Electoral Reform Committee on Aug. 23rd, 2016

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Mr. Chair, I ask for a little indulgence for the few seconds that I lost.

Ms. Goodman, we often hear that, since young people are comfortable in the digital age and love to use the Internet, that will automatically make them more engaged in politics. However, just because they want a selfie with a political leader—to use a current example—does not mean that they will automatically go to the polls. Actually, the process will remain complicated. This will therefore not necessarily make things easier.

In light of the lack of interest young people have in politics, is there evidence that a new system will actually help increase the participation rate or will it simply be yet another tool for those who vote anyway, as my colleague Mr. Boulerice said?

[Prof. Nicole Goodman]

Thank you for the question.

Definitely the primary rationale that online voters give for its use is convenience. That is the primary rationale. The second main rationale, however, is accessibility.

Yes, young people are not the most likely to necessarily use online voting. The results that I presented to you show that young people will typically use Internet voting once. They'll give it a try, since it's kind of new and cool, but then they revert back to paper voting. If it's their first time voting, they typically go out to the polls because they want to have that experience. However, when we look at the non-voters or the infrequent voters and break those down and look at them by age, we see the largest chunk of that group is among young people.

Therefore, is it going to be a tool that's going to largely engage young people? No, but I don't think there any institutional fix for that. That certainly has something to do with institutions, but it's more of a cultural problem.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

I understand.

Clearly, it is costly to change the way the election process works.

Would it not be better to invest the resources that would be invested in online voting in education or other tools? For instance, you talked about people with disabilities. Elections Canada is already making efforts to reach out to those people. Would it not be better to build on those efforts or to invest more in an already existing system than to take the risk of adopting a method that has not been tried and tested?

[Prof. Nicole Goodman]

I think it's part and parcel of the same thing, so I think this could be one effort that would be part of that initiative, let's say. Certainly offering Internet voting could be one part, whether it's remote or not. There are different kinds of Internet voting. I spoke about remote, but you can have Internet voting at the polling location where there's more control from election officials, and there's less risk associated with that. Persons with disabilities are able to go and, with sip and puff applicators, they can vote in private for the first time, so they can have a secret ballot. Therefore, for some groups of electors, it does actually enhance the equality of the voting process because it allows them the same right that other people have had previously.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Dubé.

You have the floor, Mr. Deltell.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

Mr. Macfarlane, you know that when New Zealand changed its electoral system, they took their time. More than 10 years, three elections, and two referendums went by before having the last referendum. That was to be sure that everything was okay.

Do you think that technically we can change something in the next few months here in Canada?

[Prof. Emmett Macfarlane]

You know, we could reach an agreement to change the system to one of preferential balloting, and that would not be a complicated change. That would simply change how votes are counted. However, some of the proportional systems may require changes to constituency boundaries, so completing that process in just a few months seems highly unlikely. That's not even factoring in the obvious politics surrounding this process and whether agreement can be reached and the fact that consultations across the country have yet to be done.

I think I agree with Leslie Seidle, who said we're already quite tight to get this complete by 2019. It may be the case that the committee ought to consider continuing its work, focusing on the work, coming up with an alternative, and if a referendum is something that could be agreed to, it could be held in concert with the 2019 election.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you.

Mr. Cooper, we heard a lot of people who want to make changes say, “Well, the Liberal Party has been elected with that platform. It was included in their platform.” Do you think it's enough to act and to change the electoral system because there were three sentences written in a 97-page document?

[Prof. Barry Cooper]

Personally I don't, but more to the point, doing so with these tight timelines.... Let me say also that what I teach is Plato and Aristotle. They talk about prudence and moderation, and pushing for the 2019 deadline, or Christmas, or whatever it happens to be, I think is both imprudent and immoderate. I think you will be causing more difficulty than you think you're trying to fix.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Do you have any examples in the world of a parliamentary system that changed their electoral system within such a close time frame?

[Prof. Barry Cooper]

Whatever Leslie Seidle said was probably correct, since he's the pro in this sort of thing, but it seems to me it's really pushing the envelope to get it done in time without sufficient reflection on what are foreseeable implications.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madame Goodman, in French we say hocher du bonnet, so you said yes. May we listen to you?

[Prof. Nicole Goodman]

I would agree with what Leslie said in that this is a change that you want to get right. You don't just want to do it to do it; you want to get it right. You want to take your time, and if it goes a little bit past the election, as long as you get it right, won't that be better for Canadians, as opposed to trying to rush something?

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We will conclude with Mrs. Romanado.

Mrs. Romanado, you have the floor.

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

Thank you so much.

Professor Macfarlane, you mentioned earlier that it would be important for us to explain the various systems, the pros and the cons, and then you mentioned maybe Canadians don't want to know all of the nitty-gritty details. I think because we know that there is no perfect voting system, it is important for this committee to make sure that we ask the questions, the pros and the cons, of each possible alternative voting system.

We heard from both you and Professor Cooper about some of the negative aspects of proportional representation. One issue that keeps coming up for us is in a multi-member proportional system, the kind of confusion for citizens on who represents me, the two-tiered MP system, and so on. We mentioned that, and you also mentioned, Professor Macfarlane, in your brief that under a PR system a party that secures 15% of the vote can enter into a coalition in government and actually push their agenda in a majority way.

I would like to get some further clarification from the two of you on some of the negative aspects of a PR system, in addition to what you've already mentioned.

[Prof. Emmett Macfarlane]

I would be a little concerned—and again this is a personal view, a normative view—about the implications for the party system itself, and to what extent we might see a proliferation of fairly narrow single-issue parties.

Quite frankly, if we move to a PR system, one or two of the parties that are represented in this room might not exist in 10 or 15 years. What are the implications of that? In a regional country like Canada, does it place further tensions on national unity if we see some of these parties crop up as regional parties, such as a Saskatchewan First Party, or what have you? These regional parties are certainly possible under first past the post as well, but under PR, all the incentives change.

The incentives for brokerage just aren't there, because you know that you can leverage your national vote share and it will result in seats. That's not the case under single-member plurality. You have to co-operate under larger umbrellas. More parties might mean more problems. It changes the nature of democracy in Canada from the voters' perspective, because they can no longer have any confidence that what they see in party platforms is what the government ends up implementing, even if that party is part of the government. It could become a mishmash of whatever negotiation happens post-election.

That's what I mean when I say there are arguably less clear or direct lines of accountability for what government ends up doing under a PR system compared to the current system.

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

Earlier you mentioned preferential ballots. Do you think some of the same problems would happen under preferential ballots?

[Prof. Emmett Macfarlane]

No, I don't think preferential ballots would turn our system into something that more readily produces minority or coalition governments. The question might be, again, how the party system changes.

I think we'd see less drastic change. I don't want to say that nothing would fundamentally change, but under preferential balloting, we see that in extreme cases it sometimes ends up being even less proportional than first past the post. Even when it doesn't, the improvement in proportionality is relatively minor. I don't think we would see, even if we assume the party system doesn't change, dramatically different vote outcomes. I would call that more of a modest change than one to PR.

I think the virtue that you had put forward for preferential balloting, because so few people do, is that we would at least no longer be able to say that there are members being elected with 30% of the vote within their riding and they get a seat. I think that has some appeal for some people.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

One of the benefits of having the honour of chairing this committee is being able to listen intensely to some fascinating testimony. One of the frustrations is never being able to say anything, except to cut people off at five minutes.

I would just like to make one comment. It is not in any way a defence of the status quo, but it's just a thought.

I find that people tend to simplify our system a lot. I'm speaking also as a parliamentarian who has been sitting in the House for a little while. A lot of people will say this government has a majority and they can do whatever they want, or your government has a majority, or whatever. I explain to them that in fact it's not really the case, because there are many checks and balances in our system.

We have the courts. We have provinces, and we can see the power of the provinces whenever the federal government tries to negotiate a national program. We have the media. The media are definitely critical of all governments, as they should be. We have unions, for example, in collective bargaining that put brakes sometimes on governments, even governments with big majorities. We saw how the Mulroney government's attempt to reform the pension system was stopped cold by an octogenarian with a microphone on Parliament Hill . We saw how the Diefenbaker government—and I'm not singling out the Conservative governments—had a huge majority going into the 1960s, and it just collapsed.

Is it not partially right to say that our system doesn't give absolute power to a party that has less than 50% of the vote? It just gives a stronger hand to one party to negotiate the obstacles in its way in trying to exercise sometimes a national purpose.

You have 15 seconds, because I don't want to be unfair and extend the meeting a little longer.

[Prof. Barry Cooper]

I can say it quicker than that: that is the essence of responsible government, and you tinker at the essence of a regime at your peril.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Macfarlane, would you comment?

[Prof. Emmett Macfarlane]

If we talk about the power of the executive, it's in the context of its relationship to Parliament, but even within Parliament and beyond there are definitely constraints. I think that's the counter-thesis to a lot of Donald Savoie's excellent work on concentration of power.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Go ahead, Ms. Goodman.

[Prof. Nicole Goodman]

I would agree with what you said, definitely, but on the other hand I see the issue of wasted votes and frustrated electors. However, you're certainly correct. I would agree.