Thanks very much for having me in for the work that you're all doing on this obviously pretty important issue.
I'm a political scientist who studies politics in Canada primarily at the grassroots. This includes party organization in the constituencies, but more importantly, how members of Parliament represent the constituents in their ridings. My research over the last several years has involved shadowing MPs in their constituencies while they go about that task of being representatives, unfortunately not with anyone around the table today, though.
This research and experience has given me a deep appreciation of the role of constituencies and of community in shaping politics in this country, and especially the practice of representation. I want to spend my time today talking about local representation. I want to first talk about the centrality of local representation and service to politics in Canada, and then talk about the implications of this for the deliberations of the committee. There are other good things that electoral systems can help bring about, like gender equity, like proportionality, but I'd like to focus, given my own research, on local representation.
It's difficult to overemphasize the importance of local representation in a country both as expansive and diverse as Canada. Under the current electoral system, every citizen has a representative with some linkage to their local community, oftentimes very deep linkages, deep roots in their communities, and there's no doubt about who that representative is. Every Canadian has a direct local link to government, and their MPs arrive in Ottawa with distinctively local experiences that in sum reflect the diversity of the nation as a whole. Canadians expect their MPs to carry the unique views, needs, and concerns of their constituents from the communities of their ridings to Ottawa, and act upon them there.
MPs think that being attentive constituency MPs helps them get re-elected. We know from survey research that this is right. Canadians are generally dissatisfied with politics, but dig deeper and a paradox is revealed. Canadians are dissatisfied with the performance of politicians as a group, but oftentimes they're quite delighted by the performance of their own MP. How do we explain that? It may result from the representational work and the local visibility of MPs in their own riding, so this is a crucial and important part of democracy in Canada.
How does it impact on the deliberations of the committee? Local representation is often rightly seen as a strength of our current electoral system. Single member plurality, as the name suggests, organizes the country into relatively small ridings, gives each riding an MP, most of whom have a very strong link to the communities of the ridings. But other electoral systems also contain elements of local representation. A ranked ballot system, for example, would similarly preserve single member ridings in Canada. So, too, would MMP, a mixed member proportional system. This electoral system preserves constituencies and maintains constituency MPs, but it also adds list MPs, which brings about proportionality. If the committee wanted to maintain constituency representation, while also bringing about proportionality and all the good things that come with that, maybe the easiest way to do so would simply be to add 30 MPs who would be elected on party lists, while leaving all the constituency MPs alone. Cutting back the number of constituency MPs to make room for list MPs would hurt the quality of constituency representation.
STV, the single transferable vote, changes the nature of local representation by introducing ridings with multiple MPs. It doesn't necessarily hurt the quality of local representation, but it certainly does change it.
Ridings would tend to become quite large under STV. This was a consideration in the referendum campaign in British Columbia, after the citizens' assembly concern about ridings becoming larger. This is also a consideration for proportional representation systems, which would create problems for local representation as well.
In closing, I've seen the special representational bond built between MPs and their constituents in Canada. It's a bond that's nurtured by our current electoral system, the single member constituencies. I hope the committee would keep that relationship in mind when exploring alternatives to the current system or deciding to stick with the system as it is now.
Thank you very much.