Very good.
Evidence of meeting #25 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 good.
Evidence of meeting #25 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 good.
2 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
I have a question on that, just for clarity. On the 5%, are you saying that in an election, 5% is attributable to the candidate, or are you saying a good campaign can change the candidate's vote by 5%? What I'm saying is, assuming the candidate's already popular, maybe their name is contributing 25% to the final result, but with a good campaign, a candidate can make it 30%. Is that what you're saying?
2 p.m.
Associate Professor and Department Head, Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
It's about 5%, yes, exactly. They can increase it by that amount. They can increase it by a lot more or a lot less, depending on the local circumstances, but that's about the upper limit.
If you look at the number of close races in recent Canadian elections, there were a lot of them.
2 p.m.
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette, QC
Thank you.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you for coming to tell this committee what you think. Good afternoon also to my colleagues and to the entire team.
2 p.m.
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette, QC
I would particularly like to recognize Ms. Sansoucy, who is joining us today, and those in the audience. We are really looking forward to hearing your comments. That will happen at the end of this meeting. It is our main reason for coming to see you. It is an honour for me to be here in St-Pierre-Jolys and to meet a francophone community in Manitoba. Good afternoon to you all; I look forward to hearing what you have to say.
Mr. Kidd, Mr. Koop, your comments fit together in a way. My first question goes to Mr. Koop.
Mr. Kidd highlighted the need to reduce distortion. On several occasions, in fact, he said that the government had been elected with a majority, but with less than half of the votes cast, 39.5% actually.
In your opinion, should reforming the voting system reduce the distortion between the number of seats and the number of votes cast?
2:05 p.m.
Associate Professor and Department Head, Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
Yes, totally. Bringing in any kind of proportional system will reduce those distortions. Part of those distortions result from people not voting, and more people will turn out in a proportional system.
2:05 p.m.
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette, QC
So you are in favour of some kind of proportionality in the reform.
Did I understand you correctly?
2:05 p.m.
Associate Professor and Department Head, Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
Proportionality will have that effect, whether you get it under straight PR or under MMP. The system itself doesn't matter as much as the fact that you are getting proportionality. Yes, it will absolutely have that effect, definitely.
2:05 p.m.
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette, QC
Okay. Thank you.
Now I have a question for Mr. Kidd.
Mr. Koop made a point that I feel my colleagues relate to, as I do. We have a direct link with our voters. An average constituency gives us 100,000 people to represent. It is quite a challenge for us to be able to go and see those people, stay in close contact with them and, in addition, to do all the work that has to be done in Ottawa and in committee.
The model that you are proposing would increase the size of constituencies.
Is there not a danger that we would lose that direct connection?
2:05 p.m.
As an Individual
Yes, if you change the size of the ridings, you would have to decrease the number of ridings so that they would increase in size. Obviously, that would make representing the wishes of your constituencies more difficult. However, don't forget that the proportional seats in my model.... At least I would suggest that they be distributed according to regional criteria so that they would all represent different regions and provinces. Those seats could take on responsibilities of local representation just as easily, I think, as people who are representing individual constituencies. It wouldn't be quite as direct a link, but if the work were done to make sure they did represent local constituencies, it could happen.
This is an aspect of the model that I haven't really worked on very much. I have been more concerned about the mathematical distribution of seats and so forth, rigging a system that will be proportional, or quasi-proportional, and have all the other benefits I mentioned. Your question could also be addressed to anyone who supports MMP, for example, because in MMP half the seats are also proportional. How is it done in Germany? How is it done in New Zealand? These are not new questions there.
2:05 p.m.
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette, QC
Okay, thank you. I have one final question for you.
Why would the party forming the government, with a majority of the seats but a minority of the votes, want to choose a reform such as yours, given that it would take away that majority and its power?
2:05 p.m.
As an Individual
They probably wouldn't. How do I know what the Liberals are thinking? Clearly, there is a problem. You know, I am a former professor, and I have talked to a few people in the faculty of education here who know a lot more about politics than I do.
I favour PR in some form, my form preferably; it's a good thing.
Some of these people who are well-versed in political ideas have said to me they like the idea of reform but are we always going to have governments that are not majority? That seems to me that if you have any kind of a pure PR system, that's going to result. That's inevitable. That's the real problem that you as a committee have to face. If you're going to have PR, you're going to have minority governments, let's face it. But under my system you could conceivably have a majority with a minority of votes. It does work.
September 20th, 2016 / 2:10 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Thank you all for being here and thank you to the residents of St-Pierre-Jolys for joining us today. Thank you, retired Professor Kidd, for putting so much work into your proposal. I'm trying to ask a few more questions of Professor Koop first. I hope I'll have time to get to both of you.
I'm looking at some articles you wrote for the Ottawa Citizen. I wanted to pick up on one of the points you made in the article "No assembly required for electoral reform". I was interested in the observation there, and I'm hoping you remember it, of the notion of a referendum and the populist impulse it represents. You're quoting a professor from the University of Calgary, Rainer Knopff, in saying that it's one of twin threats to representative democracy. The other being strong party discipline.
I wonder if you could expand on that point, because there is a notion that somehow we must have a referendum. It comes up now and then. The question is in responsible government citizens elect members of Parliament and we're supposed to deliberate and within the sphere of things that Parliament can determine, we're supposed to decide them. I hadn't heard of Professor Knopff's theory, so I turn it to you.
2:10 p.m.
Associate Professor and Department Head, Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
I didn't know I was going to be involved in this particular debate today. The argument being made there was that MPs are representatives who are elected to make decisions on behalf of citizens. It's an indirect democracy. MPs should be making decisions on things like electoral reform and other important matters that change the electoral context in Canada, like party finance reform. They should be doing that rather than turning it over to a citizens' assembly or even a referendum.
The broader argument being made there is that there is an accountability issue here as well. If a party makes a promise in an election campaign, they should keep the promise and if they don't, they should be held accountable for that in a subsequent election. They shouldn't be allowed to say they figured they were going to do this but now they're going to give it to a citizens' assembly or they're going to turn it into a referendum.
That's the heart of the argument that I was making there. I was mostly talking about citizens' assemblies, but that would apply just as well to the idea of holding a referendum.
2:10 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
The other article I had found that you had written flows entirely into what you said today about the value of that local connection and people would not like politicians as a group but like the work of individuals. You wrote pretty boldly here that the single member plurality, which we usually call here first past the post, is “a truly awful electoral system”.
Is it fair to say from that if we can hang on to the local representation aspect so citizens don't lose that, the reform to a fair voting system, you would think from your studies that is healthy for democracy?
2:10 p.m.
Associate Professor and Department Head, Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
Yes. That's seen as a hook into an article saying there are all these problems with first past the post, disproportionality, all the things that come out of that. For that reason, it's got some really awful elements to it. It's got one thing that's really great about it and that's local representation. I don't want to give away too much. MMP of course is a system. If you can get local representation and combine that with proportionality, that would be a great outcome.
The problem with MMP is that you don't want ridings to get too big. You don't want to take away constituency MPs to create list MPs. It creates this real conundrum. Do we add more MPs—Canadians don't really seem to like that idea—or do we replace constituency MPs with list MPs, thereby creating massive ridings that then hurt the quality of local representation?
As to your statement, yes, if we can get some of these other good things like proportionality while maintaining local representation, that would be absolutely wonderful.
2:10 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
I'm tempted to suggest that you work with Mr. Kidd and help promote his idea, and we can see how that goes.
Mr. Kidd, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there's a unique aspect to what you're proposing for us today. You're the first witness I've heard and I think the first author I've seen address the issue that not only do the votes that go to a candidate who fails to win not count, but the votes you describe as superfluous votes don't count.
I've never actually put my mind to this notion that there are votes that aren't counted because you vote for the winner. The voter who votes for the candidate who wins, you really don't know if it was your vote that put them over the top or whether that vote was superfluous. You do feel general satisfaction with the election results to a higher degree than people whose votes didn't count because their candidate lost.
Has anyone else addressed this issue of excess winning votes?
2:15 p.m.
As an Individual
No, I've never seen it. I'm no expert, but I've never seen it in anything that I've read. I think my interpretation in this regard is quite unique. In regard to what the superfluous votes are and what the instrumental votes are, it's quite a fascinating question. I explained my system to somebody once and they said, “Does that mean that the people who come in the morning elect the constituency winner and the people who come in the afternoon, their votes are superfluous?”
The answer to that question is no. The distinction between instrumental and superfluous votes is actually just a theoretical artifact, a construct, in a way. All the winning votes partake a little bit of being superfluous and some are instrumental. It's just that it's a theoretical model that allows you to make calculations.
I like to compare it to the model of the atom that you're taught in chemistry class in high school, atoms spinning around a nucleus like a miniature solar system. Quantum physicists don't interpret the atom that way any more; they do it on the basis of probability theory or something like that. That's probably not the way atoms really look, but it doesn't matter because that model of the atom allows us to do an infinite number of things with chemistry and so forth.
That's what this is like; it's a theoretical construct. You have instrumental and you have superfluous. But no, they're all together like that.
Do you follow what I'm saying?
2:15 p.m.
Liberal
Sherry Romanado Liberal Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC
Thank you very much, gentlemen, for your presentations.
I would also like to thank the residents of the town of St-Pierre-Jolys for turning out in such large numbers.
Thank you so much for a warm welcome.
My question will be in English. Don't worry.
I was quite interested in reading—and it took me two times to read—your proposal, Professor Kidd, because I had to map out the math. As you said, probably most Canadians don't need to know the mathematical formula for calculating q and so forth. We've been told that most Canadians don't want to look under the hood to know how things are calculated. From a voter perspective, it's simple because you're just putting the X. The calculation portion would be the Elections Canada officer having to create that formula to do the math.
One area of concern that we've heard is that most Canadians are not very open to the idea of adding more MPs to the plate. In your model, you mentioned increasing that to approximately 350, so 12 additional MPs to map it out.
In addition to that, you didn't mention in your brief if you preferred closed list versus open list. You had mentioned both but you didn't specify.
Now, the flip side, Professor Koop.... This is a great joint presentation. Given the fact that local representation is so important to Canadians and it is one of the guiding principles, if we were to adopt a model similar to Professor Kidd's model, what would you recommend in terms of those proportional seats? You've done a lot of work with local representation. What would you recommend? If we were to do it by region, for instance the area of Montreal, the people who would be on the proportional list probably live close to the urban centre. If they were selected, you would have a whole bunch of MPs in that riding, but further north of Montreal or south of Montreal, you wouldn't have them. Also, how would that work in terms of representation, the parachuted candidates and so on? Could you elaborate?
2:15 p.m.
Associate Professor and Department Head, Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
I didn't read your proposal, so I'm not totally sure about it, but I can respond in terms of MMP. The question is, how you would actually elect the list MPs. Is it by province or by region? I'm not sure.
We do see situations where, if you have a region, you get a lot of candidates, say, from the urban part of the province or from the city. Parties usually have a vested interest in preventing that from happening, because it creates an opportunity for other parties to elect list candidates from the other parts of the province. So parties sometimes solve that issue on their own.
On the actual unit of election for list MPs, what we see in practice with list MPs is that they're less interested in geography than constituency MPs are. They take on different representational concerns, different foci representations. A lot of women list MPs see it as their job to represent the interests of women. People from certain groups take these different, non-geographically defined interests as the groups of people they would represent. This happens no matter what you use, province or region, and it's what we would probably expect to see in Canada as well if we had these kinds of list MPs being elected alongside constituency MPs.
2:20 p.m.
Liberal
Sherry Romanado Liberal Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC
I'll let Professor Kidd answer and then I have one quick question.
2:20 p.m.
As an Individual
On the question of open and closed lists, I personally favour closed lists, because if the parties get to choose who is going to be representing the proportional seats, they can make sure they're balanced ethnically, gender-wise, and even according to other criteria like professional expertise, and so forth. If you make open lists, then who knows who the people who are voting will put in there. There may not be any ethnic representation. I like the closed list; I do prefer that. I know Fair Vote Canada has said they like open lists, but I don't know.
Also, I should say that if the proportional seats are assigned regionally, then you wouldn't need a long list for Canada. All you would have to do is make sure that within each region, and this is if you had closed lists, you could have closed lists for each party so the people would know who they were voting for.
If you have open lists and they have to choose among them, then you're complicating the ballot. I like the X ballot, but if you want to have a right-hand side where they get to choose anybody who happened to win a proportional seat, that's your choice. Maybe you could do that, but that's complicating the ballot.