Thank you very much for hearing me. I am a local film and television producer. I'm also a Generation Xer. Many of my friends are millennials. In speaking with many young people, what we've all heard a lot is that many feel disenfranchised, and the vast majority of young people have stated that they want some form of proportional representation.
In addition to this, having gone to many different town halls around electoral reform, I know that this is also echoed by most people. Most people want some form of proportional representation.
Also, in Canada people are used to electing a representative. We like to have a representative. Therefore, mixed member proportional representation is the system that will make the most Canadians happy. It is actually a fairly easy system. I really like the idea that you can vote for a candidate and a party, because you might want to vote for two different people. This gives you a lot of excellent options.
A lot of people have said that what's happening right here might actually be just a ruse—I'm not sure—and that the Liberal government is actually planning to put forward their own agenda and not listen to the people by putting forward the system of alternative votes, the ranked system. I want to point out that under a ranked system.... Currently, the Liberals have 40% support and 54% of the seats in the House. According to statistics, if there were a ranked system currently, the Liberals would have probably around 66% of the system, which would greatly skew in their favour and is kind of why they want that system.
Therefore, I want to make it clear that if the Liberal government does decide to put that through, it will make a lot of Canadians very angry. I do hope that you are going to listen to the vast majority of the people here.
I want to add one last thing. If we are going to have a system that is mixed member proportional representation, we could actually introduce a ranked ballot within the election of a candidate. This system brings in both strategies, because it would prevent an extremist or a very unlikeable candidate from getting elected. Thirty-three per cent of people might vote for one candidate while 67% may actually despise that candidate, yet they're representing them.