Evidence of meeting #11 for Electoral Reform in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was political.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Leslie Seidle  Research Director, Canada's Changing Federal Community, Institute for Research on Public Policy
Larry LeDuc  Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Hugo Cyr  Dean, Faculty of Political Science and Law, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual

4 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Thank you.

4 p.m.

Research Director, Canada's Changing Federal Community, Institute for Research on Public Policy

Dr. Leslie Seidle

Wasn't the Conservative leader also against it, and wouldn't that have been reported?

4 p.m.

Prof. Larry LeDuc

Yes.

4 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Mr. Aldag.

4 p.m.

Liberal

John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC

Picking up on that report, “The Quiet Referendum: Why Electoral Reform Failed in Ontario”, I've actually been thumbing through it as we sit here. I haven't quite made it to the conclusion, but it has made me think. We've heard today and over the course of these hearings so far that electoral reform is not new. It has been talked about for a number of years in Canada, and in fact a number of provinces have gone down this path.

Professor LeDuc, we've gone around this a bit, but I'd like to spend a bit of my five minutes talking about lessons learned. Why have these previous attempts failed? I think there is some great material in this article, but could you give us some of your observations on why we've been unable to move in Canada?

4 p.m.

Prof. Larry LeDuc

I will go right to the heart of it. It reflects what's in that paper, but also the experience with electoral reform in other countries as well.

Electoral reform proposals are generally put forward by parties when they are in opposition, but they can only act on them when they are in government. Now, it would not surprise any of you people to know that there is a little bit of a change in thinking in the way you look at the world when you're in opposition as compared with the way you look at it when you're in government. In Ontario the Liberals were in opposition when they made that proposal. They then came to government. It took them three years to decide whether they were going to go forward with it or not. I phoned up one of my students who worked at Queen's Park the day after they announced the citizens' assembly. I asked why they were doing this now, three years into the mandate, only a year before the next election. He said it was a campaign promise. They were ticking a box. They promised action on this. They were going to have a citizens' assembly. But the citizens' assembly was not necessarily designed to bring in electoral reform. It was designed to debate electoral reform.

Then the government, over the course of it, when it saw the way it was going, changed its mind. It's no mystery why it changed its mind. The Liberal caucus was split on this. I don't have a measure, but probably the majority opposed it. A few Liberals in the McGuinty cabinet supported it. The premier himself was back and forth on it, but eventually came down on the side of being opposed to it, even though he publicly remained neutral. You moved from a position where one party was supporting reform to where it no longer was.

Something similar happened in B.C. between the two referendums. The government was rather enthusiastic about the citizens' assembly at the time of the first referendum, which is why it did better. They changed their mind at the time of the second referendum, and not so much opposed it as just lost interest in it.

I mentioned that New Zealand took so long, but it's in the context of two governments of two different parties, both of which changed their position on electoral reform over the course of their mandate. It was Labour in opposition that put forward the reform and then appointed the royal commission, but it was also Labour that tried to undercut it. When National came to power, they had criticized the Labour government for its inaction, and therefore they decided to act. When they changed their mind, they tried to basically defeat it in the second referendum and failed.

That's not an unusual story in politics. I'm a student of politics as well as a student of electoral systems, and when you look at it through that lens, why would anyone be surprised?

4:05 p.m.

Liberal

John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC

If I could, though, this is perhaps a slightly different situation. For sure we had a position as a party in opposition. We're now the governing party. We're not into year three and trying to go for the check mark. We're in our first year. We're trying, I would say fairly aggressively, to move this along. We've been criticized for taking six months or seven months or eight months. I can tell you that is the second special committee I've been on. We've dealt with medical assistance in dying. We're dealing with some very large issues.

I think we are as a government demonstrating a will to move forward. If we can learn from lessons of the past so that we don't repeat the same mistakes, it will be very useful to help us move forward.

4:05 p.m.

Prof. Larry LeDuc

I would imagine there is a division of views within your party.

4:05 p.m.

Liberal

John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC

No, we're united here.

4:05 p.m.

Voices

Oh, oh!

4:05 p.m.

Liberal

John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC

Am I out of time now?

4:05 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Almost. We could go to Mr. Deltell, if you like.

4:05 p.m.

Liberal

John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC

Sure.

4:05 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Okay.

Mr. Deltell.

4:05 p.m.

Conservative

Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC

Thank you Mr. Chair.

Mr. Cyr, a few short minutes ago, you referred to the election of the Parti Québécois minority government on September 4, 2012. I was a candidate in that election. You talked about the media. I was a journalist for 20 years, so please allow me to provide some context to your narrative.

Technically, you are correct. The day after the election all the media talked about the first woman premier being elected, when in reality we had a minority government and absolutely nothing was official. However, the night before, the outgoing Premier, Mr. Charest, had publicly announced that he recognized his opponent's victory. After that, it could be surmised that things were pretty much settled.

I also want to point out that we have some very nice electoral traditions in Canada. This happens in Quebec, but I am sure that it has also been done for years at the federal level. The loser always calls the winner, and this a wonderful practice that we must preserve. It can sometimes be a bit surprising, but it commands respect. This was beautifully illustrated in the documentary À hauteur d'homme, which shows Mr. Landry, after his defeat in 2003, taking the time to call the premier-elect.

I have American and French friends who watched this documentary. They were very surprised to see that our politicians and party leaders talked to each other on election night. I will not name him, but one of my friends said it was unthinkable to imagine that happening in his democracy. So much the better if we are fortunate enough to live in a democracy that allows our leaders to talk to each other in a civilized manner and respect the very foundation of our democracy, namely, the choice of the people.

4:05 p.m.

Prof. Hugo Cyr

There are indeed such exchanges. Usually the leader calls. I will, however, give you the opposite example.

In 2010, in the United Kingdom, the outgoing government did not have a plurality of seats. The Conservatives had the plurality of seats but not a majority. There were negotiations with the Liberal Democrats over who would form the government.

Given the adoption of the manual and the discussions that took place, the media held back. None of the British media that evening announced who would form the next government, although there were good reasons to believe that it would be the Conservatives, since they had obtained the most seats, although not the majority. The media gave the parties the time they needed to discuss things among themselves. There were negotiations between the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats on the one hand, and between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party on the other.

Keep in mind that during the election the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats had said they would not form a coalition. However, given the results that night, all the parties concluded that it would be in everyone's best interests to form an official coalition rather than having a minority Conservative government.

This was possible in part because, to some extent, the media let the political parties handle the situation and talk amongst themselves. If that night the media had rushed to announce that Party x was going to form government if the trend held, any other party that tried to form government would automatically be accused of fraud or of attempting a political coup.

That is why it would be useful to have such mechanisms in a context where there are more minority governments, to allow elected politicians to decide among them who will form the next government.

4:10 p.m.

Conservative

Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC

I will make a comment and talk about three historical events that are quite relevant to what you just said.

Legally, everything stays the same. It is not necessary to introduce additional mechanisms. Legally, Mr. Charest was premier until the day Ms. Marois was sworn in. Therefore absolutely nothing changed.

I would like to refer to three historical events that are relevant here.

First, in 1979, during the federal election, the Liberal Party won more votes than the Conservative Party, but Mr. Trudeau Sr. announced that even though he had more votes, he was ceding power to the Conservative Party because more Conservative MPs had been elected to the House of Commons at the time.

I see that I'm running out of time, but this is worth saying.

Second, in 1966, at the provincial level, Jean Lesage's Liberal Party obtained 46% of the votes while the Union Nationale Party of Daniel Johnson Sr. obtained 40%; however, more Union Nationale members were elected. Mr. Lesage chose to ignore the whole thing. In a live interview conducted by Pierre Nadeau, Daniel Johnson Sr. made a colourful statement. He said: “Mr. Lesage might not know that he lost, but we certainly know that we won.”

To conclude, it's not the plurality of votes, but rather the total number of elected members that determines who forms government.

4:10 p.m.

Prof. Hugo Cyr

On that topic, I would invite you to read—this is a bit of self-promotion—my article on forming government, which won the Germain-Brière award. In this article I examine all the cases where this happened. In Canada there was the King-Byng case, for example. King had obtained fewer seats than the Conservatives and he remained in power. When there is no majority, the party that forms government is not necessarily the one that gets the most seats.

4:10 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

We understand that quite well. That was an interesting discussion and a good history lesson. I really liked those stories.

Ms. Romanado, over to you.

4:10 p.m.

Liberal

Sherry Romanado Liberal Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC

It's my turn now.

Thank you so much.

There's a question I've been asking a lot of our experts, and I think it's incredibly important. My background is in post-secondary education—even our Prime Minister named himself minister of youth—so I'm going to ask you a question regarding our younger voters.

We've heard expert testimony on how we can increase the engagement of our youth in both the voting on election day and the electoral process, including even contemplating running for office later on. We've heard some suggestions, for instance, about lowering the voting age to 16, strengthening civics education, with MPs visiting schools, and so on and so forth. We've heard about online voting and, of course, social media and engagement.

I'd like to get a sense from you if there's anything else you could suggest that would help in terms of increasing youth engagement in the voting process, but also in their quest to possibly run for office as well.

Thank you.

4:10 p.m.

Research Director, Canada's Changing Federal Community, Institute for Research on Public Policy

Dr. Leslie Seidle

I'm going to give you a very simple one: restore the public education mandate of the Chief Electoral Officer. It was trimmed under the previous government, and his office is basically confined to supporting groups that promote learning about voting in schools. They are excluded now, for example, from reaching out to young aboriginal electors, young electors of any background, and so on.

I was at Elections Canada for two years, and part of my work as policy and research director was to develop some of the early programs, including what used to be called “student vote”. There were a lot of interesting things that were being developed and that have grown up and so on, but now the opportunity that Elections Canada has to support those are limited by the law that they must respect.

It would be very easy to restore the law to the way it was. It had been like that for about 20 years and was not creating any huge issues, so far as I could tell.

4:15 p.m.

Prof. Larry LeDuc

I would agree with Leslie.

I think that some of the things Elections Canada has been doing over the years in this direction have been very helpful, including making voting easier, and establishing voting places on campus and things like that.

I would also caution that the steady decline in voting among young people is part of a larger demographic trend. Demographic trends are very hard to reverse. You just don't reverse them with an administrative fix here and there. I think they do eventually reverse. The significant increase in youth voting in the last election is a very hopeful sign, because it starts to develop the habit of voting. If people do begin to vote early, they will slowly continue, but it takes years for that to be noticed in statistics.

4:15 p.m.

Prof. Hugo Cyr

I would just like to make a comment on online voting. We haven't said much about it. Personally, I would advise you to be cautious about this. We know that ballot secrecy protects the voter, but, above all, it also protects the system against fraud. When the ballot is secret, it cannot be sold easily, because buyers have no way of knowing whether the people trying to sell their vote are telling the truth about how they actually voted.

Online voting, which is done remotely over the Internet, basically makes it possible to disclose the information required to vote and makes the vote much more susceptible to horse trading. There is therefore a risk, which is not trivial since we now use social networks a lot more, and so on. I do have reservations about this, and I don't think that simply making it possible to vote online will dramatically increase turnout among younger voters.

4:15 p.m.

Liberal

Sherry Romanado Liberal Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC

Do I have some time?

4:15 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

For a statement, perhaps.