Thank you and good afternoon.
My name is J.P. Kirby, and I run election-atlas.ca. I support electoral reform as I believe that first past the post is not compatible with the multi-party reality of this country. With that in mind, I believe that any reform of the system should revolve around four basic concepts: that the results should be proportional; regional representation should be ensured; there should not be separate classes or tiers of MPs; and the ballot and process should remain as simple as possible.
I have submitted a proposal that I believe meets all four of these criteria: an open-list, multi-vote, PR system. Most of the country outside northern or remote areas will be divided into multi-member districts. Each party could nominate up to a full slate of candidates and each voter would have as many votes on the ballot as members could be elected. The party results would be totalled up and seats distributed based on a standard PR formula with the individual vote totals for each candidate determining which members are elected.
This puts control completely in the hands of the voters. For instance, voters who like a local candidate, but not his or her party, can split their ballot as many ways as they wish. There will not be any need for a pre-ranked list, like in multi-member systems. The simplicity of marking an X on the ballot will remain in place, unlike in STV.
My calculations have determined that, depending on the formula used, the seat total for each of the major parties in the last federal election could have fallen within three percentage points of their popular vote total. Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to discuss it further here, but I have submitted a brief that explains this proposal in more detail, which you can read on the committee website.
Thank you.