Hi, I'm speaking for myself and my women friends. We know you're designing a new electoral system, and we're asking you to build three features into your recommended model: fair proportional representation, the opportunity for visionary policy-making, and collaboration and consensus in this country.
By fair representation we mean genuine proportionality with seats reflected by the vote. We want politicians who can speak to regional issues. We want politicians who can reflect gender, racial diversity, and economic class. Please don't leave the low-income people out of this reform. They're not all on computers. We may also need from you a recommendation on electoral financing.
The second thing is a system that encourages visionary government. We ask that you build a system where parties are clear on what their platforms are and say what they want to do, so that we can encourage them to work together on the priorities of all Canadians, and we can judge if they are doing what they say they're doing.
The third thing is collaboration and consensus, because all of you know that more heads are better than one. We thank you for putting yours together for all this time.
My personal preference would be a mixed member proportional system with regional representation, but all the people in our group agreed on those priorities.
In terms of the vote, three parties ran on improving the electoral system. Let's do it. Let's give it a chance, and then let people at some point say whether they are happy with the way Canada votes. Make it the best system in the world. There are 90 others you have to beat.