An opportunity to shape the voting process doesn’t come around often.

That’s what brought people out to the Coast High Country Inn on Monday when the Special Committee on Electoral Reform visited Whitehorse.

The public meeting was one in a series of events and discussions aimed at gauging the country’s thoughts on electoral reform.

The committee responsible for this was established in June by the House of Commons.

Composed of 12 members of Parliament, the committee was tasked with studying online and mandatory voting.

It’s also researching alternatives to Canada’s first-past-the-post voting system (wherein voters cast a ballot for a particular candidate, and the candidate with the highest number of votes wins).

The committee is chaired by Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia, whose riding is Lac-Saint-Louis, Que. It includes Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, Alberta Conservative Blake Richards, and vice-chair Nathan Cullen, an NDP MP from Skeena, B.C.

When consultations are complete, the committee will have until Dec. 1 to issue to a report to the House, making recommendations on federal electoral reform.

When the Whitehorse session began at 1:30 p.m. Monday, there were roughly 20 members of the public in attendance. By 4 p.m., that number had grown to 50.

The event, which ran until 9:30 p.m., included open mic segments so participants could share their thoughts.

Each speaker was allotted two minutes, during which time many spoke in support of proportional representation. (In that system, known as PR, parties gain seats based on the number of votes cast for them.)

Some also expressed concern about the possibility of online voting in a region where Internet connections can be tenuous.

Prior to this, however, the committee heard from local witnesses. They included former Whitehorse city councillor Kirk Cameron, John Streicker, the Liberal party’s Mt. Lorne candidate for the pending election, Peter Becker, electoral reform advocate David Brekke, and Yukon College instructor Gerald Haase.

Each delivered a 10-minute speech on the kind of reform he wanted to see.

While opinions differed on what might be the preferred system, all agreed something needs to change.

“First-past-the-post is the past for many reasons,” said Becker, who noted that strategic voting has hurt the Green Party in the Yukon.

Here, he said, the party lost a significant percentage of the vote between the 2011 and 2015 elections.

“People felt they had to vote strategically to wrest power from the previous (Conservative) government,” he said.

Streicker said he doesn’t think PR would do away with strategic voting or vote-splitting, but he does believe that, under that system, there will be less of each.

As a riding, he said, the Yukon is unique in that it has only a third the citizens of the average Canadian riding. The Northwest Territories has more, while Nunavut has fewer.

During his time at the mic, Cameron also focused on the Yukon’s distinct culture and character.

He said, more than once, that Canadians need to be able to see themselves in government.

Under the current system of first-past-the-post, Cameron said, Canadians, particularly First Nations citizens, can’t see themselves represented. (Each territory has just one MP, compared to the 120 members of a province such as Ontario, or the 42 members of B.C.).

Above all, Cameron said, it would be a mistake to consider the North a heterogeneous state. The North is vast, the communities distinct.

There are different social, economic and political agendas in each, Cameron said, and it would be false to assume the whole of its communities are united under a common cause.

Brekke suggested a mix of preferential ballot (wherein voters rank choices) and PR could help Canadians feel their votes count.

His approach involves cutting the number of seats in half and pairing ridings that are close to one another.

From there, voters elect one MP via preferential ballot. The second is chosen from among the runners-up, based on PR.

The committee’s members left Whitehorse early this morning for continued consultations in Victoria.