Electoral Reform Committee on Aug. 31st, 2016

[Mary Pitcaithly]

The parties change their position as they see their support changing. Originally, in the Labour Party, if you were a candidate you had to choose whether you wanted to be a constituency candidate or to be on the regional list. You couldn't do both. But in the last election, Labour was content to allow candidates from their group of candidates to be on either or both at the same time.

[Chris Highcock]

The names of the list candidates do not appear on the ballot paper. All that's on the ballot paper is the name of the political party. The names of the list candidates are disclosed separately on a poster in the polling place.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

So is it largely then a matter of internal party policy whether or not they have candidates running for the constituency and on the list, or is it a bit of a mixed system, even within the different parties?

[Mary Pitcaithly]

It is mixed between the different parties, and the parties' own positions change. So I think there's now no party that says it will not allow a candidate to be on both, but ultimately, we're not really privy to how they go about making their selections. But it would appear to us that they are now all comfortable with having people appear on both.

So, for example, our current first minister was originally elected twice to the Scottish Parliament as a list MSP and only at the last election before this one did she come on as a constituency MSP.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Can you expand on some of the issues you've talked about in regard to the STV system for council elections and the number of members per ward. I sensed that it has caused some consternation around the relative proportionality represented by the different members. What's the conversation around what the size of the wards should be relative to what they are?

[Mary Pitcaithly]

Until we introduced STV, we normally had a system whereby each councillor would have a relatively small ward to cover, unless you were in one of the rural areas, like the Highlands, or Argyll and Bute, and the islands, where you might cover a very large geographic area. But your constituency in terms of electors wouldn't be huge. So moving from that, with a very clear link between the constituency and the councillor—the ward and the councillor—to something where there was less of a link, it was clear to the politicians that to get to something that was very proportional would have created wards that were too big, unwieldy, and unmanageable for a councillor who doesn't have an enormous support system behind him or her.

So they restricted it to three or four members. All wards are either three-member or four-member wards, which means that they're not as proportional as they might be if you'd gone to six, seven, or eight—but they're much more proportional than something that's just one to one. The wards end up not being too unmanageable, and it has worked relatively well. The members in a ward are encouraged to act together, to signpost constituents, or to each other, if they're going on holiday, for example, or if they're off sick. They're encouraged to do that. They don't all do that, but there are a fair number of them who do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Richards, please.

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

I have a question for our friends from Germany, and I'll leave it to you to decide which of you two would like to answer.

How are the people who would sit in the overhang seats chosen? Are they chosen from the party list? Where would they come from, if and when overhang seats are required?

[Prof. Joachim Behnke]

The overhang seats are constituency seats, or at least a person, because overhang seats come into being if the party has one more constituency seat than it is entitled to, according to its share of second votes, party votes. So this party gained no list seats, has no list seats, though all seats are constituency seats and you cannot identify the overhang seats. You cannot say there's a specific seat that is an overhang seat. You only can say this party has three mandates more than it would have gained according to its share of second votes, but you don't know which three seats these are.

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

I guess I had misunderstood. I had understood them to be seats that were provided to other parties in a proportional way to compensate for where one party.... I misunderstood: it's not exactly a simple system. It's complex and I misunderstood.

So thank you for clarifying that for me.

In terms of the fact that you've got some members who are chosen in constituencies and others who are chosen from a list, you had mentioned, I believe in your opening remarks, the idea that those from the party list still do constituency work. You specifically mentioned the office hours they hold, and I'm wondering how that's determined. How would the location of their offices be determined, in what district or what location they would have an office, for example, where they would attend local events or have meetings or door-knock? Who determines that? How is it determined where an office would be located for a member who is chosen from the party list, and where is their constituency work done?

[Prof. Friedrich Pukelsheim]

It's very simple. It's determined by nature. People live somewhere, and so these members of Parliament also have a place where they live and where they are active. That's most often the place where they are also politically active, in that constituency, which belongs to their residents.

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

Okay, that was kind of what I assumed.

I think it draws out something that I would see as maybe a potential concern in this type of a scenario, especially given that they would be both a constituency candidate in many cases and on a party list.

Obviously, it could transpire in a number of cases that voters in a certain area have decided this isn't the person they've chosen to be their local representative—they've chosen somebody else—and then, of course, the person makes it in as a person on the party list rather than someone the local voters have chosen. It would set up the possibility—and I want your opinion on whether this is a possibility—that you then have the second place candidate in a riding deciding to conduct a sort of campaign over the course of the entire term of office to try to make sure they are successful in that constituency in the next election campaign. It almost becomes like an ongoing election campaign, where two people who have competed in an election continue to compete.

Something that I know voters in Canada want to avoid is this idea of an ongoing or lengthy campaign like we sometimes see in some other countries.

Do you see a possibility of that happening?

[Prof. Friedrich Pukelsheim]

In fact, there is this possibility, but that political competition is always going on, and in this case it's going on in the constituency.

A couple of years ago, my constituency in Augsburg actually had five representatives in the Bundestag. We had five parties, five caucuses, in the Bundestag at that time, so in that particular constituency, we had a representative from every party in the Bundestag.

On the other hand, there were other constituencies in the country that only had one representative, namely that constituency winner, because the list people in that state happened not to live in that constituency. However, I cannot report any problems.

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

I suspect that might be a problem all on its own as well. With some, you have multiple people, and others you just have one for the constituency.

I suppose that also could be considered a problem in itself.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We will now move to Ms. Sahota.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you. I've had similar lines of questioning for other witnesses. I do find what Mr. Richards is talking about very interesting.

Given that more people live in urban areas, if you do end up having more representation in those areas and then lack representation in the more rural areas, that could be a problem for some constituents. We're trying to solve a problem by making sure that everyone feels that their voice is heard and that they're represented. An important aspect of this is local representation, which you can hopefully have within a certain reach and have accessible to you.

It seems that you're saying that the problem occurs in Germany but that people don't find it to be problematic. Here in Canada, the system we now have is riding based, and everyone has a local representative whom you can identify easily because they're within certain boundaries.

How would you see our being able to keep that intact, or fairly intact, with any system that we move to?

[Prof. Friedrich Pukelsheim]

I think in Germany the situation is such that everybody has a constituency representative who is easy to identify, namely the constituency winner, and maybe a second and a third constituency representative, who may be not so easy to identify but is very visible. It's hard not to recognize them, so it works.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

My next question is more about wanting to make sure that these list representatives and the other representatives have an equal amount of legitimacy. I have heard from you that there hasn't been a problem with people finding them to be legitimate.

In this past election, I did hear a lot of comments from people saying, “Wow, having nominations take place before a candidate is chosen to run in a certain area was a great idea. It really seems that you deserve it. You won this nomination before you actually ran in the campaign as a candidate.” There was almost this extra legitimacy that people were giving the process.

Is there a certain nomination process that parties have in place to choose the list candidates, or to choose even the constituency candidates, for that matter? What are the different processes you have in Scotland and in Germany that the parties may engage in to give that legitimacy to the candidates?

[Prof. Friedrich Pukelsheim]

The nomination process is highly structured for the constituency candidates. There are delegate conferences within each party to choose the constituency candidate. There are legal prescriptions that a party must follow in order to set up the list, which is a kind of hierarchical system. It starts at the bottom. There are small delegate conferences of party delegates, then some of them meet at a higher level because the party lists in Germany are state lists. All of this must be properly documented and be submitted to the federal election authority in order to be admitted to run in the election.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

What voting system do these delegates vote under? Do they have one vote per delegate or member, or whatever you want to call it? What system do they choose amongst the different parties that you may have?

[Prof. Friedrich Pukelsheim]

That's up to the party. The party can decide on how they do it, but they have to properly document it, and they have to submit these minutes to the electoral authority. There's no legal provision how this decision process must take place within a party.

[Prof. Joachim Behnke]

The legal prescription only says that the procedure has to be democratic.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Can I also hear from our Scottish witnesses on this?

[Chris Highcock]

It's a similar position in Scotland, where it's up to the parties to determine how to select their own candidates, and they'll do that in different ways. The SNP, for example, use STV, a proportional system, to select the candidates who will stand both on the list and for constituencies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Boulerice.