Electoral Reform committee  I'm the one—well, I shouldn't say I'm the one, but Alex as well—who said that we have a system that's better than the other systems. No system is perfect, but given the realities, I think we do have a proposal that would be better, and if we applied it to Canadians conditions, we

Electoral Reform committee  Let me just finish what I had to say. We have experience from some countries and could say that in some, you have coalitions that tend to be repeated, with the same parties tending to be in government. You have grand coalitions, which some people think is a good idea, like in F

Electoral Reform committee  Our former colleague, Louis Massicotte, who is now at Université Laval, worked with Quebec's committee. He's well-versed in Germany's system, having visited a number of times. He consulted with members of Germany's parliament and found that the system worked very well. The resp

Electoral Reform committee  Any change requires some adjustment, but there's no reason to think we wouldn't be able to adjust.

Electoral Reform committee  When a municipality is henceforth considered a region, it's possible to represent a constituency that is part of that municipality, but not the entire municipality. If you're part of a team of elected representatives, I think the municipality would be much better served. Of cour

Electoral Reform committee  If you're able to do that, it would certainly be the best solution, even though it might not make everyone happy. To my mind, it would be much better to propose something concrete, if that's possible. That would keep things moving along. All the details wouldn't need to be ironed

Electoral Reform committee  I must say that is where I disagree with André. P.E.I. has far fewer people than the City of Ottawa. If the City of Ottawa were going to change its electoral system, I could imagine that kind of discussion, whereby several options would be put on the table and so on. Even then, I

Electoral Reform committee  My feeling is that abstractions are good in seminars for graduate students. To really have a discussion even around principles, I think you need to present concrete proposals and then invite interventions in which people are asked to express an opinion on either side, drawing upo

Electoral Reform committee  I've never understood the advantage of preferential systems per se. It seems to me that we know the disadvantages, which are that these systems make it difficult for parties that are not within the mainstream—even harder than it is under our system—to get elected, so you have les

Electoral Reform committee  We've had different ways of doing it. In British Columbia we had a large citizens' commission. In Quebec we had a mixed commission of politicians and citizens. There is no right way. As was said, the crucial point is that efforts must be made to present objective, non-partisan, e

Electoral Reform committee  I managed to avoid that question the last time it was asked. Unfortunately, I don't seem to be as lucky this time. Some countries have changed their voting system without holding a referendum. France did it twice. To my mind, this has less to do with what I think and much more t

Electoral Reform committee  I don't have a problem with that, but I suspect many Canadians would. If we said the cost of changing the electoral system would be having more politicians it would too easily lend itself to a caricature. I think this is too important an issue to invite that kind of situation. I

Electoral Reform committee  I think it's gone up significantly.

Electoral Reform committee  Look, whenever you have lists, you do better. If we use an MMP system, where lists would be only 35% to 40%, you won't do as well as you do in Sweden where you basically have regional list systems topped up nationally, which basically means you get 45% women.

Electoral Reform committee  I would agree with that, and I guess I should have added this. I think that in the cases where there has been change toward more proportional systems, we've seen an increase in them. I should have checked my New Zealand statistics, for example, because that's a country that is