Government Operations committee  I also want to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak. Like Alex, I've been researching and thinking about this topic for many years. I wrote the first book on government advertising and I was involved in the 2002 Auditor General's inquiry on advertising, sponsorship, a

Electoral Reform committee  I think lowering the voting age is a good thing, but I think it misses the symptom for the cause. Younger people aren't voting for a reason, and lowering the voting age to 16 encourages that habit at the heart. That's very important. We know that once people vote, they continue t

Electoral Reform committee  I think what you're talking about is stability, and again it depends on what you mean by stability. Policy lurches that occur in a first-past-the-post system would not occur, or are less likely to occur, in PR systems. PR systems, if they are more centrist and govern for a longer

Electoral Reform committee  Quickly, I agree that it's a great place to start, but it doesn't tell you where you want to go, and that to me is the more important question.

Electoral Reform committee  I think absolutely. I think you've put it really well in saying that the electoral system is only one component of a larger thing. If you're looking for the electoral system to be a panacea for all your political woes, you ain't gonna find it.

Electoral Reform committee  The line I use for that question is that it's like turkeys voting for Thanksgiving. You're absolutely right in saying there's a huge conflict of interest, and that's why I don't think politicians should be making that decision. In a perfect world, citizens would be making that de

Electoral Reform committee  You're going to hear from constitutional experts later, so I'll, in part, defer to them, but we do have evidence about the answer to that question, and that's the Senate reference case. It said that section 44 of the Constitution, which allowed Parliament to make exclusive laws

Electoral Reform committee  That's right. With MMP, there are a number of different design variations. The big ones are the ratio between local representatives and the tier. The assembly members thought 70:30 was about right, with 25% on the tier about what you need. They wanted to return the legislature to

Electoral Reform committee  That's right. That's the riding of Kargoorlie.

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, I think those are the trade-offs. If you look at the Australian system, where there is better proportionality in the STV model—

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, the Senate. The number of people per district is much larger, so you can achieve proportionality if you have at least five. If you try to think about having at least five or more representatives per district, and you look at the country, and you try to maintain the princip

Electoral Reform committee  I began by saying that the key word in this discussion was “contingency”. I would say that in response to your question. Local representation is important. As was just described, the Irish case is a great example of local representation. Because the geographical constituencies a

Electoral Reform committee  It is a challenging question. I appreciate where you're coming from and how it informs what interests you. I think you said it nicely when you asked what it is we want in an electoral system. To me, that's something that every Canadian has an opinion about. I agree with you that'

Electoral Reform committee  Thank you. I think that in the discussions around electoral reform, many issues are being conflated, and if I leave you with any one idea, it is to try to disentangle these various threads. The threads are these: what we want out of Parliament, what we want Parliament to do, and

Electoral Reform committee  Sure. Thank you for the question. I think that the guiding principles of the committee, and presumably the guiding principles that will help you in your cross-country tour, are very broad, and in some cases, as I mentioned, they are really about products of a system. You can't h