Mr. Speaker, I am glad that the member was consulting my website. I assume that is where she found that article. I thank her for that. I want to encourage her to read this passage as well. It is not from the same article, but from one I wrote in 2001. It says:
And just to be on the safe side, the existing first-past-the-post system would be included as one of the alternatives which voters could select on their preferential ballots. This would ensure that even if the commission had done its job poorly and selected a range of entirely unacceptable options, the worst that could happen would be that Canadians would return to the status quo.
I am no defender of first past the post, and I have made that clear to my caucus. My job is not to defend or advocate any system. It is to advocate the sovereignty of the Canadian people, to say that Canadians are the ones who have the right to decide whether to keep the current system or replace it with a new system.
It is perverse to suggest that we should have a decision-making apparatus in which we say that only the status quo is forbidden, that only the status quo can get rejected, because while it is true that first past the post is not in my estimation the best system out there, there are systems that are far worse.
I have been suggesting all along that the government intends to ram through the very worst of those available options in order to rig the 2019 election. That is a scandal, and it is probably unconstitutional.