Thank you for hearing me.
Good afternoon. My name is Martin Stout. I am British by birth and upbringing, which you've all guessed by now anyway, but I'm Canadian by choice. I've been a resident of Beaumont for 25 years, and I've been a Canadian citizen for 21. I've voted in elections in both countries as often as I could.
Britain and Canada both elect democratic governments by what's known as the Westminster parliamentary system. In such a system, we, the voting public, do not elect a president, a commander-in-chief, a prime minister, or even a government, as some other countries do. We elect members of Parliament, 338 of them, from ridings across the country, and it's those elected MPs who decide who shall be in the government and who shall be the prime minister.
The power and authority to do this, where does it come from? Where does the government get the power to make legislation that binds us all and to levy taxes we must all pay? That authority derives exclusively from the mandate that we grant them by voting for them. It's only by voting that we can give our consent to be governed in this way, regardless of the actual outcome of the vote. This consent, expressed through voting, is what gives Parliament its power and authority to govern us. It follows logically and inevitably that neither government nor a prime minister has the right, the power, or the authority to change the counting method, or the value of each of our votes, without our expressed consent. The best way to do that is by offering options to change the vote, including an option of no change, through a referendum or a plebiscite in all 338 ridings for every voter to participate in.
In every case I've been able to find, in a Westminster style of government—and that's Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Great Britain, provincial governments here in Canada, Ontario, B.C., Prince Edward Island, all of them—when they've sought to change the voting system, they have gone through a referendum or a plebiscite. I believe very strongly that to change the voting system without such a referendum, without seeking the consent of the voters, would be illegitimate.