Mr. Speaker, with great respect and fondness, I thank my colleague for his comments.
For those Canadians who were not watching closely, the electoral reform committee got along incredibly well. We criss-crossed the country. I can look to a number of Conservative and Liberal colleagues, my friend from the Green Party, and friends from the Bloc who all participated. While Canadians might be somewhat suspicious thinking that if there were a bunch of politicians around a table that all that would happen is partisan back and forth, we got into this issue.
It is incredibly important, how we elect and un-elect governments; it is fundamental to everything that we do, our economic policy, our environment policy, every policy is based on this. It is also something that can unite us as parliamentarians in our listening and engaging with Canadians. The evidence was fascinating. This report on Canadian democracy, by the way, is the most thorough and comprehensive in Parliament's history.
I have a question for my friend. It has been almost 100 years since Parliament first started studying electoral reform, almost a century. Parliamentarians have been engaging with each other and with Canadians on this topic, because the system that we first had when the country was formed worked for two parties but it is not so great when there is more than two.
Here is the Liberal recommendation, and I would like my friend's comment on this:
...regarding alternative electoral systems are [too] rushed, and are too radical to impose at this time....
Too rushed? Will it be another 100 years? How much more time do we need, how many more pages, and how many more Canadians do we need to talk to before it is not too rushed anymore? Is that actually not the barrier that stopped the Liberals from signing on to the consensus that was available to them?