Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's hard to come after Clive Doucet, although I'm not sure I agree with everything he said. Every party comes to an end at some point. Sorry; it's just the truth.
I have three points I want to make.
The first is that I want to urge you, when you make your report and put forward a system, to talk about the pluses and minuses, the benefits and the downsides of any system you put forward. I say that because in a lot of the debate that happens around this, people talk about one system or another as if it is perfect and don't talk about the imperfections. You are dealing with a bunch of really complex systems that have pluses and minuses. At the end of the day, you'll pick one as you balance it all out. I urge you to be honest with Canadians about that. Tell them about the positives and the negatives of the system you put forward.
I happen to support proportional representation, but it is far from a perfect system. I think it is a little more perfect than our current system, which hasn't served us all that badly but which I agree is somewhat antiquated.
The second point I want to make is about the need to reform our political culture. That goes beyond the mechanics of our system. If we go to proportional representation, we are going to have minority governments forever. It becomes really important for parties to be able to work together. I think that we will be changing from an adversarial system to a collaborative system.
I want to remind you of the motion that you passed this week in the House of Commons on Yazidi women and girls. It was a tremendous motion put forward by the Conservative Party, supported by the other parties, and then supported by the government. What happened was a negotiation, on the floor of the House of Commons and behind the scenes, to come together and form a motion that everybody was able to work with. The Yazidi motion should really be the gold standard about how government can and should be done. I urge you to do that more and start practising it soon.
The third quick point is just in terms of decorum in the House of Commons. I'd urge you to adopt a Green Party approach to question period, which is that when the leader of the Green Party stands up to put forward a question, the party doesn't stand up to applaud and heckle during that period.
I notice that the Liberals have followed that recently, over the spring. I think that's tremendous, and I urge the other parties to do the same. What you do in question period really changes how people look at politics and government.
Thanks.