Electoral Reform committee  I don't know that I believe there is a system that will be better. Every system will be different. It will produce a different-looking House. Some of it comes down to how we think about elections. What are they and what are they for? Partly, they're to produce a representative assembly, but also they're about connecting citizens to governments.

Electoral Reform committee  If the committee is successful in moving the debate ahead, then it ought to continue. If it comes to a roadblock and finds that it's not able to recommend, then some other process may be necessary.

Electoral Reform committee  I don't pretend to know how to advise you on how you can persuade the public that they ought to trust. I think trust comes when they see that there's been a legitimate process, that there's been a fair and open conversation about it, and that there wasn't a kind of manipulation.

Electoral Reform committee  I think that if the committee came to the conclusion that a particular kind of system would be desirable, it would be very helpful if Parliament had a real debate—a kind of “second reading in principle” debate—about whether this is really where they wanted to go. If you decided to go to an MMP system, it would be complicated to design.

Electoral Reform committee  I think you're going to be rehearsing and revisiting all the issues that were taken up by the law commission, the citizens' assemblies, the New Brunswick Commission on Legislative Democracy, the very large amount of work done in Quebec as it travelled the province, and by the royal commission in Prince Edward Island.

Electoral Reform committee  Sure, and where those tensions get played out and by what rules will be governed by the new electoral system.

Electoral Reform committee  The tensions will exist and different systems provide incentives for particular kinds of behaviours and they reward certain strategies and they disadvantage others. But when we're talking about changing electoral systems, we're not just talking about accounting rules, we're talking about nominations and finance, all aspects, because the rules change the incentives that govern the actors.

Electoral Reform committee  I think the evidence on turnout is pretty complicated. You're going to hearing from André Blais later this week I believe. Nobody in the world knows more about the relationship between turnout and electoral systems than André, so I would recommend you listen to him. The reason that the citizens' assembly in B.C. chose the single transferable vote, to the surprise of everyone, was that they believed it offered them more choices, because they could choose both candidates and parties in whatever order they liked.

Electoral Reform committee  That's changed over time. The boundaries are less and less coterminous with county boundaries, as the population is becoming more mobile and they've been less and less successful at doing that. The parties vary in terms of how they choose their candidates. In, say, a five-member district, parties would not run a full slate of five candidates, because they know the result would be sort of proportional.

Electoral Reform committee  The system the Australians use works, I think, perfectly well. Simply, the law requires you to show up at the polls and cast a ballot. You can spoil the ballot, if you like. You can write anything on it you like, but you must attend and take a ballot. For those who don't attend and don't have an excuse, there's a modest fine.

Electoral Reform committee  I don't think I have a preferred system. I worked awfully hard for a decade not to have one, when I was working with the British Columbia citizens. Frankly, I can see the advantages of an MMP system or an STV system, which you'll hear about, I guess, tomorrow morning, or a finished list system, which someone described as one in which every candidate in the country is listed on the sheet, and you just pick the one and it's translated....

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, I know nothing about the technicalities. I heard both the current and the past Chief Electoral Officer say they don't believe that the security concerns have been dealt with yet. I think this is an issue probably for the future.

Electoral Reform committee  I have the experience of probably hundreds of public consultations on electoral boundaries, on different electoral systems across this country, and my experience is that they're not very helpful at all. Most people who come to them either come with their own very narrow agenda, with a line to push, or they really don't know very much about it.

Electoral Reform committee  The experience of the British Columbia exercise was not encouraging. The major paper in the province, the Vancouver Sun, assigned a full-time correspondent for the entire year, and the assembly and all its work was covered in enormous detail. The newspaper published the entire report in full in the newspaper, yet we know that when most people came to the polls, they really knew nothing about it.

Electoral Reform committee  I have none.