Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2014

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

That's not a metaphor. It's actually a woolsack.

[David Beamish]

That's correct, and indeed nowadays, for symbolic reasons, I think it's said to be stuffed with wool from all the wool-producing countries of the Commonwealth.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

That's good to hear. We produce wool in my riding. I'll want to follow up on that.

I just wanted to ask something. One of the concerns some people have had here is that if we get rid of the multiple stages of balloting we would lose the opportunity to interact with each other and to get a sense of where the various candidates stand on whatever the issues might be. Has the hustings, in the view of the participants, the various candidates, or maybe more broadly the electorate, the members of the House of Lords, served as an adequate way of allowing them to get a sense of who the candidates are and what they stand for, as far as you can tell from the buzz you've heard?

[David Beamish]

That was certainly my impression. I mentioned it was a first for us in 2011. It's perhaps worth adding that the Hansard Society was following an innovation in 2009, when Michael Martin stepped down as Speaker of the House of Commons and there was a mid-parliament process, when they held a hustings for the candidates to succeed Michael Martin. I think that again was broadcast and was widely regarded as very successful. It has been done for the House of Commons as well, but we haven't yet, I think, had a contested election in recent times at the start of a new parliament in the House of Commons.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Your system involves an open vote tally. I just went to Wikipedia. There's a Wikipedia article on everything, including separate articles on each of the two House of Lords Speaker elections. In Canada we've always kept our results confidential. My proposal would continue to keep the results confidential, and in fact it tries to put an extra measure in to make it harder to see when people are eliminated with essentially no support at all, in order to avoid any embarrassment to them, but I'm not sure that's necessarily the right way to do things. I'm simply following through on the spirit of what we already had.

What is your view on using the open model you have versus keeping the results confidential and known only to the clerks?

[David Beamish]

I can see why you might prefer to go for a non-open model. I think in the House of Lords that would be a non-starter. There would be suspicions about the process. I think the openness of it is probably essential to retaining the confidence of members in the system. I can speak for only us in the House of Lords.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

That's fair enough.

That actually covers the main things I wanted to mention, so maybe I'll stop here.

I just would mention to colleagues that there was a question about comparisons between the two systems as they apply in the U.K., and that was the purpose of inviting Lord Tyler. He has served as a member of Parliament and also as a member of the House of Lords, and he had participated in both elections. He initially had blogged on the subject, and his written submission to us, which you'll be considering after I leave the room—which is why I'm mentioning it now—actually addresses the relative merits of the two from the point of view of someone who's experienced both.

Thank you very much, Mr. Beamish.

Colleagues, thank you for indulging me in this case.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you very much, Mr. Reid.

We'll go to Madam Latendresse for four minutes, please.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm really glad we have you here today.

I'm going to ask my questions in French. I understand you have access to translation and that you also understand French a bit, as I've heard.

[David Beamish]

Yes. I believe I've been connected to the interpreters' translation, but if not, provided that you speak

slowly enough, I hope I will be able to understand.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you very much.

I'm going to continue on the same topic as my colleague Mr. Reid, that is the confidentiality of votes.

According to our current system, the vote is secret, except for the fact that with successive eliminations, we can know in what order people obtained the most votes. We have an unwritten rule according to which the Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons—even though the person in that position is appointed—is often the person who arrived second in the results. One of the difficulties of our great bilingual country is that there has to be a sort of parity between French and English with regard to our Speaker and Deputy Speaker.

Both systems, both the secret vote and the open vote, have their advantages. Do you think there would be some way of remedying this?

[David Beamish]

Let me start by saying that it turns out that I had the English translation feed, so I hope that captured your question correctly.

This isn't an issue for the House of Lords, because the deputy Speaker is appointed separately by a simple motion in the House. There's typically an understanding between the main parties, and they sort of take turns filling the posts.

Although we don't have the language issue, I know that in the House of Commons they've now introduced a slightly complicated system for trying to get a balance of parties and a mix of sexes in the panel of the Speaker and the three deputies, so you might well find some useful help from them on how they operate that. But in the House of Lords it's done informally and the deputy Speaker, and indeed the second deputy, who are the only salaried deputies, are appointed by a simple motion in the House on the basis, in effect, of arrangements agreed to behind the scenes, or, as we put it, “through the usual channels”.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

I'm glad you mentioned the British House of Commons. If I understand correctly, there were two big reforms in both Houses.

Are there any particular reasons that explain why the House of Commons kept the elimination system rather than choosing the alternative vote?

[David Beamish]

I don't know whether they gave any consideration to going to the alternative vote system. Historically, it was always done in the Commons by having someone propose the name of a candidate and debating that in the usual way and voting on that, so I guess to move to the Lords system would have been a bigger departure from the traditional system, which stuck with the usual format of parliamentary proceedings in which a motion is proposed and then voted on.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you. That covers the questions I had today quite well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You're at four minutes, so thank you. That's perfect.

We'll go to Mr. MacKenzie, please, for four minutes.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Thank you, Chair. If I have time left I'll give it to Mr. Richards.

Thank you for being with us, Mr. Beamish.

I'm curious about a couple of things. Number one is obviously that the House of Lords has little or no turnover when you're going to change Speakers. Would that be right?

[David Beamish]

The thinking is that five years is a suitable term for a Speaker, and actually in five years we'd have a fair amount of turnover in the sense that we've had a lot of new members in the last five years.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Going forward though, when the next election comes around, I'm thinking that most of your Lords will be familiar with the people who are going to stand for election of Speaker. That's what some of us here see as a problem for us. Frequently we have a whole bunch of new people coming in, and it's the opportunity for people who are brand new to the House to get to know one another and also to learn some of the systems, and we would lose some of that. If I understood correctly, you said that you had 81 members stand for election. We typically would have five or six, so it's a much smaller pool.

[David Beamish]

The election in which there were 81 candidates wasn't a speakership election. That was the first of our byelections when one of the hereditary peers.... Basically 10% of the hereditary peers stayed on after the reform of the House in 1999, so these were candidates from outside the House. In our two speakership elections, the number of candidates has been nine in the first case and six in the second.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

That explains it. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Richards, you can take the rest of the time.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thank you.

There have been a lot of questions with regard to the advantages and the relative merits of the new system you have. Do you have any thoughts on things that you see as disadvantages in the new system? When you were considering this, were there other potential alternatives considered? If other things were considered, what are some of the reasons those alternatives were not proceeded with?

[David Beamish]

I don't see any disadvantages in the sense that I could think of another system that might be preferable in some way. As I mentioned, I think it could be improved if members better understood the importance of casting all their votes. As far as I'm aware, the first-past-the-post system was the only one that got serious consideration and, indeed, other than your exhaustive [Inaudible--Editor], it's difficult to think of an alternative that could be pursued.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Okay, fair enough.

Was there any analysis done of the ballots to determine the problem you believe exists? I certainly think that it would exist. With any new type of electoral system, people have to get their heads around it and learn to understand all of its implications. Was any analysis done of the ballots to determine if most put one or two choices or how far down the list were many people actually making choices, so we can determine whether what you're suggesting would in fact be true?