Mr. Speaker, I have not had a chance to say this, but I want to congratulate you on your position as the Deputy Speaker and Chair of Committees of the Whole. I am very glad that you decided to run for that and are now where you are.
I want to talk a bit about the issue of electoral reform and the government's policy of pushing through electoral reform following consultations that will take the form of a parliamentary committee but without a referendum. To put it mildly, this will result in a very significant change to Canada's way of conducting electoral business and of conducting our elections. It will be by far the most significant change that has taken place not merely since Confederation, but literally since elections have first occurred in this country.
We have been having elections in one form or another in Canada since the 1700s. In the case of what is now Ontario and Quebec, our very first elections would have taken place in 1792 under the Constitutional Act of 1791. In Nova Scotia it goes back even further. However, in all of our provinces we have had elections under the current system since before most countries in the United Nations even existed. That does not make the current system the right system, and I am not trying to justify keeping the current system. I am agnostic on that point. My point is that we should not change from that to some other system without making sure that the people of Canada support the change we are making.
There are a number of alternatives to the status quo, our current first-past-the-post system. There is the multi-member proportional system, which was proposed in Ontario, and there was a referendum on it in 2007. There is the single transferable vote system that is used very successfully in Malta and Ireland, and which was proposed for British Columbia. That system was the subject of two referendums in British Columbia. There is the preferential ballot in a single-member district. That was the subject of a referendum not in this country but the United Kingdom recently. In all of these jurisdictions we have seen the appropriate mechanism used regardless of the proposal that was put forward, which is a referendum to ask the people whether they wanted it or not.
In dealing with the issue of referenda, last June we proposed making changes to the electoral system. The then prime minister said that it would be hard to win what he called a plebiscite on electoral reform, and so we were not doing it. However, it is only hard to win it if the people do not support it. If we have something that the majority of Canadians support, it will get through. There have been referenda that have been successful. If none had been successful, that would still not be an argument against having one; it would be an argument that the status quo was satisfactory. However, the fact is that some have been successful. For example, there was a successful referendum in New Zealand in 1992 on changing from the first-past-the-post system to a different system.
What is wrong is not letting the people speak. I am so upset about this determination to drive this through without consulting the people, as if people do not matter, that I have put forward and signed today an electronic petition numbered e-48. Unfortunately, I cannot read the whole thing because it has some elaborate whereas clauses. However, it boils down to this. It states:
We, the undersigned, citizens of Canada, request (or call upon) the Minister of Democratic Institutions to hold a referendum on any changes to Canada’s federal electoral system so that the citizens of Canada have their direct say on any proposed changes by the government.
That is the position I believe in entirely. I do not think it is appropriate to indicate a personal preference as to what the outcome is. At this point, it is appropriate to say that it is for the people to make that choice. The government can propose and it should propose what it thinks is best in the form of legislation. It should then submit that to the people for their choice. They may say yes; they may say no. If they say no, they may say yes in the future after they have had a chance to make adjustments so it seems right for them and their values. On this, or on anything else, the people should be sovereign.