Electoral Reform committee  Thank you for the question. I think that under the system now, where you are elected with most people voting against you, it is incumbent on you to work hard and be mindful of what people are thinking and to do the best job you can, knowing that most people have voted against you.

Electoral Reform committee  That is a possibility. The other possibility is that some people are going to have more votes than others. If you vote for one of the candidates who reaches second or third position, your vote is counted, but if you vote for somebody who falls lower on the calculations, you get to vote twice: you have your vote, and then you have your second vote counted.

Electoral Reform committee  Of course. The system is pivotal, and it's certainly one of the factors. But if you're looking for representation, I think you have to dig a little deeper. If you're looking for representation, you have to ask yourselves, as a party, if you are running enough women, if you are running enough people who represent the country.

Electoral Reform committee  How do you get cynicism? You get cynicism when politicians look after their own interests purely. That's the answer. People will turn cynical against politicians when they see that you're only defending yourself and your own personal interests or your own collective interests. It has to go to a referendum; whether you do it with a committee or with some sort of electoral college or whatever, the people have to have the last word.

Electoral Reform committee  There are wedge issues in every jurisdiction, and I really regret that, and it should have been fixed better. I'm certainly not in agreement with the way things happened. But what is the political solution? Should there have been an anti-gun party in a proportional system, which would hold the balance of power and would have fixed the issue right away?

Electoral Reform committee  I have to be blunt. I think this is a wrong image. Every vote counts—every vote. Everybody's vote was counted. You came out first, and you know full well that it illustrates the point I made at the beginning. You know full well that most people voted against you, which makes you, I would expect, a much better member of Parliament, because you are open to hearing what other people have said to you.

Electoral Reform committee  It's a hard thing, but Canadians want good, responsive government. They know your name; they know you're the MP; they know that no matter how they voted—because you don't know how they voted—you will serve them, and I'm sure you do and I'm sure all of you do. That makes for good government.

Electoral Reform committee  I would only say that there's been an explosion of studies over the last 10 years on voting behaviour. Most of it is showing that there is less and less of an obvious link between voting methods and the turnout rate: the turnout rate has gone up and down independent of the electoral systems that have been chosen.

Electoral Reform committee  Experience shows us that, under a proportional representation system, a growing number of parties will represent narrower and narrower interests. It's as simple as that, and the math backs it up.

Electoral Reform committee  The historical context in 1993 is similar to that in 1917, when Quebec voted almost unanimously for Wilfrid Laurier. In both cases, the outcome reflected people's outrage over an extraordinary political situation. They are narrow interests in the sense that voters were delivering a scathing condemnation of a situation that obviously required a near-unanimous response, one that would ensure a Quebec-centric voice in Parliament.

Electoral Reform committee  There isn't; it's a choice you've made.

Electoral Reform committee  Yes. There's absolutely nothing that prevents you in this system from running more women as candidates.

Electoral Reform committee  No, I'm going to blame the parties.

Electoral Reform committee  I think it's actually wrong to blame the system for political failures.

Electoral Reform committee  You're blaming the system. You're saying—