Electoral Reform Committee on Aug. 29th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I call the meeting to order.

Good afternoon, colleagues and guests. Welcome to meeting number 17 of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. This is our last week in Ottawa before we start extensive travel across the country, visiting 10 provinces and three territories. In three weeks' time, for three weeks, we'll be travelling.

I'd like to introduce our guests. We have with us Dr. Broadbent, who really doesn't need an introduction, but I will give him a proper introduction all the same because I think there are a number of details here that are very interesting and go beyond what we already know of Mr. Broadbent as a political leader.

He is a former member of the Royal Canadian Air Force—I didn't know that, actually—a former leader of the NDP, and the founder of the Broadbent Institute, obviously. Dr. Broadbent spent his early career as a university professor—that I knew—and since 1968 has devoted himself to a life of public service, among other things serving as the member of Parliament for Oshawa—Whitby as well as for Ottawa Centre.

He was the vice-president of Socialist International from 1979 to 1989, as well as the director of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development from 1990 to 1996. In 1993 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 2001.

Dr. Broadbent was a critic for democracy, parliamentary and electoral reform, and corporate accountability, as well as for child poverty, in the NDP shadow cabinet from 2004 to 2005.

Welcome, Mr. Charbonneau. I often saw you on television as you presided over the National Assembly. It is a pleasure to meet you here in person.

[Jean-Pierre Charbonneau, Minister for Democratic Reform, Government of Quebec (2002-2003), As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Chair, you have seen me on television but now you are seeing me in person. I hope that you are not too disappointed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Not at all. We are expecting great things.

Jean-Pierre Charbonneau is a journalist and former Quebec politician. He has worked for a number of press bureaus in Montreal, including Le Devoir and La Presse, as well as for a number of magazines and radio stations.

He was elected to the National Assembly in 1976. During his career in public life, he served as the Speaker of the National Assembly from 1996 to 2002, before being appointed as Minister of Canadian Intergovernmental Affairs in Bernard Landry’s cabinet, and then Minister for Democratic Reform. In 2002, Mr. Charbonneau announced the creation of the Secrétariat à la réforme des institutions démocratiques. He has also chaired the Assemblée parlementaire de la Francophonie and the Fondation Jean-Charles-Bonenfant.

Welcome, Mr. Charbonneau.

I'd also like to welcome Professor Yasmin Dawood, who is joining us today from Toronto.

Can you hear us, Professor?

[Professor Yasmin Dawood, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Democracy, Constitutionalism, and Electoral Law, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, As an Individual]

Yes, I can.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Yasmin Dawood is an associate professor at the faculty of law at the University of Toronto, and this year was awarded the Canada research chair in democracy, constitutionalism, and electoral law. Dr. Dawood specializes in election law in Canada, the United States, and internationally, as well as comparative constitutional law and democratic theory. Her focus is broadly concerned with improving electoral integrity and democratic governance.

Some of her recent articles have discussed the right to vote, money in politics, political dysfunction, partisanship, electoral redistricting, and the oversight of the democratic process by the courts. She is widely published in a variety of academic and law journals and reviews.

Dr. Dawood also testified as an election law expert in the House of Commons committee examining the Fair Elections Act, also known as Bill C-23, and is a frequent interviewee in various media on election law issues.

Thank you to everyone for being here.

The way we proceed is with presentations for 10 minutes by each witness, and then we have two rounds of questions. In each round, every MP gets to ask questions and obtain answers for five minutes, the five minutes including the answer as well as the question.

Without further delay, I would ask Mr. Broadbent to provide us with his ideas on electoral reform.

Mr. Broadbent, you have the floor.

[Ed Broadbent, Chair and Founder, Broadbent Institute]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I wonder if you will permit me briefly at the outset to say one word about Mauril Bélanger, and I wanted to explain why it's particularly pertinent to this committee.

I arrived from England on Friday evening only to wake up Saturday morning and learn that my former colleague and friend had died, and that there was a funeral that morning. I very much regret that I was not here to be able to attend.

The comment I would like to make is that he was a minister in the minority government 2004 to 2006 for democratic institutions. During that period he was very accountable and attentive to the equivalent of this committee, which was meeting during that period. He listened to members from all parties. He was fully consultative. I worked closely with him at that time, and he piloted through the cabinet and then the House of Commons a report that came out of the committee, and he gave it his strong support. He was an immensely decent, thoughtful, and good man, and he did superb work of the kind that everyone around this table is involved it. I wanted to say on this occasion that I think it's appropriate, given the nature of this work, that his fine work in the past be recognized.

That's all, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much. Thank you for those insights into the great work that Mr. Bélanger did. He was a model in many ways, as you mentioned today, and he's a model for us here who are studying electoral reform, so thank you for those kind words.

[Ed Broadbent]

Okay.

Mr. Chairman, I'll continue now.

Members of the committee will have received a brief from the Broadbent Institute. I don't intend to go over in detail everything that you will readily see in that. I will highlight only a few points that I think are important, and then I want to come to one particular issue that I want to talk about and that I think is important to all members of the committee, whatever their ideological orientation, whatever their partisanship, or whatever—simply as members of Parliament.

The first few points are about support for proportional representation. As members of the committee will know, when the large majority of experts—not only those who have made their presentations to this committee, but also those around the world who have studied democracy and democratic institutions—make up their minds about electoral systems, they come down on the side of some form of PR.

It is also the case that among the vast range of civil society organizations in Canada that have been involved with the Broadbent Institute—some 60 organizations, from the YWCA to human rights organizations to trade unions—a great cross section of Canadians have supported, if I can put it this way, the principles that were found in the brief by the Broadbent Institute in support of proportional representation.

There are four particular points on why I think that any variety or type of PR is by far to be preferred over first past the post.

First, every vote does indeed count. With the PR system, we do not get what appropriately have been called the “false majorities” that have occurred, whether with Mr. Trudeau in the most recent victory, when some 39% of the vote resulted in a substantial majority of MPs, or before that, in the election of Mr. Harper with roughly the same vote, when 39% of the vote got more than a majority of MPs. In more than 80% of the democracies in the OECD, that would be impossible. To get a majority government in most of the democracies, you have to have a majority vote. Therefore, the first thing to be said about the PR system is that every vote does indeed count, and you don't get false majorities.

Second, I would say that the first-past-the-post system distorts both national and regional outcomes. For example, in the 1997 election, the Reform Party, if I recall correctly, got 40 more seats than the Conservatives, even though they had roughly the same percentage of the vote in that election, but their vote happened to be concentrated exclusively in western Canada, and the Conservative Party vote was spread right across the country. There was a distortion because of the first-past-the-post system.

Similarly, my colleagues in the Bloc Québécois may well remember that in one election, indeed they got two-thirds of the seats in the province of Quebec with less than 50% of the vote. Many Canadians across the country were unaware of the fact that a majority of Quebeckers, in fact, voted for federalist parties, but the governing group, the majoritarian group, was the Bloc Québécois. Once again, the electoral system distorted that outcome.

The third point I would make is that first past the post does discourage a number of people from voting for their first choice. A survey undertaken by the Broadbent Institute following the most recent federal election found that 46% of Canadians voted for a party that was not their first choice. I'll repeat that. In the most recent election, 46% of Canadians said they voted on their ballot for a party that was not their first choice in order to avoid electing, in their view, another party that was even less favourable to them. The system does not encourage people to vote for their choices; it encourages them to do strategic voting right off the top, instead of getting their basic democratic wish.

The final point I would make in defence of PR—and it's a very important one to me—is that almost without exception around the world, where you have PR systems, you have more women elected. That is the other half, in gender terms, of the population, and I think this is a very important consideration in a democracy.

Canada ranks 62nd in the world today in terms of percentage of women elected to our House of Commons. In New Zealand, when they introduced the system of PR, they went from having 21% women in their House of Commons up to 29% women in the first election with PR, and in the one after that—the most recent election—up to 31%. The evidence is quite strong that if you adopt a PR system, you're bound to get more women elected than is presently the case.

The other point I want to make—and I can't elaborate, because I want to go on—is that the PR system is conducive to more civility in politics. I had experience following my political life with, for example, German politicians in both the CDU and the SPD. They both say, as people familiar with the Scandinavian situation, that with multi-party systems in which it's taken for granted that you're going to have multiple parties forming governments, the politicians are more civil with each other before elections and during elections because they know they're going to have to work with somebody afterwards. That isn't a trivial point.

In the last speech I made in the House of Commons in 1989, I talked about the problem of civility. It is a serious issue for democracy. The fact that PR systems are not unequivocally clear on this but tend to be historically more conducive to civilized debate than first-past-the-post systems is another advantage.

Let me come to the point I really want to mention today, because it has had relatively little attention; that is the national unity question.

Whatever the ideological persuasion of members around the table—and there are differences, and there should be in democracy—or the partisan differences—and they are real, and they should be in a democracy—all members of Parliament, with the possible exception of my colleague, in the Bloc Québécois, whom I respect but differ from—all federalist members—have a pronounced commitment to the national unity of Canada and are very sensitive to policies that would be conducive to disrupting that unity.

The personal experience that shifted me away from strict PR, if I can put it that way, to favouring a mixed system of PR and electing your own member was my conversation with the current Prime Minister's father, Mr. Pierre Trudeau, in 1980. After the election, when he regained a majority, he wanted me to come into the cabinet, even though he had a majority. Not only that, he wanted a number of my colleagues in the New Democratic Party to join him in cabinet.

Now, why did he do this? This was not because he thought I was a splendid fellow or because he was madly in love with the NDP, though there was obviously some policy overlap relevant to the proposition. His concern was, and it's an appropriate one, that he was going to bring in, as he told me in private conversation at the time, what turned out to be the national energy program and effect the repatriation of the Constitution with a charter of rights.

He knew that in both of these areas I was in considerable agreement with much of the policy; for some of it, that turned out to be not the case. Notwithstanding the fact that he had a majority—and this is the point—he had 22% of the vote in B.C., but no seats; 22% of the vote in Alberta, but no seats; 24% of the vote in Saskatchewan, but no seats; and 28% of the vote in Manitoba, with two seats. In short, in the national energy program he was bringing in a measure that was going to have a profound effect, particularly in western Canada, but he had only two seats in all of western Canada, notwithstanding a vote in excess on average of 25%. He had only two seats.

He was concerned about this, as he ought to have been. He knew that when governing it's desirable to have representation, not only in caucus but also in your cabinet, from all regions.

What happened then, and we don't need to go into all the details of it, was that a national energy program was brought in that had, to speak bluntly, an alienating effect—not all of it, but a good part of it—on western Canada and was objected to not only by a Conservative government in the province of Alberta but also by an NDP government in the province of Saskatchewan.

The point I'm trying to make is that through goodwill, if you do not have in the cabinet people from different regions who are going to be making crucial policy affecting those regions, then you can make serious mistakes. The first-past-the-post system distorts the electoral system in Canada, and the 1980 election is a perfect example: a majority government could be formed, and yet the prime minister of the day had to look elsewhere, to other parties, because he only had two seats. If he had had proportionality, then he would have had many times that number. He would have had seats in Alberta, he would had seats in Saskatchewan, and he would have had seats virtually in all the western provinces.

This had a serious impact on my personal thoughts about electoral systems. First past the post can have a negative effect on our national unity politics through no bad intention of prime ministers or opposition figures because of the results and the importance of having representation from all regions.

Mr. Chairman, can I ask how much time is left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Would you like another minute?

[Ed Broadbent]

Okay. I think you're being generous, but I'll conclude with this.

I mentioned the problem of 1980, and maybe we'll have another discussion about that, but I could shift to the most recent election and ask you to look at Atlantic Canada, with 32 seats, and they've all gone to the Liberal Party of Canada. This is not good, I would argue, for the Liberal Party of Canada, and it's not good for Canada. If we had a proportional system, instead of being wiped out in Atlantic Canada, the Conservatives would have six seats, the NDP would have six seats, and the Green Party would have one.

This would mean, as the law commission pointed out some years ago, that opposition parties would be represented from all parts of the country, as they need to be if they want to know what they're talking about. One time, coming from a town called Oshawa, I had to make a speech on the spur of the moment about something called the Atlantic fishery. I knew as much about that as I know about walking on the moon, but all of you, as MPs, would have been in similar positions, I suspect. The point I'm making is that it's desirable for all parties, whether in opposition or on the governing side, to have representation from regions, and a PR system does that in a way that first past the post does not.

I'll leave it at that, Mr. Chairman. I thank you, and maybe we can have a discussion later.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Broadbent, thank you very much for giving us a new way of looking at some events from our political history.

We will now continue with Mr. Charbonneau, for 10 minutes.

[Jean-Pierre Charbonneau]

Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen of the commission, good afternoon. You will have to excuse my language, but I spent 25 years in the National Assembly where we call a committee a commission parlementaire.

I am happy to be here with Mr. Broadbent today. I do not know if he remembers, but between my two political lives, when I was chair of the board of Oxfam-Québec, we led an observer mission to the elections in Honduras, if memory serves. We spent a lot of time together then. We did not talk about this matter, but I have realized today that we still are on the same wavelength on a lot of subjects.

I only have 10 minutes, with the rest of the time spent on discussions with you. First of all, I would like to tell you that, before we started, Mr. Cullen came to say hello; he asked me if I had been mulling over this question for long. When I said yes, he asked me why reform did not work in Quebec. I told him that it was because the elected elite had not kept their campaign promises.

Put another way, in our political system, first ministers have enormous power. If, in an election campaign, a party leader promises to change the method of voting from top to bottom, for example, the way in which that will be done will largely rest with them, or rather with the people they choose to take on that portfolio and the way in which their troops will behave.

In Quebec, we have been talking about reforming the method of voting since 1909, but there have been some real campaign commitments. Since it was formed, the Parti Québécois has had this commitment in its program. Only in 1981 was René Lévesque able to be hopeful about putting the program, the commitment that was close to his heart, into action. But unfortunately, subsequent events did not allow him to do so.

We had to wait until 2003, when Quebeckers again began to be interested in the matter, for the leaders of the three parties to make the same promise that Mr. Trudeau made in the last election, to change the method of voting used in general elections. The Liberals had just had a painful experience in 1998, when they found themselves as the official opposition while we, under Lucien Bouchard, took power with 35,000 fewer votes.

Today, in 2016, I am here before you as a former minister responsible for the file, and still nothing has budged in Quebec. Yet everything was in place. The chief electoral officer had issued a notice, Quebeckers had participated in a special parliamentary commission and, before that, I, as the minister responsible for reforming democratic institution, had got everyone on board. But Mr. Charest, the premier at the time, decided to put a stop to it.

In Quebec today, we are using the excuse that Ottawa has reopened the file to mean that we are going to wait and see what happens before we decide if we will reopen it as well. But with the exception of the party in power, all parties in the National Assembly now have reopened it.

Personally, I favour scrapping our system for the same reasons that Mr. Broadbent gave and for the same reasons you have heard from a number of witnesses.

As René Lévesque wrote in 1972, it is a democratically rotten system that produces governments, which, most of the time, are not built on popular majorities, but on distortions in representation. We live in a representative democracy, but representation is distorted and falsified.

Some parties and some ideas are over-represented, while others are under-represented or not represented at all, while a considerable part of the population, whether in Quebec or in Canada as a whole, support those ideas and voted for them.

In addition, as Mr. Broadbent said, in a system like ours, an ancestral system, we also generate an excessive culture of confrontation.

More could be said about the flaws in the system, but I hope that members who have recently made a campaign commitment to modify the system are convinced about it and are not in the process of studying the matter simply in order to decide to maintain the status quo. When you make a campaign commitment, you live up to it and you take steps to do what it takes—my apologies for putting it so bluntly—otherwise you are disrespecting the people, as was done in Quebec. We disrespected the people and ended up not living up to our political and campaign commitment. That is even more important when you are the premier or a party leader.

I support the mixed-member proportional voting method because it is the replacement system that most meets the needs and expectations of Quebeckers and Canadians in general. We would keep direct representation with the constituency members but the representation would also be fair and equitable.

Last year, in April 2015, the research chair in democracy and parliamentary institutions at the Université Laval organized a seminar at the National Assembly in cooperation with the National Assembly; the polling firm CROP conducted a survey for the university. The result was that 70% of Quebeckers agreed that a change was needed in the method of voting in order to have fairer and more equitable political representation.

Compared to all the other systems that have been tried, studied and even designed in theory, this system has the advantage of providing a transition. Does that mean that, in Canada, we would be forced to live for 100 years with a new way of voting, such as the compensatory mixed-member proportional system, for example? No, not necessarily. But the transition would make it easier for people to achieve their two objectives: to have fair and equitable representation and, at the same time, to keep constituency members.

We must be very frank about this. People, including some members here, have said that, with that system, there would be two kinds of elected members. There are not two kinds of members; the same citizens are responsible for and masters of the electoral system and those same citizens would, using two mechanisms, choose their own representatives and party representatives. That means that, when you are elected to Parliament, whether you are a member from a list or a member as a result of the current first-past-the-post system, the reality in the caucuses such as we have in Parliament is that the two classes of members become one. They all represent the people and they all also carry their party's banner. To claim that there would be two classes of members is a false argument.

There are no problems in countries that do it that way. Why would we have problems here when they do not have them in Germany, in Scotland, in New Zealand and in a lot of other countries? At some point, the argument has to be based on facts, not on some kind of abstraction.

One of the reasons why it did not work in Quebec is that most MNAs, including those who had made the promise through their leaders or their political programs, were afraid of losing their seats.

Second, a significant number of MNAs, especially those who were in the government or those who hoped to be able to get there, thought at the time that they would not be able to control the political program as they wanted. That is to say, to do what they wanted to do with a minority of popular support. As soon as you get a majority in Parliament, the process becomes accelerated by cutting off debate, whether at the National Assembly or here, with mammoth bills and with other parliamentary mechanisms. The parliamentary majority, resting on a minority of popular support, is used to gag Parliament and rush processes along, though there is no legitimacy for doing so.

There is a third and final reason why this did not come about in Québec. It is because the Parti Québécois considered that it would lose control of the referendum program, given that, in 1976 and in 1994, it took power with a minority of popular support.

Today, however, the Scottish model and the Scottish experience have proved that this did not hold water. A country is not won and formed by an election, but by a referendum process. You need a majority. So it is all very well to control the referendum program, but, if you do not have a popular majority, it will not get you much.

Even for those not calling for independence, it is ideally preferable to have a political mechanism that allows for the development of something fundamental in democracy: a culture of collaboration, compromise, and coalition. Coalition does not imply that our governments are unstable. That argument is soundly thrashed in any country with a proportional system, more specifically in those with compensatory mixed-member proportional systems. Having to make compromises with political opponents, just as with people whose ideology is closer to our own, actually creates a favourable political climate. When it comes right down to it, people are fed up with excessive partisanship and behaviour that devalues the institution of politics. We see that all over Canada, including Quebec.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much for your very interesting presentation, Mr. Charbonneau. You have highlighted a number of important questions.

Dr. Dawood, the floor is yours for 10 minutes. Please go ahead.

[Prof. Yasmin Dawood]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon.

My remarks today will focus on the process of electoral reform in Canada, but I won't be speaking about the kind of electoral system that ought to be adopted. My remarks today are drawn from an article entitled “The Process of Electoral Reform in Canada: Democratic and Constitutional Constraints”. This article is forthcoming in the Supreme Court Law Review.

In the article I considered a number of possible mechanisms for the process of electoral reform, including a citizens' assembly, a commission, a referendum, and an all-party parliamentary committee. I did so by drawing on provincial and comparative international experience with electoral reform. I looked briefly at electoral reform efforts in British Columbia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, and Quebec, as well as electoral reform in France, Italy, New Zealand, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

My main conclusion is that although no one process or mechanism is required for electoral reform, the process must be, and must appear to be, democratically legitimate. To achieve democratic legitimacy, the process should visibly follow three norms: first, political neutrality or non-partisanship; second, consultation; and third, deliberation.

Electoral reform differs from the passage of ordinary legislation because it sets out the very ground rules by which political power is attained. For this reason, the process of electoral reform must be held to a higher standard of democratic legitimacy.

Let me talk about the first norm, political neutrality or non-partisanship.

This norm is important because it ensures that the process is as neutral as possible, which in turn helps to prevent the governing party from entrenching itself by selecting rules that favour itself at the expense of the other political parties. This norm is also the most difficult to achieve, in large part because the choice of process can have a determinative impact on the kind of substantive reform that's ultimately adopted. In other words, the choice of process can be as partisan as the choice of the electoral system, in the sense that a particular process could allow or could prevent a particular substantive outcome that is either favoured or disfavoured by any given political party. Any majority government, in particular, must guard against the perception of self-serving entrenchment by ensuring the process is as non-partisan as possible.

As for the norms of consultation and deliberation, these norms ensure that the process has canvassed and considered in detail a wide array of opinions and options. Consultation is connected to the democratic ideal of participation, while the norm of deliberation requires that a collective decision should be justified by reasons that are generally convincing to all of those who are participating in the deliberation. Valid options should not be excluded without consideration, either directly, or indirectly by setting arbitrary goals and limits from the outset.

To further enhance democratic legitimacy and the norms of political neutrality, consultation, and deliberation, I would make three observations.

First is that the proposed reform ought to have the support of all the political parties. In the event, though, that a consensus is impossible, it would be important for the proposed reform to secure the support of political parties that collectively achieved at least a majority, and preferably a supermajority, of the popular vote in the 2015 election. The composition of this special committee on electoral reform would enhance the real and perceived legitimacy of any recommendations issued by the committee, but it would be equally important for there to be agreement among the parties at the legislative level to avoid the perception of partisan self-interest.

Second, it would enhance the real and perceived democratic legitimacy of the process if an additional process option such as a commission, citizens' assembly, or referendum were implemented. While the town halls certainly add to the legitimacy of the process, they don't provide the kind of deep and detailed analysis of a commission or the more inclusive feedback of a referendum.

That said, I don't think that a referendum is required for the legitimacy of electoral reform, although it is of course one option as an additional process.

It should, however, be noted that a referendum is not necessarily a politically neutral choice. Based on the provincial experience with referenda on electoral reform, it is likely that a national referendum would fail, leaving the status quo first-past-the-post electoral system in place to the advantage of the larger parties.

A commission on electoral reform might be a better option as an additional process. Many recommendations from the 1989 Lortie Royal Commission on Electoral Reform and Party Financing, for example, were used to revise electoral laws, but there are other smaller-scale options for commissions. For example, New Brunswick and P.E.I. each established an eight-person commission, and the P.E.I. commission consisted in part of citizens. In Quebec, the parliamentary committee was assisted by an eight-person citizens' committee.

My third observation and recommendation is to extend the self-imposed deadline of December 1, 2016. While this special committee has heard from a number of witnesses, and while MPs have organized a number of town halls on electoral reform, the timeline appears to be unnecessarily hasty, and it runs the risk of undermining the perceived legitimacy of the process. The deliberative and consultative processes should unfold over a longer time period to reflect the importance and scale of electoral reform, particularly in light of the fact that there is no additional process, such as a commission.

My article also addresses the constitutional constraints on electoral reform, and while I cannot discuss this topic in any detail, given time constraints, my conclusion is that electoral reform can likely proceed without a constitutional amendment involving provincial consent, provided that the reform is consistent with certain constitutional limits. I'm happy to discuss the constitutional aspect, should there be any questions on this topic.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much, Dr. Dawood.

We'll start the first round with Mr. DeCourcey, for five minutes, please.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to everyone here today for your commentary and testimony.

I'd like to start, I think, with you, Dr. Broadbent.

The question also goes to you, Mr. Charbonneau.

What is your opinion of the importance of a member of Parliament’s responsibility to represent his local community, either under the current system or the one that you prefer?

[Jean-Pierre Charbonneau]

Let’s hear the voice of experience first.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you.

[Ed Broadbent]

I have to say that my experience as an MP is what I base my judgment on. Before I became an MP—1955 was the first time I advocated proportional representation—a professor of mine gave me on a paper the comment “ingenious but ingenuous”.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Ed Broadbent]

Once I was elected, the point that you've raised became clear to me. I used to favour straight....

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We're having trouble with the sound. Could you press the button? It should light up.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

We'll need to enter that joke into testimony.

[Ed Broadbent]

Let there be light.

Anyway, I think you can have a PR system that has members who can be quite responsive, and constituents—citizens of an ordinary riding, broadly defined—could go to a variety of MPs who may be elected on the PR basis to work for them on practical problems that all MPs are confronted with.

On balance, I like the mixed proportional system. I don't think it's an accident that New Zealand, for example, which had the Westminster model before, or Scotland, which experienced the Westminster model before, tried, when they went to a new system, to get the best of both worlds, if you like, by combining the PR with local representation.

I think that's preferable. I think personally it is better to have a local MP who is directly elected—who could be elected by a variety of forms of first past the post—and then your second vote can be for the party of preference. I think that direct contact with MPs is a desirable aspect of the Westminster model, if I can put it that way.

I'll leave it at that.

[Jean-Pierre Charbonneau]

I was a member of the National Assembly for 25 years, in the same system as the current one. I was a parliamentarian and a representative of the people at the same time. If I had been in a situation of pure proportionality, for example, I would have been a member representing his fellow citizens and taking an interest in their problems. I would have met with them in my office and I would have done the work that had to be done. I would also have represented my political party.

In a compensatory mixed-member proportional system, there may be two types of members, but I do not believe that they would conduct themselves any differently. Some would have responsibilities in their respective parliamentary teams. In a mixed-member proportional system, a member from a regional list would have to work with his colleagues in the region and not with the members as a whole, in order to represent the interests of his region. This would be the same as a constituency member, but to a smaller extent, because his constituency would be smaller than his region. Theoretically, it is as if we tried to create two types of members because there would be different mechanisms to choose them in order for their political representation to be appropriate, fair and equitable.

But actually, what counts? In a representative democracy, representation must be appropriate. There must be no unacceptable under-representation, no unacceptable over-representation or no unacceptable non-representation. In a system that could better represent society’s major political currents, the great ideas, the large parties and sometimes the smaller ones, elected members would do their work in the same way as the others. There are no two ways about being a representative in Parliament.

When I rose to speak as an MNA, I sometimes talked about my region and sometimes about my constituency, but in general, we were discussing major questions. A member of Parliament is a parliamentarian, but he is also a kind of intermediary between the electorate and the elected. Just because I might have been a member from the list does not mean that I would not have done that work.