Mr. Chair, the first past the post system is simple. The Deputy Prime Minister won by two votes. On the night of October 25, 1993 the official announcement indicated that she had received two votes more than her nearest competitor who happened to be running for my party. After the recount I believe she had won by 11 or 12 votes. It was a very narrow race. She is one perfect example of having won with less than 50% of the vote by a fair amount and very close to the others.
There is a danger that those who voted for one of the other candidates, and particularly the people who voted for my friend who ran for our party, had some disillusionment. They had worked so hard. They tried so hard. They came so close, but received nothing.
I do not know if you, Mr. Chair, have ever run in a physical race. I was in a 50 mile bicycle race. Just by looking at me people can tell I am rather athletic. There were gold, silver and bronze medals so at least the top three received something for their efforts. There should be some way of recognizing the votes of the other people who did not vote for the candidate who won.
The model which I like the best in terms of a proportional system is, believe it or not, the first past the post system. The person representing the riding should be the individual who received more votes than anybody else, even if it is a squeaker. If that person wins the race then he should receive the gold because he came in first. The other votes should then be allocated to, say, a provincial number and used for members at large to represent that point of view. That is the model I am leaning toward.
The other model is the preferential ballot where a single ballot is used to indicate a person's first, second and third choice and so on. Nowadays with computers it would be relatively easy to run those things off. The individual with the lowest number of votes would be knocked off and all of those ballots would be applied to the second choice. This would continue until somebody received a clear majority. That would be my second choice.
There are definitely ways of doing this. We would certainly engage more citizens in a meaningful way if, when they cast their ballots and expressed their ideas, they knew they would have a greater influence in the House of Commons.