Hi, everyone. Thank you for letting me speak today.
I am before you today to speak in favour of proportional representation, simply because it is proportional and because I like evidence-based decision-making.
In the last election, the party that is in power now got 39% of the vote and ended up with 55% of the seats. These kinds of distortions feed cynicism and disengagement, and create frustrated voters.
Outside of politics, I manage a women's addiction and rehabilitation centre. Before I came here today, I went up to the women and asked, “Who here votes?” Only one woman out of the entire bunch voted, and the reason the remainder of them don't vote is that they don't believe their vote counts.
Our system is alienating people. The voter turnout is falling and it has been for decades. In 2008, it hit an all-time low at 58% of voters. In 2015, we reached 68%, and we thought that was a big cause for celebration. Guess what? With five more points, we would still not even reach the threshold of the eighties.
Proportional-representation-based systems help generate better voter turnout across the world. Of course reforming the voting system will not fix everything. No single reform is going to fix all our democratic ills, but implementing proportional representation will provide the tools for a fair, representative, and engaging electoral system that citizens can use to improve our country and all our lives.
I call on you to seize this moment and give citizens the tools of a voting system based on mixed member proportional representation.