Evidence of meeting #14 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.
7:35 p.m.
Dean, Faculty of Law, Civil Law, Ottawa University, As an Individual
It means that our suggestion was to increase
the size of some of the geographical ridings to allow for the list MPs. An alternative was simply to add a number of list MPs; and in P.E.I. that would be the obvious solution there.
7:35 p.m.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
Do you think Canadians would have an appetite for more parliamentary seats?
7:35 p.m.
Dean, Faculty of Law, Civil Law, Ottawa University, As an Individual
You already had an increase in the number of MPs, in any event, so I think it has to be justifiable. You can discuss whatever you want and decide, but it would seem to me that this could be done in a way that's completely neutral and a little like electoral boundaries, that is, in a way that diminishes and looks at what makes sense with the numbers.
I think there is pressure from the public to move in that direction, because there are lots of studies that show that the way in which it is done can cause distortions.
Which electoral districts have a lot of minorities? There is a way of approaching this. We have to determine what the broad principles are and what we want. If more MPs are needed to comply with the Constitution, adding another MP is not something earth-shattering.
7:35 p.m.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
Mr. Dufour, you said your preference is the current system. Do you see any opportunity to improve the system? Do you think any changes should be considered?
7:35 p.m.
Political scientist, Analyst and Writer, As an Individual
Yes.
I am not completely opposed to change. I am simply cautious. One of the values of our electoral system is its simplicity. The system should not be too complicated.
One of the strengths of our current system is the nearly physical relationship between MPs and their constituents. That is very valuable. I am sorry for repeating this, but I am the only one making this point. Our world is becoming increasingly virtual and conceptual and people are already frustrated. An MP represents a constituency, buildings, a certain territory. Listening to the debate, I am struck by two visions. Since Greek antiquity, politics has been a battle, I would say. I tell my political science students that the law of the jungle applies. One of the great strengths of our system is the official opposition. In the past, the opposition was people you wanted to destroy.
7:35 p.m.
Political scientist, Analyst and Writer, As an Individual
Now they have status, but there is still an element of battle. Proportional systems focus on cooperation and consensus. Personally, I do not really believe in that.
7:35 p.m.
Political scientist, Analyst and Writer, As an Individual
I also think that the old democracies are superior to the new ones. I have no doubt of that. The visions are different ...
7:35 p.m.
Liberal
7:35 p.m.
Political scientist, Analyst and Writer, As an Individual
That is what I am saying, that they are two different visions and it is important for Canadians to be able to choose between the two.
7:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Okay, thank you.
Now to the second round of questions.
Ms. Romanado, you have the floor.
7:35 p.m.
Liberal
Sherry Romanado Liberal Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
My next question pertains to voter participation rates. Professor Jansen also provided some figures about online voting.
Professor Dufour, you mentioned voting age and mandatory voting, but did not provide further details. Could you elaborate on these two aspects please?
7:40 p.m.
Political scientist, Analyst and Writer, As an Individual
Thank you.
Personally, I think mandatory voting is disrespectful of citizens. It infantilises them. I think citizens have the right not to vote. They do not have to be perfect model citizens.
Moreover, I think the current system offers an accurate picture of the situation. It might be depressing or negative, but at least we know how many people do not vote. Mandatory voting, apart from the fact that it is very difficult to enforce—we're not going to throw people in jail for not voting—can give an artificially positive picture of the situation.
In short, I am not in favour of mandatory voting. It seems desperate to me, forcing people to vote makes me angry. It would be unfair to citizens. To my mind, citizens are king. They can decide to vote or not. MPs will decide, but I don't think we should force citizens to vote.
7:40 p.m.
Liberal
7:40 p.m.
Political scientist, Analyst and Writer, As an Individual
I asked people I know who have children and I am not convinced that 16-year-olds have the maturity to vote. Once again, it is a trend. I have heard that 16-year-olds would vote more than 18-year-olds. I am concerned about a vision of democracy where quantity is more important than quality. We need evidence to back this up.
In my opinion, a 16-year-old is not mature enough to vote. It is very telling, however, that people wonder why the voting age should not be 16.
7:40 p.m.
Liberal
Sherry Romanado Liberal Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC
Thank you.
Professor Jansen, you have the floor.
7:40 p.m.
Professor of Political Science, University of Lethbridge, As an Individual
On the voting age, I think if we started imposing tests on maturity and knowledge, there are a lot of 18-year-olds and 25-year-olds and 40-year-olds and 50-year-olds who wouldn't qualify either. I remember as a kid being very frustrated with adults I would meet who knew way less than I did and followed politics far less than I did. To me, I think the idea of voting age has to be tied to rights and responsibilities of citizenship, and at 18, in particular, you start paying taxes. That's a pretty obligation that kicks in. Then there's the idea of no taxation without representation. There's something to that, right? To me I think it needs to be tied to those responsibilities. A city councillor in Lethbridge actually brought forward a motion to the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association to lower the voting age to 16 at the municipal level, because that actually isn't an issue at the municipal level. Because we have property tax, it's a different issue at the municipal level.
As far as compulsory voting is concerned, I'm certainly not as strongly opposed to it as Professor Dufour is. I would be opposed to actually making people vote; but as for making people show up at the polls, I'm at least somewhat receptive to that idea. I think the idea of actually forcing them to put an X beside somebody's name and thereby maybe contributing to the election of somebody they oppose is, under no circumstances, acceptable.
Fixing low voter turnout is incredibly complicated. The causes are generational. They are based on short-term factors. There are so many things. It's the magic bullet solution. As for fixing it any other way, I'm at a loss. I've spent a lot of time looking at the research and teaching on this. There isn't a magic bullet solution other than mandatory voting.
7:40 p.m.
Liberal
7:40 p.m.
Liberal
7:40 p.m.
Liberal
Sherry Romanado Liberal Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC
We talked quickly about online voting, and you had talked about the statistics and the fact that it wasn't statistically sound because the people who participated were online. Do you have any other research that you could provide to the committee?
7:40 p.m.
Professor of Political Science, University of Lethbridge, As an Individual
We did a phone survey, and I checked it. We've been looking at other parts of this data, and right away, we wondered if we had asked about this in the phone survey. Sadly we did not. We deliberately did a phone survey because we wanted to get people who weren't necessarily online.
The proportion of people who would not consider themselves really big Internet users is around 15% to 16%. If you discounted the results by that 15% to 16% who are completely uninterested because they're basically just not engaged online, it would round the number down. Probably around 45%-46% said they'd be very likely to vote online. But again, remember we have this other problem, so we've got two problems. We have the problem that we're doing it online, and it overrepresents the politically interested.
7:45 p.m.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have two brief points.
Mr. Dufour, you spoke earlier of the very close relationship MPs can have with their constituents. You are absolutely right about that. We have all spoken to that during the 14 meetings we have had. Each one of us has mentioned how attached we can be to our constituents and how attached they can be to their MP, regardless of the party or the location in Canada.
Ms. Des Rosiers, you mentioned earlier the possibility of voting for the party and for the MP, but there is a third variable, voting for the prime minister. On a ballot, how can a person vote for a leader, for a platform, and for an MP? That is getting complicated, not to mention, as I said earlier, that our current system isn't perfect. Find us a perfect system and we will adopt it. I don't think there is one.
Would you like to respond, Ms. Des Rosiers?
7:45 p.m.
Dean, Faculty of Law, Civil Law, Ottawa University, As an Individual
Yes.
The system we recommended had just two votes, not three. We aimed for something similar to our current system, while solving the distortion problems. During our consultations, people said there were inflated majorities, or minorities that were not represented. We tried to address that. The report focused on how to correct certain excesses of the system.
We recognize that political parties still play a central role. We can punish them in a mixed-member proportional representation system by not voting for them. They can be punished for choosing the wrong leader and for not putting the right people on their lists. They can be punished to some extent.