First, we chose the closed list because of the feeling that, if the lists were closed, then the parties would make a bigger effort to put more women in particular on the list. That was a concern of the commission at the time, to try to increase the number of female representatives in the legislature.
Second, we were concerned that open lists would result in real intra-party competition as candidates vied for share of voice relative to others to move up the list and get votes, and therefore this would put parties in a position of being overly competitive, and would demean the political process a bit.
Third, perhaps peculiar to New Brunswick, was the sense that large population centres could overpower smaller communities. If you had a list member from one city or bigger town within a community, then they would get more votes relative to others. There was a sense of unfairness. Those are the things that drove us there.
Again, with that process, it's not a far leap to say let's not allow the candidates to be on lists as well as local member candidates. We were concerned about two things.
One was this potential gaming of the system, that they would say that you got elected on the list. They saw you put your name there. Partly what was of concern to us was creating two-tier MLAs. It's not a guarantee, but how you arrive in office, or how you arrive in your legislature, your House of Commons, does have a bearing on how colleagues treat you and react to you, and potentially more importantly, how citizens or constituents would react to you. That was a feeling that it would be better from a non-gaming perspective, that the public would see the system as your choice, you won or you didn't win, end of story.
Remember, the systems, especially New Zealand's, were relatively new. We did hear evidence, from talking to New Zealand folks, about this sense of second-class or first-class MPs or MLAs. It was a way to try to address that.
Over time you guys work things out in your daily business, but that was what motivated us.