Electoral Reform Committee on Aug. 22nd, 2016

[Prof. Benoît Pelletier]

Yes, indeed, openness is the major challenge. At the same time, outlooks change a lot.

A little earlier, I was asked if Quebeckers would react in the same way today to the proposal for mixed-member proportional voting that the Government of Quebec made in 2006. Today, ten years later, I feel that people would be more open to it. In an exercise like this, you have to trust the people. If they are not ready, they will say so. They may be ready later.

The government has a major role to play here. A little earlier, I said that I believed that the government had to take a position, but that it should also explain that position frankly.

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

Some have said that a change in the electoral system would not affect the turnout rate in the elections. In the last election, there was a significant increase in the participation rate by young Canadians.

After hearing suggestions from other witnesses, what in your opinion would be the best way to encourage young Canadians to become more involved in democracy, not only by going to vote, but also to stand as candidates?

[Prof. Benoît Pelletier]

First, I was telling you that studies we had access to in government indicated that there would be no real change in participation in elections. However, we all heard from Professor Lijphart that, in his opinion, it would influence the vote. Basically, two different opinions have been expressed. Personally, I am talking about the studies that were available to us in the Government of Quebec.

It is very clear to me that the people must be invited to be part of the debate. The progressive idea of holding town hall meetings is excellent. People have to have their say. Ideally, they would come to them to talk about it amongst themselves. That would be the best way to encourage people to take a greater part in the whole democratic process.

In addition, as a government, we also looked at requiring the lists prepared by the political parties to be half made up of women. We also thought about mechanisms to encourage political parties to get more women and people from cultural communities elected, such as by reimbursing election expenses and additional funding.

It must be said in passing that all that could be done, even within the current system, except when it comes to the people high on the lists. In fact, even under the single member simple plurality system, there could be incentives for political parties to get more women and people from cultural minorities elected.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

[Prof. Benoît Pelletier]

A government that truly wants to encourage the public to start off a new debate and to participate in it has all the public space it needs to do so right now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Merci.

We'll go to Mr. Reid.

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

My questions once again will be for Professor Lijphart.

Professor, I can confirm what you were saying in your response to Ms. May vis-à-vis the way in which proportionality or Proporzdemokratie, as it's called in Switzerland, is applied from one canton to the next. The largest canton, of course, is Zurich. It has a large number of deputies who are elected through pure proportionality. I had the chance to be in the smallest canton, Appenzell Innerrhoden, a half-canton, in the early 2000s when an election was under way. The way they do things there is that they elect their single representative by means of what is called a Landsgemeinde, the same citizens' assembly that votes on their laws.

I wanted to ask you, however, if you think, upon reflection, it is wise, as you initially had suggested, to consider in a country with a large geography like Canada mixing preferential and proportional representation. The question has arisen here whether we can get away with having multi-member districts in very large rural parts of the country, and you suggested that we could have single-member districts with preferential balloting in those parts of the country, and then multi-member districts in the cities.

There's an organization in Canada that recently proposed dealing with this problem by having single-member districts in the rural and remote areas; multi-member districts in the cities; and then adopting essentially a model of top-up MPs, a list system, effectively, for the rural parts of the country to compensate, effectively thereby achieving, as they put it, the advantages of the mixed-member proportional system. By the way, that's proposed by Fair Vote Canada.

I'm wondering what you think of that way of handling the issue of rural and remote areas that seems to require single-member districts.

[Prof. Arend Lijphart]

If I understand you correctly, you're still talking about a mixed-member proportional system also for the rural districts because the top-up would be done by the list vote.

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

That's correct.

[Prof. Arend Lijphart]

It seems to me that could work quite well. Basically, then, you would choose an MMP system. I think it would be desirable for the whole country, basically, to have the same system, not to have MMP for parts and STV, for instance, for another part of the country.

With MMP, of course, you will still always have the single-member districts. Both in the case of Germany and New Zealand, and I guess Wales and Scotland as well, they use FPTP in that single-member district and then proportional representation, which is a top-up, to make sure that the outcome is proportional. It seems to me that could work well.

Perhaps I could add a quick comment about the problem with MMP that many people have argued, the problem of having two classes of representatives. I think when one talks about electoral reform, it is important to realize that there is no perfect system; there's always a compromise that is necessary. The compromise with MMP is that people still want single-member districts. If you want that and you also want proportional representation, then MMP is the answer; then a consequence is that you have two different members of Parliament.

Compromises always involve things that may not be ideal, but in this case it may be a compromise that comes as close to the ideal as possible.

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

How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have 45 seconds. It's enough for a good comment or brief.... It's up to you.

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

Well, perhaps it's just enough to say thank you very much, Professor.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Reid.

Mr. Aldag.

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

Professor Lijphart, on this idea of two types of MPs, I'd like your thoughts on a question from Twitter. The question is simply: are voters better served by two types of MPs?

What are your thoughts?

[Prof. Arend Lijphart]

I don't see any difference between that and having a single class of MPs. It may, in fact, be an advantage to have one MP who represents the specific interests of the district and an MP who represents a wider interest. So basically I think that when people talk about this as a fact, and it is a fact that there are two different kinds of MPs, it's a fact but it's not a problem.

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

Okay.

I have another Twitter-inspired question, although I'm going to take it and flip it on its head. The question is: from your research, what are the most detrimental outcomes correlated with PR?

[Prof. Arend Lijphart]

What are the most detrimental aspects?

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

Yes. You've spoken to the positive side. What is the flip side? There must be something from your research that has been shown to be a negative outcome, that could even be statistically significant.

[Prof. Arend Lijphart]

There are not very many negative outcomes for democracies. There tend to be negative outcomes for the bigger parties because big parties are the beneficiaries of FPTP, as they get overrepresented. That of course was the reason that the big parties in New Zealand were opposed to a change to proportional representation.

One fact that I think has already come up in previous questions and comments is that cabinets or governments may not last as long, may not be as stable under proportional representation as under FPTP, and that it also takes longer often to form a cabinet because negotiations have to take place. These are usually connected with the thought that these facts in proportional representation are bad for policy-making, but in fact when you look generally—again as I've said—between majoritarian systems and consensus proportional systems, the consensus proportional systems do just as well or in fact usually better than the majoritarian FPTP systems.

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

Do I still have a second?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Go ahead. You still have a couple of minutes.

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

Professor Pelletier, I don't think you had a chance to comment on mandatory voting. We have question from Twitter on this. So could you take a moment to give your thoughts on mandatory voting and specifically if you have any thoughts on if it's compliant with the charter or if it could be in violation of any aspect of the charter.

[Prof. Benoît Pelletier]

We referred to that mandatory voting or “compulsory voting”, as we called it a few minutes ago.

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

Right.