Electoral Reform Committee on Aug. 30th, 2016

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Before we hear from the other witnesses, I would like to pursue this.

What do you think of the various surveys that show that between 60% and 73% of the population, including over 60% in Quebec, are in favour of a referendum?

You said earlier you are not an expert and that you represent a group of university professors and experts in the field. Yet more than 50% of expert witnesses support or strongly support holding a referendum before the system is reformed.

You describe your organization as democratic and as seeking more public consultation and participation. Yet you are not in favour of that before implementing a new system. You say that the question should be asked again in a few years, after two or three elections. Is that correct?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Very quickly, please.

[Jean-Sébastien Dufresne]

With respect to surveys, yes ...

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Is that a yes or a no?

[Jean-Sébastien Dufresne]

The public must be able to make an informed choice. That is the best solution, in our opinion.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Perfect, thank you.

Mr. Loewen and Mr. Maskin, quickly ...

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Unfortunately, your time is up, Mr. Rayes.

You have the floor, Mr. DeCourcey.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would also like to thank the three witnesses for the different points of view they have expressed here this morning. Personally, I like diversity in points of view. It is important for the committee's work and must be reflected to Canadians when we engage them in this discussion this fall.

I want to begin with a number of questions directed at Professor Loewen. They relate to an article that appeared on Friday that is generally consistent with your testimony this morning. In the article you concede there are potential benefits, though they may be limited, to electoral reform and particularly to PR systems, including the potential for a slight increase in voter turnout.

I note the table citing New Zealand and the relative view that citizens feel there is fair conduct in the way the election is run. When we talk about strategic voting, we're talking about shifting the compromise or the strategy elsewhere, and that there may be an inconsistency or an incoherency between policy outcomes and citizens' preferences.

I'll cite exactly what you said:

Claims about greater economic performance, fiscal management, and better policy are probably attributable to other factors.

As we present these options to Canadians, what are some of these factors that we should be mindful of, given that we've heard plenty of testimony that the electoral system is caught up in a larger system of a Parliament style of governance and political culture?

[Prof. Peter John Loewen]

Thank you. It's a very good question.

I think the committee shouldn't be too hopeful that changing an electoral system is going to have a large number of effects, either positive or negative, on things like macroeconomic outcomes or budget management. It seems to me that these things are largely baked in, depending on a country's place in the global economy, on the nature of its resources, and on the democratic dynamics of its population. When we look at studies that extract cross-national differences and then attribute causality to the electoral system, I think we should view them with a fair amount of skepticism.

By the way, I could probably, with some ease, point you to some studies that would show that majoritarian countries have some better outcomes as well on some of these measures. For the most part, I think those things are pretty far down the chain, and they're probably not affected by electoral systems too much.

The things that will be affected in a beneficial way by changing the electoral system are probably a bit more with regard to voter turnout, and, as you say, a better sense of fairness with the election outcome. Those are good, right? We'll likely have more women in Parliament, which is good, but they trade off against other things.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Do you see other factors contributing to increasing women's representation in Parliament? Is that something we should consider as well—the political will to put women on the ballot to ensure they have a chance to run?

[Prof. Peter John Loewen]

If this committee and members of Parliament more generally feel that it's important to have an equal number of men and women not only running but winning seats, there are administrative changes you can take to that effect.

Frankly, you can do what the NDP has done for a long time, which is to make very strong efforts to recruit women and to make sure that nomination races have strong, viable, female candidates. You could change administrative law around election expenses, for example, to make it strongly incentivized for parties to run more women than men.

We don't have to change the electoral system and then hope that some strategic logic leads to these outcomes. We can pass laws to try to bring them in place now.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Great.

Dr. Maskin, I noted in your testimony that you steered away from talking about proportional rule and calling it a radical change.

Can you talk to some of the aversions you have toward the pursuit of proportional rule, given the time that is left?

[Prof. Eric Maskin]

Here I think I share some of the concerns of Mr. Loewen.

Proportional rule has worked very well in many countries around the world. However, for Canada, it would represent a very substantial departure, a much bigger departure, from the current system than majoritarian systems, such as alternative voting and majority rule.

In particular, proportional rule would presumably eliminate the current system of single-member electoral districts. Canadians are used to the idea that in their district they will be electing an MP. That would change under proportional rule. Also, there is the idea that a majority government could well go by the wayside. Many countries using proportional rule today patch together coalitions to form governments. That's a much more likely outcome under proportional rule than under a majoritarian scheme.

My own philosophy in these matters is to make reforms when there are clear directions of improvement, but not to take a bigger step than is necessary to accomplish an improvement.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

We'll start the second round with Ms. Sahota, please.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

I'm going to carry on from the discussion about coalition governments.

We've had some witnesses say that a coalition government can be a great thing, that we can achieve a lot with coalition governments and that we have done so in the past, and that great ideas have come out of that, but there have also been those who have suggested that coalition governments could also cause a person to think that this isn't what I voted for and this is not the platform that I clearly saw and that I voted for. Then you end up with a mishmash of a lot of things.

Professor Loewen, I found it quite interesting—and I hadn't thought about this—when you said in your presentation that 10% of the vote can result in 20% of the power, or it could be leveraged to have even more effective power than that. Can you elaborate on that?

Now that you have brought this up, one concern that really comes to mind is the anti-immigrant sentiment. We in Canada pride ourselves on the fact that we had a different outlook and uptake on the Syrian refugee crisis. Perhaps they weren't able to get here as easily as in some of the European countries, but the response to it was quite different in Canada, and internationally that was recognized as a departure from how the European countries were handling the situation.

Could a system like this create small parties that may leverage that type of anti-immigrant sentiment or other things that may become divisive in the future?

[Prof. Peter John Loewen]

I have two comments.

To start with your second observation, my only observation is that if you want to look at cross-national evidence and take all the good things that are higher on average in PR countries, you should take the negative things as well. It appears to me that you're more likely to have anti-immigrant, anti-legal immigration parties winning seats in PR systems in largely diverse countries than you are in majoritarian countries that have largely diverse populations.

To your first point, I think that this is a normative question, and the question is really this. You can imagine an array, after the next election, in which.... New Zealand hasn't completely fragmented as a system. The two principal parties, Labour and National, are still winning 40% of the vote or thereabouts in each election, but imagine an arrangement in which one of our traditionally larger principal parties wins 45% of the vote and forms a majority coalition with a party that wins 6% of the vote. They now hold the majority of the seats in the Parliament in that coalition.

Gamson's law would tell you that the power that would go to that other party would be proportional to their contribution to the seat share, so why is it that a party that got 5% of the vote ought to have 10% of the power within the cabinet? Why is that more desirable than a party getting 100% of the power on 40% of the vote, or 100% of the power on 45% of the vote? That's a normative question. I think it's one that the committee needs to explore, but the reality is that in PR systems, coalition governments are more common than in majoritarian systems. Coalition governments have some good that is attached to them, but they have some drawbacks, not least of them blurred accountability and behind-door compromises that occur after an election and between elections, not before elections.

These are normative trade-offs that have to be made, and the committee ought to consider them, but I've yet to hear a very convincing argument—and I'm open to being convinced—about why a party that has a very small percentage of the vote should receive such an outsized share of cabinet power when they're in a coalition, and why that's desirable—and perhaps it's not, right? I've yet to hear an argument as to why it is, and that's more likely to result in a PR system than in a majoritarian system.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Do any of the other panellists have any input on coalition governments and how you feel about them in terms of the balance of power?

[Prof. Eric Maskin]

First, I agree with Mr. Loewen that a small party that becomes part of a coalition will tend to have an outsized proportion of power by virtue of keeping that majority alive.

However, by the same token, small parties that are not part of the governments in proportional representation end up essentially with no power. That can give rise to an incentive for strategic voting on the part of voters.

Again, suppose I favour a small party that is not likely to be part of the majority. If I vote for that small party I'm essentially throwing away my vote. Proportional representation does encourage, in general, more voting for small parties than a majoritarian system, but only for small parties that are likely to be part of a coalition.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Reid is next.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. This time I'll be directing my questions to Professor Maskin.

Professor, much of—in fact, virtually all of—the discussion that's gone on relating to your proposal has taken place in the context of American politics. One obvious difference between American and Canadian politics that occurs to me is that you have the primary system, and one of the discussions that I'm sure you've seen is about whether your system would have had the effect of changing the Republican primary process.

It strikes me that this difference, the primary system, is pretty significant. It seems to me that effectively what it's done in the United States is create two parallel systems that are roughly equivalent to the French presidential runoff. Essentially, you have two runoffs occurring at the same time, or if you like, the runoff is in reverse. As a result, some of the analysis is not easily transferable to the Canadian system.

Are there other parallels that are perhaps a bit closer? Are there any jurisdictions—for example, municipal jurisdictions in your country—where your system is actually being put in place and has operated for one or more election cycles? That would seem, to me, to be a closer parallel to the Canadian situation.

[Prof. Eric Maskin]

Majority rule, as I've defined it, is not currently used in cities, largely for historical reasons. Until fairly recently, we haven't had the ballot-counting technology to make it viable. It is used by many professional societies, but those are smaller groups than cities.

However, alternative voting, which is very similar to majority rule, with ranked-choice ballots, has been used in many American cities. It's used in, for example, San Francisco, in Minnesota, and in my own town of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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

It's used in Berkeley as well, I think, right?

[Prof. Eric Maskin]

Yes, Berkeley too.

The evidence suggests that it's worked pretty well, so we do have experience with it.

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

If I'm not mistaken, in most of those municipal jurisdictions it was implemented following a referendum in which the local residents chose to implement it, and was not, in fact, put in place until subsequent to that referendum. Am I correct in my recollection of the history of those municipal jurisdictions?

[Prof. Eric Maskin]

I'm not sure about Cambridge, because it's been using alternative voting for so long now that I no longer recall exactly how it came into being, but for the cities that have more recently adopted it, yes, that's right.