Mr. Speaker, I note with interest that there had been 28 provincial governments led by the NDP and not one of them has ever proposed this. In fact, every single time proportional representation has been put on the ballot for a referendum, it has been done by a Liberal provincial government, but somehow our support is in question. It is strange.
The critical piece here is that we are being asked to support a very specific proposal with a very vague motion and the challenge that we have is trying to understand exactly what the member means. She talks about the concern about lack of representation from certain groups. What we find is that the trade-off for that is massively bigger ridings.
I have a colleague from Labrador who can barely get to her entire riding within a given year because of its size. The hon. member is proposing to make it even bigger.
The trouble with this is, if we have the voting system as described by the member, it would be extraordinarily difficult to prevent large money candidates from always topping that list.
You cannot do this with the snap of a finger. You have to have public consultation. Why will you not agree with your leader?