From that, one might conclude that consultation is undesirable to failure, if there was failure to have a referendum on something as fundamental as changing the voting system.
I understand that the argument has been put forward in other hearings that parties in addition to the Liberals—who won the election with 39% of the popular vote—had promised, or at least had as part of their party's platform, the prospect of electoral reform. Yet in an election, people vote for many different reasons. They vote on leader, vote on party platform, vote on local representative, and they vote on a whole range of policy issues.
I don't know how many different policy statements each party had in the election, but it ran in the hundreds for some. Is it really fair to say that if a party has, for example, one single line about electoral reform that that constitutes a mandate to change a system that has been in existence for over 150 years and that many Canadians might proudly say is a contributing factor to the society we live in with its recognized high levels of human development, its values of tolerance, and the prosperity that is enjoyed by many?