Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 1st, 2016

[Prof. Craig Scott]

I will just answer briefly.

I think Dave was sort of predicting what might rise to the top. In terms of the closed list, keep in mind that there is a direct analogy. People are actually already faced with closed lists in our current system. It is a one-person list, but the party is the one that generates the only person you can vote for. If you are leaning toward a particular party or a set of principles, you know who is on the list generated by the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, the NDP, the Greens, etc. It is all transparent, and the ability to then tick is an added element.

You know who you are voting for on these lists, and then you can evaluate: “How did they produce that list? I am not going to vote for a party that produced the list this way. I am more inclined to vote for a party that produced it that way.” “Closed list” doesn't mean they are closed in all senses; it just means you can't go in and change them.

The last thing is that, when I went on a tour as official opposition critic—I think about 12 different sessions across the country—I started with a list of something like 10 or 11 different principles or variables. They had to be a lot more specific than the ones for the mandate of the committee. I got people to fill out at the beginning, before there was any discussion at all, where they were on that. It took about five to 10 minutes, then there was whatever the session was, and then I had them do it again.

This was slightly biased, because people were coming knowing I was NDP, knowing we are already in favour of PR, etc., so it didn't represent Canada, but it represented where people started—that was most valuable—and then it represented change. The change wasn't so great, but for your group the changes could be quite important.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Richards, go ahead.

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

Mr. Fox, I have a question or two for you. You made the comment in your opening remarks—I think I am quoting this accurately, because I was trying to keep up writing it down, so I am pretty close, if not bang-on here—that Canadians themselves must participate meaningfully and their collective wisdom must be part of the process.

I take that to mean that you think the current process isn't succeeding in that, and I want to get your opinions and thoughts on what this should look like. What would give Canadians that meaningful participation? What would allow their collective wisdom to drive or push the process?

[Graham Fox]

You are reading me correctly, in the sense that I don't think the process is doing that yet, but I am not sure the process needed to do it at this stage, in the sense that it is important to do the research and get to facts and essays and papers. As you think about what you do with the meetings you are going to be holding on the road, reinforcing the last two comments, you will be limited in your options because of the travel schedule and the calendar, but I would try....

To David's point about asking people to make choices, I think there is a lot to that. Part of the limit of hearings like this is that I get my five minutes and then I leave the room; someone else comes in, they get their five minutes, and then they leave the room. I don't get the benefit of hearing the person before or after me, or signal to you that maybe I have changed my mind based on what I have heard. Relaunching questions in a certain city.... If there was a theme emerging as an element of consensus in Winnipeg, test it in Halifax: “We heard this in Winnipeg, and we heard it a lot. What do you people think?”

Try to get to how you would bring all those views together in a way that isn't just a long list because, frankly, if it is going to be monologues in rapid succession, you might as well just ask for emailed submissions.

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

Okay, that is fair enough. I appreciate that.

You have written fairly extensively on parliamentary reform as well, and I think that ties to what we are doing here. We have heard a lot of testimony that talks about the different trade-offs there are with the different electoral systems, and certainly I think it is almost universally held, if not universally, that there is no perfect electoral system. Obviously, we have heard from a lot of people that we have to be looking at what the values or the goals are that we are trying to achieve. You mentioned yourself that the public doesn't seem to really be aware yet of what the problem is that we are trying to solve.

I guess what I am trying to get at here is that the electoral system, and changes to our elections, can be one of the things we can do to try to solve some of the issues there might be, but parliamentary reform may solve some of the issues, and maybe solve all the issues that might exist.

My question for you is, what do you see as some of the other potential changes that we could be looking at on a parliamentary level, and could some of those meet some of the challenges we face?

[Graham Fox]

That's an excellent question.

I'm not sure I would go all the way to say that parliamentary reform or other reforms would fix all the issues because, frankly, we have to worry first about the men and women we send to the Commons before we worry about what they do once they get there. For the last 15 years, it's been more of an interest of mine looking at what happens here once people get here. My hope is, if we are to change the mode of election and if we are to have a House that is more reflective of popular vote, that this diffusion of who gets to decide may also have an impact on committee independence and with votes in the Commons.

I understand the imperatives of needing to drive messages tightly. People don't like disagreement because it's messy and those who cover politics will make it seem a weakness or a flip-flop, but I would genuinely like to see governments rediscover white papers and asking committees to conduct some preliminary work long before they've decided what they want to do. That's independent from electoral reform, but I think one may feed into the other and facilitate it.

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

That's great, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much, Mr. Richards.

Mr. DeCourcey.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

I have one more point of clarification on the issue of the closed party list. I understood well the reasons for that and you applied it to Mr. Aldag's question and Mr. Cullen's question as well.

Achieving representational equity is the main idea behind the closed party list. The party produces the list. How does the open convention that gives the party licence to produce the list work in this recommendation in the report?

[David McLaughlin]

The way it worked is that we thought the parties were legitimate actors. They had the right to incent and choose the folks they wanted to represent them, but we wanted to create an incentive and a public pressure on them to do so.

Let's go back to how you operate. You operate in a competitive environment. You are seeking a political advantage in the best sense of the word relative to your competitors, putting your best foot forward in one way, showing that you are more in favour, on one issue or another, showing your representation. In how many campaigns in the past while have we had party leaders showcasing candidates behind them, a number of women, a number of visible minorities, etc.? This is the party's way of adapting to a new reality and a new pressure within the country under a first past the post system, and we show the candidates that we have to say we look like Canada, if you will.

Again the issue you raised was one we wrestled with and there were strong opinions on both sides. But the trade-off we made was that we wanted to have more women elected as MLAs. There were other issues there and that seemed to us, the commissioners, to trump the other kinds of concerns.

I don't want to diminish this, but Mr. DeCourcey, as you raised the issue of transparency and democratic legitimacy, it was something that we wrestled with. In the end, we made a choice based on the trade-offs. It's a legitimate example of how you will have to work through the stuff as well. And we did hear from parties too.

I'll reinforce what I said earlier. Parties are legitimate actors here. We need strong political parties. They are the partisan vehicles in the best sense of the word to allow views and issues and ideas to be debated. I'm in favour of partisanship if it allows for clarification of ideas, if it gives choice. I think that's a good thing in democracy.

So a bit of perhaps going the other way on the closed list, I get it, but that was our reasoning.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

But effectively as opposed to having party members vote for the preferred candidate as would happen in a constituency, would the party essentially trot out the candidates on the list and say this is our one, two, three, four, and then have it vetted through the party membership? Is that how that works?

[David McLaughlin]

No. We knew that this was a possibility, absolutely, parties being parties and leadership being leadership of parties. We encourage a primary process as well and as a way to do that. That's why I mentioned we had companion recommendations and improvements for greater party democracy to go hand in hand with changes to the electoral system. Again, that's part of thinking through the consequences of changing the system without thinking through what the companion actors are or the issues that go with it. Changing an electoral system creates a cascade of effects that you will need to wrestle with.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Mr. Fox, you talked a little bit about rallying Canadians to some sort of consensus on what malaise or what issue we're trying to resolve here. One of the issues that I believe have the potential to rally us together is the idea of better engaging Canadians in the way they see themselves reflected in Parliament, particularly Canadians who feel disengaged from the system. I know there are Canadians who feel that their vote isn't represented in Parliament, but there are also Canadians who don't vote, and therefore are completely disengaged.

Is that a spot where you think we can start? How best do we engage those people who have not traditionally seen themselves as a part of the process?

[Graham Fox]

As much as I don't worry about mandatory voting, I'm not sure that's a convincing, long-term way of fixing one's commitment to the system. Turnout was high at elections where people felt like there was something at stake, which usually coincided with a change in government, but not necessarily. In 1988, the first example, there was a genuine issue of fundamental public policy choice that drove people from both points of view out to the.... So I think part of trying to get citizens interested in political life and democratic life is to make sure they understand that their input matters, that you didn't decide before you showed up, that they do, in their interventions, have an opportunity to move the yardsticks. I think that goes a long way. If I don't feel like there's a point, why would I go?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Okay, thanks.

We'll go to Mr. Boulerice.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Before I ask my question, I would like to point out that Mr. Cullen and I do not embody a great deal of diversity in many respects.

Yes, we are both men, and we are both white. One of us has a beard; the other is clean-shaven. However, we are very different in one very important respect that is typical of our electoral system. Mr. Cullen's riding covers 330,000 square kilometres. It is larger than Poland. Mine is 11 square kilometres. The circumstances governing our work as MPs are extremely different.

When we look at the systems in Germany, New Zealand, Denmark and the Netherlands, we see a number of very interesting things. However, we can't just copy-paste. That's why I like Jean-Pierre Kingsley's suggestion about being informed by what is happening elsewhere but coming up with a made-in-Canada system. I feel we should really think about that.

If we want to achieve proportionality, I think there are three ways to do that. We could have provincial lists, regional lists within provinces—some provinces are larger than others—or amalgamated ridings, which would result in multi-member ridings with three, four, five or six members representing the same small region.

Obviously, that would work well for Montreal, but it would not work as well in Mr. Cullen's riding or the Northwest Territories. We have discussed this with witnesses who expressed differing opinions on the subject.

Can we have a system with first-past-the-post ridings in some cases and amalgamated ridings in cities and suburbs allowing for a degree of proportionality?

I would like to hear from all three of you.

[Craig Scott]

I think we could have a system like that, and I don't foresee any constitutional issues with it. There would really have to be exceptions for northern ridings and maybe for very large ridings closer to cities in the south.

Like the NDP, we considered a mixed corrective system designed for Canada. I think that Mr. Kingsley's suggestion has a lot of merit. However, I don't know that it's such a good idea for ridings with smaller populations to have just one member. They could be combined, except in the north, where they should remain as they are.

[David McLaughlin]

It's a great question, and I would concur heartily with a “made in Canada” system. You'd be informed by electoral systems elsewhere, but we have different realities. It's language, of course, and other things, but geography is perhaps the biggest defining thing.

In New Brunswick it meant that...to do the proportionality that we came up with, without increasing the size of the House. That meant that the single member ridings were a bit larger; they were very tiny, but they were larger. It was what some of the people wanted. You have to think about that if you're going to go this way to try to address this issue, which I think is very legitimate. Do you want a bigger House of Commons? How do you allow for that, because you will have these kinds of inequities, and you will still want to keep the variances down to a manageable level in terms of representation of population, which is part of a process of redrawing boundaries, which you will, by necessity, have to go through here.

I don't know if some kind of hybrid system is the right system. Again, I go back to my presentation; we haven't had that kind of study here. We've had studies of mixed member proportional. We've looked at the key principles, but the application of it with maps, with boundaries, thinking about the roles of members of Parliament, how many in one province or region versus others, that's really quite consequential and matters a lot to voters. It's an interesting notion, and I encourage you to pursue it and see. You may end up saying, we need a larger House of Commons, and the euphemism for MMP becomes “many more politicians”.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[David McLaughlin]

It goes from there. It's not to be pejorative or anything.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We have just a few seconds.

[Graham Fox]

I agree with that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Rayes, it's your turn.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

In 2003, when I entered politics for the first time at the provincial level, a person whom I consider to be very wise gave me some advice. He may be listening now via the web. He always told me that, as long as I treat the voters as intelligent people, they will respond intelligently. The fact is that the people, the citizens, are always right when given a chance to express themselves. That flows naturally from us taking the time to ensure they are well-informed.

Changing the voting system is really the centrepiece of reform, but we all agree that there are many other things we can do, so there is something I would like all three witnesses to explain to me.

When consulted haphazardly via opinion polls or referenda on this issue, people—in Canada especially—rejected the proposed option or preferred to keep the status quo most of the time. That's true despite everything those pushing for change say about voting systems, all of the lip service about changing the system, and even the fact that governments have the financial means to educate people through the Chief Electoral Officer. I'm not talking about consulting interest groups because, when they present their proposals, apparently everyone completely agrees with them.

[Graham Fox]

I may be mistaken, but I think that in British Columbia, there was a simple majority in favour of change.