Mr. Chair, thank you very much for holding this exercise in democracy.
I have two observations for you.
First, in my opinion, democracy begins by recognizing all votes. Recognizing all votes is recognizing the will of the people. I feel that, with the current voting system, the only votes that count are those that elect members of Parliament. The other votes have no weight. For example, when I go to vote and I vote for a candidate that does not win the election, it is as if I am putting my ballot in a garbage can rather than in the ballot box. I am not the only one to experience that. It has been said that millions of people waste their vote in that way under the current system.
My second observation is that, recognizing the will of the people also means that Parliament must be a mirror that accurately reflects Canadian society. That is why, if a party gets 20% of the votes, it should have 20% of the seats. The current voting system is a mirror that really distorts the reality. You do not need me to give you figures to show you how that happened in the last election.
What I see as the most serious aspect of the system, is that, at the moment, with our first past the post voting system, the outcome of the election is determined by mechanics and not by the will of those voting, the will of Canadians. I feel that it would be a fine project for our society to set as our objective the reduction of the democratic deficit by, for example, establishing a proportional system, instead of constantly talking about reducing the deficit and getting the deficit to zero at any cost. I don't think that is a major concern.
We were talking earlier about citizen participation. However, if we had a societal project specifically designed to reduce the democratic deficit, it would increase citizen participation.
Thank you very much.