Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 20th, 2016

[Dirk Hoeppner, As an Individual]

Hi. My name is Dirk Hoeppner. Like Gina, who was speaking to you earlier, I'm from Charleswood. I, too, know what it's like to not be represented in my own riding.

You guys were talking earlier about various forms of PR, such as mixed member proportional and I believe the professor's made-in-Canada model as well. A couple of things you guys talked about were discussed in such a way that I got the idea you found them to be drawbacks to the system, whereas I see them as potentially beneficial. One of those was the issue of local representation, which you might find is a little more difficult when you have the extra seats being filled from party lists. One thing not really discussed here was the single transferable vote, which is another means of doing sort of the same thing.

With the larger ridings that you'd be having, of course managing those ridings would be a little more difficult. But if we're using multi-member ridings with regard to local representation, I would suggest that you might want to consider the fact that you get more than one MP to speak to who can represent you. Your riding might be bigger, but let's say you're a Green like me, or something like that, living in a Conservative riding...or I guess now it's Liberal federally. I don't feel as though I'm represented. If we had a larger riding, and let's say a Green got in, or perhaps in one part of the riding an NDP person got in, I could go to that MP.

For those of you who aren't being represented, or for those of us whose votes are being thrown away under first past the post, something like mixed member proportional or single transferable vote or what have you would potentially mitigate that problem by giving you more representation or more optional representation.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Wyndels, would you please come up to microphone two.

[Anita Wyndels, As an Individual]

I'll pass.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Okay, thank you.

[Anita Wyndels, As an Individual]

Mr. McKee.

[Bruce R. McKee, As an Individual]

Thank you.

My name is Bruce McKee. I'm from north of St. Adolphe, which is just south of Winnipeg. I'm part of the Provencher constituency, which is very large. I want to thank the chairman, the MPs, and staff for coming today to be part of Provencher and to see our beautiful countryside here. I'd like to welcome you and thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak.

I want to encourage the committee in these meetings to maybe advertise this more broadly. I was surprised not to hear this morning on my local radio station 1250 that this meeting was taking place. I would like my fellow constituents across this riding to have the opportunity to be part of these meetings, which I think are very valuable. I just want to encourage you to make sure it's well advertised. I also want to encourage you to advertise the online questionnaire so that you get a good broad spectrum of what the people want to see in these types of talks and considerations.

I want to very much encourage you to make sure that before changing anything, you get this right. We should stick with the current system, which has served us well for over 100 years, until we're convinced that this is right and Canadians have given voice, to give you an okay for you to proceed, through a referendum. I think this is the best and most acceptable way to continue and to bring this to a point where Canadians have felt that they have had their say and have confirmed that this is the right way to proceed.

I want to thank everybody for the time you've spent away from your families and loved ones to do this across the country, and to affirm what you're doing in Ottawa. You're serving your country, your nation, and your constituents, and I just want to thank you for that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much for your kind words of encouragement. We appreciate them.

Finally, we have Mr. Mayer, and then Mr. Jag.

[Charles J. Mayer, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to echo what the previous presenter just said. We are all in your debt, because you choose to serve our country. We all do that in our own way.

Let me make three brief comments. I heard today that the system we have is a time warp; let's come up with a model, try it out, and make sure it works, and it's simply time for change.

We will celebrate, a year from now, our 150th birthday. By any measure, this country shouldn't work. If you go from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland, it takes you almost a third of the way around the world. You get to Minsk, which is halfway between Warsaw and Moscow. We are an improbable country. We cover five geographic regions. We don't have a common language. We have several time zones, five, six, seven, depending on how you measure it. We don't have common geography. We don't go back thousands of years in history. Yet in 150 years we've become one of the most, if not the most, desirable places to live in the world.

My contention, as us old farmers say, is that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Unless you can come up with something that will show us how it will be better.... I'd very much like to hear from the committee how you think it will improve.

Also, if you take away the direct vote, my sense of it is this. I ran for office five times and was elected four times. The last time I ran third and the voters sent me home, but that's another story. If you take away our direct vote, my sense is that voter turnout will go down. I haven't heard anybody talk about voter election turnout in provincial, municipal, urban areas. They are way down. By any measure, people should be in a better position to understand those issues as opposed to federally, when we talk about fiscal and monetary policy and everything else. Voter turnout is way down in those areas.

Unless you can come up with something that improves everybody voting, I think voter turnout—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you—

[Charles J. Mayer]

Can I make one last point?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Go ahead, one last line.

[Charles J. Mayer]

The last thing to say is that there is no perfect solution. We know that. Somebody said that the best solution is a benevolent dictator. Lord Acton, over 100 years ago, put that to rest when he said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

There is no perfect system, but ours is as close to it, as we have it now, as we'll ever get it.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much, and thanks for your service to Canada. We appreciate that.

Finally, Mr. Jag.

[Gavin R. Jag, As an Individual]

I'm Gavin Jag. I'm from Saint Boniface in Winnipeg.

I would like to see a change. For my generation—I'm 39 years old—a lot of my friends don't even go out and vote anymore, because we find our vote is not really counting. We're making a statement of who we want, but we're not seeing representation in the Canadian government. It would be nice if there were some system of proportional voting so that when I vote for the Green Party or for another little guy, we would at least have some representation, somebody who will listen to us.

For the people who say it's not broke, well, that's because the people they want are in power. No kidding it's not broke—for them. It's broke for me and it's broke for my generation. We're not even going out to vote. What's the point if I go out and vote and there's no one to hear me?

So it would be really cool, and more of the younger people would go out, if they were heard. Then they'd have someone they could talk to.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you. You made the point that there is some frustration out there.

We appreciate all the views we've heard today. It's been great to be in your town again. I've been here before, and it's great to be here again. Thank you for having us. Thank you for listening to the testimony and to our questions. Have a great day.

Just as a reminder, we have a deadline of December 1 to table a report in the House. It will be available on the web.

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

I think our analysts feel stress every time we talk about the deadline here.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

The point I'm trying to make is that you'll have some good reading material available around that time on the web.

Thank you very much.