Good morning.
I will begin by briefly describing the organization I represent today. The FECQ represents the students of 22 CEGEPS in the province of Quebec. These have more than 65,000 students throughout the province, from Abitibi to the North Shore, Gaspésie, Joliette, etc. From its inception, the FECQ was built on democratic principles, that is to say that we try to give a voice to everyone and ensure that all opinions are heard and can be expressed to build a consensus. That is the vision that guided our reflection on democracy and the representation of the opinion of all citizens.
We consider that the current voting system does not meet our expectations concerning the representation of everyone's wishes. We are aware of the fact that the first-past-the-post system distorts representation considerably, and that there can be a discrepancy between the votes and the members who are elected to the House. We advocate the adoption of a proportional voting system with compensatory mechanisms.
Also, we would like to see half of the elected representatives elected in ridings, and the other half chosen on the basis of closed lists, which would be tabled before the beginning of the elections by the various political parties.
Moreover, the FECQ is opposed to any affirmative action, whether be to further the representation of women, ethnocultural communities or young people in politics. We are instead in favour of various measures such as popular education, which could change the population's attitude, rather than imposing quotas. We believe that the solution should not come from artificial measures but rather through changing attitudes. We are also open to the idea of lowering the voting age to 16, as has been done in Austria, which saw a quite significant increase in electoral participation among young people.
We think that this would be a good way to improve the participation of young people particularly. We know that it is quite complicated to encourage electoral participation among young people. Although things were different during the last federal election, which made the statistics lie, we believe that there would be avenues to encourage that participation.