Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment the member for yet again raising this issue for debate. It is important that we debate matters which may not at first blush fit in with our set ways.
Many countries have proportional representation or some form of it. There are many hybrids of this.
With regard to the one that the member is proposing as one that we might want to consider, I looked at it in one of his previous speeches. It is a system whereby there would be candidates in every riding but there would not be as many ridings as there are today. We would probably have 200 ridings in Canada instead of 301 or 307 as the case may be.
That effectively means that all members of Parliament who are elected in a riding would have 50% more constituents than they do today which makes it extremely difficult for them to have that intimacy with constituents in terms of serving their needs.
The second aspect is that the balance of the seats in the House of Commons would be represented by those on lists in the proportion of the votes that they received in the second balloting.
This would create a second class of member of Parliament. Some would be directly elected and have all these constituents to take care of, and others could very well be those who could not get elected on their merit. Quite frankly it raises some concern about whether or not the homogeneity of the House of Commons in terms of the common bond of association would cease to exist.
Could the member comment on those two points?