Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 20th, 2016

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

No, but we're talking about voting.

[Dr. Paul Thomas]

Right.

On the point about diverse representation in legislatures, I am all in favour of a more socially representative background for members. A critical mass of people from a certain background makes a difference in terms of the legislative output and so on. Now, it matters more to be around the cabinet table than to sit in the House of Commons in terms of where influence resides, but that's another problem.

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

I find that it depends on the minister and it depends on the MP.

[Dr. Paul Thomas]

I agree, it all depends.

However, there are other ways of doing it, a royal commission on electoral reform. Give the parties an incentive, or a rule even, to offer more balanced representative rosters of candidates in elections. There are a number of ways you can go at it. I'm onside with where you want to go. I'm just saying there's not one route and the electoral system is an indirect route.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We will continue with Mr. St-Marie.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

I also want to say hello to all the people in the audience. Thank you for coming in great numbers this evening. We look forward to hearing from you.

I’ll start with a question for you, Mr. Thomas. Don’t worry, I will not confront you as much as my colleague Mr. Cullen did, constructive though it is.

You suggested that we target three or four values to build on as we determine the next system. Let me throw the question back to you: in your opinion, what are the three or four key values?

[Dr. Paul Thomas]

As you can tell, I'm something of an institutional conservative. I'm not big into radical experiments with institutional and constitutional arrangements that have served the country fairly well. I would say that our system concentrates authority and power, and that way people take the credit or the blame for what they do. It's unlike the American system of divided power and checks and balances where accountability is diffused.

I like the idea of a local representative. I've already indicated that. That's a very high priority for me. I wouldn't sacrifice that.

I don't like the idea of two categories of members of Parliament. I could live with it. I like the idea that if you don't have coalitions or minority governments.... I'm not afraid of coalitions or minority governments. If we went the route of coalitions, we'd have to develop precedents and practices for that, and we don't have any experience with that. New Zealand had to develop that, so they have had supply agreements and confidence agreements among the parties since they adopted mixed-member proportional.

I like efficiency and effectiveness in government. I don’t want a prime minister to be able to say, “I would have given us a bold policy on climate change, but I couldn’t because my allies, my colleagues in the coalition, wouldn’t allow me to do that.” The Americans have a problem of too much dispersible power and authority. We have the opposite problem of too much concentration of power and authority. Again, as I said to Mr. Cullen, there are other ways to deal with that beyond the electoral system. I’m not saying no to electoral reform, I’m just saying you don’t put all of our eggs in one basket.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you very much.

I have a question for Ms. D'Aubin. Mr. Sosa, you may add something to Ms. D'Aubin's answer if you wish.

I think we have clearly understood your message, namely that access to polling stations, candidates and rooms—like this one, for example—is paramount. We must not overlook this; we must bear it in mind at all times. In my view, this value exists but we have to revisit it.

For instance, in our constituency offices, we are very strongly urged to provide access to people with reduced mobility. We must continue to move in that direction. This is a very important value. We all know people with reduced mobility and we can see the challenges they are facing on a daily basis. I believe we must implement measures to help all those people reach the polling stations. For the hearing and visually impaired, there must be special ballots or touchscreen ballots. Measures must be taken for them.

Ms. D'Aubin, I would now like to talk about voting by telephone, online or by proxy. My big concern with that is the possibility of fraud. As we know, there have been many cases of fraud in the past.

In some parties, malicious people are willing to do almost anything to win the election, including vote-buying or identity theft, even stealing the identity of deceased people. Can you imagine that? There may be undue pressure. It is difficult to monitor remote voting. When you step into a voting booth, it feels more like a solemn occasion and the level of oversight is higher.

In your opinion, is it possible to control fraud problems when the voting is done remotely?

If so, how can it be done?

[April D'Aubin]

I'm not a technology expert, so I don't have any recommendations on how to control fraud or to make it a secure system.

We believe that we need to persevere and try to develop a system that is barrier-free.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Ms. May.

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

I really do appreciate so many people from Winnipeg coming out tonight.

I wanted to start with the Council of Canadians with Disabilities. This is a concern we haven't had raised. As you know, this is our 26th meeting. We haven't heard very much from your community. I really want to take advantage of your experience and always be mindful of “Nothing About Us Without Us”. Thank you very much for being here.

I'm wondering about the experiment that you told us about, Ms. D'Aubin, in which they attempted in a by-election to try out new technologies. This is very consistent with what Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand told the committee he might be interested in doing with online voting, perhaps a specific experiment, maybe in a by-election, looking specifically to a community that might benefit.

What lessons would you like to share with us? I can't predict what my colleagues on the committee will want to recommend. I think it's very unlikely we would recommend something that the Chief Electoral Officer has told us is simply not on, such as widespread use of online voting by the next election. However, a targeted experiment, a pilot project, is quite likely.

What can we learn from this experiment in Winnipeg?

[April D'Aubin]

One of the things that we learned was that replicating the paper ballot made it a very difficult test. Each ballot was to look different, so that the people who counted wouldn't be able to tell that this had been done by the machine versus something that people had marked themselves.

I think we need to have reasonable expectations of what we're looking for. Is it really reasonable to replicate squiggles in people's writing style? That's one thing we need to be looking for.

Also, if you're working to make it for people with disabilities, then involve people with disabilities right from the very beginning stages and throughout the process, so that it's not that they come in after you've selected a device to test. You start right at the very beginning stage and involve that community so that you have an idea of all the concerns from the get-go, when the test is designed.

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

It strikes me, too, that we might jump to online voting as a solution without exploring other ways in which we could reduce the barriers for people with disabilities to vote, because a lot of the ones you mentioned aren't technological at all. They're access to transport, the costs involved, the accessibility and location of polling stations—all of those things.

Of course, there's also the additional ID requirements, which I personally think we should remove. I think it creates a barrier that makes it particularly difficult for certain Canadians to vote. I don't think we ever had a problem. I've always said that the idea that we had to prove who we were before we could vote, as if we had widespread voter fraud in Canada.... Our problem isn't that people vote more than once. Our problem is that people vote less than once.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

I don't really know why we needed all that extra security.

In pursuing that, could you identify any ideas that we can implement quite easily, without new and untested technology with security concerns, to improve accessibility and remove the barriers for people with disabilities to vote?

[Carlos Sosa]

I think this will take a longer-term approach. It won't be solved in one election. I think we have to realize that poverty is the major barrier here. If we don't deal with poverty, then how will we be able to vote? It's simply the act of getting to the polling station that's the issue, and there are so many barriers related to poverty right then and there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. DeCourcey.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all our presenters and to everybody who joined us this evening in hockey-crazed Winnipeg. On a night when Team Canada faces off against the U.S., it's great to see so many folks out.

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

We'll lose half the room now.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

The last update that flashed in front of me had the U.S. up 1-0 early in the first. Our combined will here will do us well tonight.

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

I hate winner-take-all hockey.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

But don't count that against me.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

The clock goes back to zero now.