Madam Speaker, I got up earlier and gave the Reader's Digest version of my thoughts but I will take four minutes now.
If we throw out the partisan rhetoric, I think what we are hearing is that debate on the motion has been very interesting. There are people who are going to support this for a variety of different reasons, but I think it is fair to say we do have some issues that need to be addressed.
I will repeat my comments. I am not saying that this is the solution to the problems with democracy. In fact, to paraphrase Churchill, democracy has problems until we consider the alternatives. There are pros and cons to everything. There are no easy answers, but based on my own experience out on the hustings, people are not staying away from the ballot box, as has been suggested, simply because they think the government is doing a good job. I think there really is a disconnect out there. I think there are people who sit there and think, “What does my vote matter?” They think that the person they want to support does not have a hope of winning because that person is not from one of the mainstream parties, so they just disconnect themselves from the process.
Believe me, democracy does not work if people are not engaged in it. There has been talk of the government getting whatever the percentage was, being the government. Do not blame us. We still got more votes than the opposition parties. We are all in this together. We all have to figure out how to put in place a process that can take the needs and aspirations of Canadians and reflect them in public policy.
As I said in my earlier comments, I look at the issue of the environment. In our current system of first past the post, winner take all, 31% or less, or 39% in my case, I win the prize. That is characteristic of the fact that there were eight or nine parties running.
When the member talks about the way we run the House, I agree. The Standing Orders for the way we run the House, the lion's share of them, were put in place when we had two parties. When we get to three, four or five parties, that is where we start to run into problems in terms of representation on committees and allocation of time on various topics. I think we need to look at those sorts of things.
But what I like about this motion, and it may be a proportional ballot or preferential ballot, as they are not defining what we do in terms of proportional representation, I do not see the flaw, the problem, with putting some value on a vote that does not necessarily carry the day in first past the post but is certainly a ballot that has been sincerely put in that ballot box by a Canadian.
We could do it in a way which says that the candidates selected under proportional representation would start with the candidate of the defeated party that got the most votes. We do not need to have the person hand picked. Again, that has not been defined in the motion.
We heard a lot of talk about Italy. I think we have to be very careful that we make a distinction between correlation and causation. Italy's democracy is rather cumbersome. Whether that is because they have proportional representation or not, I do not know. I think it is a dangerous leap of faith to blame it on PR. The same logic would suggest that we should never go to bed because the lion's share of people die in bed. I think we have to have a bit of an open mind.
This particular motion, by simply keeping the issue alive, puts it on the radar screen. I harbour no illusions as to its fate, but again I think it is worth supporting in the sense that it is not a perfect system now and we should take a serious look at anything that could potentially improve it.