Good evening, Mr. Chairman and honourable members.
Let me tell you a story about multiple member ridings. I'm very much against multi-member ridings. This riding that you're in right now used to be called Vancouver—Burrard, and it was a two member riding at the provincial level. Just over in another part of Vancouver was another two member riding, Vancouver—Point Grey. What used to happen is that the candidates used to be nominated, and then they used to be elected in pairs. In other words, two MLAs from the same party were elected to the constituency. That worked up until 1988 when there was a by-election. What happened after that is one of the candidates who was elected in 1986 stayed, and the other one who left was replaced by an MLA from another party. Now the problem with these multiple member ridings is that you will never, and I will repeat this, you will never get all of the MPs from the same riding from different parties working together in the same constituency office.
For example, we have five people over on this side of the table. Let's consider that as a fictional riding. They will not work in the same constituency office. You will have four of them working together, but the fifth one will not, and that will create confusion for the voters. Who do they go to for help? Who do they go to for assistance? They will go to the MP of the party of government, but which one?
Then you have a problem of ego. You have a problem of one MP trying to get ahead of the other MP within the same party, so that's a big problem. It will cause a lot of trouble at the party level because, I can tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I've seen it from every party, and in some cases, the local riding association can't even handle a simple nomination meeting. I've seen it.
With that, ladies and gentlemen, please join with me and all Canadians by saying, Mr. Trudeau, give us that referendum.