Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank all the witnesses for being here this evening.
This is the committee's 44th meeting. It has now heard from close to 100 witnesses and has received thousands of comments.
My first question is for the representatives of Fair Vote Canada. I
was interested to hear that the comments the Prime Minister made earlier this week, to the effect that reform might not be necessary, actually mobilized the 65,000 members you represent, rather than decreasing their motivation.
The same thing might apply to the people you surveyed, Mr. Graves. Who knows? That might be why he said the opposite today, from what I understand.
In any case, as a Quebecer, I must admit that it felt like Groundhog Day this week. We have seen the same thing in Quebec. An opposition party denounces the unfairness of the voting method, since one party can win a majority of seats with a minority of support, and suddenly it is the opposite once it gets into power.
In your presentation, you said that 90 countries around the world, including 85 OECD member countries, have adopted proportional representation. From what you know about their transition to proportional representation, how do you get out of the vicious circle in which a party maintains one thing while in opposition and something else when they are in power, because what is fair in one situation is no longer fair in the other situation? How do you get away from that?