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.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
The commission in its report obviously recommended an MMP system. I think that's something that you seem to personally support as well.
Dean, Faculty of Law, Civil Law, Ottawa University, As an Individual
It was as a result of the process, not before. I did not even know that it existed.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Subsequently, I think you now seem to have some personal support for that type of system. I wonder if you can tell us what downfalls or tradeoffs you see in that system.
Dean, Faculty of Law, Civil Law, Ottawa University, As an Individual
Certainly, I think change is scary. Changing the system will have some cost in terms of people adapting to it.
You do worry about small or fringe parties with agendas that would be racist, or so on, getting more visibility than they would normally have. That's the issue with thresholds, so you always worry about that and the worry that you have when you are moving in that direction.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Professor Dufour, Ms. May asked a question earlier about whether any parliamentary committee or other body had ever looked at the first past the post system and concluded to keep it. You seemed very eager to answer that question, so I want to give you that opportunity now.
Political scientist, Analyst and Writer, As an Individual
In my opinion, if we want changes, we have to be realistic and quite modest. Listening to the discussions here, it sounds like the goal is re-engineering, which I think is very ambitious. There is a factor to consider. As I have said, the changes reflect a more intellectual, more ideological and more conceptual view of politics. From what I have observed of the dynamics of politics in Canada, there is a factor of inertia, a resistance to change.
Those seeking changes in terms of proportionality need to be very realistic. It is not just the committee's work that is at play. There is a whole complex process working against change. I hope your committee and those seeking changes will be pragmatic and not too ambitious. It will not work if you are too ambitious. I am being very direct. I keep repeating this and I apologize. Canadians should in my opinion be able to keep the current voting system.
Conservative
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
—Professor Jansen, earlier in our exchange there were a couple of parts to the question that you did not have a chance to respond to. In particular, did we see an increase in the number of rejected or spoiled ballots when alternative vote systems were put in place? Also, with the alternative vote system, did it actually have an impact on those jurisdictions in terms of reducing the spread between popular support for a party and the number of seats that a party won?
Professor of Political Science, University of Lethbridge, As an Individual
Yes, we did see an increase in vote spoilage.
In Edmonton, in 1952, 9.1% of the ballots were rejected. That's huge. The reason is that in Alberta they had a rule that if you only wanted to vote for one candidate and you put an X by their name, that was considered a spoiled ballot. You had to put a “1”, and some people were voting federally and voting with an X. Manitoba didn't have that rule. If you put an X, it was clear that you only wanted to indicate one preference. So their rates of ballot spoilage were more like 1.5% or 1.6%, but it did drop even with that, after it came in. So yes, there was some ballot spoilage.
As far as improving proportionality is concerned, in Edmonton, Calgary, and Winnipeg, yes, they all performed much better and got much more proportional results—more so in Edmonton and Calgary than in Winnipeg. Winnipeg was very complex. There was a big spike in the number of small parties, but that had to do with the general strike. Saskatchewan conveniently provided a control case for us. They didn't do electoral reform and they saw a big spike in parties at the same time even though they didn't change their system.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you very much.
We'll now go to Mr. DeCourcey who is the last questioner. He'll be batting cleanup in a way.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Professor Dufour presented
the idea that there's competition that takes place in our political system. I apologize if I'm mistaken in not remembering this correctly, but I believe that Ken Carty and other presenters talked about the inherent tensions that exist in our system now, and that if we change the system or move to something else, the tensions will move to a different place—perhaps not inter-party but intra-party, perhaps not in the legislature itself but at the community level.
I'd like to hear each of your reflections on where possible tensions might be in different electoral systems or different political orders, and maybe I'll start with Professor Des Rosiers, Professor Jansen, and then give Professor Dufour the last word.
Dean, Faculty of Law, Civil Law, Ottawa University, As an Individual
As to proportional systems, international experience certainly does not indicate that there is no struggle between the parties. Politics is a competition of ideas. In any system, there are winners and losers. There might be differing degrees, but election campaigns are obviously characterized by a fight among ideas. This is highly valued by society. People want a debate on ideas.
We asked a fundamental question at that time: whether any voices, ideas or perspectives are excluded from the parliamentary arena in Canada as a result of the current system. That was the key issue. In other words, we had to determine whether the pressures, the existing distortions, and the fact that these viewpoints could not be expressed in the political arena diminished our collective debate. That was also a question we considered.
Professor of Political Science, University of Lethbridge, As an Individual
On day one in Political Science 1000, I teach my students that politics is about seeking support for common projects. It's building coalitions of support. Right now we do have coalition governments, but the coalitions happen within your political parties. The Liberal Party is the government, but the Liberal Party is actually a coalition. There are differences of opinion that get hashed out in caucus. We don't see them. To me, the big shift that would happen if we went to a proportional system where no party has a majority is that those things would be hashed out in public much more. That's going to be different and take some adjustment for people to get used to, but also for politicians to adjust to as well.
Political scientist, Analyst and Writer, As an Individual
Politics has always been a struggle, and it always will be. That's just the way it is. Our system assumes there will be struggle; it is predicated on struggle. This provides some creative tension. People are sure there will be a struggle. They believe the outcome will be positive.
I will try to be open and say that I hope we will be able to introduce elements of proportional representation without losing the strong points of the current system. That is all I would like to say.
I have said about 10 times that our current system has great strengths. Not many people will say that.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
Thanks, Mr. Chair. I hope we got a couple of runners home anyway.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Yes. Thank you. We did, in fact, yes. You got a triple there.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Anyway, thank you very much to the witnesses.
I would like to thank the witnesses for their very lively presentations. You have stimulated debate and interest among committee members, at 8 p.m. in the middle of August. We thank you very much for your participation. We have learned a great deal and the discussion has been very interesting.
Thank you and have a nice evening.
The meeting is adjourned.