Madam Speaker, I have to say to my friend from Halifax, the parliamentary secretary, that I am offended by what we just heard. I worked hard on this committee. We were never as a committee given a mandate to get large numbers of Canadians involved. We were not given a budget to get large numbers of Canadians involved. The government spent millions of dollars on Vox Pop, where it did get hundreds of thousands of people involved, and that survey said that 70% of Canadians would rather see a system in which many parties worked together by consensus rather than one party making all the decisions, even if it took longer. Therefore, the outreach the government did got hundreds of thousands of people involved and actually supported PR.
The parliamentary committee, which came to a majority report, travelled 31,000 kilometres, to every province and territory, holding open-mike sessions with thousands of Canadians who gave up their time preparing briefs. More than 100,000 people went online to give us information. We were never told as a committee that we were supposed to accumulate numbers of Canadians to justify a promise the member's government made to Canadians, and that I voted for in the Speech from the Throne in this place, that 2015 would be the last election held under first past the post.