Electoral Reform committee  I want to point out that, in Germany, the situation is very strange. Yet the country has a proportional system. The CDU-CSU alliance has formed the government since 1949, except in three elections. Those two parties form coalitions with other different ones.

Electoral Reform committee  The same party is always at the centre of power.

Electoral Reform committee  It's worse than in Canada. At least here we have some alternance.

Electoral Reform committee  In Quebec, it is even better in a way, because the alternance is at the head of the system, meaning that the government party can be something other than Liberal or, back in the day, something other than the Union nationale, and so on. It also affects the party that forms the official opposition.

Electoral Reform committee  No. In the plurality system that we have in Canada, the party that wins the election usually has a higher percentage of members than their percentage of votes, except in cases when a government is elected with a minority of members. That requires a coalition government. In Canada, contrary to what people think, we are very open to coalition governments.

Electoral Reform committee  I quite agree with what you have just said. In my terms, I would say that there has to be a link between the voter and the elected representative and the link must even be quite close. Today, the link is quite loose. Who calls their MP or goes to see him or her? When and how do MPs manage to reach not only the voters, but the general public?

Electoral Reform committee  I pretty much agree with Mr. Dutil. Basically, the system itself will not promote women in politics. Women have to take the initiative themselves and run for election. However, the system must provide a real chance of being elected. We need a system where votes are not lost, even for candidates obtaining a low percentage of the votes.

Electoral Reform committee  My colleague said something quite interesting: it changes nothing. It just goes about things in a different way. If that is the case, why change? If it ain't broke, don't mend it. My thinking is slightly different. I am not looking for mathematical precision. Are people looking for mathematical precision.

Electoral Reform committee  The mixed voting system in Germany is definitely seen as a pure proportional system. A proportional system comes with problems. For example, if there is no quorum, no internal limit, there will certainly be a large number of parties. Quite often, you will end up with an elected parliament that is absolutely impossible to control.

Electoral Reform committee  Personally, I would not stop at just one specific method. There is a series of criteria that could be ranked by importance. For example, one of the criteria could be the regional representation of a party. If a party has no representation, it would be a priority to give it an MP.

Electoral Reform committee  Those are my findings so far.

Electoral Reform committee  Not necessarily.

Electoral Reform committee  I would like to add something in that regard. Six seats is an average. In some cases, there could be up to 20 or 23 seats.

Electoral Reform committee  That is based on the simulation I did using the 1963 election results for the Parliament of Canada.

Electoral Reform committee  It is not necessary in my system to have a threshold, because we have a gift for the winning party. The government party has a higher percentage of députés than percentage of votes, and we give to the other parties—like the opposition party and a third party—ratios that are under 1%, whereas the government party has an actual ratio over 1%, at 1.2% or 1.3%.