Electoral Reform committee  I didn't know I was going to be involved in this particular debate today. The argument being made there was that MPs are representatives who are elected to make decisions on behalf of citizens. It's an indirect democracy. MPs should be making decisions on things like electoral re

Electoral Reform committee  Yes. That's seen as a hook into an article saying there are all these problems with first past the post, disproportionality, all the things that come out of that. For that reason, it's got some really awful elements to it. It's got one thing that's really great about it and that'

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, totally. Bringing in any kind of proportional system will reduce those distortions. Part of those distortions result from people not voting, and more people will turn out in a proportional system.

Electoral Reform committee  Proportionality will have that effect, whether you get it under straight PR or under MMP. The system itself doesn't matter as much as the fact that you are getting proportionality. Yes, it will absolutely have that effect, definitely.

Electoral Reform committee  Any system that produces proportionality would address that. If you feel you're not going to produce a wasted vote, then you're more likely to turn out to vote. Any sort of proportionality will lead to that.

Electoral Reform committee  I don't feel it's my job to lecture MPs on this. I did have....

Electoral Reform committee  You're quite right about the riding. I worked for the B.C. Citizens' Assembly and followed it afterwards. It was in those northern B.C. ridings where local representation was a huge issue to an extent that it wasn't in the Lower Mainland. People were perfectly fine combining thre

Electoral Reform committee  It doesn't counter it, but it tempers it. What we know is that there are two measures. The number of volunteers in a local campaign and the amount of money that a campaign spends are both related to increased vote shares. In the end, local campaigns can affect about 5%, and they

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, that's the maximum.

Electoral Reform committee  Look at the last election. A lot of seats were close calls, so candidates, if they can push that and they end up in a close race, it could have a big effect. The big thing is that candidates can do a lot to help themselves, and MPs, between elections, can help themselves as well.

Electoral Reform committee  It's about 5%, yes, exactly. They can increase it by that amount. They can increase it by a lot more or a lot less, depending on the local circumstances, but that's about the upper limit. If you look at the number of close races in recent Canadian elections, there were a lot of

Electoral Reform committee  They're finding that people would be more likely to vote if they thought their vote would count.

Electoral Reform committee  It's completely expected that under the electoral system we have there are psychological and mechanical effects that create disincentives for people to vote under certain conditions. If you live in a riding in which the Conservative is going to sweep it and you're an NDP supporte

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, there's no doubt that accountability is a real strength of our current system. People can very clearly see their votes have an effect in the riding. You get wasted votes, the phenomenon of wasted votes, but you can see if incumbent MPs get fewer votes than the challengers, t

Electoral Reform committee  I actually only have a five-minute presentation.