I'd like to thank the committee for having this open mike and giving us the opportunity to voice our opinions.
I'm for proportional representation, and I wanted to share my opinion about why I do not want a referendum, as much as I love voting. There are two principles to this. First, I work in health care, so I consider the knowledge of harm as a principle. I think we've heard enough expert testimony that we can agree that there is harm in our current system. People are being essentially disenfranchised and deprived of their full representation.
When you have a referendum, the full knowledge of the harms and the benefits don't always get down to the voter. I'm from B.C. and I was there during the 2005 referendum on the single transferable vote. I know a number of people who voted against it and who had no idea what it was about. One of my mom's best friends voted against it thinking it would somehow allow Quebec votes to influence the B.C. referendum on the legal transferable vote.
Unless you're going to have some kind of a testing, where people are given enough information on the impacts of a referendum on proportional representation to make it possible for them to give informed consent, the way we expect when we consent to a medical treatment, then we can't allow people to vote against their best interests. We don't allow this in medicine and we don't allow it in things like workers' rights. For example, a person who is not aware of their rights is not allowed to sign them away to do unpaid overtime hours.
I feel this should be considered when we think about a referendum for something we know is in the people's best interests, and when there is a likelihood that they could vote against their best interests without knowing what they're doing.
I also believe there is a mandate for the Liberal government to bring this forward without a referendum, because they had it in their campaign promise. They may not have spoken specifically about the type of representation, but people voted that government in with it clearly in their platform that this was to come, so I think we have the mandate to proceed with this.
Thank you.