Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak on this very important motion. I am very supportive of it and I thank the member for bringing it forward. I thank her, too, for her focus this morning on the issue of how this House does not represent the face of Canada and how we had hoped that by a tiny incrementalism we could do better. I think it is quite clear to most of us and most political observers that without a dramatic change in our electoral system we will not reach a House of Commons that reflects the people of Canada.
As for our journey in this, I was blessed to have the unbelievable force of Doris Anderson teaching me at every moment, with her hope that we would be able to do this and then her realization that only with electoral reform would we actually make the necessary changes. With her death on March 2, I think all of us felt that we had a moral obligation to carry on her fight for electoral reform and for a House of Commons that would more truly represent the people of Canada.
It is interesting that Equal Voice has set up a fund in her name to do just this job of carrying on the fight for electoral reform and a more representative Parliament. At the April 15 tea held to honour her and to raise money for this fund, it was interesting to note that it was the very day that the Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform chose and voted to suggest to the Government of Ontario, and put to the people of Ontario in a referendum this fall, a mixed member proportional system, which was indeed Doris's ideal system and the one that she thought would be fairest for women.
There is an increasing appetite, I believe, for Canadians to understand that part of their cynicism in terms of politics and Parliament is that their vote does not count. The distortion that can happen in elections means that their votes are not really reflected in the people who come to this chamber. It was interesting in recent visits to Alberta to note that even in Alberta the appetite for this, particularly among Liberals, is very acute in terms of the recent electoral outcome of 15% of the people of Alberta voting Liberal yet not one member being sent to this House.
We have seen this many times. Almost 20% of Canadians voted for the Conservative Party in 1993, yet only two seats--