Electoral Reform committee  I would suggest that the committee members read the report of Quebec's chief electoral officer from December 2007 regarding a compensatory mixed system. This report includes a summary which I have here in front of me. You should have the official document. This report will provid

Electoral Reform committee  Thank you for inviting me, Mr. Chair.

Electoral Reform committee  Of course. For my part, I have been fortunate to have been elected six times with an absolute majority. Once or twice, I got just 48% or 49% of the votes and I was frustrated, because I would have liked an absolute majority. We have to be careful though. Based on the rationale

Electoral Reform committee  In my opinion, one of the issues of the reform you are discussing is the change in political culture. If you can change that to get away from the excessive confrontation and blind partisanship that we have now, everyone would thank you for it and would benefit from that shift.

Electoral Reform committee  Thank you very much.

Electoral Reform committee  If your parties have received identifiable popular support and we calculate that support by multiplying it by the number of parties who make an alliance or agree on a mechanism, part of the population would be represented in Parliament and would express its support through these

Electoral Reform committee  I will be brief, Ms. May. The more the majority in Parliament is based on the majority of the population, the greater its legitimacy, I would say.

Electoral Reform committee  I would just like to ...

Electoral Reform committee  I know, Mr. Chair, and I respect your authority.

Electoral Reform committee  The proportion recommended for Quebec is 60-40, which is the proportion in the Scottish system. A slim majority would be formed of local members, as is the case in the current system, and the 40% minority would serve to reduce the distortions under the current system. In his repo

Electoral Reform committee  That could easily be adapted for Canada. Quebec's chief electoral officer gave his opinion. I think you could also ask the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada for his opinion.

Electoral Reform committee  That depends on how far you want to go. What is unworkable is ending up with a reform that has been talked about since 1909, as is the case in Quebec. The best way of not achieving reform is to find all kinds of pretexts to slowdown the process. Once you have finished your work,

Electoral Reform committee  As I said at the outset, it is not healthy for our democracy. That is why René Lévesque wrote in 1972 that this was appalling for democracy. We are now at the crux of the debate on the meaning of representative democracy. This is a test of how interested people are in democratic

Electoral Reform committee  You have before you someone who has often been mistaken for the speaker of the House of Commons. When I would meet people, all over Quebec, they would ask me whether I was not the speaker or the former speaker of the House of Commons. I would then have to tell them that there wer

Electoral Reform committee  That is much more serious than finding out whether the participation rate has gone up by 1% or 2%.