Electoral Reform committee  I have one terrible one that I put in my brief. I butchered the words of JFK by saying, ask not what the electoral system can do for your party, but ask what it can do for your country.

Electoral Reform committee  Well, I'm a transplanted Nova Scotian, but I know a little bit about New Brunswick. If you look at the current results, where the Liberals swept the 10 seats with 51.5% of the popular vote, under the system that I proposed...and it's just my preference. I figure that the commit

Electoral Reform committee  PR should really attract more people to voting if they realize that they have choices and that they're not just voting for their local MP, that they're voting for a party that may result in regional MPs. If open lists are employed, they can even be voting across parties, which re

Electoral Reform committee  I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but my point really is that, generally speaking, all votes should be equal under the Charter of Rights. The one exception to that is section 51A of the original BNA Act, which is the Constitution Act. It requires provinces like P.E.I. to have as m

Electoral Reform committee  They're very important issues, for sure.

Electoral Reform committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and honourable members. I understand that I should slow down for the sake of the translators. I had it timed to five minutes, but—

Electoral Reform committee  Okay. When I began investigating this issue, I looked at the original electoral arrangement set forth in the Constitution Act, 1867. Section 40 deals with division of the original member provinces into electoral districts. You would hardly recognize most of them now, needless to