Electoral Reform committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Members of the committee, thank you very much. I'm honoured and delighted to be invited to address this august committee and to discuss the merits and demerits of electoral reform. Your work is very important. It's extremely valuable and it comes at a good

Electoral Reform committee  I'm getting to my last point. The way we vote shapes our political culture. Canada is not perfect, and its democracy has its flaws. But we also have to recognize that the system has worked and that, because it has enjoyed the electorate's approval for generations, the electorate

Electoral Reform committee  Thank you for your question. I wrote this in December. I think that what has happened, what has transpired, is very good. I like the composition of this committee. I think you've set very high objectives. You have a good budget to get the job done. My only worry is that the kind

Electoral Reform committee  I could add a lot more subclauses to what I wrote. I would assume that the question will be clear. I would favour a supermajority on these issues, quite frankly, as the provincial governments did in Canada and as they did in Australia and New Zealand, because these matters are ve

Electoral Reform committee  Well, no. I would not want our system to be making a habit of turning to the people every few years and asking them if they're happy with the electoral system. No. I think that maybe once a generation, maybe once every two generations, or maybe once a century might be a good idea

Electoral Reform committee  Oh, no. I would never say that.

Electoral Reform committee  False majorities.

Electoral Reform committee  I raised the Jennings test because, again, it was specifically applied by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1981. It's not something I just pulled out of a hat. The Supreme Court applied the Jennings test, and I think the Jennings test applies itself again in the situation where you

Electoral Reform committee  Yes. I just don't like proportional systems. I'm afraid that proportional systems focus—

Electoral Reform committee  I like this committee a lot.

Electoral Reform committee  The answer is simple. These were minority governments that were formed out of national parties, not out of small sectoral parties, regional parties that can somehow put together a coalition and each divide up the spoils in terms of what they want out of government policy. We have

Electoral Reform committee  We don't have any data on cynicism. It's important to recognize that. As a trained historian, I tend to put things into context historically. Having read what politicians experienced in the past, I don't have the sense that people are more cynical today than they used to be. Th

Electoral Reform committee  There is no argument against the convention. When the Supreme Court of Canada was asked in 1981, they said these conventions matter and the Government of Canada has to abide by those conventions, the government has to work to build substantial agreement among the provinces. The g

Electoral Reform committee  All right, I'll come back to it.

Electoral Reform committee  Peter Hogg said, in his Constitutional Law of Canada, “there is a stronger moral obligation to follow a convention than a usage, and that departure from convention may be criticized more severely than departure from usage.” Convention matters.