Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you for your caution about making disparaging comments about individuals in the other place despite some things that might have happened to certain individuals in the other place. We want to improve decorum here and we have to stay away from those types of snide comments.
I want to question the hon. member about the whole issue of proportional representation. She has been around the world and has seen other governments that have proportional representation. My experience with it is that it has not been well received.
I was recently in Ukraine where it has gone from direct representation to proportional representation. The people do not know who they are electing because they are people on a partisan list. They are extremely partisan and political when they are functioning in their house. There is no way for those individuals in their electoral districts to contact their representatives because they do not have any representatives. They do not know to whom they should turn to get the assistance they need in dealing with government programs and government issues like we do as members of Parliament here day in and day out.
The hybrid systems like we see in Mexico and New Zealand are creating a double-tiered system. There are directly represented members of parliament who do all their constituency work, do all their committee work, do all their work in the house, and then there are people appointed off a list. The NDP is criticizing the Senate because its people are bagmen and people who have worked in a party headquarters so that is why they get to the Senate. The people on a party list who end up in a country's main chamber are a bunch of political hacks. They are hyper-partisan. Those individuals who do not have work in their ridings cause all sorts of commotion in their house and chamber.
I would like the member to comment on that.