Electoral Reform Committee on Aug. 22nd, 2016

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Mr. Chair, thank you for your welcome and for that of your committee. I'm very happy to be taking part in your work.

Professor Lijphart and Professor Pelletier, I was delighted to hear your testimony. My questions will go to you, Professor Pelletier.

I was very interested in the answer you gave to a question a colleague asked a little earlier. You talked about a reform worthy of the name. As a former minister, you are certainly aware of how important it is for the work of a committee like ours to end up with a concrete result.

Personally, I feel that all the work potentially to be done here and in Parliament runs the risk of coming up only with changes that I would venture to call cosmetic. I don't believe that they will be enough. Do you share that opinion?

Second, in your opinion, what will have to be the result of the committee's work in order for us to be able to say that the government has fulfilled its commitment to reform our electoral system and that we have come up with a reform that would be, as you said, worthy of the name?

[Prof. Benoît Pelletier]

I do not know the exact purpose of your question, but, at the risk of disappointing you, it is not for me to judge the content of the recommendations that this committee will eventually make, or what the Government of Canada might propose. Will it be enough or not? Will it be a major reform or not? It's still too early to fully answer those questions.

That being said, when you change the method of voting in a significant way—what we normally understand by the word “reform”—you are changing the political culture of a country. It's as simple as that. It is not just a matter of modalities or technicalities, but it's also a matter of culture. It really is a question of values—

because choosing an electoral system is choosing the values that we as a country want to emphasize. What are the values that we value the most? This is one of—

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Forgive me for interrupting you but I only have a little time. I would like to be able to deal with all my topics.

You mention values. That is a good point. You briefly listed the criteria of the parliamentary system inherent in the Westminster tradition. One of the important elements is the responsibility that the executive power has to the legislative power. Given that our method of voting dates from a very long time ago—when there were only two parties, when women did not have the right to vote, and so on—do you believe, for example, that a proportional system would allow us to better respond to the need to have the executive power as part of the legislative power, responsible to it and to the parliamentarians who make it up?

[Prof. Benoît Pelletier]

Let me lay things out differently.

I feel that we could have a mixed-member proportional system at the same time as we have a government that takes part in the legislative activity, that is accountable to the legislative power and whose political legitimacy comes from the assembly. We can have a system in which members are, at the same time, chosen by the direct vote of electors in the constituency and also chosen from lists. You could have such a system while still having an executive power responsible to the legislative assembly. There is nothing incompatible in all that.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Of course.

Let us look at the issue of Quebec.

We recognize that it is important that the regions are represented, which is why we call it a “mixed-member proportional system”. Have you been able to draw any lessons from that process, specifically on the way in which members of this committee could better ensure that we keep this important feature even while tending towards a system that is more representative in the way citizens vote in an election?

[Prof. Benoît Pelletier]

I do not know how long I have to answer you, but I could keep a part of my answer for other comments.

The regions were actually one of the factors that caused the reform to fail. At some stage, they expressed their opposition to the reform of the method of voting in the belief that it was to going to create some distance between the elector and the elected, which would have put them at a disadvantage.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

However, if you consider the fact that people in some constituencies believe that they can vote for the Prime Minister, do you believe that the distance already exists and that the fact that the system is a little more stable rather the responsibility of the elected—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

That is a good question, but I have to interrupt you.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

That's fine, Mr. Chair. No problem.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

The question is going to require an in-depth response. An opportunity may arise at another time.

Let's move to Mr. Richards now.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Pelletier, I want to ask a couple of questions of you. As has already been mentioned, you have that unique perspective of academic expertise and experience, but you also have that practical experience and expertise, having participated in the political process as an MNA and a minister in Quebec. You've had lots of opportunity to use your academic expertise and experience, and in your opening remarks you gave us a good overview.

I want to focus a bit on your practical experience from your time as a minister, when your government looked at the possibility of changing the voting system to an MMP type of system. I think even in the platform in one election there was some indication that the province might move toward a more proportional type of system. Looking at it again, it was determined that Quebec should not proceed that way, and ultimately no change was made.

I wonder if you could elaborate for me on why that was considered and why it ended up not proceeding. Was it simply that there wasn't enough public support to proceed with that type of change? Why was it not adopted?

[Prof. Benoît Pelletier]

Yes, different factors came into play.

First, the will of the people has been overturned three times in Quebec's history. In 1944, the Quebec Liberal Party won more votes than the Union nationale, but the latter won more seats. In 1966, the same thing happened. Finally, in 1998, the Quebec Liberal Party won more votes than the Parti Québécois, but the latter won more seats. Those three reversals of the will of the people brought about a serious questioning of the single member simple plurality system.

That is basically what led our government, after being elected in 2003, to consider reforming the method of voting and suggesting a dual-member proportional system.

The dual candidacy implies that people can be both candidates in a constituency and have their names on a party's list at the same time. At that point, I started to explain, both to voters and parliamentarians, that it meant there would be two different classes of MNAs.

I think that people said, “Well, we didn't know that it would go that far, and we're not sure about what that would mean, and we're not sure that we are in favour of that.”

I think that most people were in favour of a reform, but when I gave details about that reform, it then began to fail. The interest groups that were particularly in favour of a reform, at the end, did not support the government because the formula that we advanced, or the type of reform we proposed, was not their formula or the formula they had in mind.

Since they didn't have the type of reform they had in mind, they decided that instead of supporting the government for another formula, they would not support the reform and instead wait for a reform adapting their formula in the future.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Yes, it sounds as though it was an effort made, but the support wasn't there for the decision. There are different ways that can be determined. We've argued that it's important to have a referendum to try to determine whether there is support to move ahead. Your government made the decision not to proceed, knowing that the support wasn't there. That was something you determined at that time.

Would you say that the feelings in Quebec toward that type of system would still be of that nature? What would your sense be of the support in Quebec for a reform of that type at this point?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Perhaps we could come back to that. You'll have another opportunity to ask a question in the second round, and we could hear the answer to that then.

Ms. Sahota.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you, professors, for being here today.

As I'm sitting here and contemplating all of the meetings that we've been having, it's been quite fascinating. I'm thinking about what this committee has been mandated to look at, the factors of fairness and inclusiveness. My colleagues and I have been talking about voter turnout, the link between an electoral system and satisfaction. Some experts have said that it's hard to decipher what voter satisfaction is.

I was looking at a list online a little while ago when my colleague across the aisle had pointed out India as being a large democracy. I was looking at India's voter turnout, which seems to have been quite a lot higher in some of their recent elections than here, and then I noticed that Kenya is a country that has about 85% voter turnout. As I was looking at that I was thinking that these countries have first past the post systems, yet their voter turnout is quite high. So can we really say that's the reason we don't have high voter turnout and that changing our electoral system will necessarily solve that problem?

[Prof. Benoît Pelletier]

May I say something, Mr. Chairman?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Yes.

[Prof. Benoît Pelletier]

I can tell you that in the case of Quebec, when we started we had different studies showing that electoral reform would not change turnout at elections. That was not something we could take for granted. In other words, the turnout would almost be the same. If we had to change our electoral system, it would be to promote other values, such as the participation of small parties, the expression of diversity in the House, and so on. But the studies, at least, indicated that there would not be a major change in turnout.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Professor Lijphart, would you like to address that question as well?

[Prof. Arend Lijphart]

Yes, I would be happy to.

In my study I found that turnout is positively correlated with consensus democracy and proportionality. If you look at a large number of countries, obviously you can find individual instances of high turnout in FPTP countries, and perhaps relatively low turnout in consensus democracies, but when you look at countries overall, the correlation is very clear that PR countries have higher turnouts than FPTP countries.

There are two reasons for this—logical reasons that you would expect. One is that PR gives the voters more of a choice, so if a voter likes a small party, they are more likely to come out and vote for that small party, and they will perhaps not vote when, in fact, the candidate of that small party simply has no chance at all. The second reason is that if you have FPTP, you have a number of districts that are safe for one party or another party, and in that case the party that is disadvantaged in that particular district is not likely to make much of an effort in that district.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

May I ask whether the Netherlands has compulsory voting? I can't remember off the top of my head at this point if it does. I know that Australia does.

[Prof. Arend Lijphart]

Yes.

Compulsory voting is also correlated with higher turnout, and I have written quite a bit about the use of compulsory voting. I think it's a good thing. Relatively few countries use it. Interestingly, both an English-speaking country—namely Australia—and a non-English-speaking country, Belgium, do. But they're in a minority, so I'm not going to make a strong case in favour of compulsory voting. The only thing I would want to say about it is that the English term “compulsory voting” is very—

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

So for those countries that follow a form of PR and do not have compulsory voting, can you give me an example of a couple of countries and their voter turnout percentage, approximately?

[Prof. Arend Lijphart]

I think that in proportional representation countries, the voter turnout tends to be between 70 and 80%, and in FPTP countries—I don't know the figures for Canada—it's more like 60%. The normative aspect of compulsory voting is, of course, that one cannot impose any compulsion to vote even when voters have to, quote-unquote, “vote”—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.