Thank you to the committee for coming all this way across the mountains to hear us.
I have three things that I'd like to tell you with my two minutes.
First of all, I've been voting since I was 18, and never once has the person I voted for been elected. Last year I held my nose and voted strategically, and even that person didn't win. That's 22 years of wasted votes. I figure I have about 10 elections left in me before I line up at that big polling station in the sky, and just once I would like my vote to count. Proportional representation can make that happen. Canada has about a 50% rate of wasted votes. Other countries that use PR have about a 5% rate. This is something we can do.
Second, I've felt left out of the divisive politics of the last decade at the federal level, and so have many of my contemporaries. We've had a minority of voters elect a false majority government that didn't do a good job of engaging with people who disagreed with it. The result was many laws and policies that made voters angry at the government. I would rather have a system where coalitions that may disagree with each other work out compromises that everyone can live with. Proportional representation can do this too.
Third, regarding a referendum, in the last decade I've voted in four provincial referendums, in Ontario and in British Columbia, and it turns out that they are a terrible way to make political decisions. They are polarizing; they provide a lot of misinformation, and they're just a way for politicians to avoid making tough decisions. Many of you promised to change the voting system. We elected you as representatives, and now you have our permission to make our votes count.
Thank you.