Mr. Chair, I'm surprisingly going to propose to you that your committee add an emphasis on deciding which voting system politicians would like.
To begin, the biggest problem is that half the voters do not have the representative they want in Ottawa. Any PR system would improve on that. Another big problem is regionalism, such as the shortage of opposition members from the Atlantic region and of government members from the Prairies. Any PR system would solve that.
Among the family of PR systems, the experts most commonly favour mixed member proportional. Fair Vote Canada's version, called rural-urban PR, would give excellent results. Another version, Sean Graham's dual member mixed proportional, is closer to our present system.
I will also mention a primitive version of STV we are submitting to the committee, called neighbourhood shared voting. Neighbourhood shared voting is exactly the same as our current system, except that the ballots which have not helped to elect the winner are shared out among the neighbouring ridings using two simple rules. Computer simulations of the last five elections show neighbourhood shared voting produces PR and fixes the regionalism problem.
The three PR systems I've mentioned have minor differences in terms of sorting out nominations and servicing constituents, and they will produce virtually the same results once members get to Ottawa.
Therefore, I believe the committee should recommend whichever PR system you feel would be most liked by the politicians and voters. I emphasize the need for the politicians to like the system because that is crucial to attracting the best candidates.
Thank you.