Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to hear colleagues talk today about the fact that so many people voted for this particular method of electoral reform. This promise was put into a platform with dozens or perhaps hundreds of promises, yet my colleague suggests that constituents voted for this particular one out of all of the others. My colleagues often argue about the inadvisability of omnibus bills, yet a platform is just that. People pick and choose the items they will vote for and what kind of response they expect. There were a number of promises made in the Liberal platform that people may have voted for. They may have voted for small business tax cuts, but that one did not quite work out. The $10-billion maximum deficit did not work out. We are still not seeing action on restoring door-to-door mail delivery or on the banning of partisan advertising. None of these have worked out.
My colleague can host town hall meetings and he can go on Twitter, but the percentage of people from his riding who will get to a town hall meeting at best, if his number of 250 is accurate, is one-quarter of 1%. A referendum could actually access between 60% and 90% of Canadians. Why would my colleague not allow more Canadians to have a say on this very crucial matter?