Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 1st, 2016

[Graham Fox]

I think it is. I think the more you can get to actual, concrete details around your models, the more it will increase public confidence that you've done the homework and that you have come to a common view. When you think about what happens after your report, the more you all agree on the greater number of details, the more it might be interesting or beneficial for the government to follow through on your leadership, because this is where the national conversation has happened.

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

We've also heard from elections officials that as the committee—or Parliament, more importantly—starts to narrow down, they begin their work as an elections commission. If they can tell Parliament is headed towards one of these models, then that whole idea of this being too rushed and then there's a panic, and then the next election doesn't come off coherently, if I can put it that way, is diminished if Elections Canada is given early signals. These are a couple of paths that were taken.

David, you would agree?

[David McLaughlin]

Absolutely. They are the ones who administer the election and they're responsible for its proper administration at the end. So yes, they've got to get going.

[Prof. Craig Scott]

Can I just—

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

Sure.

[Prof. Craig Scott]

I'll make it two sentences. One is this that this goes back to that CBC suggestion. At some point, having this committee in a deliberative mode, with the institutional design choices of an MMP—there are 15 main institutional design choices and maybe seven are crucial—having the different models in play where you're all working through together in maybe a slightly hypothetical way, because you're not all committed to each of these or maybe any of them, in a well-moderated way, where you can possibly film it, it could possibly be done in public, you could consider something like that. I just taught it last term. Make yourselves like a mini citizens' assembly in the way you interact.

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

This is what, back in February, we had suggested to the government. It was to have a parallel citizens' assembly process, working through some of that on-the-ground truth-telling of what a system would mean. What does this mean for me in Mississauga, etc.?

You talk about trade-offs a lot here. This is what it's going to be. It's always the case whenever we redraw boundaries in the country that there are always trade-offs. One of the trade-offs I'm concerned about is this list thing. I've got to tell you, I'm not a huge fan of the closed list system, just in terms of legitimacy in the eyes of the voters. Who's on the list? How do they get on the list? Is it just knowing the leader of the party? Are you a fundraiser? There's the notion that the voter has got to be involved. We've seen some models come forward that say that list is derived from the next most popular candidate in that region, as a way to legitimize their place and not have two-tiered MPs. So the voter choses that person and that person goes ahead, not somebody in a back room.

Do you have any thoughts on that model versus the other in the trade-off question?

[David McLaughlin]

You've absolutely hit the issue on the head and we wrestled with it. It was one of the final pieces of the puzzle that we actually worked through, and then we came to a choice on it. It was a unanimous report, so we understood it, but we had a companion piece, because of our large mandate covering all these aspects of democratic reform in New Brunswick, for changes to party democracy.

One of the ways to get at that was that we had legislative changes proposed for how parties conducted nominations. It was, for some, perhaps seen as more interventionist but we required open nomination processes and things to avoid the top-down process. This is not to say that the parties would have liked that, but it was our way of trying to get at the kind of concern you raised, to try to make it more transparent and try to make it more open.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Thériault, it's your turn.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to touch on three subjects.

First, Mr. Fox, if I understood you correctly, you would rather do things properly than hastily. I gather Mr. McLaughlin feels the same way.

It seems to me that, on this file, the worst-case scenario would be for the legislative branch—which we represent—to finish its work on December 1 and let the executive branch decide what happens next. I don't think that three weeks is enough time to get a clear sense of what voters from coast to coast want.

That being said, it would be good for the committee to agree on the recommendation to leave the matter in the hands of the legislative branch and perhaps a citizens' assembly. There has to be a second stage before the executive deals with this issue. The executive branch might well decide that the lowest common denominator is that everyone wants change, and it might make a unilateral decision—backed by its parliamentary majority—about what that change should be. That would be a complete failure. I see you nodding, so I guess you agree with me.

Let's talk about gender parity.

Judging from what has happened in Quebec, some mechanisms have a greater impact on parity. However, no system, not even ours, can provide absolute control over gender parity.

I've done recruitment, and I've observed that merely getting a woman to run in a safe riding is not enough. The problem is everything that being in politics at the federal level represents.

It would be great for Parliament to address work-life balance. I have been a member of the Quebec National Assembly, and I can tell you that work-life balance there is much better than it is here. If we don't make things better, we won't be able to do that kind of recruitment and achieve parity even if we have lists. We would miss out on some excellent candidates in certain age groups.

What are your thoughts on that?

[Graham Fox]

I think Mr. Scott talked about that earlier. I think it's very important to consider not only the mechanics of reform, but its impact on how the House of Commons works. How can Parliament foster work-life balance in light of the added challenges of geography, particularly compared to provincial legislatures? This is an extremely important issue, for sure.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Scott, on the subject of cultural change, you said that the transition would take a long time. I agree. Just changing the mechanism does not mean that, from one day to the next, people on the ground will start working together. If the proposed Quebec model had passed, then when I was elected in 2003, my rival would have been elected as well, but he would have been a list member. He would probably have become the Minister of Transport.

Imagine what collaboration would have looked like in that scenario. I think it would have led to—this was actually my experience—four years of partisanship. We would have had the government representative on one side and the opposition representative on the other.

Wouldn't the cultural change mean focusing more on the legislative branch, on how we decide who represents the people in the House and on the ideological plurality that's represented to ensure that every vote counts? If we want to push cultural change even further, why not elect the executive with a majority of two-thirds of the representatives in the House?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

That's a very good question.

[Craig Scott]

It's a very good suggestion. It might be a good idea, but we don't have time to comment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We have 15 seconds left, and it's a very good question.

Ms. May, it's your turn.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thanks very much.

By a bit of preamble, when you were talking, Craig, about the fact that this has been an issue since 2000, going back through parliamentary records, it may interest you to know that the first parliamentary committee looking at electoral reform was in 1921, when Ireland had just gotten single transferable vote in order to protect minority rights in Ireland. It has been a topic that has come up, and it seems, as far as I can determine, when every commission, federal or provincial; every citizens' assembly; every law commission; every review of electoral reform since 1921 in Canada comes to a conclusion, it comes to a conclusion that we should move to some form of proportional representation. It does seem to me that the time is right and that this is a once in a generation opportunity.

But in my questions to you, I wanted to focus on the harms of first past the post, because you raised one that Professor Peter Russell identified. When you combine a Westminster parliamentary democracy such as Canada, where the executive has rather more power than even in other Westminster democracies around the world, and certainly more than in the U.S. where the executive has checks and balances, it's rather important to know that the majority of Canadians support the general direction of a majority government. You referenced this rather tangentially in your opening remarks. I wondered if you wanted to revisit the question of the power of the executive and the harms that can be done when you have what Professor Russell calls a false majority. And I don't think it's partisan; I don't know how else you'd describe it.

[Prof. Craig Scott]

Yes, we tend to address the false majority notion as in a party simply gets more seats in the legislature than their popular vote would warrant, and that seems unjust; and it's a voter-centred perspective and that's good, that's fine to say that's a problem. But the fact is you're giving the majority of seats to a single party in a system where there's a fused executive-legislative arrangement that in any Westminster system already gives a lot of power to the executive. In our—I wouldn't say political system—political culture, we have a much greater degree of internal party unity, party discipline. I think the localization pressures on our MPs, because of the size of the country and other things like that, also mean that the extent to which parliamentarians can be legislators, as opposed to members of a party, taking direction from good advice, etc.... We have a culture where once you give a majority to one party, you are partly at the mercy of how that government runs itself because you can have more and less willingness to engage with the rest. The rest could be not just the opposition but the 60% who didn't actually vote for the party that now has 100% of the power.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

And it's a sensitive topic because it's raw, because we just had a change in government, and I apologize to my friends in the Conservative ranks here, but Gérard Deltell actually put the question to Professor Russell, “What harm has ever come from first past the post?” To my surprise he said climate change. We didn't act for 10 years, and 80% of Canadians since the early nineties, by polling, have always wanted action on climate change, and I know a lot of Conservatives wanted action on climate change. Unfortunately, one of them wasn't the former prime minister.

So for me, that's not just a theoretical or academic harm. It's real and it has damaged our reputation in the world, and it was not something supported by most Canadians. So forgive me for mentioning that one, but I'll turn to my friend David McLaughlin, and I don't want to put you on the spot. Obviously, you are a Conservative. You've made that clear. You were chief of staff to our friend, the late Jim Flaherty.

Do you have any comments on this executive power in the situation of a false majority? You were a victim as CEO of the national round table of omnibus Bill C-38, which I don't think was the will of Canadians.

Do you have any thoughts on this aspect of first past the post?

[David McLaughlin]

One of the ways that we tried to get at that issue in the New Brunswick commission...again, we had a broader mandate...but I do want to refer you to our section where we talked about making the system work. We did look at improving or enhancing the role of MLAs as individual legislators, enhancing the role of the Legislative Assembly as an institution, and rebalancing power and authority away from the executive branch back to the legislature. We proposed a number of things for strengthening legislative committees, higher funding allowances for MLAs, more extensive committee work, just a broader role for the legislature in what had traditionally been defined as government life.

That allowed us to do that, independent, if you will, of the electoral system piece. But yes, there's no question that Canada...and I agree with Craig, as a political cultural issue, we have very strong executive power authority. I've been in the Prime Minister's Office. Some days were better than others. Some days you liked it; some days maybe not.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thanks very much.

We'll go to Ms. Romanado, please.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

I'm just going to address one issue and then move to my question. I know that people have been questioning the timeline. I know that when we had our Chief Electoral Officer here, he said that this is absolutely possible. We're hopeful that this committee will come up with a report that will have a consensus, that we'll be able to put into action. I just wanted to reiterate that.

One thing this committee has been trying to do, and I've used this term earlier, is to take a voter-centric approach. As parliamentarians, we have our own ideas. What does it mean to have a legitimate process? What does it mean to have a simple process? Is it from our perspective or from the perspective of the voter? I think that's something we need to be mindful of when we're communicating with Canadians. We have done the first phase of this process, where we've heard from experts and so on, and now we're going on the road.

Given your expertise on this file, we know there's some low-hanging fruit that could address the bobo we have in our system, that's not necessarily a different voting system—for instance changing the voting date to Sunday or a day that people are not working, and so on. Keeping voter-centric in mind, what would you recommend, when we are engaging with Canadians on the road, so that we are making sure that whatever system or any recommendations we put forward are reflective of what they are looking for?

[David McLaughlin]

Let me start. I'll let my colleagues reflect a bit more.

Force them into some trade-offs. You have to do it. Find out what they value most. Come up with your series of principles, explain how they can work in comparison to others. I suspect that local representation will be very close to the top of the list. They'll want to know who their MP is. They want to know where you live, because it's that accountability and that possibility of throwing you out afterwards, the blunt democratic instrument, that's fine.

That would be one example that I think would jump up to the top, but try to force them a bit on that. Then, if you can, find out what they really want from an electoral system in this sense, and let me rip off what Elizabeth May said in terms of the central authority, the executive authority. Do they think it will cure this versus something else?

You may have a role in helping to address myths as well as improvements. Don't let the myths stand out there, that if we change the electoral system we can fix A, B, C, and D. Help them understand what those absolute choices are and help them appreciate where this is an improvement but not a panacea, if you will.

Off the top, that would be something that you could think about.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Before the other two go, I'm just going to probe a little more on that. You mentioned that if what they value most is to know their MP and know where their MP lived—and trust me, I have people showing up on my lawn—that being said, why would we ever recommend a closed list? I'm just throwing it out there. If people want to know who they're voting for, the person, not just the party but the person, why would we ever put forward a closed list?

[David McLaughlin]

Again, the closed list is a mechanical process or step to get to the electoral outcome. You would have a closed list. The reasons I gave are what were populating our minds at the time, and it can seem there's a lack of transparency, it's unaccountable, etc., but it was the outcome we were more concerned about along the way. I'm talking about how “Where do you live?” is a euphemism for afterwards, when you are elected. They want to know who to go to to help solve their problems, and of course, represent their broader interests. At the end of the day I'm not convinced a closed list or open list is absolutely germane to that. I think it's a way station en route to it.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

I'll let the two of you go.