I'm a member of the national advisory council of Fair Vote Canada, and I'm also a co-founding partner at Leadnow. I chose to take on both those responsibilities and those honours because I am so passionate about electoral reform. For me, this has been the most important issue in the last number of years, because I'm a mother and I was frustrated and very sad to be unable to make a convincing case to my son and his friends, and my goddaughter, who I helped to raise, and her friends, about why they should participate in our electoral system.
I happen to really like our MP. He does a great job. But it's a death sentence for encouraging the young to vote because he's going to get re-elected. The young people around me, even though they're politically engaged and they support his values, say they should spend their time doing something else, and I think that's a great pity.
I'm in favour of proportional representation, which will change that. I'm in favour of lowering the voting age to 16. If kids in Scotland who are 16 can vote on the future of their country, then kids in Canada who are 16 can also vote. I really want you to provide some money to the provinces that would be dedicated to civic education in schools.
I'm also a woman. I know, because I've looked at the data, that proportional representation is the only system that will raise the ceiling so that we will end what the United Nations calls our democratic deficit. Let there be no mistake about it. We do not have a functioning democracy as long as we have a glass ceiling that refuses to elect more women than 27%. No system will change that other than PR.
I'm also convinced that the great challenge of our time is to balance the power of the market with the power of the values of people. We're going to be able to do that only if we have an electoral system that does not allow parties to become captive to corporate interests. I think that's what's happening with the decision today regarding Petronas and Site C. It's not that Mr. Trudeau is not well intentioned; I think he's become captured. I think that if he were forced to work in a collaborative system with more Green Party members, with more New Democrats, and with more parties that support those kinds of values, it would be harder for corporations to capture.
Finally, I'm a lawyer and I'm a mediator. I've spent my entire career helping people not to fight. The first-past-the-post system institutionalizes fighting, and we need less of that.
Thank you.