Hi there. I really appreciate having a chance to speak to my members of Parliament.
I would like to speak from personal experience. For the past 10 years or so, I've felt very betrayed by our system, and at times I've felt like giving up.
Do we live in a democracy or has our democracy been taken over by a dictator?
I'm really heartened to see that even though the current Liberal government has the same type of false majority the previous government had, at least there is effort to do what you promised us when you were voted in. I really appreciate that.
I felt very sad when my young daughter, who is in her twenties, went to vote for the first time. I think it was in the election before last. She was all gung-ho. We're in Saanich, and she was really happy that she was going to be able to vote for Elizabeth May. Unfortunately, we were a couple of blocks outside of the riding, and so she wasn't able to.
I had to explain to her that if she wanted to vote for these types of principles, she would have to have to vote strategically, because we have to make sure that the votes are on the side of the issues we're interested in, such as the environment, and so on. We're not going to get that if the vote is split three ways, where 60% of us want something, but the guy with 38% gets in despite the fact that the majority of the people want what the two other groups want.
I think that speaks very much to the issue of minority governments. A lot of people pooh-pooh them, but I think some great things have happened in Canada as a result, like our Canada Health Act, and as Nathan Cullen referred to earlier, our social safety net, and so on. A lot of really wonderful things can happen in a democracy when we get much more collaboration, and people are forced to do that when they have minorities rather than majorities. I think this is a good thing for Canada, and it might be facilitated by proportional representation. Lots of the countries that have this and indeed most advanced democracies like it.
I really like the idea of not having a referendum until we are a couple of times in, so that people have a chance to experience it. In my experience talking to people, most of them have no clue. When I ask people if they saw the leaders debate the previous day, they say that they were too busy watching hockey. Unfortunately, that's the level that most people are at.
I'm really grateful, and I hope that you do have multi-party support for doing what you're doing and reforming the—