Thank you.
My name is Kim Vance. I'm not here to represent anyone. I'm here as a mom. I'm also here as someone who works in the field of international human rights and as a dyed-in-the-wool maritimer.
As a mom, I'm very worried about the low participation of youth in the political process, extremely worried. As the mom of a daughter who's of African-Nova Scotian descent, I'm also worried that time after time she sees nobody who looks like her from this region going to Parliament. She also sees nobody who looks like her in the current makeup of the cabinet. As much as I'm appreciative of the current Prime Minister for gender parity in the cabinet, it is a one-off act, not an institutional step that this government is taking. We need more institutional steps, like proportional representation.
On the international front, I'm embarrassed actually when I do human rights work and people talk about how great Canada is. That waned a little bit in the last 10 years. It's getting better again, but it stands in stark contrast to where we rank, for instance, on the role of women in the democratic processes in our country. We're very low, and that is unacceptable for a country that goes out and hallmarks itself as a beacon of human rights.
As a maritimer, I cannot imagine a more troubling situation than the one we're in right now. Three out of our four federal parties have no representative, no voice from our region. This cannot happen. Even though I may not support those other three parties, I still think it's important that our voices are in those caucuses. It's essential. I can't imagine a situation where the next time around, if we have a different government, that government has had an absence of perspective from this entire region of the country for four years, eight years, or whatever. That is unacceptable, and proportional representation is the answer to that.
I disagree with some of the other people who have spoken today. I do think you have to act quickly. I think you can get it right in a tight timeline. I have listened a lot to the committee deliberations, and I have read a lot of material. Other than getting rid of first past the post and moving to some system of proportional representation, I don't think there's a lot of strong debate about what the options are. I think you can act. I think you can act quickly and act on an option that works.