Electoral Reform Committee on Aug. 29th, 2016

[Ed Broadbent]

It's a matter of preferring the system that I advocated, either strict PR or MMP.

A ranked ballot system can have the effect of eliminating particularly very small parties. They can be ranked out of the system. The advantage of either MMP or strict PR is that every vote will count and you don't need to have a ranking to make it count.

I just prefer without, that's all.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Thank you.

I suspect there's not much time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have time for a short snapper, I'd say.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

It's okay. I'll save it for the next round.

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll hear Mr. Aldag, please, for five minutes.

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

Thank you.

I'm going direct my comments and questions to our two end-person witnesses to start.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've had the opportunity at home to do a couple of town halls on electoral reform. The most recent was this past Saturday. It was put on by Fair Vote Canada and a neighbouring riding association from the Liberal Party.

For the first one that I put on and organized, I had a number of constituents come out, including a number of self-proclaimed Conservatives who were effective in addressing their concerns for a referendum. I would say that on the session we did on Saturday there were many of the same faces there. Although I wouldn't consider it a breakthrough, I found it quite exciting, because we were able to move from that position into some more discussions about values.

The question I put to the audience was “What values should we be looking at to design a new system?” With a range of participants, including some of the Conservative members and others who were there, we started talking about what things they would like to see guiding the design of a new system.

I found a document from the Broadbent Institute entitled Canadian Electoral Reform - Public Opinion and Possible Alternatives. There's a good section on values, and a couple of them are things like “The ballot is simple and easy to understand”. That got 55% of support, and 51% went to “The system produces stable and strong governments”.

Over the discussion this weekend, those were a couple of the issues that came up from a broad variety of participants. I'm not picking holes in any particular system, but those ones also raise questions about systems such as PR and the idea of coalition governments. Can they produce stable and strong governments, and do the two work against each other? With regard to “The ballot is simple and easy to understand”, at my first town hall there was a gentleman who brought a German ballot that was three feet by three feet. People remembered that one, and they were concerned that any PR system ballot is going to be complex.

I simply throw out for comment, how do we address these kinds of issues? How do we frame the discussion on values that will help us come up with a system that is the best option for Canada at this point, and is designed for Canadians? There's not really a question there, just thoughts on values and criticism that we hear. How do we address that?

[Jean-Pierre Charbonneau]

The committee's mandate already states a number of principles and values. You have to think about it and assess the various options. It really is a fundamental guide. For example, must we attribute importance to fair representation of the major political currents in our society? Are we concerned about under-representation, over-representation or lack of representation?

We must also be concerned about the stability of governments. However, how do we show that governments will not be stable if, all of a sudden, the method of voting is different and parties have to come together? The only way would be to try it and to see what is done elsewhere. Otherwise, we are just tilting at windmills. We make the point that people do not want to have elections regularly, every week. We bring up the worst examples, like Italy and Israel, and we say that they are scary. However, if we take away the examples that have no bearing on the choice to be made here, there is a lot less drama.

Tomorrow, you are going to hear from the president of Mouvement Démocratie Nouvelle, where I am a special advisor. I know the issue a little, but I learned something when we met with a number of experts last spring. In some countries, a mechanism was established in Parliament to ensure that coalitions are stable. We call it the constructive vote of confidence. The mechanism was established in West Germany, where they have the perfect compensatory model. Basically, it is 50-50. Half of the members are elected using the current system and half using a proportional system.

The mechanism there is that, if a party in a coalition wants to bring down a government, it has to be able to propose another solution, or another government leader who is able to secure a new parliamentary majority. Otherwise, they stick with the commitments that were made and the political deal that was reached in order to form the coalition.

Nothing prevents us from putting a mechanism like that in place. It is a way to do what you want as you are innovating, while making sure that there will be no unstable governments. The threshold can be 3%, but it could also be 5% or 6%. There are tools to guarantee stability, according to the principles.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

[Jean-Pierre Charbonneau]

But if you do not have the principles at the outset, I believe that you are off to a really bad start in making those political choices.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Mr. Cullen. Maybe you could make the point, Mr. Broadbent. This is hard, you know, when we have two eminent—

[Ed Broadbent]

That's okay. No, I understand. It's all right. Go to Mr. Cullen.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

It's hard on us here and hard on me to limit the time when we have such wisdom at the committee.

Go ahead, Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you.

This is great. I'm enjoying this conversation. I'm also enjoying this.

I wonder if we've come to a political tipping point in this country. I'm thinking of you, Ed, standing with Guy Giorno and Mr. Himelfarb, and reading quotes from Jason Kenney talking about our system being medieval, and reading the minister's quote about how our system was designed to address 19th century reality and is not suitable for the needs of a 21st century Canada. Is there a multi-partisan point that we've crossed, with the Parti Québécois, the Bloc Québécois, and various people speaking out for a proportional system?

I have one quick comment to follow that, and then a question for you, Mr. Broadbent.

With regard to stability, we've heard evidence that in the last 55 years in developed countries, it's been almost equal between proportional and first-past-the-post countries in terms of stability. In fact, proportional ones are slightly more stable. There are these notions of unstable coalitions. In Canada's history, when parties have had to share power, we've produced our most progressive and enduring policies. Pensions, health care, the flag—and the list goes on—have all come out when parties have had to put a little water in their wine.

I have a question about a positive vote as a positive choice when voters walk into the ballot box and don't have to go down a list of negative options of “I really don't like that person, or that party, or that leader. Which is the best choice for me to disrupt them?”, as opposed to “What do I want?” I'm imagining someone buying a cellphone, and the store says, “There are all these choices, but you only get two in your particular city, so pick one of these two. You can't have any of the rest.” The store wouldn't last long. I don't know why we continue with these false choices.

I want to get back to how 46% did not vote for their first choice in the last election. What do you think the long-term effect has been for Canada in terms of voter enthusiasm, in terms of hopefulness, and in terms of the ways parties respond and create platforms for voters under that scenario?

[Ed Broadbent]

As you will recognize, this is quite a subjective answer on my part. It's a judgment call that's not based on any, as one would say, solid empirical evidence.

That said, it's almost self-evident that part of the cynicism of youth, and not just youth, about the electoral system has to be related to this. If you live in a certain constituency and you know it's always going to vote one way, even though 20% in that riding want to vote another way, and your vote's not going to count under first past the past, then this can be a major disincentive to even participate, and can build, at the most exaggerated levels, a degree of cynicism.

Why I'm strongly in favour of changing the system is to avoid this necessity of having to vote, in a way, to stop somebody else—in other words, to vote for your second choice because you think that your second choice can beat the third option you don't like. We should have a system that encourages young people, or not-so-young people, to vote for positive reasons. I think only some versions of PR do that.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

It speaks, as well, to women getting elected to serve in the House.

[Ed Broadbent]

Oh, indeed.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

There was a study of 60 years' worth of elections in Australia, which showed that in the two houses using two different systems—one AV, a ranked ballot type of first past the post, and the other using a proportional system—women were two and a half times more likely to get voted in under a proportional system in that country.

[Ed Broadbent]

If I may comment on that, on the one hand I'll praise our present Prime Minister for doing the gender equality thing in the cabinet, but I have to be candid. When that happened, I thought of how Gro Brundtland, a prime minister of Norway, did it decades ago in Norway. I remember having lunch with her in the parliamentary restaurant here, after she came here from winning an election. She told me that many years ago they had gender parity in Norway. I don't think it's an accident that they had a PR system as well.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

To be content with being 62nd in the world in terms of women's representation in Parliament is a stat that would be shocking to most Canadians if they knew about it. We think of ourselves as better than that, and more fair than that, and yet our system isn't serving us right now.

[Ed Broadbent]

Right.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Charbonneau, you mentioned the option of ratifying the choice of a new system after putting it into operation for one or two elections.

Why do you support that idea?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

A quick answer, if you please, Mr. Charbonneau.

[Jean-Pierre Charbonneau]

Okay.

The experiment was conducted in New Zealand. The advantage is that people can try out a political mechanism that can be quite complex, depending on the choice made. When people try a system out, they make it their own and most of them, with the exception of new voters who were not familiar with the old system, are able to make a comparison.

In fact, if I have a choice between a referendum in advance and a ratification referendum after two general elections, I prefer people to be able to try the system out.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

[Jean-Pierre Charbonneau]

Then it is easier for people to make an informed judgment as a result.