It was the Progressive Conservative Party. I thank the member from Kings--Hants for the correction. Only two seats were Progressive Conservative.
As well, many times we have seen a Quebec government with a separatist majority in spite of the fact that most of the people of Quebec voted for a federalist party.
We have seen a very impressive report from the Law Reform Commission of Canada. My only caution with this motion today is that the timelines may be too brisk. We have learned the hard way what happens when we hurry this process. Indeed, it is countries such as Switzerland that are best at doing bottom-up citizen engagement and that look down their noses at the proposition system in California, which is only six months. Countries such as Switzerland know that it takes at least four years to drill down so that individual citizens actually understand what is being discussed.
I think the cynicism is really that people are worried that their votes do not count. I believe that for any prescription for a democratic deficit we have to move on all four fronts. We need to move to a true democracy between elections, true parliamentary reform, and true party reform, as well as what is being discussed today in terms of electoral reform.
Democracy between elections will require a two-way accountability between citizens and their elected representatives, an understanding of assured listening, and a real representative democracy, which requires meaningful citizen engagement.
Canada has led the OECD in some experiments in citizen engagement. The OECD paper, “Citizens as Partners”, which separates out the differences among information, consultation and deliberation, is something that all members of the House would find extraordinarily interesting.
On parliamentary reform, I think that we have to see a much better use of committees, particularly in this House. I have to say that the rehearsing of government members before committee appearances and using motions for work plans is appalling. It is the worst I have seen in my 10 years here.
The idea is that non-geographic constituencies must be utilized and that we must do a much better job of using technology in the House in terms of the kind of study that we did on the subcommittee on persons with disabilities.
In order for any sort of electoral reform and any sort of proportional representation that involves political parties to take place, we need to make sure that the parties themselves have good governance in terms of fairness, transparency and taking people seriously, such as what the decisions taken in terms of the makeup of a party list would represent and again would indeed be democratic themselves.
I think that most of us do believe that in terms of moving toward electoral reform we would need some sort of blended proportional system. This is a big country in which geographic representatives are still extraordinarily important. I have been very interested in some of the Green Party proposals. It has what it calls the “best losers” system, wherein the party list would be made up only of defeated candidates, people who have chosen to put their names on the ballot and who have been able to knock on doors and know what that really means.
I think we have to learn from processes that did not work. The B.C. citizens' assembly was run, as one American observer noted, like a university tutorial. People knew from the time that Ken Carty was appointed as the researcher that the single transferable vote would probably preside. Instead of actually engaging citizens, the process was about creating experts and, in some ways, almost lobbying for a certain method.
I believe that the Ontario process was much improved compared to that one, but without the media attention and without grassroots involvement we still are at risk of having the people of Ontario not really knowing what is going on before they come to what now is really a very short time to the referendum. I call upon the government of Ontario to actually put the resources into a communications strategy and plan so that people will actually be able to have the information with which to cast that very important vote in October.
The process really does matter. I believe and have believed that we need a step way of process. We have to begin not by spending our time picking which system would be better; we need to have a conversation with Canadians about how the present system is not fair. Until they can understand that this is not fair, I think we will end up in trouble if we then confuse the picture with nitpicking about which system is better instead of actually having a consensus arrived at in this country that this present electoral system is not fair. None of the emerging democracies are picking our system. We are left with England and the United States in terms of this very antiquated system.
I hope we will understand that from that decision of a consensus on the fairness of this system we need to move into a true deliberative democracy, a true deliberative dialogue that then would explore all of the options for a made in Canada solution. I am worried that the forum the government member referred to is really just again creating 40 little expert groups across the country instead of having a real online conversation with Canadians.
We then need a communication plan. We need to be able to have a referendum. We then need the legislation. I believe it will take all five steps, but the first step must be creating the case for change.
I believe that the principles matter and that whatever system we pick must indeed have Doris Anderson's ultimate goal of having a Parliament that reflects the people of Canada. We know that has not been possible in any country that has not moved to electoral reform. It is the legacy of Doris that moves us forward. We know that the bigger parties have always ended up particularly--she always called it the seduction of the big win, which is what has always allowed governments to perhaps resist the--