Electoral Reform committee  Again, I think what you're going to see in your consultations is partisan types and a lot of advocacy groups, and they're going to reflect back some of the opinions that are already here in this room. In that sense, it's a bit of an echo chamber. However, some stragglers might co

Electoral Reform committee  Anything that connects voters to the political system in a cohesive way is a good thing, and I support it. I realize I'm fighting an uphill battle perhaps with my audience in attempting to suggest that we just temper your enthusiasm for your local representative role. I've over

Electoral Reform committee  It's very challenging. The democracy exercises we've had have been excellent. They've shown that the public, given a chance to become informed, can make good decisions. I'm not against that idea, but that is not the situation we face now. If you go out and ask people what they th

Electoral Reform committee  Because they don't know anything anywhere, right? Do you think that the Irish voters know the weighted inclusive Gregory method? Do you think they can explain how STV allocates its representation? No, they can't. Neither can our voters explain to you how 39% of the vote turned in

Electoral Reform committee  You already are a tool of legitimacy: you were elected, there were platforms, people broadly understood the different things that were being discussed. I think it is time now to act. There's a higher-order principle at stake. It's lovely that you all want to chat and have a gro

Electoral Reform committee  Well, your question of the role of a political party in a democracy is a very broad question, whereas the lead-up was all about the role of the individual member. I think that the results that you describe are perfectly in line with the research, in that someone who's been in the

Electoral Reform committee  I do think it's wrong-headed to look at this from a point of view of public education. What do people need to know about voting systems? I often tell people that selling a voting system is like selling a car. People need to know about the performance; they don't need to look unde

Electoral Reform committee  It sounds like me talking.

Electoral Reform committee  It sounds like me talking, yes. I wasn't there, but....

Electoral Reform committee  You know, I tell my students, “Don't knock politicians. It's a hard job.” It's a thankless job, in many ways. Weekends and evenings are spent talking to people and doing stuff. It's hard, hard work. That doesn't mean your vote is a reflection of all that hard, hard work. In fac

Electoral Reform committee  Ultimately voters are not ideological in the sense that they wave left and right banners, but they are able to locate parties in terms of the values they hold—which party is the abortion party, which party is the party on law and order—and they make their choices on the basis of

Electoral Reform committee  I'm not against having local representation, but your job is to try to work out the balance. Right now we have an overbalanced sense of the local. People use it to basically try to block every attempt at reform with these overblown ideas of the importance of the local. You had

Electoral Reform committee  Thanks for inviting me to come, and I want to begin by applauding the government for bringing this issue forward and by applauding the parties that are supporting it. This is a little bit about me. I've worked on this topic for almost three decades. I've written two books and

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, I don't think it's an accurate claim, because we have two sets of identification rules. People in the country don't have to present a passport but people outside the country have to present a passport, so if the government is suggesting that they're going to make things the

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, it seems to me we could use the databases that have been suggested. If the goal is to solve the problem, then the citizenship database and the Elections Canada database on where people have voted before would provide us with the evidence of the riding they had been in befor