Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My background is agriculture. I'm a retired rancher-farmer. I lived in one of the largest constituencies in this province, which is populated all over, called Crowfoot for most of my working life. I am definitely not in favour of a proportional representation type of system. I believe that it is so complicated to try to explain to Canadians that the government is going to get into a lot of problems if they try to do it and put it forward without a plebiscite. However, I do believe in the preferential ballot idea, which nobody seems to want to discuss anymore except in a negative fashion. I believe that a preferential ballot would give me the type of leeway that I need as the voting public to first of all blackball the party that I didn't want in power whereas now I'm strategically voting to deal with it. I believe that you have a problem as well with the Constitution, as was suggested here by one witness earlier, and I know that she suggested it probably wouldn't be a problem, but I think it could be. It's especially going to be a problem if somebody decides to try to take this whole idea down in the courts and they can put it forward and hang it out to dry.
The Prime Minister has said that he's in favour of a preferential ballot. He campaigned on it during his leadership, and I support him on that. I think that is all we really need to be looking at. We can set that up and do it very quickly in this country with the electoral system we have right now.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.