Evidence of meeting #39 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was study.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
Colleagues, let's resume the meeting. The meeting is now in public.
Mr. Preston, I'll give you the floor to introduce your motions.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
Joe Preston Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
I'll leave the members to read the motion by themselves. It certainly reflects other conversations we've had in this committee, but I will bring to their attention that there is a translation error that has been caught and corrected at the bottom. The definition of “civic literacy”, versus what it says en français, is incorrect. So they're fixing it.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
Jay Hill Conservative Prince George—Peace River, BC
This is the first time I've had a chance to look at this to see this motion by my colleague, Mr. Preston.
We did a study. Procedure and House Affairs did do some work looking at alternate electoral systems and that type of thing.
It says, “conduct a study of Canada's democratic and electoral systems”—it is plural there. So I just wonder, as a starting point, if this is agreed to as an initiative of this committee, if we can at least start with what we've done in the past, albeit in a former parliament, and have that information available to all of us so we're not, in effect, starting from square one. We would at least have that information. I know there was some travel involved to other countries, where we studied their systems in consideration of what was possible for future reforms to our system.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
Thank you, Mr. Hill.
We'll go to Mr. Proulx and then to Monsieur Godin.
11:20 a.m.
Liberal
Marcel Proulx Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
Mr. Chair, just on a point of clarification, I appreciate that Mr. Preston has said that the translation from English to French is not exact, so maybe he could describe for us in English what he understands as “civil literacy”, and from this we would have translation services give us the French version.
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
Joe Preston Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
Well, an understanding of civics, I guess, is a really good short version of what I'm trying to say. Do voters understand the system we're using? So it's literacy with respect to our political systems. Do they understand their political systems?
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
Perhaps I can help, Mr. Proulx.
We do have a corrected translated version. The translators have the corrected version. I could ask our clerk to read it.
11:20 a.m.
The Clerk of the Committee Ms. Lucile McGregor
The interpreters helped us in coming up with this. It is,
“connaissance des droits civiques” rather than “la capacité de lire et d'écrire de la population municipale”.
11:20 a.m.
The Clerk
It is about their civic rights.
11:20 a.m.
Liberal
11:20 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
Next we'll go to Mr. Owen, please, and then to Monsieur Godin. Do I see another hand down there?
11:20 a.m.
Liberal
Stephen Owen Liberal Vancouver Quadra, BC
Thank you, Chair.
I think this is a good motion for us to be pursuing, for a number of reasons. First, as was mentioned by Mr. Hill, there has been previous work done on this by this committee, before the last election, which really responded to the September 2004 Speech from the Throne, which was amended to put the question of electoral reform into it. So things are under way, and we would be picking up the work that had been left out.
I have a couple of other observations. First, in the spring of 2004, the Law Commission of Canada put out a massive report on electoral reform and on different electoral systems in the Commonwealth, in particular, but also in the European and American systems, and it came up with a whole set of recommendations. The Law Commission of Canada Act requires that they do extensive public consultation, which they did, and deep research--social research--which was done. So we have a tremendous body of work to consider.
While it's important that this committee continue with this work, that it not interfere with the consultation and polling process that the government announced two weeks ago, I think it's equally important that we make sure that they're complementary and that Parliament continues to have a role in it. We've begun, and this independent law commission has reported. I just think we should take advantage of all the information that's necessary.
Having gone through the B.C. process and having watched their Citizens' Assembly for a year and a half really deliberate, and seeing both how valuable that was and how confusing it can be with different electoral systems, I think we should draw on all this work that has been done. I would suggest that this is the appropriate committee, rather than a special committee, because it does have overlapping relationships with a lot else that we deal with.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
Mr. Owen, just for clarification, you mentioned a report in the spring of 2004. I have in front of me the 43rd report. Is that the same thing?
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
We have that report right now. Apparently, it was sent out to all members last week, but we'll make sure...
11:25 a.m.
Liberal
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
11:25 a.m.
Committee Researcher
No. The Law Commission report is a separate document. It pre-dates the consideration by this committee of the order of reference from the House. I'm not sure offhand if it's available electronically, but we will endeavour to get copies.
11:25 a.m.
Committee Researcher
We'll get the link circulated to all members in both languages.
11:25 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
Thank you, Mr. Owen. That's a great suggestion. We'll do that.
Monsieur Godin.
11:25 a.m.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Tank you, Mr. Chair.
We must remember that Ms. Catherine Bell introduced in the House of Commons a motion dealing with the same subject matter, which will be debated very soon. When we dealt with electoral reform, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs did some considerable work. Ed Broadbent contributed to this debate. I believe that we should perhaps review this and determine what has been done in this area. As Mr. Hill was saying, there were visits abroad and a study was made. We should not reinvent the wheel.
I am not in favor of the motion as it is presently written. I believe that we should rather review the matter and reassess the situation.
