Thank you all for being here this evening. It is quite impressive to see a full room. Ms. May, I think you chartered a boat or something to get all these folks here.
Thank you so much to our three panellists for everything they have been doing in terms of democratic reform. I know it hasn't been easy. I know the B.C. Citizens' Assembly worked tirelessly on the issue.
Over the course of the last couple of months, we've heard that a lot of Canadians felt that their vote didn't count, so we have been tasked to look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of our current electoral system and everything that goes with that. We heard from expert witnesses who said there is no perfect electoral system that is going to address all the boo-boos we currently have in our system.
It's going to take a combination of initiatives to address a lot of these issues. For instance, something such as increasing female participation could include quotas, or it could include reimbursements from Elections Canada to political parties that run more candidates, and so on and so forth, and that has nothing to do with the actual changing of the voting system.
My question is for Mrs. Byford and Mr. Hodgson. In terms of your proposed model, the STV, could you talk to me a bit about what combination of tactics we would need to address all the problems we currently have? Even if we were to address proportional representation or getting that representation in the House through STV or another model, there are other things that we need to do. Could you give us any feedback on that?