Electoral Reform committee  I would agree with your interpretation. That would be a concern. We were tasked with recommending an electoral system that met certain principles, but we felt very strongly in our commission work that we had to spell out what that system would be and all the details; that we were charged with figuring it out; that the details did matter; and that the potential for unintended consequences for the various actors in the system, all of whom were legitimate, needed to be thought through as best we could.

Electoral Reform committee  Let me take advantage of this to perhaps answer Mr. DeCourcey's question about the closed list as well. They all sort of come together.

Electoral Reform committee  I wrote a piece for Graham's publication that offers up some suggestions as to how you might consult more and improve the process. In short, I suggested things that were done previously under the constitutional process, under Joe Clark, such as a bigger conference, citizen conferences, if not a citizens' assembly; independent academic research that the public could see and that you could put out to people to show that you are considering the trade-offs and the issues; and a series of online things that you are starting to do.

Electoral Reform committee  First, we chose the closed list because of the feeling that, if the lists were closed, then the parties would make a bigger effort to put more women in particular on the list. That was a concern of the commission at the time, to try to increase the number of female representatives in the legislature.

Electoral Reform committee  The evidence shows that PR systems tend to have higher voter turnout, so I think that is probably reflective of a sense that the votes do count. But by itself, it's probably insufficient as an explanation. There are other factors that go into play. We do know that voter turnout goes up in a change election, for example, in this country.

Electoral Reform committee  What we meant by that in the report was that the way regional boundaries could be drawn under an MMP system could very much safeguard and protect communities of interest where you have significant minority communities located. You could actually craft boundaries that have the largest population centres for francophone voters, and that in turn would ensure that changing the system would not result in a dilution, if you will, of a number of self-styled francophone MLAs in the legislature.

Electoral Reform committee  I'm going to riff a bit off what Graham Fox said in terms of putting some stuff out there that people can react to. We did that in the New Brunswick commission. We had an options paper. We had some draft recommendations. We put things out to try to narrow the debate in terms of getting people to respond to specific things, to help us come to conclusions and decisions.

Electoral Reform committee  Get it right. I didn't make the promise—

Electoral Reform committee  —but I do believe there is great merit in studying our electoral system. As somebody who has studied it but also as a voter citizen, I'm open to change for it. I do see the inadequacies of the system. I don't want to stand on ceremony here, but I do think you have to allow a process that is inclusive enough, expansive enough, and timely enough.

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, because it would have been brought in by a Conservative government that had been re-elected.

Electoral Reform committee  The commitment by Premier Lord was that if he had won the next election it would have gone ahead, but there was a change in government and the new Liberal government said no.

Electoral Reform committee  It led us to MMP with the broader mandate that we had and with those other principles too of effective government, quality of the vote, etc. When we had to make certain trade-offs, we looked at different systems, so we looked at AV, we looked at STV, we studied Germany, New Zealand, all of the same kinds of models.

Electoral Reform committee  The starting point for me is that it's the public system. It's not the party's system or a politician's system and whatnot. I also think our sense of democracy has changed over time in terms of what people are expecting from elected officials. It's unfortunate, but we don't hold a high enough opinion of them to devolve upon them all of these kinds of decisions.

Electoral Reform committee  I don't have a sense that this committee is that partisan. I do have a sense that it's proportional and the parties are doing their work and members of Parliament are doing their work. With that slight dissent, I do believe and did offer up a referendum, a chance for citizens and voters to pronounce on the work of this committee.

Electoral Reform committee  At the time we were doing our work, we found a bit of the opposite. I do recommend, if you're interested, some academic research that we had conducted and that we published in a book. Many of these academics you've seen here. Some of it may be dated, but we did some original analysis to show the effects of government formation and instability.