Mr. Speaker, the member who just spoke has been fighting the B.C. election that is going to come in a few weeks' time, and I find it very strange that he would also talk about why we are once again putting the motion forward.
The Library of Parliament tells us that the last time there was a vote on PR in this parliament was in 1923. The last time it was debated as a private member's initiative prior to last fall, when I had a motion that was votable before the House, was in 1979 when Jean-Luc Pepin, who was a Liberal member at the time, had a non-votable motion on looking at the wisdom of the PR system being part of our electoral system in Canada.
Last fall my Motion No. 155, which was votable and was similar to the motion today, asked to strike an all party committee to look at the wisdom of looking at elements of PR for our system. This initiative has hardly ever been discussed in the Parliament of Canada, so I am very surprised the member would be criticizing us for putting forth an idea that has hardly ever been talked about before. Just last week the member's own party had a motion in the House dealing with the ethics counsellor. That was a repetitive thing too because that was a promise of the Liberal Party in the 1993 red book. The argument he is making is a rather strange one indeed.
I want to ask the hon. member specifically about proportional representation. He has studied the New Zealand system and I would like to have him tell the House what kind of model of PR he would think is relevant for our country. We are a unique federation. We have the uniqueness and distinctiveness of Quebec. Geographically we are the second largest country in the world outside of Russia. We have very diverse histories and so on. What kind of a model would he suggest we look at if indeed we did have an all-party committee to take a look at this?
I also remind the House that I think the chief electoral officer has a mandate in which he could look at PR. Therefore all we need to do is strike a committee to look at various electoral systems. I wonder what contribution he would make in regard to the kind of model if we indeed had such a committee.