Debates of Dec. 8th, 2016

Electoral Reform

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I will try to get two more questions in here. I ask hon. members to be concise with their interventions.

The hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as my hon. colleague just said, what is the harm in adding some questions that deal specifically with the choice that parliamentarians are facing?

The government has promised to bring forward legislation in May on a new voting system. All we have simply said is to take these non-partisan questions that were developed by the best analysts we have on the Hill, which the minister has said do excellent work, and did excellent work. The Liberals, the Conservatives, the New Democrats, and the Bloc agreed to these questions. They ask a simple, respectful, straightforward questions of Canadians. Canadians have no problem understanding them and answering.

Here is the challenge. At the minister's town halls, she never got to the question. People would try to insert it into the conversation, but she kept wanting to back it up, saying never mind voting systems, never mind the way the ballots were cast and counted. Ultimately this is what the government must decide. She never asked.

That is also true of the survey. To say some experts wanted this, when it has been the Liberal pattern on this topic from day one, begs a certain curiosity and unbelievability of what the member is saying. Simply add in the questions to which everyone has agreed. They are good solid questions that will get the Liberals an answer so they can finally put some legislation forward.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps there is an easier way for me to use what the member said earlier as an example. The member suggested it should be a given, that we should ask people who signed in if they were Canadian citizens. I disagree wholeheartedly with that. Many landed citizens are not citizens today but will be citizens at the time of the next election. I would not want to do something that could potentially discourage them from participating. Are we saying someone has to be a citizen in order to participate?

There is the difference. He has an opinion; I have an opinion. I have faith in the individuals who have been tasked with the responsibility to draw out the values of democracy in which Canadians believe. I have faith in that system.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member mentioned he had a town hall with a total of, I believe 50 people. I had a town hall also. I had 40 people. Even the Prime Minister could only draw 40 members to his town hall. This is the Prime Minister holding a town hall on electoral reform.

The question the Liberals did not put out there, which I did in a householder to over 60,000 households in my riding, was “Do you feel there should be a referendum before any change to Canada's electoral system?” Why not put that simple question out there first? That is the priority question. We can find out if Canadians want to change it, and if so, whether there should be a referendum. Why not do that?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have great deal of experience. Before I answer the question, let us not marginalize the importance of town halls. Whether 10, 15, 300 or even a 1,000 people show up, the numbers do not really matter. The first and most important thing is that members of Parliament extend the opportunity for their constituents to get engaged in town halls.

With respect to the question, if I were to ask a question about whether we should have a referendum on X or Y, generally speaking and depending on the topic, people who will respond to surveys will quite often say “yes” to 30, 40 or 50 different types of referendums.

I understand how questionnaires and surveys work. I used to be in opposition too. With MyDemocracy.ca, we are reaching out to all Canadians and affording them the chance to share their values.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House, and I also want to inform my colleagues, and you of course, that I will be sharing my time with the member for Sherbrooke. This just goes to show that this really is not a partisan issue, since the member for Sherbrooke is an NDP member, although a worthy successor to the hon. Jean Charest, who used to be a Conservative leader and minister. This shows we can take a non-partisan approach.

As we gather here in the House today, once again we are witnessing another installment of the Liberal government's blatant improvisation, and on such a delicate and fragile issue as electoral reform.

I would remind the House that, in the throne speech, the Governor General uttered the words that would lead to the exercise that brings us to where we are today. He said that 2015 would be the last election under the old voting system. What are we dealing with today?

I remember clearly when the Governor General made that statement. I was in the Senate lobby with a number of members of the House of Commons. Right next to me was my friend, the hon. member for Beauport—Limoilou, as well as the Minister of Foreign Affairs, with whom I have little in common politically, given the nature of his commitments as compared to ours. However, I have the utmost respect and admiration for his genuine political commitment. For 20 years he has been recognized across Canada as perhaps the leading academic expert on constitutionality, elections, the electoral process, and politics. He earned a doctorate in political science in France, and, as we know, he is the former leader of the Liberal Party. He was quite surprised and quite pleased. In fact, I have that wrong. He was not surprised, but he was pleased to see that the government, through the Governor General, was committed to change.

I need hardly remind the House that the hon. Minister of Foreign Affairs made his own commitment in 2012, when he said that if we wanted to change the electoral system in Canada, then all signs pointed to a referendum, given our Canadian experience.

It was not us, the big bad Conservatives, who said that. It was the current Liberal minister, a senior minister in the current Prime Minister's government. The ball was in his court. We were very surprised to see this commitment because it was a major change.

The Liberals continue to remind everyone that it was an election promise and that more than 60% of people who voted for political parties wanted change. Need I remind them that in the Liberals' 97-page election platform there were three sentences about this promise. It cannot be said that it was a major commitment. There were five televised leaders' debates during the election campaign where the leaders could address the issues they felt were the most important. How many times was this subject raised by the Liberal leader? Zero. Not even once.

The only time this subject was ever raised was by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, the leader of the Green Party. The Liberals never made this a major issue. Nevertheless, it is an extremely important one because making changes to our electoral system means changing the most important institution in any democracy, since the electoral system determines who will sit in the House of Commons, who will form the government, and who will rule the state. Every other decision, whether we are talking about the budget, defence, foreign affairs, health, transport, or anything else, stems from the electoral system. As a result, the electoral system is the backbone of any democracy. If by chance the government wants to change the system, we, the Conservatives, like the Minister of Foreign Affairs, believe that it must be done by referendum because we politicians are all in a position of conflict of interest in this regard.

We are all human. Naturally, any time we make a decision we think about how it will affect us personally. For anyone who is involved in politics, there is nothing more personal than the electoral system. That is why we are fundamentally in a position of conflict of interest, and that is why we want to hold a referendum. I will come back to that later.

The Governor General made that announcement, but for six months, the government dragged its feet on telling us what its game plan was. Since we know that it wants to get this done in this term, and that it will take at least two years to change the electoral system, time is running out, and still it took them six months just to announce that a parliamentary committee will be formed to study the issue.

Here is the second piece of evidence of this government's improvisation: under pressure, primarily from the NDP but also the Green Party, the government finally agreed to change the membership of the committee so that it would not be partisan and the government would no longer have a majority. Some folks might say that after what happened with the majority report, perhaps the government would have changed its position if it had known how that was going to turn out, but that is another story.

Now the Liberals are improvising once again by changing the number of members on this parliamentary committee. What did we do? At my leader's invitation, I had the great privilege of sitting on that parliamentary committee, with such eminent and esteemed members as my friend from Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, who is right beside me.

I always have a hard time naming the federal ridings, as some of the names are so long. If we could use the electoral reform as an opportunity to simplify those names, everyone would be happy, myself included.

My 12 colleagues and I spent several months working long and hard on this issue. I would like to say hello to those who are here today: the five Liberal Party members; the official opposition members; the NDP members, with whom I really enjoyed working; the Bloc Québécois member, a former colleague of mine from the National Assembly; and the member forVictoria. We criss-crossed Canada to hear Canadians' thoughts on electoral reform. The results are pretty impressive, as is the amount of work that went into this.

The report that came out last week covered 57 meetings during which we heard from 196 witnesses. Another 567 people participated in the town halls that were held in 18 cities across Canada. The Victoria and Vancouver events were packed. Over 70 people registered. Attendance was not quite as high in other places. I have to admit that, in my hometown, Quebec City, barely 10 people came out. People are interested in this issue, and those who are interested are really very interested, but we have to recognize that not everybody cares about this issue.

The first step of this process consisted in consulting Canadians to see what they think. Nearly 600 people attended 18 town hall meetings from coast to coast to coast. There was even an e-consultation, the central theme of our discussion today. Exactly 22,247 people took part in that. Let us look at the numbers: 567 people attended town hall meetings and 22,000 people engaged in e-consultations.

On the government's suggestion, a number of MPs held kitchen meetings, as we say in Quebec, to see what people thought. There were 172 reports by members, plus two others, for a total of 174. An estimated 12,000 Canadians or more had their say at these meetings. That is great. Again, many people participated, and I would briefly add that some of them may have taken part in every form of this exercise. The bottom line is that a lot of people were engaged in the process. The NDP members also held their own consultations, in which 37,000 people participated online or responded to mailings.

However, we, the Conservatives, asked our fellow Canadians in 59 of our ridings what they thought. We asked them this question: if there were a change, should it be decided by a referendum? How many Canadians answered? With all due respect for previous exercises, it was not 567, nor 22,000, nor 12,000, nor 37,000 Canadians who answered, but 81,000. With all due respect for my colleagues, we had the highest score, as they say in hockey. We reached the most Canadians and obtained their opinions.

What 90% of these Canadians, or 73,740 of them to be precise, told us was that if by chance the government wants to make a change, it should hold a referendum. That is what the committee heard and what it identified in its report, the majority report in which the Conservatives, Bloc Québécois, NDP, and the Green Party asked that a referendum be held. That is the solution because we, the politicians, have a conflict of interest. If we want to change the underpinning of the entire electoral system, the government must ask Canadians what they think.

We submitted this report, and the government tried to play it down it and set it aside, even make a mockery of it, while insulting those who had prepared it. The government apologized, and so much the better.

However, the reality is that if the government ever wants to change anything, it has to go through a referendum and not this new improvised consultation called MyDemocracy.ca. Canadians deserve much better when it comes to electoral reform.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for the work that he did with us in committee. As he knows, we heard from witnesses from across the country. If we are going to change the electoral system, we need to find a way to ensure that Canadians are heavily involved in the process. Unfortunately, the committee was unable to do that, although many Canadians were involved in the work we did in committee, which was very well done.

Does my hon. colleague understand that there is still a lack of consensus with regard to how to make a change? The NDP publicly announced that it was in favour of a referendum. Then, the party immediately turned around and indicated in the supplementary report that it had serious concerns about a referendum. This shows that there is still work to be done to get Canadians involved in these fundamental issues.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to answer that question and to point out the great work that the member accomplished, along with our other 11 committee colleagues. He and I often had the opportunity to talk at the committee meetings, and we really enjoyed ourselves. I thank him and commend him on his excellent French.

If there is one thing that everyone can agree on, it is the fact that Canadians need to have the last word on this. Yes, we need to take the time to explain to Canadians what the issues are. However, when we held our own consultations and asked citizens whether they wanted to be consulted on this subject, 90% of them said that there should be a referendum. All of the polls also indicate that 70% of Canadians want a referendum if by chance there is a change. If there is one thing everyone agrees on, it is that there must be a referendum.

Technically speaking, we could hold a referendum, make the necessary changes, and establish a new voting system, if that is what Canadians want. However, we should let Canadians decide by holding a referendum.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the Conservative party.

This is a somewhat strange situation. All the opposition parties worked together to get the Liberal party to keep its promise. Normally the four parties, the Green party, the Bloc Québécois, the NDP, and the Conservative party, do not have much in common. However everyone is in agreement on the Liberal party’s promise.

In the last election, the Prime Minister said that this was the last time the old system would be used, calling it out of date, broken, and unfair. All the parties worked on this, and made concessions and other things. However, the ongoing problem is that it is not parliament or the opposition but rather the government that is refusing to keep its own promises. This is a situation that may be unique in Canadian history.

Together, we can do something very important for our democracy and our citizens. It is a sign of respect to listen to what is happening with respect to the real questions, like the ones we have recommended to the government. Is it just a small sign, or is it an effort to respect the intelligence of the citizens of this country?

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my hon. colleague on the quality of his French and his efforts. He was also a member of the committee.

This shows what we have been saying from the beginning: it smells of improvisation from beginning to end. Since the findings of our report do not suit the Liberal party, which would like preferential voting, it says we did not do enough consulting with Canadians. That is preposterous, even farcical.

That is why, on page 179, we find recommendation no. 9, which clearly states that Canadians have to be consulted by means of a referendum that will require them to choose between the “current system” box and the “preferential vote” box. Canadians are intelligent and in a much better position than us politicians to decide which is the best electoral system.

[Marilyn Gladu, Conservative, Sarnia—Lambton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was a global statistical specialist for a business for several years, and so I can say absolutely that the results of this survey will be meaningless in terms of saying what Canadians want, for a variety of reasons including the fact that anybody on the planet who knows a Canadian postal code could answer and answer multiple times, and the Liberals are excluding people who did not include their personal data.

I want to ask the member about the content of the survey. Certainly the committee talked about this. The members of the committee talked about what the questions should be. Why does the member think the Liberals went ahead with their own questions without waiting for the committee's questions?

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is quite simple. It is because the Liberals are not happy with the conclusion of the committee's survey. We travelled from coast to coast to coast, but not a lot of people talked about preferential votes. That is why the government designed something to steer it the way it wants. Canadian people are more intelligent than the Liberals think and that is why people should decide in a referendum what is best for our electoral system instead of following the Liberal platform that says it should be a preferential vote, which is not good for Canadians or democracy. The best way to know where people stand is to ask them in a referendum.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to take the floor after my hon. colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent. I thank him for graciously sharing his speaking time so that I can address the House on this extremely important subject that I care so much about.

Prior to the 2015 election, I had the opportunity to act as the deputy critic for democratic reform. I was pleased to learn a good deal on that occasion, and I continue to follow the developments in this area very closely. I followed in particular what happened during the last election, when the Liberals made a promise that could not be any clearer. We know that other promises were more nuanced, and unfortunately, Canadian citizens who are a little more cynical might have expected them not to be kept.

However, in the case of electoral reform, we were promised that the 2015 election would be the last one under the current system. That was a clear, plain, and specific promise. It could not have been clearer or more obvious that the government was promising to change the electoral system.

The Liberals had the support of a majority of Canadians to act on that promise. In fact, that is what the government mentioned at the start of its mandate. It mentioned the number of votes it had received, demonstrating that 60% of Canadians in the last general election had spoken, one way or another, in favour of reforming the voting system.

It was in that context that the committee was created. I want to salute that committee, and I also want to thank its members for their tireless work. The committee kindled a lot of hope in me, and I think in many of my colleagues. All the parties succeeded in reaching agreement, including those that are not officially recognized in the House. This committee managed to produce a report that contained clear and specific recommendations.

I was very hopeful about the follow-up to this report, until I heard the response of the Minister of Democratic Institutions the day that the report was tabled, on December 1. That response was very hostile and very surprising.

One might have expected the minister to accept the report and its recommendations, since it was the Liberals themselves, with all-party support, who agreed to set up this committee. This committee produced a report containing recommendations that the minister could have accepted and decided to implement. Instead, she criticized and insulted the committee’s members. It is a real pity, and it has diminished all the hopes I had on this matter.

The other thing that has dashed my hopes of seeing electoral reform materialize is the survey that is online right now. That survey comes from the Minister of Democratic Institutions, who feels the need to engage in consultations one more time. The work of the committee that was created does not seem to satisfy the minister. She clearly said that she was not satisfied with its work, incidentally insulting all her Liberal colleagues who sat on that committee. She said it was not good enough for her, and that she had to conduct another consultation, using another approach to try to get the opinion of Canadians.

Her way of doing so is completely shameful. The entirety of the survey has been ridiculed by experts and by Canadians. It has been ridiculed by the people who took this survey on the Internet. Those people agreed to take it in good faith. They saw it as an opportunity to make another contribution to this debate. They were very disappointed and dissatisfied with the quality of the questions.

I will give the example of a person called Rory, who commented in English:

I just did this survey, and then at the end I was thinking I might have been doing a Facebook personality survey. Very much like a pop quiz type thing you find on FB all the time, like what your sign is, very disappointed with the bubble gum type personality of the survey, crazy that this came from the government. Silly. Insulting. Useless

I think that is a good summary of the opinion of most of the Canadians who took this survey.

We are therefore asking the House to adopt report 2 of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform, which we are debating today; this report was first adopted in committee.

It asks the Minister of Democratic Institutions to replace the survey questions or to add to them. That may not be what she will do if the report does get adopted. We ask that she at least add the questions discussed in committee, which were proposed by the Library of Parliament analysts who were in attendance.

Very specific, direct and clear questions could be included right now in the questionnaire on MyDemocracy.ca. That is what we are requesting today. Indeed, considering the extent to which the questions have been mocked, this would seem to be the appropriate course of action. I hope that the government will listen to reason and choose the right way to improve the questionnaire. What we are proposing to the government today is an improvement to the questionnaire that at the moment is the laughing stock of many people in the country. We are giving it the chance to take the right approach, the one that is appropriate if we want to conduct proper consultations.

The problem with the questionnaire is that the data collected, which we hope will subsequently be published, will be almost worthless. Allow me to explain. Respondents are being asked for personal information at the end of the questionnaire. If they decide not to provide that information to the Minister of Democratic Institutions, their views will simply be rejected. Their opinion will not be taken into account.

That is absurd, because respondents are being required to provide personal information. They say there is no obligation to do so, but if respondents do not, their survey result will be rejected and not considered. How can they tell these people they are engaging in consultations when they are forcing them to give their personal information so their opinion is taken into account?

The other serious problem is the worldwide accessibility of the MyDemocracy.ca site. Anyone on the planet can access it, even many times. That is completely nonsensical.

Most surveys conducted by academics or even students doing a school project are organized on a more rigorous scientific method, so as to arrive at reliable conclusions.

This survey, organized by the government of Canada, does not even meet the expectations for scientific rigour. When a government conducts consultations or surveys, we expect it to follow a rigorous approach. In my opinion, the data collected in this survey will be absolutely worthless.

It is a shame, because it could have definitely produced better results. I get the impression that the Minister of Democratic Institutions decided to hold another consultation because she was not satisfied with the responses obtained thus far. What is more, I think that is the Liberal government’s strategy on this subject, for it has no intention of keeping its promise to Canadians.

As long as the Liberals do not have the answers they want, that is, their choice of electoral system or no change at all, they are going to continue holding consultations. That is my impression. They will keep on asking the question until they get the answer they want. It is unspeakably sad.

The consultations that my House of Commons colleagues and I carried out in our ridings and the evidence provided to the Special Committee on Electoral Reform led to some pretty clear conclusions and a broad consensus. The vast majority want the new system to include some form of proportional representation. That is what the Special Committee on Electoral Reform's report indicated. Apparently that is not the answer the government was expecting.

Because the government did not get the answer it was expecting, it decided to consult some more, to ask the question again. Maybe if it gets the answer it wants someday, we will see the light at the end of the tunnel and an electoral reform that will give the Liberals what they want.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my NDP colleague for his speech.

When we went across the country and spoke with academics and Canadians, what was impressed upon all committee members was the complexity of our governance ecosystem and how changing an electoral system would effectively change many other aspects of the way Canadians related with their Parliament, the way governments were formed and dissolved, and all other aspects of our political ecosystem. It is tough to engage Canadians on these complex questions. Would the member not agree that continuing to sloganeer and make arguments that allow one side to argue right past the other is being disingenuous to Canadians? Would he not agree that engaging them in an online activity that allows them to understand the values that underpin our democratic institutions is an important process in this engagement process, which has to continue to be undertaken in order for Canadians to be engaged in this conversation?

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I only wish I could have supported this new consultation and congratulated the government on an excellent, sound initiative that will produce clear, reliable results for parliamentarians. Unfortunately, the Liberals' online consultation is anything but sound science. That is what I am against. It is not a good survey with meaningful questions.

That is exactly what the minister criticizes all the time. She says the committee did not give her clear, direct answers that everyone agreed on. How is her survey going to produce clear, direct answers when her questions are neither clear nor direct? She cannot expect to get clear, direct answers if she asks bogus questions.

The questions are useless, and the whole survey misses the sound science mark, so the data will be useless. I would have been happy to support this survey if it had been done properly and if its results could at least be considered reliable.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what I found interesting about the entire situation was this. The then leader of the Liberal Party campaigned on this. He then became Prime Minister. Now we hear concerns raised by the Liberals about complaints to their Prime Minister. That is really where those questions should be directed. They in effect got this process going. It was well-noted that it was the opposition parties that agreed to work toward a political objective of the Liberal Party, this being the last first-past-the-post vote as the Prime Minister promised.

We worked on this side of the House. We went across the country to work on an objective that was politically noted in the campaign by the Prime Minister, and public money was used for that. Now the Liberals are complaining, but they need to be doing that at the caucus meetings. Maybe it is happening, I do not know, because a thorough examination is not happening in the chamber.

Would it not have made sense to at least consult the committee about what type of questions public taxpayers should pay for democracy since its members travelled the country together?

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

Indeed, that would have made a lot of sense. The committee members would have been happy to participate and give their opinions on the questions the Minister of Democratic Institutions wanted to put in her survey. I am sure the committee members, across party lines, would have been happy to be consulted. Considering everything they heard during the months of consultations, they would not have refused the minister's offer if she had asked them to suggest questions to be included in the survey she was planning for December. The committee members would have been quite happy and would have definitely helped draft the questions.

That did not happen, which is why today we are debating a motion for the adoption of the report of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. That committee had actually suggested some questions to the minister. Those questions are much more valuable and much more direct. They would have solicited meaningful responses and results. It would have been much better if the survey had been done thoughtfully.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Montcalm.

This is the first time in a while that I have stood in the House to speak about electoral reform. I used to speak about it quite often in the last Parliament. If it is okay with everyone else, I would like to start with a story. It is my own personal development around this issue. I do not think my situation is that much different from any other Canadian who may not have had a distinct interest in this topic or an interest in changing the system. Here is why.

In 2004, I was elected as a member of Parliament. When I was 12 years old, I wanted one job in life, and that was to be a member of Parliament. I wanted to represent my riding, my colleagues, my brothers, my sisters, and my family. I wanted to be the representative of my home. I take no greater pride than in being that person who currently represents the office, and I respect it greatly.

To me, the essential part of democracy was about direct representation. I was directly elected to represent my constituents. By way of example, recently the Coast Guard announced it was going to remove the oil from a tanker that sank many years ago. If we had a system in our country where everybody in the House was chosen by one person to sit and represent the whole country—

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Order. The interpretation system does not seem to be working.

We will continue on, and we will ensure we are fully operational.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Being lost in translation is nothing new to me, Mr. Speaker. As I have said, I have a lot of experience being a politician, and it happens on occasion that I have an accent, but I will try to tone it down just a little bit. Perhaps that may have been a problem.

Mr. Speaker, I am a direct representative, and I love the fact that I represent this Parliament directly, and to me, that is sacrosanct.

Why would a person choose people to sit in the House when local issues, like the one I just expressed, would never be addressed or might only addressed some day down the road when it is too late?

From 2004 straight up to 2010, I was a person who believed that every member of the House should be directly responsible to one riding and one riding only. However, the leader of the party a few years ago named me critic for electoral reform, and I got to speak to a group of people from Fair Vote Canada. I also spoke to another group from Leadnow. We had a fabulous discussion about representation in this country. Should votes of an individual be counted? Should the representation in this House reflect the general vote of this country? That is a legitimate question. Why should a person feel like they have wasted a vote because they have voted for a party that is in a small corner of the House, which we were at that time?

I was struck by several elements of this. As I was talking about it, I became more open to the idea of introducing perhaps some type of proportionality, which would be good for this country by better reflecting where it wanted to go, just by parties and party policy, not from the direct representatives. I am not saying that I endorse that position, but I certainly became interested in the concept, thanks to people who engaged in the discussion. Here we are, to this day, having this discussion and the myriad of ways that we can go.

I believe that we need to speak to Canadians in terms of their values, as was done in many other countries, for example, New Zealand and Australia. Many countries throughout Europe have engaged in this, and many Canadian provinces.

I had the distinct honour of visiting British Columbia to meet with a lot of people involved in its campaign to bring in STV. I met with many people from Ontario who had a referendum on MMP and discussed the effects of that referendum. I have also spoken to people in P.E.I. who have done the same about the systems.

I truly believe that this discussion needs to branch out into many areas that have not been discussed. I can tell members that I went to my riding with a question when I had my forum. I asked what system they wanted. Did they want AV, STV, RU-STV, or MMP? My constituents looked at me as said, “You know, with all those letters, it's a lot of BS quite frankly”. However, this is essentially what we need to do. We need to ask, “What do you want?”

Everyone needs to take the journey that I did, where we go from strictly, “I want everyone in this House to represent one riding and one riding only”, to a broader perspective. When I spoke to people, they gave me a perspective that I had not thought about before. I was not rigid. Before anyone in this House accuses me of flip-flopping, which I think is a ridiculous term, this is a journey for all of us to take.

In all of the provinces, the committee held a total of 57 meetings, and heard 196 expert witnesses, 567 open-mike participants, and received 22,000 responses to surveys. This is a good step.

I will recite to members a favourite quote of mine from the report, which is on page 2. I have managed to read past page 2, by the way, but page 2 really struck me.

There is a gentleman by the name of Thomas Axworthy. I have met him before and am always interested in his writing on how we can progress as a nation, as a federation. We are a large country with few people in an international perspective, and so we have to have a system that strengthens that federation. This is the other part of that journey that I have discovered. He said:

...there is no perfect electoral system. There are advantages and disadvantages to all of them, and it is really a question of values, of differing perspectives,

This is the differing perspective I received when I became the critic.

Not everyone in this country has the benefit of being here, but we certainly do realize that benefit; all of us do. Mr. Axworthy also said, “It is basically a political process of deciding your purposes and values and what you value most”. It is about what we value the most.

I still believe that I want to represent one riding. I still want to represent the people who live in the place that I call home. I have done it for 12 years. I will do it for as long as they deem necessary, and at that point upon reflection I will call it one of the greatest honours anyone in this House can receive.

When I had my forum, something very interesting happened. People started exchanging ideas about where we should go. They said they have a system called MMP, in which two thirds of the House is directly elected like we are now. One third is what is called PR, proportional representation; and there are certain variations of that, by the way. Essentially, that would result in a better reflection of the national vote. There was one gentleman in the audience who said to me, “I have a question for you, sir. There is something that no one is asking in this. You keep talking about members of the House, who they are, where they're from, what political group they're with, and how many seats they represent, etc. No one has ever described to me what the ballot will look like”.

Here is one of the arguments that arose when I looked at MMP and I thought that maybe this is not a bad idea. One side of the ballot would say that the voters want this person to represent them in the House of Commons; the other side would say which party should lead this country, which party should lead this federation. I am not endorsing MMP, but, by God, that is a valid point.

Every point is valid. Should we have ridings that have multi-members, bigger ridings where everyone gets to go on a ballot? We could have two or three people from the same party on that ballot. I may not agree with that, but there is an element of logic in it that makes sense. If we do not engage with Canadians on values, then we are never going to see the logic of a new system that creates a better country. That is what we need to do.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize to my colleague, because I am generally polite and let women speak first.

I have a question for my colleague opposite, who spoke about the importance of holding consultations and of the special committee. I even had the opportunity and the privilege to travel around Canada with some of our colleagues opposite.

The member suggests that we must continue to discuss it. However, someone decided a throne speech would be a good time to tell every Canadian it would be the last time we would have a first past the post election. The member spoke about the importance of taking one's time. He even referred to New Zealand, which, by the way, consulted its citizens for 10 years. That was one of the first things we pointed out, but the government wanted to move quickly, and it did. Nevertheless, it took six months to set up a committee, which was then changed as a result of pressure from the opposition parties.

My question is simple. The committee did great work. After criss-crossing Canada and hearing from a multitude of experts, it arrived at a conclusion: there must be a referendum to ensure that all Canadians can weigh in on the matter.

Would the member agree to put a very simple question to Canadians in a referendum, one that gives a choice between proportional representation and the status quo, that is first past the post, so we will know where they stand on this issue?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

Mr. Speaker, there are also many jurisdictions that did not have a referendum. There are also many jurisdictions that had a longer conversation, and he pointed to New Zealand in this regard. There are also jurisdictions that had a much smaller conversation and made that choice.

Electoral reform was discussed in the election campaign, and I say that there was an interest and hunger to have something that would strengthen this federation, as I spoke about earlier.

That is the point of this. I have no problems discussing the idea of a referendum, but the problem is that everyone is racing to the bottom or ultimate solution to this without engaging the values of this country on what we want to do.

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame, NL]

I apologize if my speech is interrupting his heckling, but I will continue.

Here is the situation. That party never engaged the electorate on this. I was there when the Conservatives did the Fair Elections Act. I use air quotes because it is quite comical. The Conservatives never once said anything about a referendum. That is #disingenuous, if they want to call that a Twitter campaign activity.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to hear the member across the way speak in the House. It has been a pleasure working with him for many years in this place.

There is one profound point that my constituents, and in fact, people from right across my province, have raised many times. It is that they are fed up with the process in which less than 40% of the vote receives an even larger majority government. That is what happened with this government. We again have a mass majority government that received less than 40% of the vote. It is clear and simple. People have told me there has to be a better way to do it.

We have had a lot of great discussions with groups like Fair Vote Canada. Professors have talked to me about systems in other countries. People were free to fill out, with no pressure, a questionnaire giving some of the options. The committee did a sensible review. What is so upsetting is that we now have the valuable information to simply make the decision at the right time, and yet we have this nonsensical survey that has people incensed.

Would the member agree with me that we should just proceed to begin making amendments?