The member just said that we do not need to fix it. It speaks to the problem that we have too many government members who agree that our electoral system creates distortions, divisions and undemocratic results in terms of the composition of parliament, but in the same breath they ask what could be wrong with a political system that produces three majority Liberal governments in a row.
We have an electoral system based on a first past the post system. The problem with that is that the electoral system leaves too many people feeling that they do not have any way to make their vote count. They feel they may as well not vote because they know perfectly well that if they do not support the majority view then their view does not count at all and they do not have any way to influence the composition of parliament so that important, significant minority views are fairly and proportionately represented.
It is a problem that our first past the post system creates distortions and that kind of unrepresentativeness. It is equally a problem, perhaps even more of a problem, that it creates a winner takes all mentality. That is the seed of the kind of arrogance and unresponsiveness that comes from majority governments that are over-represented.
I know some people say that the NDP keeps pushing for electoral reform because it believes that if we had an electoral system that included a proportional representation element that it would likely end up with more seats in parliament. With many elections that is true, but even over-represented Liberals must recognize that it is a problem when we have an election in which, for example, the Liberals win 50% of the vote, but they win 97% of the seats as they did in the most recent election in Ontario.
It is not just about the over-representation of Liberals, which is the problem with the winner take all mentality of the Liberal government. It is also about other distortions.
Let me give another couple of examples. In the 1997 election the Reform Party got 19% of the vote. The Progressive Conservative Party got 19% of the vote. Did it have roughly the same number of seats? No, the Reform Party won 60 seats in the House of Commons and the Conservative Party won 20 seats in the House of Commons. Some may ask what is wrong with that because that is the system? They say that is just what it means to be in a democracy where the winner takes all.