Madam Speaker, the reason I support this motion while at the same time I oppose proportional representation personally is that, and I suppose this is the difference between being a Canadian Alliance member of Parliament and a Liberal member of Parliament, I entrust Canadians to make some of these decisions. I believe in open dialogue and open conversation.
I do agree frankly with the member's criticisms of proportional representation, particularly as seen in Germany and especially as seen in Italy. As it has been organized in Italy, I think it has caused incredible political problems and organizational problems in terms of governing.
I do agree, as I said in my speech, that when one is setting up a democratic system and setting up a mechanism by which people are electing their government, there is a list of virtues. Among those virtues are voter participation, stability, intellectual identity and so on.
In my view, while it is immensely important, voter participation does not override the need for stability, particularly in the example which the hon. member gave in the case of Germany of smaller political parties, perhaps overly ideological parties, perhaps single issue political parties or as could be the case in Canada, political parties identified by language or by aggressive regional anxieties.
If that were to take place, we would have to have a coalition government, which is almost always the case in a proportional situation. Then we really could have a situation where rather than having high voter participation, people think there is high voter participation and therefore we have the rule of the majority because more people are voting, but the reality is we have more political parties that represent a segmented view of the public.
As a consequence, what would happen is we would actually in an inverse way have a tyranny of the minority. We would have broad political parties, a wide number of political parties in a coalition government but no single political party would have a large enough constituency to be able to speak for the majority.
In an inverse way, and a kind of perverted way, while we would have an elevated number of people participating in a campaign, because we would have more political parties without which a coalition could not survive, we could have a tyranny of the minority through smaller political parties that are driven by regional anxieties, by language, by religion and by all kinds of other things. That is why I am personally opposed to proportional representation particularly as a stand-alone reform.
At the same time, coming back to answer the specific question, the reason I will be voting in favour of the motion is I believe that Canadians are intellectual beings who are fully prepared for the discussion and prepared for the dialogue. I am prepared to put forward my view of proportional representation and a wholesale reform of our electoral system, Senate reform, reform of how we choose the Governor General, holding judges accountable and so on. I am prepared to have that debate. I am not afraid of giving more power, money, control and influence to Canadians, but then again, I am not a Liberal.