Mr. Speaker, that gets into the debate the House will have tomorrow on proportional representation.
When we look at parliamentary electoral reform, I believe we have to look at it as a package. I talked today about some parliamentary reform, of getting rid of the other place. I also think we need to have electoral reform and change in the way members of Parliament are elected. It is very important that every Canadian's vote counts in this chamber.
I do not know if the House is aware but we are one of only three democracies in the world with more than eight million people that uses the pure first past the post system. It is us, India and the United States. In the last election campaign in the United States, Al Gore received 550,000 more votes than George W. Bush but who is the president? George W. Bush.
We have a system in this country that distorts the reality. The government across the way had 41% of the votes but it has almost 60% of the seats. The current Prime Minister had 37% of the votes back in 1997 and he had a solid majority. It was the same thing in 1993 when he had about 40% or 41% of the votes and a solid majority. We have minorities electing majorities.
In fact since 1923 we have had only three or four governments that have won with a majority, such as John Diefenbaker in 1958, but almost all majority governments are elected by a minority of the people and almost all the countries in the world have some form of proportional representation.
It is interesting that when the Soviet Union fell apart and the new countries in what was the Soviet Union looked for an electoral system, they looked at ours and at various systems around the world but not one of the them, be it Russia, the Ukraine or Poland, chose our kind of system, which is first past the post, because they did not feel it was democratic enough in making sure that every individual in the country was equally represented in terms of their vote counting. All of them chose some form of proportional representation. I believe that is the way we should be going.
We have some provinces, such as Quebec where Premier Jean Charest has said that in the election after next there will be a measure of PR in the election of the members to the Quebec national assembly. The same thing has been said in Prince Edward Island by Premier Binns, that they will take a serious look at PR down the road. It is the same thing in British Columbia by the premier in that province.
This is an idea whose time has come. If this House were to look at that, as well as at abolishing the unelected house, giving more powers to committees and more independence for this place, we would have a much better democracy for all.