It has been 11 years since I chaired the electoral reform commission. It took some scratching and digging to try to bring forward some memories so that I could sit next to someone who is working on something currently. Let me give you a little background.
The electoral future commission that I chaired filed a report in 2005. The P.E.I. legislature had been lukewarm or hot on the topic of electoral reform for a number of years. In April 2002, there was a report on proportional representation, which was provided to the legislature from the then chief electoral officer of the province. It was a survey document. The legislature at that time got to read about or look at a range of voting alternatives that might be available to them.
In December 2003, as a follow-up to that, the legislature named former chief justice Norman Carruthers to look a little more intensely at the options that had been presented earlier by Mr. Wigginton. He provided another survey report, but he tightened it. In it he recommended to the legislature that they pursue mixed member proportional.
In the fall of 2004, the legislature, on the strength of that report, passed a motion to create the Commission on P.E.I.'s Electoral Future. In January 2005, that commission was put in place. It was an eight-person commission. The legislature attempted to ensure that it was a cross-section of the province, and that political parties were represented.
In the fall of 2005, our group presented its report. Our task was a narrow one. The two prior to us had a broader task; ours was narrow. The legislature had already accepted mixed member proportional. We were asked to devise an educational program that would explain to the public the difference between first past the post and mixed member proportional. We were to prepare an educational package. We were to recommend the wording of a plebiscite question, and we were put on a very tight timeline.
There were posters, pamphlets, radio and TV, and some 20 small groups in addition to a dozen planned meetings that we held across the province to try to ensure that we got out to as many people as possible.
There was some push-back to what we were doing. Obviously, some people thought we were promoting mixed member proportional, and folks had an objection to that, for whatever reason, when, indeed, what we were attempting to do was show that mixed member proportional held up against first past the post, which we kind of assumed most people had a handle on, but maybe they didn't.
Our role, then, was simply to prepare folks for the plebiscite that was to come. We devised a question. The question of the day was: Should Prince Edward Island change to the mixed member proportional system as presented by the Commission on P.E.I.'s Electoral Future? There was a plebiscite on November 28, 2005. There were 32,361 ballots cast, and 63.58% of the good ballots said no.
I might just say that, after 11 years, it would be almost impossible to find a number of copies of each of the things that we used. I do have a final report in both English and French. I have a copy, if needed, of the Norman Carruthers work and the one that came from the chief electoral officer, and so on.
Maybe I'll just stop there.