Just as a way of background, before the committee began its work, we'd been following and preparing for this presentation on electoral reform and trying to engage the community. The challenge we found in trying to engage our community is that there just wasn't a lot of pickup. I don't think people in our community, the folks we work with, understand why we're engaged in this conversation, and what's in it for them. Therefore, they're not engaging in it.
Through our newsletters and our web 2.0 products, we've been trying to engage our community in this, and we just haven't got the pick up. Part of the problem here is that it's so vague. You talk to Canadians about electoral reform and to people in our community, and their first question is, “What do you mean by that?” You say, “They're thinking about changing the way you vote at the federal level.” They ask, “What are they proposing?” You say, “There are five or six different systems.” By that time you've lost them.
These are busy people. These are people who are out trying to get scarce resources to provide direct services to their communities. These are small not-for-profit organizations. They're not sophisticated organizations that have expertise on electoral reform. What's in it for them? What does this mean for them? People haven't been able to get that message across, so I think that's why our community hasn't engaged thus far.
What we're asking for is to give us a specific model that we can take to our community, and then we can ask them what they think about it.