News excerpts (The Province, CBC)

The federal government will look to provincial experiments such as the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform as part of a parliamentary reform package.

That word came from Marie-Claude Lavigne, spokesperson for government house leader Jacques Saada. Lavigne spoke in an interview published in The Province newspaper on February 6, 2004.

"(The minister) wants to know what every province has done with this issue and if they have any ideas that can help us."

Saada was quoted as saying: "I want to hear what they have to say. I want them to enrich my thoughts about this reform."

Earlier, on February 4, 2004, Prime Minister Paul Martin mentioned the Assembly, on CBC's national Your Turn with host Peter Mansbridge. Here's the excerpt:

Peter Mansbridge: "The next question is right here in the front row."

Elmer Kabush (from Moberley Lake BC): "Prime minister, my name is Elmer Kabush from British Columbia, in the Peace River country. Democracy is hurting in Canada. More and more Canadians are apathetic about the democratic process because they feel their votes don't count unless their party wins the vote. Are you in favour of reforming the way Canadians vote? Example being proportional representation."

Paul Martin: "There's no doubt about proportional representation as an intriguing idea. It has one problem, in that it leads in most cases to a minority government, and I think that if before we were to, you adopt proportional representation, that we've got to look at that and see if there's a way around that. But there's a very interesting thing happening. In British Columbia, as you know, there's this constituent assembly that's taking place. They’re going to do the same thing in Ontario. There are four provinces that are looking at it. One of the great things about a federation is you can learn from what happens in one region or another. What we’re doing in Ottawa, the essence of it, whether you’ve got proportional representation or something else, fundamentally what you’re doing is talking about electing members of parliament, and if those members of parliament can’t speak for you, you know, if they’re simply going to be some kind of cipher from Ottawa, then no matter what kind of election process you have, it’s not going to work. So what we’re going to do right now is we’re going to reform the way parliament works so that a member of parliament from British Columbia basically reflects your desires, and that’s what was introduced today in the House of Commons."

The full transcript of the show may still be online here.  (Note: That's a temporary CBC archive, and the item could be deleted at any time.)