Electoral Reform Committee on Aug. 31st, 2016

[Darrell Bricker]

They are out there.

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

Maybe I could put it differently. I wonder if you have a copy of them.

[Darrell Bricker]

I will send it to the clerk.

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

That would be very much appreciated.

These results confirm something I have felt for some time. I have my own biases, but as I try to explain what is going on to people who aren't paying attention, they tend to become more firmly supportive of the position I hold, which is that there should be a referendum on whatever system goes forward at the end of this process.

However, your results differ somewhat from an earlier poll you did, which was released in late May, in which you asked people questions following this preamble:

One of the commitments that Prime Minister Trudeau and the Liberals ran on during the election was that, if they were elected, they would make major changes to Canada's election system and how we elect Members of Parliament. Their commitment did not specify exactly how they would change the system. The following statements are about this commitment. For each, please indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree:

That is the preamble, and then people were asked to respond to the following statement:

The Liberals should not make major changes to Canada's election system without holding a national referendum to get the public's approval for the changes

The combined “strongly agree” and “somewhat agreed” in favour of a referendum added up to over 70% of all respondents—

[Darrell Bricker]

It was 73%.

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

—with only about 20% on the other side. What is the difference? What is the reason for the difference between the results in these two polls?

[Darrell Bricker]

We asked a different question. We gave them the option of having the process reviewed and approved in another way, so it was the parliamentary process—the committee process we are undertaking right now—versus a referendum, whereas in that particular instance, all we did was ask about a referendum. That leads me to believe that the more you talk about it, the more the number goes up.

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

Right.

[Darrell Bricker]

I expect that the more people talk about this process and the more interested they become in it, the more you will see those numbers move up rather than down.

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

One of the things that have been put.... I don't know if you have done this, but I follow all the polls on this subject.

[Darrell Bricker]

I feel bad for you.

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

Well, you have made the situation worse today, as a matter of fact, by adding another poll.

[Darrell Bricker]

You are welcome.

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

I do follow these, and one of things one pollster has done is to include a preamble that, “Regardless of how you feel about electoral reform, do you favour a referendum?”

I am just wondering if there was anything in the results you got that indicated there is a distinction between those who are in favour of electoral reform not being in favour of a referendum, or if the results are more or less the same, regardless of people's ultimate personal desires as to what the outcome would be.

[Darrell Bricker]

I always have trouble with a question that says, “I don't want you to think about how you yourself would think.” Who are they thinking about? Are they thinking about their neighbours, or whatever? It doesn't make a lot of sense to ask questions like that.

No, at this stage of the game, since we don't actually have any proposals on the table for people to consider, it is a little hard to ask them about that, although I did a survey in Policy Options a few years ago that asked people about PR, and the level of support for it was not very high. The reason is that the public doesn't necessarily see a huge problem with the way they elect parliamentarians. Their issue, when they have a lack of confidence in what goes on in Parliament, is with what parliamentarians do when they get here, not necessarily the process they go through to get elected.

It is no wonder that when we start talking to them about the process, to a certain extent they kind of think you are asking the wrong question.

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

That is an interesting perspective.

I wanted to ask one other thing. The government has promised that it will have legislation, so we will actually know what its system is by April of next year, assuming it fulfills that promise and produces a proposed new electoral system. At that time, once Canadians get the chance to see which of the various options out there is the actual option, which necessarily means all the others are off the table, is that likely to change the percentage of those who feel that there ought to be a referendum? By definition, of course, people will be more informed then than they are now, but I am loading the question. Let me just ask you what—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Answer briefly, please.

[Darrell Bricker]

I will answer it in an unloaded way.

I would say that an awful lot depends on what this committee does. If this committee comes out and says that there is a consensus on how we should proceed, I think this is going to make a big difference in how Canadians would view the process of having a referendum or not.

If the committee comes out and says that this is very controversial, that people are disagreeing, and that there is no consensus on that point, I think this is when we get into what Professor Johnston and Gordon happened to say about the need for seeking external validation for whatever comes forward. That would become even more important.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

[Darrell Bricker]

No problem.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Boulerice.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My thanks to our distinguished witnesses who are taking this time in August to talk to us about issues related to the electoral system.

From the outset, it is important to recall this committee's mandate. During the election campaign, the Liberal government told us that 2015 would be the last election with a voting system that produces false majorities. It is a voting system that may be defined as winner takes all. In any given riding, a candidate who garners 32% of votes can win, while the 68% of votes that went to the other parties are thrown in the garbage.

Our mandate is to listen to experts, people from civil society, citizens, so that we try to achieve consensus on what we are going to propose on this issue.

My friends from the Conservative Party are basically using the referendum as a fig leaf. It's sort of like putting the cart before the horse. Before we ask whether we must hold a referendum, we have to find out whether we can agree on something. What will we propose? What would the question be? We are still very far from that. I want us to take the time to discuss and analyze the various options being proposed.

Mr. Johnston, in 2001, in an article published in Policy Options magazine, you said that a fundamental change to our electoral system was much needed. You concluded that proportional representation was probably the best system for Canada. You also said that the alternative vote or preferential ballot was probably not the answer to Canada's democratic malaise. You said that the alternative vote might work to ensure Liberal hegemony, since the Liberals, after all, are the near-universal second choice.

Do you still agree with Mr. Johnston from 2001?

[Richard Johnston]

Touché, Mr. Boulerice.

I underestimated.

You may recall, as I mentioned in my notes, in the same edition, that none other than Tom Flanagan and Ted Morton argued for the alternative vote precisely to solve the disunion on the right.

I think we all underestimated the resilience of the political order. I don't feel particularly remorseful. I think the concatenation of circumstances that made it possible basically for Stephen Harper to execute the reverse takeover of the Conservative Party were quite extraordinary. I think it was a remarkable feat of political engineering by him on the party side.

I'm inclined to say that it in some sense illustrates the power of the framework in inducing behaviour. Then, post-2006, while I'm owning up to bad predictions, I thought that perhaps the 2011 election had put the Liberal Party of Canada in an impossible situation. It is in truth, in most of the rest of the world, very hard to articulate a growth strategy from the centre.

Again, I underestimated the resilience of the system and of the parties that operated in overcoming these kinds of divisions. In the 2001 era, I thought that we were stuck in place. To the extent that I was making an instrumental argument, I am less persuaded of the power of the reasoning than I was at the time.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Everyone is entitled to grow and change their minds.

We are going through a process that might require fundamental changes, electoral redistributions and lists of political parties. The Chief Electoral Officer of Canada has already given us some indication as to the time needed to change the system for the 2019 election.

Last October, a CBC article quoted you, stating that you were extremely skeptical about the ability or the probability that a Liberal government would be able to change the voting system by the next election.

Based on our timeframe, is it possible to make significant, not just cosmetic, changes?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Be very brief, please, because we're at five minutes already.