Electoral Reform Committee on Aug. 22nd, 2016

[Prof. Arend Lijphart]

I live in the state of California in the United States, which is a hot bed of referendums. We are going to have, at the beginning of November, I don't know how many state referendums and local referendums, but I think it's something like 20 or 25. I've become quite skeptical about referendums.

With regard to the specific issue of proportional representation, one thing I would point out is that 150 years ago there was not a single country that had PR. It has been adopted by many countries since then and, obviously today, proportional representation is now the most widely used system. It was adopted without a referendum by almost all of these countries. There are a few exceptions. I think Switzerland is one, but Switzerland is a referendum addicted country, and almost everything is done by referendum in Switzerland.

I've observed a lot of referendums on many different issues, especially since I've lived in California for many decades now. I am skeptical because outcomes of referendums are often highly volatile and unpredictable. They often involve a lot of emotion, demagoguery, and outright lies, and I'm especially appalled at outcomes of referendums like the recent Brexit referendum in Britain, which shows how much damage a referendum can do. I think Brexit has been a disaster for Britain. It has been a disaster for Europe, and it has been a disaster for the whole world.

My opinion is that if one can avoid a referendum, please avoid it.

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

Dank je wel even more. Okay.

I want to a question from a Twitter user. I'm sure you know Twitter in California. We're being watched by live streaming. Canadians are watching you from coast to coast. Matt Riser from Halifax asks, “What in your view, professor, is the most beneficial statistically significant outcome you have found that correlates with proportional representation?”

[Prof. Arend Lijphart]

I think the most significant and strongest correlations are with the quality of democracy. As I've said, I use a whole series of indicators of democratic quality. On all of those, proportional representations works not only slightly better, but a whole lot better. There is simply no comparison between PR and FPTP in that respect.

What is also important is that it works better for effective government, which has long been the argument against PR. Many advocates of FPTP would say, “Yes, of course, PR is the more democratic option, but we should worry about other things than just the quality of democracy. We have to worry about effective government.” The evidence is now in and it's clear that for effective government, PR also works better. PR systems and consensus democracies have a better record with regard to effective policy-making.

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

Professor Lijphart, having read your book and looked at your research, I'm struck by how much work goes into being able to make a summary statement such as the one you just made. You must have had large team studying empirically the results of 36 democracies over as long a time span as you looked at, from the end of the Second World War until now.

This is just a pragmatic question that occurs to me. How does one have the confidence to say, “This isn't an opinion, this is the fact”?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll have to save that answer for another opportunity. We're at five minutes, but we look forward to the answer.

We'll go to Ms. Romanado now.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My thanks to the witnesses for joining us today.

I'll start with Professor Lijphart. You've written that the United States House of Representatives is insufficiently representative in three specific areas. The first one is election by plurality, or first past the post. The second one is the timing of the elections, specifically mid-term elections, and the third one is the size of the lower house, with 435 congressional districts. In your opinion, does Canada suffer the same insufficiencies other than our election timing?

[Prof. Arend Lijphart]

Thank you for your question.

Certainly, the election timing is important. The United States would be much better off if it had four-year terms for the House of Representatives rather than two-year terms. In fact, two-year terms are very exceptional. Almost all countries have four or five-year terms—although, of course, that may be cut short if the parliament is dissolved.

The weaknesses of the FPTP system in the United States have to do with the usual weakness, that it's not representative. In fact, in several of the last elections Democrats won a larger percentage of the vote than Republicans, but because of intentional gerrymandering and the way that populations are distributed, these Republican victories have occurred. Especially if a party actually wins the majority of the vote, it seems to me quite wrong that that party does not have a majority of the seats.

In the United States the further problem is with primary elections on the whole, which of course were meant to make the system more democratic. But these tend to give special strength to extremes in both parties—in the case of the Republicans, the so-called Tea Party especially.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

I was actually referring to the Canadian system, comparing the two.

I'll move on to another question.

In your brief you recommended that perhaps mixed-member proportional be considered for Canada. Given that Canadians are very close to their members of Parliament, or would like to be very close to them, can you elaborate on what you think would be the outcomes in terms of citizen satisfaction of having that dual or two-tiered system of members of Parliament here in Canada?

[Prof. Arend Lijphart]

I think that question has been raised with regard to the German and New Zealand systems. You do obviously have two classes of members of parliament, ones who are elected in a particular district and ones who are elected from a list, but who obviously also live in a particular district. I think that is well-known to the voters. Obviously there are differences between these two different categories. But I think in the case of both Germany and New Zealand, this has not given rise to the kinds of problems where people would start saying they should change the system or to go back to the old system. If the feeling is that with MMP, the districts become too large, one possibility is to increase the number of members of Parliament, which may be unpopular in an age when politicians are not very popular. That is an obvious solution. I should have in my mind how many members you have in the House of Commons, but I don't think it's excessive now.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

We have 338, after adding 30 in the last Parliament due to changes to the EDAs and ridings based on the last census. There was some pushback from Canadians saying that we're already top-heavy. I'm not sure, quite honestly, how Canadians would feel about the idea of having a mixed-member proportional system that might actually increase the number of MPs.

I'll save my 10 seconds for next time.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll go to Mr. Reid.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

My questions will be for Professor Lijphart.

Professor, in your presentation you observed that the breakdown of 10 first past the post versus 22 proportional representation systems exaggerates the use of first past the post, because, as you say, six of the first past the post countries are very small ones like the Bahamas, Barbados, and Botswana.

I would respectfully submit to you that, given that two of the countries are the United States and India, we have the second and third most populous states in the world using first past the post. While I am no particular defender of first past the post, I think your breakdown of the types of systems makes first past the post seem a more marginal system than in fact is the case when the largest and second largest democracies in the world both use it.

I want, however, to turn to the question of referenda. You were quite dismissive of referendums. You pointed out that you live in California and you don't like the way referenda are conducted in California. Of course, in Canada we are not proposing the idea of having referenda on multiple questions in parallel with every election, but rather on having, potentially, our fourth referendum in a little over a century on the issue of changing our system, so it's a bit different. I must say, however, I lived in Washington State for a period of time and I found that voters approached referenda quite intelligently, much more so than they did the parallel elections that were occurring at the same time.

Let me ask you this question regarding the referendum that was conducted in Switzerland in 1919, in which that country adopted proportional representation. Would it have been a more legitimate exercise if the parliament had enacted that change without consulting the people in a referendum?

[Prof. Arend Lijphart]

I think that certainly when a referendum is held and there is a clear majority, it adds a kind of imprimatur to the decision. On the whole, though, countries that have PR have adopted it without a referendum and I don't know of any kind of popular dissatisfaction with that decision.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Right. In the case of Germany, for example, the much admired multi-member proportional system in that country was adopted because of the fact that the Allied countries at the end of World War II imposed it on the country. There was no input at all from the German people, either by referendum or other means. In the case of Ireland, their system of STV was imposed from the outside by the British when they were leaving. In the case of Scotland and Wales, it was similarly imposed through a process that cannot be said to have involved the representative bodies of those two jurisdictions, which didn't exist at the time.

May I take it, then, that a referendum is in fact at least as legitimate a means of adopting proportional representation or considering it as any other method?

[Prof. Arend Lijphart]

In the case of Canada, you're talking about a parliamentary decision, followed by a referendum, so it becomes a two-stage process. I certainly would not consider a referendum illegitimate in itself and I think a case can be made that a change in the electoral system is indeed a very important decision. I think the problem with referendums is that other issues often come to the fore. In Australia, for instance, referendums generally tend to fail because they just mean that the people can express dissatisfaction in general without reference to the specific issue of the referendum. I think, actually, that happened in the case of Brexit, too; that people did not always realize they were talking about this specific issue, but expressed general dissatisfaction.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you very much, Professor.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll go to Mr. Aldag.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Over the past three weeks when I've been back in my constituency, I've had a bit of time to review some of the testimony that we've heard, and it dawned on me that we've actually heard a lot of people speak quite favourably about proportional representation.

Over the three weeks I was able to meet with a number of constituents. I did a town hall and a couple of dinner meetings. I've been door knocking and then out at community events asking people about their thoughts on electoral reform, and we're getting into some discussions about the values that people hold.

I'm trying to reconcile in my mind some of the things I'm hearing and how they fit with a PR system, a proportional representation system.

Professor Lijphart, I'll start with you to get your thoughts on a couple of these. We've heard many positive things in testimony from experts and I'm trying to see if there's any sort of dark side to proportional representation. One of them comes down to this. When people look at the model—this idea of five to six MPs for a larger constituency—one of the values coming out of my discussions with people is the clear connection between a constituency and its member of Parliament. I've had people on the doorstep say to me, “John, I like it that if your government is doing something good, I can go to you and tell you; but, also, if you're messing up, I have somebody to go to, clearly, and to hold to account.”

I'd like your thoughts on examples that you've studied. How does that work? How do constituents actually hold their members of Parliament to account within these larger ridings with five to six members?

[Prof. Arend Lijphart]

That is a good proportion. In some proportional representation systems, as in my native country of the Netherlands, the entire country is one district. While that has worked well, I would not recommend it for other countries. I would not recommend it for Canada.

I think the advantage for voters of having more than a single representative elected in a district, and members of different parties being elected, is that they can still go to a representative with questions or comments on what the government has been doing. If those voters in the past have not voted for the representative who won the election, now they have the advantage of going not only to a representative of their district, but to a representative whom they actually feel comfortable with and they have voted for.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I guess where I am going with my question is, do you find there is, or have you seen, clear accountability between this group of members of Parliament and their constituents? Are constituents generally satisfied? I ask because this will be new. Proportional representation is probably the most extreme change that we could go to, and that's the thing people are having the most concerns with. It's the biggest leap for them to make.

What kind of accountability have you seen that gives people that confidence that it works for them?

[Prof. Arend Lijphart]

Of course, the shift to proportional representation in those countries that now have PR was generally from single-member district systems, so it was a big leap for all of those countries.

On the direct contact with the representative, I think it works as well when you have several members representing the same district, as I've mentioned before. Perhaps there's one fact that is especially important. In opinion and survey questions, when people in different countries were asked how satisfied they were with the system of government, with the democratic system of government they had, on the whole people in the countries with proportional representation had higher satisfaction with the government than in the FPTP countries.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Okay.

Do I still have a minute?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have 30 seconds.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

If we run out of time, I can come back.

Another one that's come up gets into the unique geography of Canada. I look at our northern three territories representing over one-third of Canada's land mass—it's probably more than that. We currently have three members of Parliament from the north, so to get into this five-to-six range, we'd probably have to take a half of the northern portion of our western provinces as well. We get into these very massive pieces of land.

In my riding, a southern riding....

I'll come back to this one. I'm getting the eye here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You made your point.

Mr. Dubé.