I'm afraid that I really want to focus on the fact that David Moscrop and Megan Dias have a particular view about delay. I'd like to pick up on where Nathan Cullen was on that and see how you feel about the awareness of this meeting. I think it will have changed. Darrell Bricker's poll was in mid-summer.
If you turn around, you'll see, and I want to get this on the record, there are two tables here that are empty. Perhaps you'll see the nameplates for the expected visitors. It says they're for media. We've been in five provincial capitals, one territorial capital, and several smaller communities, and so far, the only place where media showed up to cover the hearing was in Whitehorse. Full points to the Whitehorse Star and the local reporters.
We are trying. Goodness knows this committee is doing more than I think most parliamentary committees have done in our history. We have open-mike sessions. We have tremendous turnout from the public. I'd like to suggest to you, and ask each of you, whether your answers would change, that preference for delay is better. I think I got this right from you, Mr. Moscrop, that it is better to get the process right than to risk getting it wrong.
What if this is it? Nathan Cullen and I are thinking along the same lines here as people who see a window opened, politically, that is going to close soon. I don't have anything on the record from the current government that there is a commitment to have electoral reform come hell or high water no matter how long it takes.
I've heard a promise that 2015 will be the last election held under the first-past-the-post system. If this process doesn't do it, if we don't deliver on that, would your answer change in terms of electoral reform? Bear in mind, if we can deliver a system that works by the fall of 2017, we have between 2017 and 2019 for further public engagement and further public education. Who knows what manner of things we could try in that time?
It's my belief that it's now or never. Well, not never; we can get back to it in perhaps 2060. We have lots of time. But I think this is it for electoral reform. If you thought that, would you provide what you think would work to enhance public participation in the timelines that I believe we have in real life?
First David, and then Megan.