Electoral Reform Committee on Aug. 30th, 2016

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Professor Loewen, I want to return to the six-and-a-half-minute conversation that was taking place around the importance of political parties and the way that they collect or coalesce around certain ideas, and the value that we place on platforms and on visions for the country.

In your mind, what value does our current political culture place upon the ability of parties to coalesce, to collect around ideas, and to present those to the electorate?

Second, what system or systems may reflect that value, and should that be something of importance that we should present to Canadians as we engage them in this conversation?

[Prof. Peter John Loewen]

It's a very good question.

My sense is that what keeps every country going is different, so it doesn't always help to look at other countries. When I look at Canada in particular, what I see is that parties that have aspired to power have been forced to reconcile themselves to the fact that we're a large, diverse, complicated country. They've had to often put some water in their wine and figure out, from a pragmatic perspective, how they present a platform to Canadians that speaks to often-competing interests in different places. That's very difficult, and we've seen parties blow up as a result of being unable to deal with those coalitional demands, in some sense, or those brokerage demands, but I think it is a method that has plainly worked in our country, and we are an improbable country that has continued to have an uninterrupted turn of elections since 1867.

By the way, there are other countries in the world that we esteem as democracies that are regularly revisiting their electoral institutions because they couldn't find a formula that worked. France now is onto its fifth broadly constituted constitutional system as a democracy because it couldn't make the other four work. The fact that we've been able to make it work in a complicated country suggests to me that we've done something right.

I think our parties have played a role in that. I think our electoral system has played a special role in that, and that's generally why I'm a bit reluctant to recommend change. It's exactly the same reason that I wouldn't go to the Germans and say, “I really think you ought to change your MMP system to first past the post.” I think MMP works in Germany. It works for their unique political circumstances.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

That's a fair enough comment.

I am citing an article that you opined on in April around the differences between coalition or consensus-building taking place in order to develop a platform versus the coalescing and the collecting of ideas taking place behind doors. You talked about different systems valuing one set of coalition versus the other, and perhaps either status quo, AV, or STV forcing political parties and political actors to work together out in front of people before the platform is set, versus an MMP or a pure PR system forcing backroom negotiation to take place.

Do you think there are modifications that we should consider that will help enhance consensus-building, help enhance finding common ground with and on behalf of Canadians?

[Prof. Peter John Loewen]

The degree to which you find common ground is a normative question. Parties divide people—they always have—and there is a model in which we say we want a democracy in which a smallish number of parties compete for power on relatively clear platforms and with a leader at the head. They are then put into Parliament, and they're given, often, extraordinary power to implement those policies, and then those policies are judged by the voters.

Mr. Cullen is certainly right, for example, that we've had good policy, even bold policy, in minority governments, but we've also had majority governments that have been able to move to the centre and have been able to take on pretty bold policies, knowing that they would have enough time to then put them before the electors.

I think about Mr. Mulroney and the HST, and free trade, which he put before the electors. I think about Mr. Chrétien's deficit-cutting policies through the 1990s, which required political courage, certainly.

My sense is that we have seen minority situations in which we've had good government and we have seen majority situations in which we've had good government. We don't have a lack of political courage or change in this country. In fact, our parties have often almost drastically changed direction. Whether that is normatively good or not is another thing you have to decide on.

What's clear in all of this is that we've created a system that has incentives for parties to build broad coalitions before elections. By my reading, it's held together a country that's relatively improbable.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

This has been extremely insightful. We've had some good debate around new and existing ideas.

I don't take this opportunity very often, but I have one question for Dr. Maskin. It wasn't the principal point of your presentation—I understand that—but it's been working on my mind these last two hours.

You said that under the current system of first past the post, some people feel discouraged from running because they don't want to split the vote. I can see that readily in a U.S. primary system in the case of intra-party competition, in which someone says, “Look, I'm not going to run to become a presidential nominee because I don't want to split the vote and then the front-runner who's acceptable to me won't get in,” but I see that more as an issue of party power brokers applying pressure on a candidate who has a personal interest in being on the correct side of that party for long-term reasons. I can see it applying when the operating principle is sort of Sam Rayburn's famous saying, “If you want to get along, go along ”, but when it comes to people in a riding deciding whether they want to run for a party or not, my gut sense tells me their decision not to run is not because they don't want to upset their ideological cousin; most likely it's because they think they can't win. I've seen election campaigns, and this is counterintuitive, in which one candidate really goes hard after their ideological cousin.

Is there empirical evidence around this idea that first past the post causes people to think twice about running because they don't want to split the vote?

[Prof. Eric Maskin]

There is such evidence. The U.K. provides some interesting examples on that point.

You may remember that in the early eighties a new party, the SDP, arose in Britain. It was basically Labour Party members on the right and Liberal Party members who thought that they could rewrite the electoral map in Britain by joining this new party.

In the first election, Labour and the SDP split the vote on the left, and the Conservative Party, which had only about 40% of the popular vote, got a huge majority in Parliament. In the next general election the SDP decided to not even send candidates to certain electoral constituencies precisely because they were worried that the same thing would happen again.

There have been many examples in Britain.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I understand your example. It seems to me we're talking at the power broker level.

I can see that if two parties, whether it be the Conservatives or the Reform Party, decide that's enough of—

[Prof. Eric Maskin]

It has the effect of reducing the set of political options for voters, and also the set of political ideas that are out there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Yes.

[Prof. Eric Maskin]

It may arise out of power broking, but it also has muting effects on—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

What I'm saying is that at the individual riding level, where there's no decision by the top brass in any party to not run candidates, it's not clear to me yet that somebody would say they would not run for the Green Party because they want to make sure that the NDP wins, if that's the scenario. I don't know if that's the case, but I take your point about higher levels making strategic decisions not to split the vote.

Thank you for your fascinating testimony. All of you have brought a lot of original thinking to this committee.

Thank you very much.

I would like to remind the committee members that there will be another meeting at 2 p.m. this afternoon. We will not be in this room, but in room C-110 of the Wellington Building.

Thank you.

Thank you, everybody.

The meeting is adjourned.