Evidence of meeting #21 for Electoral Reform in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was change.
A video is available from Parliament.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
I would hope that you'll ask other questions. I think the logic—
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
—adds up in people's heads, because we expect that when we vote in an election.... Of course, the value of proportionality and fairness, which you've both reflected on, is very strong among Canadians. There is something quite counterintuitive that in a majority Parliament in the Canadian electoral system, where there is no separation between legislative and executive for all functional purposes, 100% of parliamentary power is in the hands of whichever Privy Council—and in some cases, where it's really centralized—of whatever Prime Minister has the majority of the seats in the House. If that derives from a minority of the votes, we're certainly hearing a very strong pull from Canadians that they don't find that fair.
CEO, IPSOS Public Affairs, As an Individual
All I can do is say is, yes, when you get into conversations with people about that, they come up with those kinds of conclusions. But if you look at the levels of satisfaction that we see for this current government, even based on how they were elected, they're very high.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Oh, yes, but that's a different question, I think, from—
CEO, IPSOS Public Affairs, As an Individual
I only answer the questions I want to answer.
CEO, IPSOS Public Affairs, As an Individual
You guys do the same, by the way.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Actually, I answer questions I don't want to answer, but I'm unusual.
Professor Johnston, you made a comment right after the election that I think goes to this question of legitimacy. CBC News posted a very interesting interview in October, right after the election, about whether this voting system was going to change. You were quoted as saying that you were extremely skeptical about the likelihood of any federal electoral change under the Liberals. You reflected on the fact that B.C. and Ontario had tried, and you said that “opposition parties tend to talk a lot about democratic reform when they're in opposition and rarely deliver once in government”.
Because I believe that the public cynicism about politicians is a problem in a healthy democracy and I think we've earned public cynicism, do you think when a government keeps its promises—and this was a point you made in earlier testimony—it matters to Canadians that political parties and political leaders keep their promises. In this case, given the history, as you say, that “opposition parties tend to talk a lot about democratic reform when they're in opposition and rarely deliver once in government”, do you agree with me that it'll contribute to public confidence in a party that they deliver on their promises, and conversely contribute to greater cynicism that they failed to deliver on a promise?
Prof. Richard Johnston
You stated it as a general proposition, so it's hard to disagree. I guess I could also note that on a very concrete promise it would seem that the electors were perfectly willing to let the government take as long as necessary to meet its Syrian refugee total, for example. There was no particular requirement that the total be met within what proved to be an unrealistic deadline. I think that's true in this case as well. To deliver on the promise of abolition of an established electoral formula in the space of one Parliament, particularly when the machinery doesn't get rolling until the spring, strikes me as a stretch. Probably the only administratively possible form of change would be to the ballot—
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
My question is for Professor Gibson. In your introduction, you talked a lot about consequences that may not be considered ahead of time when changing an electoral system.
Yesterday, Professor Loewen presented an intriguing chart to us. He talked about the anti-legal immigration sentiment that has grown in European countries—in fact the countries that have PR, where these smaller parties have taken a dominant control on some of these issues. He mentioned Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands, the small parties have gained popularity and have taken a lot of seats.
Could this be a consequence that we may not be considering, depending on which electoral system we switch to? You had referenced Donald Trump winning the primaries in the United States due to some changes they made to their primary process. Can you elaborate on other consequences you could foresee, since you have thought about this issue quite a bit?
As an Individual
I want to start by thanking you for promoting me to a professor. I've never been that before.
No doubt proportional representation, particularly extreme proportional representation as they have in Israel, gives organization and voice to very small groups of sentiment, some of which can be quite extreme. While our current FPTP privileges the regional representation, proportional representation privileges ideological representation. That might be Christian, it might be anti-immigrant, it might be whatever you like, but it's much easier to organize on a proportional representation model.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
These are big what ifs, right? I want to make sure we don't go down a path that we look back on years from now and regret. We want to get it right, and we want to make the right change for Canadians. Is there any advice you can give us about different consequences and obstacles we may not be considering right now that we should consider? If you have been following the committee's work, then maybe there are things you'd like to suggest to us.
As an Individual
You know, we're in a curious place. Why are we here?
In British Columbia, it was because we had two perverse elections. The first election saw a government elected with less than the most votes, and the second one saw a government elected with 77 out of 79 seats with only 59% of the vote. The public said that something's wrong here.
We do not have that situation today in Canada. We are here because a political party—and forgive me for saying this—in a minor aspect of their party's promises, said we're going to be here. So we're here. However, there are no torchlit parades, as Dr. Bricker said. There is no public demand out there saying, “For God's sake, fix this”, but one of these days there will be.
I think this committee can do good work in laying the foundation for that day. You might not find that this is the day, but I think you can do an awful lot of good research by asking how we can do a lot of sustained and legitimate thinking about changing our electoral system and putting in place an institution or institutions, such as a citizens' assembly, that might help us in that direction.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
What would you think would indicate that time?
Right now we've had many organizations that have been campaigning on this promise. They've told us that they have large numbers of members and there has been a lot of talk about this issue in terms of the last election. There have been citizens' assemblies in many provinces that have studied this issue. When would you consider it to be the right time?
As an Individual
When Citizens Decide, from Oxford University Press, is probably the definitive book on citizens' assemblies. They're quite rare, and they tend to come about for non-partisan reasons, or when some political party gets the idea—as Dalton McGuinty did, or Gordon Campbell did, or a group in the Netherlands did—that we should do something about this. Apart from that, they just don't happen. You might choose to make it happen, but they don't come out of the blue. Most parties do not see that kind of study as being in their interest. Most parties want electoral reform to be their electoral reform to help them. It's just the way the world is.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
I have a question for both Mr. Bricker and Mr. Gibson. In her last round of questioning, Ms. Romanado mentioned a number of statements from witnesses today that she felt were humbling. One of those—which I actually don't recall hearing it from you, but maybe I missed something—was that it “may or may not cost us the next election”. I assume that when she said that, she was referring to the governing Liberal Party.
Mr. Bricker, in your experience in gauging public opinion, if this were done without giving Canadians a direct say, without giving them some input, would it actually have some political consequences for the governing party?
CEO, IPSOS Public Affairs, As an Individual
Yes. When you look at the agenda that Canadians hold dear right now, this isn't one of the top priorities they want to see the government focused on. When people worry about Ottawa's being detached from what's going on in the rest of the country—and believe me, it is—it just underscores the distance between what people are dealing with in their day-to-day lives and what parliamentarians choose to focus their time and attention on.
Is there political capital that's going to be spent as a result of that? Yes, I think there would be. On the other hand, if they could lead this process and come up with something that the public would find acceptable, they might actually add to their political capital. Right now, as I said before, this is an issue that few people know there is a problem, and almost nobody understands any of the solutions that anybody wants to bring forward, or why any of them makes anything better.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
I would assume that part of that would involve, at the end of the process, giving people some kind of a say, whether it be a referendum or.... I fail to see what the other mechanism would be. Letting the public have a direct say, I would assume that would add, obviously, to—
