Thank you for your time.
My name is Jon Lumer. I came this evening also to speak in favour of proportional representation, and against a referendum. I spent the last writ period in several different ridings on both sides of the country. I worked first with a candidate in Laurier—Sainte-Marie in Quebec. There were nine candidates in the riding. Three candidates received more than 10,000 votes each. The NDP kept that riding. Hélène Laverdière is the MP, with less than 40% of the vote. However, 61.7% of the votes were not translated into representation in the House.
I spent the last half of the campaign in the north Okanagan. Most people I spoke with in downtown Vernon were trying to decide how to vote strategically. The consensus was that the NDP had the best hope of beating the Conservatives. This ended up being false. The Liberals beat the NDP by four points, but in any case, the Conservatives maintained their seat with less than 40% of the vote; 60.7% of the votes were not translated into representation in the House.
My family's home is in the Laurentian Mountains of Quebec, and in that riding of Laurentides—Labelle the vote was split fairly evenly among four parties. The Bloc took the riding with less than 30% of the vote; 70.3% of the votes were not translated into representation in the House.
I arrived in Vancouver on November 1 with my wife. Our MP is the Honourable Hedy Fry. Dr. Fry was elected with 56.1% of the votes, which is to say that 32,554 ballots were cast for Dr. Fry, but she only needed 11,619 votes to secure her seat; so, in fact, even in a safe riding where most people had the pleasure of actually voting for the person who speaks for them in Parliament, 80% of the votes were not translated into representation in the House.
Under our system, the more familiar you are with the workings of democracy, the more difficult it becomes to convince yourself that your vote matters. The less motivated you are to participate, no matter where you are in the country, no matter who you would like to vote for, that is a very sad state of affairs, but it can be easily corrected. Please do what you can to ensure we obtain some form of proportional representation.
Thank you.