Electoral Reform committee  I have to say that my experience as an MP is what I base my judgment on. Before I became an MP—1955 was the first time I advocated proportional representation—a professor of mine gave me on a paper the comment “ingenious but ingenuous”.

Electoral Reform committee  Let there be light. Anyway, I think you can have a PR system that has members who can be quite responsive, and constituents—citizens of an ordinary riding, broadly defined—could go to a variety of MPs who may be elected on the PR basis to work for them on practical problems that

Electoral Reform committee  Okay. I think you're being generous, but I'll conclude with this. I mentioned the problem of 1980, and maybe we'll have another discussion about that, but I could shift to the most recent election and ask you to look at Atlantic Canada, with 32 seats, and they've all gone to the

Electoral Reform committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wonder if you will permit me briefly at the outset to say one word about Mauril Bélanger, and I wanted to explain why it's particularly pertinent to this committee. I arrived from England on Friday evening only to wake up Saturday morning and learn th

Electoral Reform committee  Okay. Mr. Chairman, I'll continue now. Members of the committee will have received a brief from the Broadbent Institute. I don't intend to go over in detail everything that you will readily see in that. I will highlight only a few points that I think are important, and then I w

Finance committee  Mr. Chairman, I wonder—I'm going through an old movie—if you'll permit a point of order. I was told by Mr. Brison that I misinformed the committee on a certain fact. I want to use the opportunity to correct the record. I gave credit to the government for creating the working in

Finance committee  I've often said that some Conservatives have very good ideas.

Finance committee  Let me put it in context. It has been said by a number of people in recent years that the top 1% have had about 30% of all the income growth in the country. The argument is that if they have really benefited, to generalize a lot, from globalization and other reasons, disproport

Finance committee  I don't think they're going to go anywhere. The last report and all the survey data do not indicate they're going to pack up and move.

Finance committee  We're talking about capital gains; 50% of capital gains are exempt from taxes.

Finance committee  Frankly, I would have to check specifically, to look at the list.

Finance committee  Sure.

Finance committee  The transactions tax is a very old idea that is coming into force. In fact, if I remember correctly, the European Union adopted it last week.

Finance committee  When you have transactions, movements of capital around, there are two purposes, I remember, when it was first proposed by a Nobel prize-winning economist. One is that it's a source of revenue when there are these flows of billions of dollars, instantly, in seconds. One is to get

Finance committee  Whoever is doing—