Electoral Reform Committee on July 27th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll to go Monsieur Thériault now.

Mr. Thériault, it's now your turn.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

What happened in 1993 is a hot topic. It could also be argued that the outcome was a super-representation given that the 54 MPs had been elected by an average of 55% of the vote. Only three didn't receive a clear majority. Does that reflect some sort of regionalism, or does it have some other political explanation? I believe there is another political explanation.

In the documentation provided to us by the researchers, I read this short excerpt from a text written by Mr. Himelfarb on May 12, 2016:

Whatever system we opt for must be designed for Canada; it must, in particular, respect and reflect our federal structure and regional, social and cultural diversity.

Political diversity should perhaps be added to that list, bearing in mind my previous comment.

What does that mean to you? Which Canada are you talking about? Are you talking about the Canada of 1982 that obliterated the nation of Quebec? Are you instead referring to a Canada where the reality reflects the fact that premiers, federalists and sovereignists alike, did not sign the repatriated Constitution of 1982?

[Prof. Henry Milner]

Is that question for me?

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

It's for Mr. Himelfarb.

[Alex Himelfarb]

I'm talking about the constitutional Canada, the Canada that requires a certain proportion in every province or region. I also recognize that Canada is a country of common purpose. We have a federal government of diversity and with the French fact, and my Canada includes all of those.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Milner, when Quebec's special committee was studying the province's election legislation, you submitted a brief indicating that the proposed model was distorted because the size of the regions did not allow for the emergence of small parties. Simply saying you're in favour of proportional representation isn't going to make the merits of such a system materialize with the wave of a magic wand.

In fact, the devil is in the details. Have you done any exercises to simulate what that might look like in large regions? You mentioned Prince Edward Island. But Quebec has 75 ridings. Keep in mind the stumbling block Quebec ran into. We went from 125 members to 75. It's important to take into account the close nature of the relationship between voters and members in Quebec, especially in the regions.

What would that look like for a geopolitical region as large as Quebec?

[Prof. Henry Milner]

I'd rather not discuss Quebec, since the purpose of our meeting today is to discuss Canada. Nevertheless, the same issues come up, and regional size does indeed become an important consideration.

We need to look at the 15- to 20-year period in Quebec when the Bloc Québécois was very powerful, or fairly powerful, on the federal stage. In my view, Quebec's regions would have been better served under another system, even those where the Bloc won all the seats with half the votes or those where the Liberals won all the seats with 60% of the votes. Had the regions not been represented by a single party, they would have been better served. When the Bloc members were in the House of Commons, their positions were more partisan than regional. At least, the partisan aspect was more visible than the regional one.

As I see it, fiercely nationalist regions would have been better represented in the House of Commons if, instead of having seven Bloc Québécois MPs, they had had five plus one Conservative MP and one Liberal MP. By the same token, the province's fiercely federalist regions would have been better served if, rather than having only Liberal MPs, they had had a few representatives of other political stripes. As far as Quebec is concerned, that would have been better.

My preference is a system that reduces partisanship at the regional level. I'm not talking about the provincial level. I'm referring to large provinces with smaller regions. That plays an important role. Since Quebec is in a different boat, the outcome would be unique to the province.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Thériault.

It is now Ms. May's turn.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

I want to ask Professor Blais some questions relating to strategic voting. I'll probably go to Mr. Himelfarb next, because you raised this in your presentation as well.

I have a different sense about it, having talked to a lot of my friends in Green Parties around the world, and I'm not doubting your research for a moment. “Wait a minute”, my friends from New Zealand say, “it's not like we get rid of strategic voting altogether. We have people trying to calculate if I vote this way on this list, and I vote that way locally, then I'll get...”.

Are the distortions caused by strategic voting far less in a proportional system than the great lurches we get in our system, such as no representatives from anything but the Liberal Party for all of Atlantic Canada in this election, from strategic voting? As I said, when I pursue this with my friends in other countries, I say, sure, people are voting strategically, but the impact is altogether different.

[Prof. André Blais]

You're absolutely right. The impact is different, and you could argue that the distortions are smaller in the sense that in our system, strategic voting is always at the expense of small parties to the benefit of larger parties. Under PR or MMP and so on, sometimes it goes the other way around. For instance, in Germany, if you are supportive of the Social Democrats, and you see that a potential ally, the Greens, might not meet the 5% threshold, you have voters who strategically defect towards the small party to make sure that the Greens have the 5% in order to form a coalition. You are absolutely right.

The main point is that they have at least as much strategic voting under PR, and perhaps even more. But the consequences in terms of bias against small parties are not the same.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

I think it may be a health issue. I feel that if you have to hold your nose while you're voting, it can't be good for you. Perhaps these people who are voting strategically in PR systems feel good about what they're doing, as opposed to feeling ill. That may be too much of a hypothesis.

Mr. Himelfarb, can you jump in on this one?

[Alex Himelfarb]

I was going to go where you went. No question: voters will be tactical. Voters will make tactical decisions. When they have more than one vote or more than one party or a party and a candidate, all of which are possible under the system, they will make some tactical decisions.

When I talked about less strategic voting in my introductory remarks, I meant it in a very specific way, which is less the sense of feeling forced to vote for your least worst option, which means it opens you up to making tactical decisions without holding your nose.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Professor Milner, you're nodding. Did you want to add to that?

[Prof. Henry Milner]

No, I agree. The kind of study André does, because it's so big and takes all these different contexts and puts them all in the same barrel, by definition misses this aspect. When we look at the effect it might have on Canada, we can be more contextual and say, well, that's likely to happen in the Canadian context.

[Prof. André Blais]

If I can add, if you are supportive of the Pirate Party in Germany, you know that your party will not get 5%, and you will be induced to vote strategically as well. There is that in all systems. In all systems there will be small parties that will not be represented, whatever the system.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Professor Milner, I want to go to you, because you're so strongly in favour of mixed member proportional, and I understand your rationale. I'm not promoting one or the other.

We've had a lot of presentations on single transferable votes as an option, and the argument is that you still have your local representative, you have a cluster of local representatives, and you can even create healthy competition to provide better service to constituents between and among the representatives. Or people may say, “That's my MP; that's the one I voted for”, as opposed to, “That's the one from my town”. Have you looked at that aspect of single transferable votes?

[Prof. Henry Milner]

You know, in a sense, it's a theoretical question. My feeling is that if we were starting from scratch, if Canada was being invented and we were adopting an electoral system with no experience, with everybody sort of coming with a tabula rasa, then that kind of argument could win and could be better, and I'd have no problem with it. In fact, you might even argue for some kind of regional list system.

I just think that when people are used to having one person, not five people competing, but one person representing them, they feel more comfortable. I think they would be reluctant to give it up. In some of the discussions I remember in Ontario and so on, that was a factor. I didn't follow the British Columbia discussion. I know that your province disagreed with all the other provinces that discussed this.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

That happens in B.C.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Prof. Henry Milner]

Yes, I guess that's right. It's the winds of California, and so on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

We'll have to go Ms. Sahota now, please.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you, everybody, for being here today.

My question is directed towards Dr. Himelfarb.

You argued in an op-ed on May 10, 2016, that ranked ballots can be instituted either in the current system or in a proportional system, but that on their own they don't solve any problems.

Would you mind explaining to the committee how ranked ballots would function in a proportional system?

[Alex Himelfarb]

Sure. In either model that we have talked about, you could allow people to rank parties or rank candidates. In the single transferable vote, ranking parties or ranking candidates is usual, so in PR, ranking is often built in.

When you build it in to first past the post or winner takes all system, you actually exaggerate some of the difficulties in the system. If what you're looking for is greater representativeness and a greater ability to capture the diversity of views in Canada, the use of ranked ballots, when attached to first past the post, doesn't do that.

Ranked ballots is a kind of subset. There really are two big choices: a winner-take-all approach and a proportional approach, and either of them can have ranked ballots. The fundamental decision is which of those objectives you are pursuing. Are you pursuing single-party majorities as the norm, or are you pursuing greater representativeness as the goal?

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Okay.

Yesterday I didn't get an opportunity to ask this question, but I now put it out to all of you. There was a Jenkins commission in the U.K. I wonder whether any of you are familiar with it and with their recommendations of an 80%-plus system, what your thoughts on that would be, and how it could possibly function in Canada.

[Prof. André Blais]

This is a question about the alternative vote as an option—