Electoral Reform committee  I have to say that I care a great deal about electoral reform, but I also don't want to pretend that the country is falling apart. We are one of the strongest democracies in the world, and that isn't blind nationalism and that isn't jingoism. Look at any ranking from any body.

Electoral Reform committee  To quickly finish on one more, a free vote that ratifies the citizens' assembly.

Electoral Reform committee  I don't envy the committee its task. You have to balance politics and partisan commitments with the fact that you're doing something that could very well end up being a foundational part of Canadian democracy, certainly for decades and perhaps for centuries to come. That ought to

Electoral Reform committee  I think you would need at least provincial regions for top-up, or perhaps smaller regions within the provinces. You wouldn't need to adjust that with P.E.I., for instance, but you might in Ontario. Part of what I like about MMP is that it does give you the flexibility. Folks are

Electoral Reform committee  Well, the times have changed a little bit. I think of this: Twitter, Facebook, social media writ large, Instagram and Snapchat are really useful tools for enhancing a substantive process. They shouldn't be your primary tool. This shouldn't be the thing you are doing. They should

Electoral Reform committee  I'm from Ontario, but I've been here for six years and I'm starting to understand western alienation a bit. Each year I come out a little more western alienated. The referendum was a success. The B.C. Citizens' Assembly was a success. The Government of British Columbia failed the

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, absolutely. It's a great compromise and it would do it. What is it; 338 works pretty well for the House of Commons, and I think it would work pretty well for a national citizens' assembly as well. You want the number to be high enough to be representative, but to sort of ech

Electoral Reform committee  I think if you extrapolate from British Columbia, you end up at over 600, but if you say that you don't really need 600 people to get a representative group of Canadians, you could probably do it with half of that, right? I do think breaking it down by region makes sense, even br

Electoral Reform committee  Part of the problem is that electoral systems are sticky. As you say, they don't change easily or often. If you get it wrong, then you might end up stuck with it. If it ends up benefiting one particular party or a couple of parties at the expense of another, then you might have t

Electoral Reform committee  Absolutely. It's better to do the process right than to rush it and risk getting it wrong.

Electoral Reform committee  When you are building a house, you don't want to skimp on the foundation. It is something that's worth putting some money into. It is the thing upon which the house is going to rest. Electoral reform is part of the foundation of our democracy. I think it would be worth the $300 m

Electoral Reform committee  Absolutely. Let's be honest: I think Canadians would agree that the consensus needs to be broad. It needs to be multi-party. You certainly don't want any party gaming the system. I think the government understood that when they agreed to make the committee proportional, and I thi

Electoral Reform committee  Absolutely, right, and you'll land somewhere in the middle. At the same time, I agree with you, and I'm super sympathetic, that you want to get it done. You don't want to just look back and say, “We were close.” So why don't you pass legislation that you can grandfather into the

Electoral Reform committee  Sure.

Electoral Reform committee  I think that's reasonable. There are a bunch of different ways to do it. It's worth remembering that referendums are good legitimacy-building tools, to some extent. They are awful policy-making tools. When you run a referendum, you are not looking to build a policy, you are look