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.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Alain Rayes Conservative Richmond—Arthabaska, QC
Mr. Bricker, are you satisfied with the current voting method? Are you in the 50% of the people who are satisfied with the current method? Can you give a quick yes or no answer?
4:20 p.m.
CEO, IPSOS Public Affairs, As an Individual
I don't think my opinion of the electoral system matters at all. That's not what I'm here to talk about.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
4:20 p.m.
As an Individual
In the current circumstances, it's acceptable, but we could do better.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you, Mr. Rayes.
We will end this afternoon’s session with Mrs. Romanado.
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Sherry Romanado Liberal Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC
We've heard over the last couple of weeks from various witnesses that our electoral system and democratic reform are not just about the actual voting system. They're an ecosystem in a sense, taking in how we educate our citizens on civic literacy, whether or not we offer technological advances, how we do outreach, how we engage youth—we had a huge youth engagement in the last election, which we hope to continue—how we encourage women and visible minorities to consider running for office, and so on.
As my colleague Mr. Cullen mentioned, in the last election, millions of Canadians felt that their votes didn't count. We're trying to increase engagement in the political process, which is why we're sitting around this table.
Mr. Gibson, I understand your warnings to take our time and do this right, and I agree with you. We need to do this properly. We don't want to take a reactive approach, so that when we come to a situation, we panic and think we have to fix this right now. We need to do our proper due diligence and make sure that what we come up with is best for Canada and that Canadians agree with us.
I'm hopeful that this committee can come up with a great Canadian model to address some of the issues that we've been mandated to address.
Given your experience with the British Columbia citizens' assembly, what advice would you have for us to move forward, given our mandate in this committee and keeping in mind the electoral deadline we have that the Chief Electoral Officer said could be met?
4:20 p.m.
As an Individual
To be clear, your hypothesis is that it is a unanimous committee?
4:20 p.m.
Liberal
Sherry Romanado Liberal Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC
Okay.
Mr. Johnston, do you have any suggestions for us as well in terms of our mandate in trying to get the ball rolling on electoral reform?
4:20 p.m.
Prof. Richard Johnston
My view is that if you're really serious, you would try to get the rules of the situation changed. I don't see how you could break out of the current situation short of a serious breakdown of the representative process at the next election.
4:20 p.m.
CEO, IPSOS Public Affairs, As an Individual
What I would say is that the mandate of this committee as I understand it is a lot wider than just whether or not we have the first past the post system or not.
There are a lot of other irritations in the way our election system operates that represent clear areas of opportunity for you to actually be able to build some consensus with the Canadian public. There are things that involve technology. There are things that involve, as somebody was mentioning, the dates on which we vote. If you start building from those things on which people do agree, there might be something that could move along as an agenda here without your necessarily having to focus on that one big thing to start. I would say there is an opportunity to produce some form of a reform proposal that wouldn't necessarily have to go to a referendum, because it involves cleaning up a whole series of different things that people would see as reasonable things to do, given the time and age that we're in, and that should have been changed a long time ago. Then you can focus on the other question, which I think is going to be a very, very difficult thing to move even through this committee, in making a proposal and moving forward as legislation through the House of Commons and the Senate.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you very much to our witnesses for, among other things, underscoring the challenge that is before us. It is indeed a big puzzle. We're working very hard at understanding the complexity of the issue, and your insights and opinions will certainly help us along the path to a successful report, hopefully, and a way forward.
So thank you very much.
Committee members, we are going to suspend the session for 15 minutes. Then we will come back in camera to discuss future committee business.
Mr. Cullen, do you have a point you would like to make?
4:25 p.m.
NDP
4:25 p.m.
NDP
