Electoral Reform committee  STV retains the one kind of member of Parliament. It means at the local level there are multi-party MPs to represent the distribution of political preferences in the neighbourhoods. So it's not just the plurality, there is not just the political preference that more people like than any other single preference.

Electoral Reform committee  Oh, on the constitutional issue.

Electoral Reform committee  Yes. Again, we have this cloud hanging over us. The Supreme Court created a new kind of concept—Mr. Kenney alluded to it—of the architecture of the Constitution. It's a little hard for those of us who parse every word of Supreme Court decisions to tell you, “Well, here is what ‘architecture’ means”.

Electoral Reform committee  It's a very important dimension of parliamentary government and you people experience it every day, particularly when you're not in Ottawa. One of the things I like about the STV system is that it retains that and broadens it. Let me give an example from my own part of Canada, the middle of Toronto.

Electoral Reform committee  If I understand your question, and I'll use the technical word, I'm a Burkean when it comes to the role of the MP. I don't see the MP as simply a representative of the people in his or her riding. You elect a member of Parliament because you think that person has good judgment on the issues of the day.

Electoral Reform committee  I agree.

Electoral Reform committee  I give that as one example.

Electoral Reform committee  You mean you had a plurality of the vote.

Electoral Reform committee  That's since 1921.

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, but that's only a plurality, around 40%. I just don't think government should be controlled tightly by an administration that only 40% of the people think is what they want.

Electoral Reform committee  Well, there are several things. You'd have to go back to the false majority times. We just had a false majority before this government, and I think we're seeing that Canadians, for instance, supported parties that take global warming very seriously. Yet, they were under a government that did not seem to do that.

Electoral Reform committee  I think my colleague would like to answer that.

Electoral Reform committee  Oh boy, you have a tough assignment. I know there's been talk that you should do a citizens' assembly, and I know that's not going to happen. On the other hand, they're well written up. What's interesting about the B.C. citizens' assembly and the Ontario one is that they really were genuine efforts to get a cross-section of people in their respective provinces, most of whom had never even thought about electoral reform, to apply their minds to it for a month or so and to just keep on and think about it, and they came out very much for a proportional representation change: STV in B.C. and MMP in Ontario.

Electoral Reform committee  Well, the PMO is not going to shrivel and go away. We have—Patrice has used a useful phrase—a “political culture”. We have really as a country, of all the Westminster parliamentary countries, built it into our culture, as we have with political staffers for ministers. We've changed the political culture of our parliamentary democracy, and a lot of it has been fairly beneficial.

Electoral Reform committee  I think an MP would run the risk there, because it produces two kinds of members of Parliament. That phrase in the Senate reference about the architecture of the constitution, you would agree with me, is not a precise phrase, and creating two kinds of members might be found to be a deviation from the architecture.