Mr. Genuis says “not enough”. He had a lot more to say, I know.
I was in the same boat. As I indicated earlier, I got a chance to read probably only 10% of those emails that Canadians sent in. I thought it was good that all Canadians were getting a chance. It's not something that happens all the time that Canadians get the opportunity to have a direct say in committee. I was giving that voice to them by doing that. I could have taken probably, I don't know, many more hours to do that. I could have spent probably 30 or 40 hours reading all those, based on how long it took to read the 10% I did read. The committee sat for hundreds of hours, I'm sure. It was to stand up for a democratic principle.
I did talk about this a little bit earlier, but I didn't get to finish my thought on it. With the electoral reform committee, something similar happened. We had all those consultations, which the chair will remember well. All across Canada we had opportunities for experts to come in. Many of the experts were academics or university professors who study political science. They came in with, in some cases, historical context. In some cases, it was to enlighten us on what other countries were doing, or on what some of the provinces within Canada have proposed or done in the past. In some cases, it was to bring forward new models that had either been used in practice elsewhere or were just theoretical models of what could happen.
There was one thing that I think we identified very quickly. I think it happened among members who were advocating for change and among members who, like me, really believed it was more for Canadians to have a say. What we did arrive at really quickly was that many of the models we saw out there that were applied in other countries.... Although most, if not all, would agree that our electoral system is not perfect, we quickly discovered that probably no electoral system is perfect. We also discovered that for countries that have tried other things, or jurisdictions that have tried other things, new problems arise with the changes they make. We also really quickly established that, in many cases, countries are different. There are different realities to Canada, as there are to many of these other countries. We have a very unique country, actually, in Canada. We have a very unique country because of the size of our country, because of the geography of our country, and because of some of the distinctness due to that size and how widely dispersed the population is. There's some incredible distinctness in different regions and in different parts of the country.
If you applied a system that's been applied to a country that doesn't have those same distinctions and differences and uniqueness to it, there would be real problems. In many cases, people who were coming forward with proposals to that committee were coming forward with a modified or adapted-to-Canada version of various models that had been applied elsewhere. That became very interesting, but I found that with every one of those proposals, there was something that just didn't quite fit or didn't quite work. It was like trying to put a square peg into a round hole, that kind of thing. It just didn't quite work in all those instances.
In the end, the committee did come up with what they saw as a bit of a compromise, I suppose, on some kind of system that not all of us agreed with, certainly, but some members did. We did it on the principle that any suggestion being made there would be put forward to Canadians for a referendum, for them to have their say. Because of that, those of us who weren't so certain about the proposal that was being put forward were comfortable. We believed it really was up to Canadians to make that decision anyway. The bottom line is that lots of conversations occurred, not just around the table in the committee room, as is happening today, but outside of that, on the sidelines and in the background of those things, as often happens with things here in Parliament. It can be more productive when everybody has a chance to have a say. Sometimes you're having a say through your House leader or through your whip or whatever.
We all have an opportunity to get our input that way. It's not possible.... For me today, I've been talking for quite some time. Any of my colleagues who maybe would have wanted an opportunity to give their thoughts to me as one of the vice-chairs of the committee wouldn't have had that opportunity today. It's only because we do have to.... To make sure there isn't a decision made on something on which we don't feel there is an ability to make a decision, of course I'm having to talk for some time. Therefore, if my colleagues wanted to talk to me right now, they couldn't, because I'm a little busy.