Thank you, and thank you for the opportunity to be here to speak. We don't get this opportunity very often. It's very much appreciated, and all your hard work is as well, of course.
I'm a teacher by trade and by nature. The fundamental job that I've had for most of my life is taking things that are very complex and complicated, with all the chaff around them, and then distilling it down, getting rid of the chaff, and getting at a core idea.
I have three points to mention today. They're brief.
The first one is on the topic of whether or not we need proportional representation. When I take away the chaff of all that there is to say and learn about that topic, I think to myself, “What is any election anyway?” To my mind, any election is simply a manifestation of a core question: what do the people want? That is what an election is. It's a question. Majority governments that are in place with less than 40% of the people's vote don't answer that question. It's that simple. If an election is the question of “what do the people want?”, then we must see that reflected in the results—so “yes” to proportional representation.
I should have said earlier that I'm speaking on behalf of the Fredericton chapter of the Council of Canadians. So far, from what we can understand, I think we're in favour of a mixed member scheme for proportional representation. That could change, depending on what we find out next.
The second point is on the subject of a referendum. I think there's a massive gap between the ideology of a referendum and the reality of it. The ideology is that you should let the people decide. That is, after all, the democratic way, and that sounds right to my ears. The reality is that people have to make that decision based on some kind of knowledge, and by and large, they don't have it.
We, as the Council of—am I done already?