Electoral Reform Committee on Aug. 23rd, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the 15th meeting of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform.

We have three witnesses with us this morning. They are Professor Barry Cooper, Professor Emmett Macfarlane and Professor Nicole Goodman.

As usual, the witnesses will each have 10 minutes to make their presentations. I need to point out that, after the presentations, there will be two periods for questions. In each period, all members will have the opportunity to participate. They will have up to five minutes, including the answers to the questions. Speakers who do not have the time to finish their remarks can always make comments the next time they have the floor.

The question-and-answer segment for each member is five minutes, and that includes the answers. If for some reason there's a question left hanging and you don't have time to respond to that question because the five minutes are up, no worries; you can answer the question the next time you have the mike. We won't be deprived of any information or insights just because of a five-minute limit.

If you allow me, I'd like to take a couple of moments to introduce our witnesses.

As I mentioned, we have with us Barry Cooper, who is a former senior fellow at the Fraser Institute and has taught at Bishop's University, McGill, York, and the University of Calgary for the past 25 years. Professor Cooper has studied western political philosophy as well as Canadian politics and public policy. He studies the work of political philosophers as they relate to contemporary issues, specifically regarding the place of technology and the media in Canadian society, the debate over the constitutional status of Quebec, and Canadian defence and security issues.

Professor Cooper has written, edited, or translated some 30 books and writes a regular column in the Calgary Herald.

Emmett Macfarlane is an assistant professor in political science at the University of Waterloo. His current research focuses on legislative responses to court rulings and on the Constitution. He has also advised the Government of Canada on the process of Senate reform. His work has been published in the International Political Science Review, the Canadian Public Administration Journal, the Canadian Journal of Political Science and the Supreme Court Law Review.

Nicole Goodman serves as the director of the centre for e-democracy at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and is assistant professor at the school's innovation policy lab. Professor Goodman's research largely focuses on the impacts of digital technology on Canadian political behaviour and public policy, and she's widely recognized as a leading expert on the topic of Internet voting in a Canadian context.

She has co-authored numerous academic papers and reports for electoral management bodies and governments across Canada and recently led a study of the Ontario municipal elections to assess the effects of technology on voters, candidates, and election administrators. At this time Professor Goodman is involved with two Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-funded research projects to understand the impact of digital voting and e-democracy technology on municipalities and first nations in Canada.

Welcome. I can tell right away that this is going to be a very interesting and informative panel and subsequent discussion.

I would like to start with Professor Cooper, please, for 10 minutes.

[Prof. Barry Cooper, Professor, University of Calgary, As an Individual]

First of all, thank you for the invitation. It's always nice to come to Ottawa when the weather is nice.

I teach political philosophy and war, not political parties and elections, so my remarks will reflect this approach to political reality.

Changing the electoral system changes one of the fundamental attributes of the regime, which in Canada we usually refer to as responsible government. Because fundamentals are involved, I'll have to commit a little political science, for which I apologize in advance.

First of all, changing fundamentals means you can't simply change the electoral system and everything else stays the same. A lot of things will change if we move from the majority-plurality system we have today to one or another form of proportional representation, or PR, as I'm sure you've heard it referred to. The kind of PR matters as well, but I won't go into that. The important thing is this: changing the electoral system is not just applying a new coat of paint.

Second, politics involves forming coalitions—of interests, of ideologies, of personal patronage, whatever—in order to govern. This is as true for chimps and bonobos as it is for human beings.

Parties part people in the sense of dividing them, but they also bring them together as they search for winning coalitions. Whatever the electoral system, whether plurality or PR, parties exist to form governments; that is their rational purpose. It is not just to promote interests and ideologies. Interests and ideologies are often promoted by organizations other than parties and are, within parties, often subordinate to forming a government, but here matters get more complicated, because different electoral systems incentivize people to form different kinds of coalitions.

Specifically, plurality systems incentivize people to form coalitions within a party to win a parliamentary majority. Brian Mulroney famously did so by forming a coalition of Quebec nationalists and westerners. Under PR, small parties, which may well represent ideologies or interests—or in Canada, a region—have no possibility and no ambition to form a government. They want to be part of a larger coalition in order to advance their ideology or interests that way. Governing with a PR system still involves forming a coalition, but now parties form them openly in parliament rather than within a big-tent party. That is, all PR systems incentivize persons to create single-issue parties to run on comparatively narrow agendas and do the coalition-building after the election.

None of this is news. I first learned about the effects of electoral systems as an undergraduate at UBC during the 1960s. The material we were reading was even older.

I have one last bit of political science. We all know that majority rule in free elections is the basis of democracy, but when there are more than two choices, there may be no majority for any particular rank order of choices. This “voters' paradox,” as it's called, is the electoral equivalent of “rock, paper, scissors”. More formally, it is the basis of Kenneth Arrow's impossibility theorem, which he described in 1951 and which helped secure him the Nobel Prize in economics 20 years later. The implication of this very complex argument is significant: there is no best electoral system.

To repeat, there are different incentives provided by different electoral systems, and these incentives are distinct from questions of establishing the franchise, homogeneity of electoral districts or constituencies, and what Canadian courts call “communities of interest”.

Let's look again at the consequences that a PR incentive system extends to a political party that is more concerned to advance a particular interest, ideology, or agenda than in ruling.

First, it leads to a proliferation of small parties. Even in a plurality system, the disintegration of the big-tent Mulroney coalition resulted in two little parties, Reform and the PQ. It took a decade for Stephen Harper to recreate at least part of the coalition in the Conservative Party of Canada. Outside Canada, between 2000 and 2015, 17% of PR elections resulted in single-party majorities. In contrast, 85% of majoritarian or plurality elections resulted in single-party majorities.

So what? That seems to be a pretty benign consequence.

The problem, however, is that when coalitions are formed in Parliament rather than within the party, large majority parties have to make concessions to small ones, including fringe parties. This is reason enough for small, intense, single-issue parties to favour PR.

The logic is obvious. If small-party ideologies or interests are supported by most electors, they become big parties. If not, they are in a position to leverage their small but intense support in exchange for supporting a big party in Parliament and getting the big party to legislate what they want—but notice that they do so against the wishes of the majority.

Democratic theory is rightly concerned with the tyranny of the majority. PR practically invites tyranny of the minority or minorities. In short, PR does not encourage the foremost political virtue, namely moderation, to say nothing of institutional stability.

The most obvious practical result is that PR elections lead to increased government spending as large parties acquiesce in the requests or demands of small ones in exchange for their support. One study has shown that increases in government expenditures are in the order of 25%. Moreover, PR countries tend to cover their increased expenditures by borrowing money, thus increasing debt. The generalized effect, therefore, is to increase the size of government, which increases the effective power of bureaucrats, and bureaucrats are not elected by anybody.

I should say in passing that the most obvious forgone benefit of instituting a PR system is that it becomes much more difficult to vote the government out of office. This practical advantage of plurality systems was clearly in evidence in the 2015 federal election and in the 2016 Alberta provincial election.

In that connection, so far as changing the federal electoral system is concerned, winning 39% of the popular vote does not constitute a mandate, especially when you ask how many of those who voted for the federal Liberals did so because that party promised to change the electoral system but didn't say how. I would suggest the answer is “precious few”, which leads to a final practical issue: the growing suspicion of, not to say cynicism with respect to, the motivations of government. Like all parties, the Liberals are rational actors and so will likely design an electoral system from which they expect to benefit. Whether they do is, of course, another matter.

A couple of lawyers wrote in the Toronto Star not too long ago, which usually supports the present government, “To allow a one-off parliamentary majority to unilaterally alter” the foundations for distributing political power “would be fraught”. Madison said something quite similar in “Federalist No. 10”, and so did de Tocqueville and many other democratic theorists.

Let me conclude by reiterating my first observation, that changing the electoral system is a change in fundamentals. In legal language it amounts to changing a constitutional convention, or what we now call the constitutional architecture. I need hardly remind you that constitutional conventions are the customs, practices, and maxims that are not enforced by courts but nevertheless constitute a practical political ethics. We were recently reminded of their importance by the spectacle of Senator Duffy.

What is more important is that we might anticipate a court challenge from one or more of the provinces on the grounds that changing the electoral system violates a constitutional convention that has been in place since 1791. It clearly changes the internal architecture of the Constitution, which invites scrutiny by the Supreme Court of Canada.

Changing the electoral system obviously affects provincial interests. Just think of the constitutional requirement of four MPs for P.E.I. If that constitutional requirement were carried forward, one of my colleagues at the University of Calgary calculated that the House would contain over 600 MPs, which implies another kind of architectural change to the configuration of the chamber.

More to the point, the decisions by the court in the Nadon reference and the Senate reform reference of 2014, and going back to the patriation reference of 1980, are pretty good indications that the government would lose.

In short, thinking about a PR system for Canada is fine for political science undergraduates in a bar on a Friday evening. For Parliament seriously to consider this constitutionally suspect change is politically imprudent, to use no stronger language. A lot can go wrong and likely will.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Professor Cooper, for that interesting analysis.

We'll go now to Ms. Goodman for 10 minutes, please.

[Prof. Nicole Goodman, Director, Centre for e-Democracy, Assistant Professor, Munk School of Global Affairs, As an Individual]

Good morning.

I'd like to begin by thanking the chair and members of the committee for the invitation and the opportunity to speak today and share my research findings and thoughts.

Before I begin, I'd like to draw everyone's attention to the fact that the Centre for e-Democracy, which is an organization that's dedicated to generating, translating, and disseminating scholarly research findings about how digital technology is affecting our democracy and our societies, is releasing a report that looks at how Internet voting in local elections in Ontario affected election stakeholders such as voters, candidates, and election administrators. That report was released today on the centre's website. Thank you.

I have structured my remarks to speak to the applicability of online voting with respect to the guiding principles of accessibility and inclusiveness, engagement, and electoral integrity. I'd like to make clear that when I am speaking about online voting, I am referring to remote online voting, which means being able to cast a ballot from a remote location such as work, home, or perhaps overseas.

There are other types of electronic voting, such as from public kiosks or by electronic devices at a polling place. These latter options allow for tighter control by election officials and can minimize some risk.

Remote online voting offers electors improved access and has the greatest potential to reduce costs associated with casting a ballot. It is the only type of electronic voting reform that represents a substantial step forward in terms of voter access and convenience.

Voting accessibility is becoming increasingly important for Canadians. Turnout in federal and provincial elections has experienced a general trend of decline over the past 25 years, notwithstanding a few recent increases that have to do with the contextual considerations in those elections. At the same time, voter turnout in the advance voting period in the same elections has risen significantly. Why is this?

There have been some changes to the advance voting structure that may have created additional opportunities to participate, such as extensions in the number of advance voting days. Generally it appears to be part of a trend, also mirrored in other advanced democracies such as Australia and the United States, whereby voters are opting to vote in advance of election day.

Voters in these countries are also using other remote voting methods more, such as voting by mail. In the recent Australian federal election, for example, overall voter turnout was the lowest it has been since compulsory voting was introduced in 1925, but advance participation at the polls was around 24%. This is up from 16.9% in 2013 and 8% from 2010. Taking into account votes cast by mail, about 34% of the votes in that election were cast before election day.

The fact that voters are so readily making use of the early voting period and other remote voting methods signals that the contemporary voter wants options, or rather choice and convenience, for voting.

There is also evidence that improvements in access can address some of the reasons for non-voting listed in Elections Canada's survey of electors and Statistics Canada's 2015 labour force survey. In recent elections, the frequency of the explanation of “everyday life issues” is the largest category provided by non-voters to explain why they did not participate. This category includes rationales such as being too busy or out of town, illness or disability, weather conditions, or transportation problems. Online ballots can enable voting in situations of everyday life or health issues. These reasons for non-voting should be on the radar of the committee in their consideration of voting reform.

Access can be particularly important for special groups of electors, such as citizens abroad or military overseas, persons with disabilities, young people away at post-secondary schools, the elderly, and members of indigenous communities. Ten countries presently have active Internet voting programs, and five of these initiated the reform to improve voting access for citizens or military overseas: Armenia, France, Mexico, Panama, and the United States. Jurisdictions that have implemented these programs seem content with the added access for voters, and some have expanded the program to the entire electorate, such as Alaska.

Should the government decide to adopt mandatory voting, it would also be important to introduce reforms or measures to improve voter access to the ballot box, such as additional advance voting days, vote centres, or remote online voting.

Regarding the implications of online voting for engagement, I will speak first on turnout. A recent study of Internet voting adoption in Ontario municipalities by myself and my colleague, Leah Stokes, professor of political science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, finds that the voting reforms increase turnout. Examining five elections from 2000 to 2014, we find that Internet voting increases turnout in Ontario municipalities by 3%.

These results are consistent with findings of other research on “convenience voting” reforms, such as voting by mail or early voting. These studies find effects in the 2% to 4% range, typically.

Other voting reforms the committee is considering, which are larger changes, may not have much larger effects on turnout. Adopting a PR system, for example, can increase turnout by 5%, while compulsory voting laws show a much larger change, with an average increase in turnout of 7% to 16% in advanced democracies.

However, even in places where mandatory voting is already established, such as Australia, there is talk of further improving turnout. Voter participation is complex, and no one institutional reform will be the silver bullet.

In terms of policy design and what the voting reform should look like if introduced, we find that when registration to vote online is not required, 35% more people choose to vote by Internet. We also find that there is less uptake of online voting when it is offered in the advanced voting period and not on election day. If offered, I would recommend offering online voting on election day.

Now let me say a word about non-voters. Evidence in Canada and in other countries with established online voting programs, such as Estonia and Switzerland, shows that online voting brings some infrequent voters into the voting process. Particularly in Canada, at the municipal level there is evidence that people who previously were eligible to vote but did not were brought into the voting process when online voting was offered.

With regard to age and engagement, online voting typically appeals to voters of all ages, though not disproportionally to young people, as is often thought. My research on Canada and findings from other countries, such as Norway, show that the youngest voters, those aged 18 to 25, are more likely to choose paper over online ballots, perhaps out of symbolism or ritual for the first time participating.

Emerging research form Switzerland finds that while older voters are likely to use online voting and remain loyal to the voting method, young people are more likely to try online voting once and then move back to paper ballots or back to abstention. Older voters will use online voting, but it's not the solution to engage young people.

I will end with some final words about electoral integrity.

Though security authentication and verification must be managed carefully, our lives are increasingly moving online. I am of the view that the modernization of government institutions is inevitable, and whether online voting is proceeded with or not, we are going to see technology creep into other aspects of the election process, such as the voters' list, voter registration, and ballot tabulation. Thus, the government needs to give due consideration to research in this area and how voting technologies might apply to the unique, contextual circumstances in Canada.

The integrity of elections should be a foremost consideration of parliamentarians. While some changes may raise questions about the impacts of certain reforms, taking no action, which is a decision in itself, could also impact citizen trust and faith in elections and Parliament.

If online voting is implemented, its deployment should be carefully thought out, researched, and trialed in a select area or with a particular group of electors prior to broader development.

Finally, process is very important. Electoral reform is not something that can be rushed; it is much better accessed as part of a careful and deliberate process. While a trial would be a practical step forward and change is inevitable, large-scale deployment needs to be well researched, considered, and planned.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

That was very rich in insight and the latest information. Much of it seemed at first blush, from where I'm sitting, to be counterintuitive. We're looking forward to really delving into what you said in more depth.

We now move to Professor Macfarlane, for 10 minutes.

[Prof. Emmett Macfarlane, Assistant Professor, University of Waterloo, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I want to thank the committee for the invitation to join you today. You'll forgive me if I'm not as coherent as I could be, but we have a two-week-old baby at home, and it turns out babies come with a big dose of sleep deprivation.

The brief I submitted to you addresses a set of disparate issues relating to electoral reform. It explains why there are no significant constitutional constraints on Parliament's authority to implement reform. It addresses the nature of proportionality and reminds you that while PR systems are designed to result in proportional representation in legislatures, they do not necessarily result in anything resembling proportional exercise of power. It cautions you about mandatory voting and asks that you consider whether mandatory voting is anything more than treating a symptom of a set of problems rather than dealing with those problems. It presents an argument for why, I believe, political legitimacy may require, at the end of this process, a referendum to ensure that Canadians support whatever specific reform is advanced at the end of the day.

For my opening statement, I'd like to focus on exactly how evidence from social scientists, and especially political scientists, can assist you.

As the committee has already learned, political science can provide important insights about the operation, impact, and comparative evidence regarding various electoral systems, but there is no social scientific evidence that one can apply to assert that any particular system Canada might seriously consider adopting is more democratic than another, and this includes the first-past-the-post system.

As Professor Jonathan Rose has told you, choosing between alternative electoral systems is a question of values and trade-offs. In my view, there are those who advocate for PR systems with privilege, proportionality, and vote equity, and there are those who advocate for the status quo with privilege, efficiency, vote aggregation, and more direct or clearer lines of accountability. These values are all consistent with democratic norms but are emphasized by varying degrees by different electoral systems. There is nothing less democratic about a system that privileges parties capable of obtaining deep enough support to win single-member geographic ridings, nor is there anything less democratic about a system that seeks to ensure seats allocated in a legislature reflect popular vote shares.

Misleading rhetoric about the various electoral systems may cloud our ability to properly identify these trade-offs that are associated with each system. There are accusations that first past the post produces false majorities that risk misrepresenting that system entirely. It certainly looks like a false majority is produced if one frames the system entirely on the basis of national vote shares, but that's not what the existing system is meant to do. In first past the post, the system effectively consists of 338 separate electoral contests with a seat at stake in each one. A party that wins a majority of those contests is not winning a false majority. Canadians might reasonably prefer this simple geographic form of representation. Similarly, accusations that PR systems bring inherent instability are not supported by the comparative evidence, nor is there any evidence that Canadian political parties, or the political culture within Canada or its Parliament, are somehow incapable of adjusting to a system that more readily produces minority or coalition governments.

It has been disappointing to see some of the expert witnesses appearing before you make normative assertions about the democratic validity of certain systems over others. These may be informed opinions, but they are grounded in normative preferences, ideology, and even partisanship. This is not to say they are illegitimate or somehow not valid. I would argue that you could make a valid, normative case in favour of any major electoral system, including the status quo.

The question becomes one of who gets to make the final call. With respect, political parties have too much self-interest to be trusted with the end decision. There is already sufficient anecdotal evidence that the parties each of you belong to are already entrenched in their views about the outcome of this process. It would be absurd, especially considering the arguments against first past the post, to enact an electoral system against the wishes of a majority of Canadians.

The government's campaign promises gave it a mandate to pursue reform, but they do not provide a mandate to enact any particular electoral system. An electoral change is not like any other ordinary legislation. Canadians should have a say in the design of the fundamental thing that links them to the state.

I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much, Professor Macfarlane.

Congratulations on the new arrival in your home. A lack of sleep does not seem to have blunted your acuity and the clarity of your comments.

We'll proceed to the first round with Mr. Aldag, for five minutes, please.

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

Thank you.

Professor Goodman, I'll start with you.

First of all, I'd like to thank all three of you for being here today. I'm sure that you'll all have lots of questions as we go through the rounds.

We've had some discussion on online voting. I'm particularly interested in the online voting work that you've done and I was able to retweet the link to the report that was just released, so hopefully everybody out there watching us will get to review that material.

From some of the witnesses we've heard already, the concern of security comes up. There's this cautionary note that's been given to us to be careful, and that our electoral system needs the trust of Canadians. In your studies, could you speak to some of the issues, such as how other areas are dealing with these security concerns. How are they addressing security within their population to give people the certainty that they can trust the system that's being introduced?

[Prof. Nicole Goodman]

Thank you for the question.

Yes, security is certainly a major argument against online voting. Certainly a lot of jurisdictions that have looked at implementing it have delayed or stalled or not moved ahead with pilot projects because of concerns around security, but Internet voting has been used in numerous jurisdictions now in the world. I think there are over 20 jurisdictions. The biggest concern reported from authorities that have well-entrenched programs—such as Estonia, for example, which is the only country to deploy Internet voting in a national election—is they're more concerned about perceptions of security and how that might hurt things as opposed to actual attacks. I think what you find when you do surveys, particularly in countries like Canada that have high Internet penetration rates, is that the public is very accepting of the Internet and they want to see more and more services online.

I was recently attending a conference where someone suggested that even if there was an issue, just as there are issues with online banking, people continue to bank online. I'm not supporting that or saying it's right, but there seems to be an expectation among citizens today that we should have services online and that those other concerns should be mitigated.

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

I'll take the comment about the online banking. It's something that's come up in our discussions with the previous witnesses. One of the comments that was given to us is that in the case of online banking, if you're hacked and you lose your money, there's insurance. There are things that cover it. There's not that same kind of insurance with a vote.

Are you seeing it in conversations in areas that have done this? How do you give people that confidence? How do other jurisdictions give people that confidence? I think you indicated that we should start slowly and try it with a test population. Does that give the population the confidence? I'm curious. Alaska, I think you said, started off small and has rolled it out to the entire population. Have you studied the steps that they took to get there and reactions within the population as they went over that rollout? What does that look like?

[Prof. Nicole Goodman]

In a lot of jurisdictions you'll see them start out with a pilot, and then they'll move up from there. Even in Estonia, for example, they started in local elections and then they moved up to national. In European parliamentary elections, in Switzerland, you saw the same trend.

Typically, when you're starting out, you do a lot of research and come up with a system that works for you. What they have in Estonia, which I can maybe speak to a little bit more later, is maybe not something that would work financially in Canada, because Estonia is a very small country. Everyone has a digital card, and that card is your bus pass, your bank card—it's everything. It's not something that you easily want to share. It's not something I would share with Professor Macfarlane, for example, because it has all of my information on it.

The media and candidates and voters have been brought into the process as they were implementing it. Making sure that there's lots of education and outreach is key to getting stakeholders on board, and it's really important to have an open and transparent process, to have public information sessions about how the technology works and to have people test it out and try it out and see if they like it.

One last point is to make it available to maybe a special population of electors first. You see it in quite a few jurisdictions. I mentioned it's available to expats or military overseas, or another special group or a special area. Then once they've worked out the kinks, they do larger deployments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

We're almost at five minutes, so we'll move on to Mr. Reid. Thank you, Mr. Aldag.

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

Thank you very much. I found all three presentations very interesting. I will, however, be directing my questions to Professors Macfarlane and Cooper simply because your topic is fundamentally different from Ms. Goodman's.

I want to start with a thought that has been rolling around in my head. Professor Macfarlane, I think this is somewhat as you were saying, but I've had the impression since October of last year that what has happened is that the government has misinterpreted what its mandate is.

The classic parliamentary mandate theory from the era of Gladstone and Disraeli would have said that the government has a mandate to propose legislation, that effectively it has the exclusive right to propose legislation. In those days, if Disraeli, for example, had had a minority in Parliament, he would still have, being in control of the executive, the exclusive right to propose legislation as government legislation. Gladstone in opposition would not, and Parliament would make the decision, and they seem to have made the assumption that the modern version of this is that if they have a majority, regardless of the percentage of the vote, they have the right to simply push through everything they bring forward, whereas I would say that the proper modern interpretation of mandate theory ought to be that they continue to have the exclusive right to propose any electoral system they think is appropriate but that ultimately it is the people who ought to have the final decision by means of a referendum.

Do you think I'm right in saying that the government does have a legitimate mandate to propose whatever system it thinks is best, but not to proceed beyond bringing that forward to the people for the final decision?

[Prof. Emmett Macfarlane]

I don't want to get into suggesting that a political party can't make whatever promises and frame those promises however it wants, and quite frankly, in a system of responsible government, if the government can pass constitutional legislation, good for it.

My concerns relate to the political legitimacy of those decisions, and I think had the government actually promised a specific electoral system, it would be on safer ground with regard to that political legitimacy question. I think the nature of the promises that 2015 would be the last first-past-the-post system, that we will consult and pursue reform, clouds the extent to which you can claim a direct mandate from the people. I do think there are other reasons that Canadians need to be consulted by a referendum. I just think the mandate, the nature of the promise, is what I think runs into some difficulty in terms of political legitimacy.

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

Right.

I have been frustrated. I've made this point to the minister. She says we'll sit back and wait for recommendations and then we will choose from those recommendations and then proceed forward, presumably without a referendum, although she's a bit vague. It seems to me she's got it backwards, and I've said to her, “Look, you make the choice. You decide what is right and then present it,” and it's the people who should make the decision rather than as we're doing now. Essentially we go out and ask the people of Canada what recommendations they would make so that the government can make the final choice.

Do you see what I'm getting at? It seems to be almost a reversal of the way the system would best function, whether from a democratic point of view or simply from the point of view of coming to a practical, workable system.

[Prof. Emmett Macfarlane]

I am a bit torn. I'm not a fan of referenda generally. I do see electoral reform as an exceptional case, so I wouldn't want governments to have to deal with every policy decision by saying that “Well, we're going to make our decision and then we're going to present it to the people. We're going to constantly have plebiscites.” However, I think there is something particular about electoral reform that's inherent in a value proposition about what system we ought to have. I don't think a referendum can replace any of the process of actually arriving at a potential alternative, but I have yet to hear a convincing argument against a referendum in this case, especially given the arguments against first past the post and the nature of government power under that system or why we ought to potentially push through a system without knowing that Canadians don't prefer the status quo.

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

Thank you.

I'll wait for the next round for Professor Cooper, because I seem to be out of time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Monsieur Boulerice is next.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to the witnesses appearing today.

I would first like to ask Ms. Goodman a question.

Many voters want to be able to vote online. They come up to us in the streets to tell us that it is 2016 and to ask us why it is not being done. The most common example they give is that they can now pay a telephone bill through their bank. So why can’t they vote in the same way? On the other hand, even though it is modern and user-friendly and can make life easier for a number of people, if it’s not broken, don’t fix it, as they say.

We still have a system that works well. The law allows people to leave work at a certain time in order to go and vote. When you show up at a polling station, you only have a few minutes to wait. I have never waited very long to vote. You can find out the results two hours after the polling stations close. If the result is unclear, people open the sealed boxes and count the ballots again.

If that works well, you wonder why we have to move to something that a number of people see as quite risky. Here is an example of a vote that was not done online, but that was done electronically.

In the municipal elections in Montreal in 2009, people did not vote on paper ballots but they registered their votes using a machine. Initially, the company that organized the voting provided amazing guarantees as to the security of the process. But a year and a half later, we found out the company in question was unable to guarantee that the results that had been announced were accurate. In fact, we did not know whether the candidate elected as mayor of Montreal actually was the mayor of Montreal, which was somewhat of a problem.

What could you tell people to reassure them that the process is secure? The procedure seems quite interesting, but I do not see the need for it.

[Prof. Nicole Goodman]

Thank you for the question.

To start to respond, I'd like to say that electronic voting machines are very different from Internet voting. You typically see the two conflated. People point to the 2000 election and what happened there as an argument against Internet voting.

I'm not here today to necessarily advocate for Internet voting or say that it has to be implemented. My view is that our political institutions are modernizing, and if we don't see Internet voting now, we're going to see technology in other aspects of elections. The United States is a great example, because it is a country that has been extremely cautious, yet you see 32 states now using the Internet for voter registration, and it is having a great impact. I think we'll see the technology creeping into voters' lists and into registration, and we already see it in ballot tabulation in a lot of areas.

I think it's important for the government to flag this, put it on their radar, and start doing research now so that maybe in five or 10 years, when you decide that maybe it is time to implement it, the framework will be in place and it's not a rushed process. In the U.K. in particular, they really tried to rush their trials and pilots and it didn't work out well for them.

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

We want to use online voting in order to increase the turnout at elections. But Professor Jansen, who was here with us yesterday, told us that Internet users, those who could be most likely to vote online, are already online and interested in politics. Often, people with more education and a higher income, those who are more comfortable, already vote using the paper ballots.

Is there any evidence at all that online voting could increase participation in elections, given that people who do not vote are often more marginalized and less likely to understand and to use electronic or online tools?

[Prof. Nicole Goodman]

Yes.

Professor Jansen's comments are correct when we look at who is the average Internet voter and who uses Internet voting the most. In Canada at the municipal level and also in other jurisdictions, it is typically people who are older, people who wealthier, and people who are more educated. This is interesting, because in a way it speaks to this digital divide. A lot of people say, “Oh, older people won't make use of online voting because they have lower digital literacy”, but we see this isn't true. When older people have lower Internet use, for example, or familiarity with computers and the Internet, they're still just as likely to make use of Internet voting. That is somewhat reassuring.

In terms of—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Just take a couple of more seconds, please, for your point.

[Prof. Nicole Goodman]

Okay.

We have seen it improve access for special groups of electors, such as persons with disabilities. It's being used in many first nations communities, and hopefully I'll have the opportunity to speak to that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Ste-Marie, you have the floor.