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.