Thank you to the panel as well as our audience members for attending.
I want to thank all three organizations, the Council of Canadians, Fair Vote Canada, and Alternatives North, for the work and the preparation that has gone into the presentations. They all were very detailed. Our committee has heard from a wide variety of experts and different lobby or advocacy groups that have positions on what system should be recommended for change. We've had a lot of people come out to attend these meetings to give private remarks as well.
One of the experts that we heard from, who was an advocate herself for proportional representation, pointed out that the consultative process that we are undertaking has failed to attract younger, less wealthy, less educated, or other marginalized groups, to attend many of the meetings. She said that the meetings have tended to attract a specialized group of people, those people who are very keen on the subject matter and probably possess a fair bit of specialized knowledge. I would also, perhaps, add to her list of people that we have not seen at meetings, people who simply have varying levels of interest in the subject matter. They might certainly vote. They might think from time to time about electoral systems, but they are perhaps not willing to give up a day at work, or hire a babysitter, or otherwise give up other things in their day-to-day life to tell our committee what they think.
We are hearing specialized testimony both from expert panellists and audience members, and ultimately we've been asked, and there's desirability that we've heard from this panel, about finding consensus. Well, real consensus would actually be everybody in Canada agreeing. That's consensus: everybody agrees. There would probably have to be a lower threshold than that. It's not reasonable to expect millions of people to all agree on something, but the legitimacy of the outcome is extremely important.
Ms. Little, you told us that we must never underestimate the intelligence of citizens. Then why not put the final recommendation of this committee to a direct vote, to all Canadians including those who were either too busy or something to come and tell us what they think at a microphone at an open public session?