Electoral Reform committee  I think the research is pretty convincing. If you look at the top countries in the world, they don't have our system. Almost all of them have some sort of PR or mixed system.

Electoral Reform committee  Well, look at the countries at the top of the list. They are all PR or mixed systems.

Electoral Reform committee  You are making a good point, but I always go back to the research, which shows that these systems tend to do better, and also—

Electoral Reform committee  You are talking about geography. Women don't actually do any better in the small provinces. If you look at P.E.I., Nova Scotia, or New Brunswick, women don't do well, and the distances are like small compared to travelling to Ottawa. I don't think it is related to travel. I thin

Electoral Reform committee  Yes.

Electoral Reform committee  They didn't win because they weren't running for parties in winnable ridings.

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, and that's great that you're here, but for the most part those women were not. They were not running in winnable ridings for their parties. They were running in other ridings. The fact is that if you looked at the winnable ridings, you didn't see all that many women running.

Electoral Reform committee  Correct.

Electoral Reform committee  Correct. I think the idea is that there is a male list and there is a female list and that all citizens vote for someone on the male list and someone on the female list. So all citizens have two votes.

Electoral Reform committee  They're separate races. There is a race for the female candidate, and there is a race for the male candidate. People vote for both. You have two votes and you have two representatives elected: you have a male representative and a female representative. I'm pretty confident that's

Electoral Reform committee  I do believe it's institutional factors, including the electoral system. We would see a change if we had a system that was more conducive to electing women. If political parties, even in our current system, took it more seriously and devoted more thought and leadership to it, the

Electoral Reform committee  That is exactly what has happened. Other countries are moving ahead of us. That is why our ranking is falling. I want to add something very interesting in regard to the most recent report from the Inter-Parliamentary Union. They pointed out this fact back in 1995 at the Beijing

Electoral Reform committee  Exactly. It's not your bridge club or your tennis club. I don't really care how they are run, although I would like to see women there too. But we're talking about our Parliament, and decisions are made there that affect everybody. For women not to be there in fair numbers is a f

Electoral Reform committee  That is her proposal, yes. Of course, the ridings could be larger than they are today, but each riding would have two representatives, a male—

Electoral Reform committee  I don't think her proposal has proportionality in it. I've spoken with her many times about this. I'm not the best person to relay her point of view, but I don't think it had proportionality. She felt that such a system would fit very closely with what we have right now, and it m