As a good Canadian, I will say thank you to everyone here today and apologize for my tardiness. With this many meetings in this many cities, I didn't realize which floor this meeting was on.
That being said, it was interesting to have two conflicting panellists today, and when I say “conflicting”, that's not in a bad way. We've heard a lot about various systems and the magical powers they have, that they will solve all evil on earth, and so on and so forth.
I'm also of the mindset that our electoral system is an ecosystem. There are many parts to it, and it's not necessarily the way we vote that is going to fix everything. There are tactics we can develop. There are things we can implement to address, say, the tone in the House.
We talked a little bit about how we can change the committee structure to include more different voices. We talked a little bit about mandatory voting. And we heard a little bit about cynicism. I'll premise this by saying that a lot of people are surprised to know that after these meetings, most of this committee—in fact all of the committee—usually sits down and has a debriefing, and we laugh and we joke around. We actually do get along.
One thing we did notice is that, if there is a political will to change something, it's not necessarily an electoral system that will address some of the problems. For instance, let's say we want to increase the engagement of women, of youth, of minorities in politics to run for office. I'm of the firm belief that people decide not to run for office not because of the fact they don't like the electoral system per se, but rather it is the job, the idea of the adversarial tone, the idea of your life being on the front page, the idea of the constant bickering.
I'll give you an example. There are 197 new MPs. I'm one of them. We decided, little backbenchers that we are, to change the tone of the House by one simple measure. We brought forward the idea to stop clapping during question period. We tried this in June. We decided we would not clap. We support our government, but we're not going to clap at the answer. On the first day everyone looked at us as if we were crazy. On the second day, they were all wondering what the Liberals were up to. On the third day, we saw that the tone in the House actually calmed down because the reaction on the other side was amplified because we weren't reacting, and it calmed the House down. There wasn't a change in the electoral system; it was a change in political will to do things differently.
My question is for the two of you. What can we be doing that is not necessarily a change in our electoral system but can address some of the issues we are facing, whether it be participation at the polls, running for office, changing the tone, or having a collaborative approach?
If you could elaborate, that would be great.