Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 1st, 2016

[David McLaughlin]

The evidence shows that PR systems tend to have higher voter turnout, so I think that is probably reflective of a sense that the votes do count. But by itself, it's probably insufficient as an explanation. There are other factors that go into play. We do know that voter turnout goes up in a change election, for example, in this country. Why? Because people think their votes do count. There is something more at stake, I would presume. Even with an inadequate system in terms of equality of vote, people still come out to vote. There are going to be a myriad of factors, but it's the motivation vote that we're really talking about here, not the barriers. You will have to address them, barriers to vote, and all those administrative things. You still have to make that work. But people will come out to vote if they think it matters and if they think their vote counts in that kind of integration of the issues.

The electoral system will clearly make a play in it because you know that sometimes a seat that just always elects a Conservative, always elects a Liberal, always elects an NDP will always be an outlier. Parties and campaigns don't pay much attention to it. They don't send the incentives out to voters to come out to vote. It's contested seats, swing seats, that parties focus on and where voters get the education, information, the messaging to go out and vote, and sometimes then that results in a higher turnout.

[Prof. Craig Scott]

I would only add that I think it's important to understand that changing the electoral system and the 5% to 8% increase that creates for turnout, by most studies, isn't just about people knowing my person can be elected more easily. It's associated with producing a better political process too. I think part of the outreach to Canadians needs to talk about the connections between the electoral system and what Parliament and the House of Commons could look like that you could reasonably project would be different. My experience in three and a half years as an MP was that I think we underestimate how much people care about the way Parliament works and parliamentarians act. It might not be at the top of their list, but they care.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Ms. Sahota.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

My mind is going in a hundred million directions right now, and which one I should take.

Mr. Fox, you had raised the point about the next step of our process. We should really go prepared to people with a main concern in mind. We feel a sense of urgency on this committee. The government feels a sense of urgency because they have made a commitment to look at this and to change it. How do we get people to feel that sense of urgency? We've been talking about this issue for years and years, and we know there are issues at stake that are important to people, but how do we get them to understand? What would you think is the main concern we should be addressing to people? I know you were talking about whether we've discussed and come up with a main concern. I think we have many concerns, but we can't figure out how to get people concerned about this issue.

[Graham Fox]

I'm not sure it's up to me to propose an articulation of the problem. On the process, though, if we knew how to get citizens engaged in the manner in which we all hope they would on all things at all times, political life would be considerably easier in Canada. It's a challenge we all face in a host of ways.

But two things came to mind as you were putting your question that I think are important. The first one, and I think the committee is off to a good start on that, is to deliberate in full view of the public. I think if you are not just genuinely open but are seen to be open and doing things in full view, that helps. I think a process that is explicit about the fact that you don't have a preconceived view about the outcome will also encourage different views to come to your table. It's not a perfect answer, but it's the one I have now.

[David McLaughlin]

I wrote a piece for Graham's publication that offers up some suggestions as to how you might consult more and improve the process.

In short, I suggested things that were done previously under the constitutional process, under Joe Clark, such as a bigger conference, citizen conferences, if not a citizens' assembly; independent academic research that the public could see and that you could put out to people to show that you are considering the trade-offs and the issues; and a series of online things that you are starting to do. There are a number of things that you can do to engage people beyond just the traditional committee process.

I would encourage you, if you are going to go down that path, to do it sooner rather than later because of the time constraint, obviously, that you are working under, whether it is December 1 or whether you give yourself some more time. It is not a lot of time.

Second, to really make that work.... When do Canadians focus? They focus when it matters, or when they think a decision is coming. Right now, you are in a fairly broad, expansive learning mode. At some point, you have to be in a deliberation mode, and you are going to be deliberating specific options or specific choices. At that point, I would really encourage you to go public with a shorter paper or some specifics to say, “This is what we are thinking. This is where we are heading. It really does matter, and now we want your input on this.” Then you have to find some way, again, to get input on those specific things.

Until you put something out that is more explicit, more specific, and more real to Canadians, I think it will be an interesting notion, but everybody has other things to do. We have struggled with that in New Brunswick, even with a dedicated process, and we had lots of engagement in terms of devices. It is still very tough. This is an off-the-top-of-the-head recommendation, but feel free to read the piece as well, if you would like.

[Prof. Craig Scott]

All I would say is, get the Tragically Hip to do a bunch of town halls with this committee and then call the CBC, and you have your engagement right there. I am only half-joking. The CBC has started doing town halls outside of election cycles, for example with the Prime Minister and a minister or two. It is a completely legitimate thing to approach a public broadcaster about a completely pan-partisan parliamentary process and whether or not they might be interested in that dimension of your work in terms of publicizing through town halls.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you for that idea. It is a good one.

We'll start the second round of questions.

Mr. Aldag, it's your turn.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Mr. McLaughlin, in your opening comments you made a statement about the model that was developed, that you couldn't have both the list MPs and the constituency MPs in the mixed member proportional model. I am curious about the reasons for that. We have heard from other witnesses, in other jurisdictions, that they allow that. It is interesting that you excluded it, and I am just wondering what the thinking was behind that.

[David McLaughlin]

Let me take advantage of this to perhaps answer Mr. DeCourcey's question about the closed list as well. They all sort of come together.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Yes.

[David McLaughlin]

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.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Scott.

[Prof. Craig Scott]

Briefly, there's a politico-cultural dimension to it. In Wales there was that kind of resentment, to the point that they did try to have a rule along the lines of the New Brunswick proposal, and Westminster overrode it. In Germany they basically almost forced everybody to be running locally as well as to be on the list. Apparently, a high percentage of German members of their legislature served in one or the other capacity over the course of their careers. One thing the German approach does is it actually gets people to understand that there isn't such a great difference between the two sets of MPs, and it produces more continuity.

Some people would say, in a “throw the bums out” culture, that's not a good thing. Obviously, I'm sitting on the wrong side of the table to be saying this, but in Canada we probably have too much turnover. We have, probably, the highest turnover in comparable legislative processes. We could benefit from, probably, having more continuity, especially in collegial, consensual legislative environments. If people who are completely new are constantly coming in high numbers, you do lose something. Germany has more continuity, and I think being able to be on both is part of it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Reid.

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

Following up with that, I agree with Craig's observation about the high turnover here. It's striking. I've been here for 16 years, and I'm one of the 15 most senior people on Parliament Hill. If I were in the United States Senate, I would still be struggling to get—

[Prof. Craig Scott]

A second term.

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

—a junior chairmanship of a subcommittee on something nobody wants to do, and I'd be surrounded by octogenarians who've been there since President Truman or something—or McKinley, maybe. That is a realistic problem that exists, for sure.

I want to go back to a theme that has just been discussed but that may not have been addressed directly. Mr. McLaughlin, right at the very end of your presentation you mentioned there can be issues with how you design MMP. What I thought I heard you say, but I'm not sure I heard you say it so I want your confirmation, is that if this committee were to, for example, just recommend MMP but give no specifics, the government could then take it. The cabinet, after all, designs and produces a system, which has a different outcome from that which might have been imagined, at least in some respects that are significant from a partisan point of view, and from what the committee thought it was sending to the government. I may have misinterpreted that, so I want to hear your comments on it.

[David McLaughlin]

I would agree with your interpretation. That would be a concern. We were tasked with recommending an electoral system that met certain principles, but we felt very strongly in our commission work that we had to spell out what that system would be and all the details; that we were charged with figuring it out; that the details did matter; and that the potential for unintended consequences for the various actors in the system, all of whom were legitimate, needed to be thought through as best we could. We had to come up with recommendations. Where we could, we came up with precise legal text as a way to encourage both the government and the opposition to actually move it along. We didn't want to leave very much to chance that things would get muddled at the other end.

So yes, to use your example, Mr. Reid, if you proposed MMP and had some rationale for it and gave no detail, I think you would be leaving yourself open to perhaps a different kind of system in important respects from what you had contemplated or desired.

If you're going to do your work, do your work. Do the detailed heavy lifting in order to help move the process along.

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

It's perhaps unfair to push you further on this point, but I'll do it anyway; you can just say, no, it's illegitimate, if you feel this way. Would it be your recommendation, then, or would you accept it as a good recommendation, that we ought to actually be working on selecting, if it's feasible or if there's enough of a consensus, an actual model, and then trying to fill in the details as part of our report?

[David McLaughlin]

Yes. I would very much encourage that, and for a number of reasons. One is that this is the only way, in my view, for this file to progress within at least a shot at your time frames. I'd try to be respectful of that. Second is that I think it would show Parliament working. I think it would show the committee process working, and I would argue that you'd probably, as a group, find it more fulfilling in terms of having that kind of engagement and that kind of commitment. So yes, on a number of levels; absolutely.

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

Okay.

I have to ask this question, because the committee has not made a decision to go in favour of one system versus another. Let's say, for the sake of argument, we were drifting in the direction of STV. Would you make the same recommendation in terms of trying to pin down the details?

[David McLaughlin]

Yes. Again, I think it's system-agnostic, so I think you would have to show it, and you would have to show how it would work. You would start with principles, but people also want to know how it would work.

I go back to the outcomes. In a way, you're doing a long game in a very short period of time. The long game is to improve the legitimacy of our governments and of our system, etc., and that will flow from the outcomes. If at first people are maybe not so sure about this but over time grow accustomed to and like the system, that's a good change and good progress for the country. The legitimacy of the outcomes and the details do matter.

Frankly, in the short period of time you have, if you're proceeding on that, to give direction to Elections Canada but also parties, how do you then organize yourself for an election campaign? Just think of the questions that go back and forth to Elections Canada now on funding rules and so on from your local campaign manager, where people supposedly know. They're volunteers, right? Your CFO's a volunteer. Now you have a new system. Where's the boundary? It used to be they voted at the church down the street, but wait a minute, this town is out, this town is in.

All of those things will matter. Help Canadians come to grips with that. This would be my strong advice.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Cullen, it's your turn.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

This is interesting. I've been here a couple years. I like deadlines. I've seen Parliament kick around ideas forever, with everybody stating the importance of the issue, and why it matters to everybody and we should really do that. As soon as I hear the word “should”, I start to lose faith: we “will” do this or that.

I take your comments, David, about moving from an expansive to a deliberative focus. I'm a visual learner. I went through the B.C. process as an observer, and needed to see maps. Maybe it's because I'm engaged in politics in this way, but I just want to see how it will look. Until I see that, it's theoretical and perhaps confounding.

Mr. Fox, you're nodding. Does at some point the committee get to that point for Canadians where we say, just to pick a number, here are the three choices we're looking at, and here's how it might look in New Brunswick, in Toronto, in Vancouver, in rural Canada? Is this important for us in terms of that engagement level, and then raising the level of legitimacy of all this work?