making every vote count, and that means something as well.
To me it's clear. Alternative vote is not good enough, even though we passed a resolution at our 2014 national convention in favour of alternative vote. We have to do better because we campaigned on something different. We campaigned on making every vote count. We also campaigned on real change. AV is not real change; it's still a first-past-the-post system.
As Liberals we have to look at an alternative. We have an Atlantic caucus that's going to lose seats, right? It's going to be very hard to convince that caucus to vote in favour of proportional representation which does represent real change. What do we do about that?
To the Conservatives, though, who are giggling over there, this is a chance, actually—and not you, Nathan, I know. On the referendum issue, you're making a good point. This is a democracy. We need legitimacy, but let's do it in a fair way. Let's do it after we've tested the current system. Let's ensure that we know that Canadians are having an informed vote.
If you do it before, even Margaret Thatcher said referendums were the perfect forum for demagogues. Listen to Margaret Thatcher. She got it right. Have it after two elections when Canadians really know what they're in for. Then we'll have a real democratic vote because it will be an informed and fair vote.
Last, to the NDP folks who campaigned on MMP, I ask you to put a little water in your wine. There's an excellent compromise that Fair Vote Canada has put forward. It's the Kingsley model. It's a rural-urban proportional representation model, an excellent compromise for this committee.
I challenge you all to come up with a unanimous report. We'd like that from you. Everybody in this room would like that from you.
Thank you.