Mr. Speaker, I appreciate where the question is coming from.
First, it is important to clarify the premise, which is that under the system we are talking about, there would be no appointing by party leaders of the MPs. Each party would have an internal process that would have to be transparently revealed to Canadians as to how they ended up with a list of MPs from which people could go to Parliament.
Under the system we would advocate, individual voters could actually go into the list and say, “That is the order the party set, but I do not prefer that order. I prefer this person to move up in the order.”
It is very important to note that there would not be an appointment system. It would depend on how each party set up its list so voters could determine how that would influence their vote.
On the second point, absolutely, the idea that the whole question of a direct appointment by a single leader of any MP, let alone all these MPs, is anti-democratic. I would actually say that our current system does not actually have an appointment power; it has a power requirement, under the Canada Elections Act, to sign off on local nominations. It is not quite the same thing.