Electoral Reform Committee on Aug. 31st, 2016

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Monsieur Boulerice.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

We are talking about the various voting systems and the advantages and disadvantages of each. No system is perfect.

During the two most recent elections, in 2011 and 2015, the same thing happened, meaning that a party obtained 39% of the votes and 55% of the seats. For four years, these people have the majority in committees and in the House and can impose their viewpoints. This system has some advantages.

In the NDP, we think a mixed member proportional system also has the advantage of allowing stable governments to form most of the time, to have a link with the local elected officials and to produce public policies that have consensus support or broad agreement.

Actually, when the first past the post system completely fails the will of the voters, some take issue with that. That has not happened often at the federal level. In 1979, the Conservative Party was elected as a minority government although the Liberals had obtained more votes.

However, this has happened in Quebec three times within the same system, in 1944, 1966 and 1998. In those cases, the majority of voters had chosen a party, but because of the system's inherent distortion, another party formed the government. I personally said that it was unacceptable. Professor Massicotte told us recently that it was awful that something like that happened.

Mr. Johnston, don't you think that these historic examples should encourage us to opt for a system in which the popular will or majority would not be contradicted by the voting system?

[Prof. Richard Johnston]

I think the repeated occurrence of that is a perverse result.

On one hand, parties and voters themselves have conspired to reverse the perversity, so to speak. If you take the historical view, those things have not tended to persist indefinitely, but there's no question that it is one of the chief defects of first past the post.

The response to that particular defect is not necessarily to go to PR. The response could be to take the majoritarian logic of the system to its logical conclusion. I don't think you can draw any particular reform strategy from that, but I don't think there's any question that the social choice perversity is a problem of first past the post.

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

Thank you, Mr. Johnston.

Mr. Gibson, from what we have read, your position generally seems to favour voters over the political party and MPs over the government in place.

If we had to adopt a voting system with lists, would you be in favour of closed or open lists?

[Gordon Gibson]

First of all, I don't like lists—

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

You don't like lists.

[Gordon Gibson]

—but if I have to have lists, they should be open lists. I appreciate that a closed list will give you guaranteed gender balance, guaranteed ethnic balance, and all of those kinds of things, but I am one who is for strengthening the voter, not the political party. There always has to be a balance. The political party has to be strong enough to be accountable. But if there has to be lists: openness.

In response to your previous question, where you talked about dealing with some of the perversities of majoritarian democracy, they can also be dealt with through parliamentary reform as well as electoral reform. For example, you could have a completely different committee system with permanent staff and that sort of thing. You can do other things to empower the ordinary member.

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

Mr. Johnston, the only example of a democracy that is close to us or a western democracy that operates with alternative vote or preferential ballot is Australia. We see that this voting system leads to an extremely strong two-party system and the objectives of proportionality are not reached at all, if that's what we want to bring forward. In the past four Australian elections, the two main parties had between 96% and 99% of the seats. We can see the difference between this system and the system that is used to vote in the Senate. In terms of the place of women, over the past 50 or 60 years, two and a half times as many women have been elected in the Australian Senate with the single transferable vote compared to what has been happening in the House of Representatives.

Does that provide an indication of what might happen here if we applied a similar system?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Johnston, please give us a short answer.

[Prof. Richard Johnston]

It's also true, by the way, for ethnic minorities. The Senate looks much more like Australia than the House does. The House is full of people named “Jeff”, as far as I can tell.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[A voice]

[Inaudible--Editor] Sheilas, too.

[Prof. Richard Johnston]

Well, no, the Sheilas are in the Senate.

The fact that the Australian parties have engineered STV so completely, and have the “above the line” box, which is pretty much the determining factor in the flow of the vote, means that in effect—notwithstanding what Gordon said—they've created a kind of closed list through the servants' entrance

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Thériault, you have five minutes for questions and answers.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Since the beginning of the work of this committee, we have been saying we are open to a change, but not any change and not at any cost. It is not sufficient for us to be in favour of the change so that suddenly an aura of virtue appears above our heads.

Mr. Johnston, you rightly explained that this entire debate was over-determined by partisanship. That is why we think it is important to move beyond parties. It is not a debate between politicians, experts or insiders. We have to follow a process that, I hope, will allow us to reach consensus by December 1 and to give the public the possibility to reclaim this debate. To do so, we think we need to take a stand on holding a referendum right now. No system is perfect. If no system is perfect, the pros and cons of the various systems need to be weighed. If that assessment is left up to politicians, we will not come to an agreement.

It would be unfortunate if, on December 1, three trends emerged, we made no decision and we put everything on the shelf. If we want real change, let's not allow ourselves to be restricted by the deadlines of a prime minister who was perhaps too enthusiastic during the election campaign. Let's do this right.

I don't think I'm contradicting what you are saying, Mr. Gibson, Mr. Johnston and, I assume, Mr. Bricker. Given that only 3% of people know what we are trying to do, if this debate is left strictly in the hands of parliamentarians, it will be difficult to achieve the desired legitimacy.

Mr. Gibson, you said that this debate could not be done in an abstract way. Actually, the details are the problem. It is not enough to say that we want a mixed member proportional voting system to ensure that the model does not have a partisan bias. We have seen this in Quebec. The model chosen by the Charest government created 26 regions. Rather than encouraging ideological plurality, it strictly favoured the three parties already represented in the National Assembly.

Given that the details are posing the problems, what are you suggesting that we do about it? My suggestion is to hold a referendum at the same time as the election in 2019. At any rate, we have no time to do it before that. However, if we proceed as I'm suggesting, we will have the time to go to a second phase. This could be a draft bill on a specific model. We could then consult the people on something tangible.

We will consult the people now on their desire for change, but we have nothing specific to suggest. If the details are the problem, I am wondering how they will be able to have an idea of all the systems on which we will consult them. Could you comment on that?

Mr. Chair, I know it's long, but our way of operating—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Let Mr. Gibson answer the question. His comments could perhaps fit into the five minutes you have.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

We have cruel ways of operating, but they are our ways.

[Gordon Gibson]

I guess my response to that would be that your aims are very good and noble, but unless you all agree, I don't think anything is going to happen—at least not anything productive. If the government party uses its majority to go ahead against the opposition parties in this committee, there is going to be a big fuss, a big fight. There are going to be constitutional questions, and it is going to overtake a lot of other issues that are very important in the country and become a focus in the next election.

By contrast, if you are all agreed and you put the thing to a referendum, the public might very well accept it. If you are not, I think they probably won't.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Should we not consult the people as soon as we have something to propose?

It is not enough for us to agree. At the moment, I do not think that we are going to agree on a model. At least, we haven’t done so yet.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

A quick answer, if you please, Mr. Gibson.

[Gordon Gibson]

I can't add any more. Yes, absolutely, the public should be consulted on a specific model, but first of all, who is going to design the model? In British Columbia, it was the citizens' assembly. Here it might be you. They have to have specifics. You are absolutely right.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Ms. May.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you. I'm glad I get another chance to try to get through questions.

I'm going to start with you, Mr. Bricker, and then ask some more questions of Professor Johnston. I hope I can get through the questions.

You said that some years ago you did some polling around the question of satisfaction with first past the post in general and that you hadn't done anything very recently. Some recent polling results from EKOS polling asked the question:

Please rate the extent to which you agree or disagree with the following statement: It is unfair that a party can hold a majority of the seats in the House of Commons with less than 40% of the vote

This was December 7 to 10 of last year, and I gather they were using land lines and cellphones. I don't really know what kind of difference it makes when you use online surveys. Do you go back to the same 1,000 people each time? Are they online all the time? So there's an online randomness among people. I don't know if it makes a difference, but this was land lines and cellphones. Apparently with 2.3% plus or minus 19 times out of 20, 56% of Canadians agreed that it was “unfair that a party can hold a majority of the seats in the House with less than 40% of the vote”.

I'm wondering if you think the situation may have changed since you last asked people about whether they were generally satisfied with the voting system. What would you expect to find if you were to poll again?

[Darrell Bricker]

I think an awful lot comes down to the questions you would ask. There's an inherent logic that there probably is something wrong just by the way the question was asked. That 40% equals a majority, well, the math just doesn't add up in people's heads. I would expect that 56% is a low result for that. I don't really like that question much.