Thank you.
I would like to start by stating that I am strongly in favour of a proportional voting system. Watching the hearings of this committee has given me hope that we can finally update our system to a proportional one. I worry, though, about these calls for a referendum, which seem intended to kill this opportunity for change and force Canadians to keep wasting their votes for the sake of partisan politics.
I have first-hand experience of a national referendum on changing the voting system through the 2011 U.K. referendum on the alternative vote. The result was 68% for no, which kept the status quo, and 32% for yes, which would have changed the system. I worked for six months as a campaigner for the yes side of the vote. Let me explain that I would not support the alternative vote for Canada. It is still a majoritarian system that fails to address most of the problems with first past the post. I repeatedly encountered people who supported electoral reform but would not vote for the AV system because it was not proportional. The campaign itself was also problematic.
People vote in referendums based on the information they are given. The yes campaign messaging was weak and largely failed to explain the system itself. The no campaign's core messaging strategy was to create fear around change and to spread misinformation about the AV system. They said it was too complicated, that it would cost too much and took too long to count, that it unfairly gave some people more votes than others—all complete myths. There is no reason to think that the same tactics wouldn't be used in a campaign here in Canada.
Referendums tend to favour the status quo, and both sides of the campaign can introduce messaging that can be counterproductive, misleading, or simply false, and a referendum is not the only way to lend legitimacy to a change in the voting system.
I urge you to focus on those methods now and in your recommendations.
Thank you.