Electoral Reform Committee on Aug. 23rd, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Ms. Goodman, you have the floor.

[Prof. Nicole Goodman]

Yes, I think there are definite benefits to a more proportional system. When I spoke with young people and did some focus groups, one of the major concerns that they mentioned, whether they really meant it or whether they were just saying it, is that they felt that their vote didn't count because a lot of votes were lost. I definitely think it's a concern, and a more proportional system would probably encourage some people to participate.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Cooper, it is perfectly legitimate for you to see virtues in the single member simple plurality system. We can always consider the extent to which people are ready to accept the discrepancy between the will of the people and the number of seats. There are always compromises to make. All systems have their pros and cons. We in the NDP feel that the discrepancies that result from the single member simple plurality system are too great.

The problem is not always simply that 40% of the votes give 60% of the seats. Sometimes, the contradiction even extends to the will being expressed in elections. At federal level, it has only happened once, but at provincial level, in Quebec, it happened in 1944, in 1966 and in 1998. The party that obtained most votes did not win the election and formed the opposition. The party that came second in terms of the number of votes won the election by getting the greatest number of seats. So there you have a reversal of the will expressed by the people.

Do you find that system acceptable or is it too risky?

[Prof. Barry Cooper]

I'd say two things. As Professor Macfarlane said, the present electoral system is not designed to simply reflect in Parliament the popular vote. The second thing, as someone mentioned over here, is that you're going to go and ask people about wasted votes.

I would suggest you ask Canadians who vote for parties that didn't win in their constituency whether they thought they had wasted their vote. My guess is they will say no. You don't simply have to vote for the winner. When you vote for a party that loses, you're, among other things, reaffirming the importance of the entire regime.

Then there's always the next election. If you can persuade more of your fellow citizens to vote for the party that you lost with this time, then you haven't wasted your vote. The argument about a wasted vote—and maybe Professor Macfarlane would disagree or maybe he'd agree—seems to me to be an artifact entirely of a PR system. The question simply doesn't arise in the context of the system we have now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Boulerice, your five minutes are up.

Mr. Ste-Marie, the floor is yours now.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question goes to Ms. Goodman and is about electronic voting. One of my great concerns is integrity.

Consider this example. Someone goes to vote and, at some point, they find themselves alone in the booth. In the examples of the countries you mentioned, the solemnity of that moment may explain why young people prefer to go to vote in person rather than on the Internet. It also may help to reduce undue influence from third parties who may be present when the vote is cast from home.

There are always exceptions. I question the current electoral rules that allow someone with no identification to be vouched for by a person we assume to be a neighbour, confirming that they actually are who they are. Someone can vote without identification. There are problems there.

Electornic voting lets people vote from their own homes. How could we reduce the risk that they may be unduly influenced by someone else or someone who is partisan? How could we ensure that that will not happen?

Unfortunately, the past has taught us that activists have been so partisan that they were prepared to cheat in order to win elections. Sometimes, that increased the participation rate to the extent that dead people apparently voted. We have to try to prevent that from happening again.

[Prof. Nicole Goodman]

Thank you for the question.

This certainly is a really important issue. Some countries have gone around it. In Estonia, for example, they allow you to vote online as many times as you would like up until election day, with your final vote counting, so if you're at home with your partner and they're a staunch NDP supporter, and you're a staunch Conservative supporter, even though you shouldn't observe voting, you could cast a vote for the NDP, let's say, and then tomorrow when you go to work cast your vote for the Conservatives. Then some people say, ”Well, you know, what happens if you're in a situation where this person knows that, and they are with you right at the last moment that you can vote online?” Then some areas will still allow you to actually vote on election day, and that vote would override your previous Internet vote.

Municipalities in Canada have gotten around that—because certainly it's a concern—by doing a lot of outreach and education and by passing bylaws to increase penalties and remind people of the penalties for doing that. Your vote should be a secret ballot and you should not be influencing other people. You could go to jail or pay a fine, and they found that has been effective.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

So measures have been put in place, but the same problem persists.

I continue to have concerns about this. An activist or a party loyalist could go to help an elderly person who is not very comfortable with the Internet and who has difficulty moving around, and take advantage of that in order to exert undue pressure on that person. That problem remains.

I would also like to hear what you have to say about the security of the votes cast. You talked a little about it before, but I would like to know how we can identify people using Internet security measures and make sure that no malware or viruses can tamper with the results.

[Prof. Nicole Goodman]

With respect to highly partisan people maybe helping in a nursing home, for example, it's a huge concern. Some jurisdictions have gotten around that by training DROs to go around with an iPad and administer the online voting. Presumably those people are taking an oath and they're assisting voters to be able to exercise their right in a non-partisan capacity.

With respect to security and viruses, do you want to know about some of the issues the jurisdictions have had?

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Yes.

[Prof. Nicole Goodman]

There was the issue in Estonia. In Switzerland previously, Internet voting was deployed in three cantons: Geneva, Zurich, and Neuchâtel. The Zurich system has been cancelled for now because of a security audit. Nothing went wrong with the system, but they were doing a security audit and it didn't meet the highest requirement. Zurich now has to decide what kind of new system they're going to proceed with.

There's no really bad breach of an election that I'm aware of. There was, in the United States, a primary or some sort of party vote and there was a breach—a Michigan computer science team did breach that—but in a binding government election, there's been none that I'm aware of.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thanks.

We'll go to Ms. May now.

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

Thank you very much.

I just saw reading Twitter and saw that Elsie Wayne just passed away, and having just asked you the question about the two surviving Progressive Conservatives of 1993, I just thought I'd share that with colleagues. She was a great lady.

To return to the topic at hand, Professor Cooper, you put forward the notion that there were really only two ways that you could think of to create the extra legitimacy around changing a voting system. The vast majority of the witnesses we've heard, including Professor Macfarlane, but constitutional experts, have all said there's no requirement for a referendum. Everybody's pretty clear that constitutionally it's the job of Parliament to design a voting system. We've had changes in our voting system since 1867, federally and provincially, without any of them going to a referendum.

The question that comes to mind is whether there is some other way, given that I'm also persuaded that a higher level of legitimacy makes sense when you're changing the voting system. I'll ask all three of you if any of you would consider, and whether you think there's any merit—and I wish I could find where I'd seen this, in what paper—in having a vote in Parliament that required more than the bare majority in Parliament. In other words, a change in our voting system might require something more. I have an open mind on this; I'm just looking for what you think about the idea of, say, requiring two-thirds of parliamentarians for a change in the voting system, so that we wouldn't have a ricochet where one party in power could change the voting system and then another one could change it afterwards.

Could we just go down the row and see if any of you think that has any particular merit as another way of enhancing the legitimacy of a change that is in Parliament's hands legally and constitutionally? I would say we have a mandate based on how people voted in the last election, but I'm not going to dive into that with you with the time I have.

[Prof. Barry Cooper]

It seems to me that's a way of tinkering with the basic premises of responsible government, which doesn't require supermajorities. That might do the trick, but it also alters what we expect from responsible government.

[Prof. Emmett Macfarlane]

I think all-party consensus would alleviate some of those concerns. We could lock you all in a room and not let you out until you reached a compromise, which might be fun.

How happy would you be if the Liberals and the Conservatives got together, agreed on preferential balloting, and that was that? I'm not sure it would satisfy the political legitimacy concerns that many of us share.

[Prof. Nicole Goodman]

I like the idea of locking everyone in a room and coming to a consensus.

You mentioned a two-thirds vote. Certainly that would improve the legitimacy, but ultimately I do agree with the comments that Professor Macfarlane has made that there is something special about electoral reform and Canadians need to be considered and consulted. When we look at other changes that have tried to happen around electoral reform, there does seem to be a higher level of precedent. In B.C., for example, when they had the referendum, all previous referendums in B.C. had been 50% plus one, but they increased the threshold specifically for that one.

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

I mentioned that I've been watching Twitter. We had a first here today, and I want to thank Professor Macfarlane. For the first time ever I've been able to tweet with a witness while we've been talking here at the table.

Another Twitter commentator, Chris Conway in Invermere, B.C., has asked me to ask you, Professor Macfarlane, why you are biting your tongue and what it is you want to say.

[Prof. Emmett Macfarlane]

I don't feel at all tongue-tied. It's just a matter of how diplomatic I am in regard to some of my responses.

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

Laurel Russwurm wants me to ask you, Professor Cooper, why you would feel that a secret compromise within a political caucus is better for democracy than transparent negotiations between parties.

Now, that of course assumes that the negotiations between parties in more consensus-based parliaments are always transparent, but the chances are they go on behind closed doors too.

That's Laurel Russwurm's question for you.

[Prof. Barry Cooper]

Well, Bismarck's answer is still valid: if you see how laws and sausages are made, you won't want to see it.

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

I have a teeny bit more chance to follow up on something I wanted to ask you, Professor Macfarlane, and that is going to the comment you made here that in the 2015 election there was the Liberal promise that 2015 would be the last election held under first past the post. You noted as well that other parties also supported electoral reform. In fact, 63% of all the votes cast would be for candidates who supported getting rid of first past the post.

On your comment that there's no specific mandate for a specific change, don't you believe that based on your own commentary, there is one for a specific reform to get rid of the status quo?

[Prof. Emmett Macfarlane]

I think there's a clear mandate to pursue reform.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thanks.

We'll go to Ms. Sahota now.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I guess from what you say there is a specific mandate, but you also mentioned there's been a lot of misleading rhetoric around various systems that we've been exploring. It was, I think, a little striking because I haven't heard any of the witnesses say this before. You said that perhaps Canadians might prefer the simple geographic form of representation, and that it's the local geographic seat that wins, and that within that seat they're winning a plurality of the vote, and the party that leads has the majority of those seats.

We've talked a lot about local representation, geographic representation, as valuing accountability, valuing the attachment to community, and about members of Parliament understanding their local community. Now, a large geographic district, as in Ontario or any other province, actually a lot of the northern concerns are very different from the Niagara region, let's say, and their concerns are very different from the GTA region. In our caucus we tend to discuss what various MPs are advocating for in their regions, and it can be quite different at times.

In a new system, whatever it may be, how do we protect that value of being able to get a local representative who can advocate for you and who can facilitate a resolution for you?

Let's say an individual walks into my constituency office. I can help facilitate a solution for them, and there may be more concerns of that type in my area than in my colleagues' areas. Sometimes we discuss the different issues that we have in our different areas. How we do go about doing that in the new system?

[Prof. Emmett Macfarlane]

I think in some systems it wouldn't change all that much. Preferential balloting wouldn't change that dynamic; a mixed member proportional system wouldn't necessarily change that dynamic. You would still have ridings across the country; there would just be a set of seats set aside on the basis of party lists.

I think my concern would be that we want to avoid multi-member ridings in Canada. I think it's just the nature of our geography and that rural-urban divide being so pronounced. On a technical side, it would be really difficult to draw up fair constituencies. It's difficult enough in the system we have.

My concern with multi-member constituencies really relates to more confusion about who one's local representative is. On the practical side, who is doing the constituency work and who is not, and how is that sorted out? Could that end up with voters not being represented in a fair way or maybe not represented in the same way across different parts of a province?

My one personal issue would be the multi-member ridings. That would really be an issue under single transferable vote.