Mr. Speaker, I too want to compliment the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle who has dedicated much of his career to the topic of electoral reform. At the end of the last parliament he saw fit to bring forward a private member's bill which stimulated a great deal of interest and debate. He is now using our opposition day motion to debate this same important issue of electoral reform in Canada.
Why reform our electoral system? Our system is outdated and needs to be amended. It needs to be put back into a condition where it actually works for Canadians. It has to be a living institution. As our country evolves and grows our system needs change. We have been saddled with an outdated system that is not serving our needs. Low voter turnout, which speaker after speaker has pointed to, is the most graphic illustration of this.
In 1968, 80% of Canadians voted. There are those who argue that during good times people do not bother going to the polls. The economy was fairly buoyant in 1968 as well and 80% of Canadians chose to exercise their franchise and cast a ballot.
In the most recent election about 60% of Canadians voted. Sixty percent of those who were registered voted. Fifty percent of all eligible voters actually voted. This is a horrific record. It is as bad a level of disinterest as in the United States. That is what we see with our partners to the south.
Many people have given up on the idea that the electoral process is some way they can get satisfaction. Many people are completely disillusioned with the electoral process that they do not bother to exercise their right to vote. That is a serious problem. There is something fundamentally wrong with the state of democracy today.
We have heard the full range of debate from the sublime to the ridiculous today. The most poignant thing about the debate that I heard, especially from the government benches, is their complete unwillingness to revisit the issue in any kind of a serious way. It makes us wonder what they are afraid of. Why would they not embrace the idea of being able to reach more Canadians and have more Canadians play an active role in the political system?
One of the most interesting points raised during this debate was made by the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle in his argument, and an argument that I accept, that some form of PR would help foster a greater sense of national unity. What could be of more interest to the people in this room than some way to bring the country closer together?
The logic he used was that under PR to win seats in a federal election the political parties would have to run on platforms that would appeal to citizens right across the country. In other words, if my only interest was representing the interests of my home province of Manitoba, I might be able to get elected on that basis by being a booster for the home team. Under PR I would also have to have a platform and a campaign that addressed the issues in various regions. One would think that that in itself would be a good enough reason to seriously visit the idea of introducing proportional representation.
The way things are now, unity is not served because there really are no truly national parties. We take care of our base of strength. The Liberal Party takes very good care of the province of Ontario. The Bloc Quebecois does an admirable job representing the interests of the province of Quebec. The Albertans have their party.
It would seem that if we are serious about threading the country together with some real vision of national unity, one of the elements has to be reforming our electoral system. I believe the PR system is the way we can do that.
The reason many people are not voting today is because they are concerned that their vote is wasted. Under PR every vote weighs equally. Even if one is an NDPer living in downtown Edmonton, a person could cast a ballot for the party of choice knowing it would do some good. It would not be a throwaway vote. That makes some sense in the interest of fairness and in the interest of balance.
If a person is a reformer in Newfoundland, the person could have the confidence that his or her vote would not be meaningless. That is a positive thing. I do not know what the resistance was to this idea from the opposite benches. I find it frustrating that they would not at least seriously entertain the idea.
We are also seeing part of the cynicism about Canadian politics. Low voter turnout stems from the messaging that is going on in federal elections today. There is a growing awareness. The pollsters, the Hill and Knowltons of the world et cetera, will advise political parties that the lowest 15% or 20% income bracket do not really vote. Why would someone bother addressing messages to them?
In other words, the people who actually need representation the most and arguably need the services of strong advocacy in the House of Commons, do not bother to vote at all. Frankly, at the other end of the political spectrum, we all know how the top 15% or 20% of the economic scale vote. There is no point in addressing our messages to them either.
All the messaging goes to the middle class band. It is a homogenizing of the political messaging because those are the people we have to reach. Even there voter turnout is tragically poor.
If we are going to move forward as a country we have to engage more of the population. The most basic way we can do that is by having them take part in the political process, which is obviously a gift in a free society. To not exercise their right to vote is an absolute shame as there are places in the world that do not have those rights and freedoms.
I have nothing but admiration for the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle for his dedication to this cause. He is doing a great service to all Canadians to try and move this issue forward. If we could have a proper and an honest debate, nobody could guess what the outcome would be. However, the motion does not try to dictate any particular solutions. It only calls for the creation of a committee to review the subject.
Who knows what kind of positive outcomes we could have if we embraced this idea in a fair and honest way and visited it without all the rancour and some of the parry and thrust that we have heard today. That dialogue deviated so far away from the actual issue at hand that it did a disservice to all of those people listening and the people who would benefit very much if Canada adopted something along those lines of PR.
The other frustrating thing is that the people who need the representation the most are now the least likely to vote. Those are the people that we have an obligation to address, to reach out to, to engage and to ask them their opinion. Under this system of PR their opinion would weigh just as much as our opinion.
In closing, we all know that something is fundamentally wrong with the democratic process and the state of democracy in Canada today when only 50% of all eligible voters bother to come to the polls. We could give them a new confidence if we seriously embraced the idea of proportional representation and increased that to an acceptable level of engagement.