Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 21st, 2016

[Diane Bergeron]

I believe it was in 1937 that blind people were actually given, through law, the right to vote, so I think we started a long time ago with getting that process forward. We just haven't been able to find a way to have it happen in secret and independently.

Technology is humongous. There are many electronic systems we are able to use through audio, electronic Braille displays, and other types of devices. People who are even deaf-blind can use electronic Braille displays in some of these systems.

Online voting is also very important. Again, it should be accessible, through things like ZoomText, JAWS, and other screen-reading software and technology for electronic Braille.

It also helps with the issues around transportation. People who are blind or partially sighted living in rural or remote areas have no way to get to the polling stations to do their voting. That is a big issue, but if you have access to the Internet and the ability to use your equipment.... Using your own equipment—the equipment you are used to and not the equipment where somebody says, “Here, try this”—would be the best way to do it, keeping in mind, of course, that we understand this system has to be safe.

The majority of the people I know who are blind or partially sighted in Canada do online banking and online taxes. We do so many things online, and yet somehow we just can't seem to get the system in place to allow people to use their adaptive equipment with their own computer technology.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thanks very much.

Monsieur Rayes, go ahead.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair

Ms. Stephenson, you mentioned the importance of local representation. I completely agree with you on that. You say that it is essential and that people want to keep it. Proponents of the change are proposing a mixed member proportional voting system, but we see some tension between local representation and the representation in Parliament, which reflects more the percentage of votes won by all the candidates in all the constituencies.

According to you, is there a mixed member proportional voting system that would help us keep our local representation? Or do we really have to consider increasing the number of MPs in the Parliament of Canada?

[Laura Stephenson]

A mixed system isn't my recommendation at this point, just because of the types of MPs that are created, the two different classes of MPs. I think that we would have to look—if you were moving to any kind of multi-member system—at having either small districts, and then increasing the number of MPs, or slightly larger districts by merging some together. It is possible to do, obviously, and it has been done in the past. It is a bit difficult sometimes, with some of the larger ridings that already exist given our geography, but I think it is instantly doable. It is just a matter of deciding what principles we want to put forward for that type of representation.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Thank you.

You also mentioned that, in the case of representation that better reflects the make-up of the population—more women and minorities represented in Parliament—changing the voting system would not necessarily improve the situation. Could we, through tangible ways in elections, improve the representation of minorities, women and people with disabilities in Parliament without actually changing the voting system? Can you give me one or two examples?

[Laura Stephenson]

What it comes down to is that parties put forward candidates, and then the voters choose among those candidates. If there were laws or incentives, let's say, put in place for parties to have more diverse slates of candidates, that would improve the representation as we have it. There are a lot of concerns about simply having candidates put forward. If we had a quota that there had to be 50% female candidates, for example, and that if a party did not reach that quota it would lose some of its financial support from the government, that would be a fairly concrete way of making sure that it happened.

The other thing would be where they have placed candidates. Even when you do have equal numbers, there is something called a sacrificial lamb—the idea that you would place the candidates from under-represented groups in ridings that you are unlikely to win. That is also part of the problem. When it comes to the root of how you improve representation, I believe it means you have to improve the representation among the candidates themselves. That isn't necessarily a system-dependent issue; that's wider.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

You have studied and written about referendums. A number of people are opposed to submitting the question to Canadians and asking for their opinions on the matter. If people vote against the proposal for a referendum, does that automatically force us to maintain the status quo? According to you, if there were a referendum and it were rejected, would it be because people are resistant to any change? Could it simply be because they are happy with what they have?

[Laura Stephenson]

It's always difficult to try to interpret the outcome of any referendum. There's an issue of information and there's an issue of the limited amount of time that voters have or want to put into learning about an issue. It's very hard to know.

We do know that when referenda fail, we often find that it is related to the fact that people don't know much about an issue. Mobilization is important. Turnout in any election is important, and we know that if people don't turn out to vote, they can't support an issue. If you are in favour of an issue or feel passionately about an issue, you're more likely to turn out. If you don't, then you're not going to get there. If you like the status quo, then you're less likely to invest the time to go out.

It's hard to say that a failed referendum is actually a vote for the status quo, even though that's what happens, in effect, but I do think that for any referendum the value of it needs to really depend upon the amount of information that is circulated about that issue, and on how informed the public is in order to cast their ballot.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Mr. Cullen now.

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

Thanks, everyone, for being here.

Professor Stephenson, are you aware of Bill C-237? It's been put forward by my colleague Kennedy Stewart. It's called the “Candidate Gender Equity Act”. What it would do is link existing public subsidies for political parties to gender equity measures.

When parties run and spend money, they get a subsidy. This bill would suggest that parties that seek parity would get full refunds, and for those who choose not to or are unable to, there's a degrading of that subsidy. That's essentially what the bill does.

Is that in line...? You've made some comments about incentivizing.

[Laura Stephenson]

That would be right in line with what I was saying.

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

Good. I'll give you a petition.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

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

As for the state of affairs, as Ms. Dasco pointed out, we're 64th in the world for women in Parliament. I'm going to focus on this because I believe this is our first all-female panel. It only took us 27 meetings to get here, but we got here. Twenty-six per cent women in Parliament right now is 2% better than the American Congress. We shouldn't be too smug about ourselves.

We have evidence to suggest that changing a system to a proportional system sees about a 3% to 5% improvement. It's not the whole solution, though, but yet a no-brainer, if that's one of the goals and if you care. As Ms. Dasco said, women have different opinions than men do. I'm going to take that as expert testimony. Then you should care about only a quarter.... Our Parliament doesn't look like our country, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

Is there any particular field of policies...? I'm trying to get this through the eyes of the voters. If we change the system, what does the voter get out of it? How does their world change? How does their world get better or worse? Particularly around the issues of policies and being able to nominate and elect women to Parliament, what are the policy gaps that you think would need most earnestly to be addressed?

[Donna Dasco]

Mr. Cullen, it certainly is true from the research I've done as a pollster that there are a number of issues in which men's and women's opinions tend to differ. I would say those cover areas such as spending on health care, for example, and social services in general and those kinds of issues. Women tend to be more supportive of those kinds of programs in almost all polls that I've done at the national level, and we find that at every other level.

One area that people are not really aware of where we find very significant gender gaps is in attitudes towards military. For almost every question we've ever asked about military spending or about taking action in various theatres around the world in a military sense, women are less supportive than men of almost every endeavour in spending on the military. It's an area that I don't think a lot of people are aware of, but there are most certainly gender gaps.

The idea here is that if women are not represented equally, then those views may not be represented as they should be, that being one of the arguments to increase the numbers of women in our parliaments, because these are views that may not be heard as much as they should be if women aren't there. Of course, the first argument is that it is a matter of fairness. It's a matter of democratic representation. We're talking about our democratic institutions. We're talking about decisions that are made and that affect the entire society and the entire country.

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

It's not the board of the local curling club, which is important—

[Donna Dasco]

Exactly. It's not your bridge club or your tennis club. I don't really care how they are run, although I would like to see women there too. But we're talking about our Parliament, and decisions are made there that affect everybody. For women not to be there in fair numbers is a failing of our system, in my view.

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

Thank you.

Professor Stephenson, you talked about local candidates mattering. I don't know whether you heard the earlier testimony and the reassurance that this committee was guided to only pick systems that maintain a local presentation, a local connection between a community and a member of Parliament.

Do you feel assured about that, or do you remain concerned that we're going to come up with some sort of system that breaks that link?

[Laura Stephenson]

I wasn't particularly concerned that it would be broken, because I think everyone agrees with it. The point I wanted to make was that PR systems have enough variance that sometimes that link can also be maintained.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Ste-Marie, the floor is yours.

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

Good afternoon. Welcome, everyone.

I'll start with a comment to Diane Bergeron. By the way, you have the same first and last name as my grade 6 teacher, who was an extraordinary teacher.

Your testimony is very moving—I think I am speaking for the group. It is incredible to hear that, in your entire life, you have never been able to vote properly and confidentially in a federal election. I think that needs to change. We have taken good note of that today.

However, I will express some concern about online voting, which might eventually lead to fraud. We have heard a lot about cybersecurity, intimidation, identity theft and even vote buying. So we must remain cautious on that front.

I now have a comment and a question for Ms. Dasco.

The fact that we don't have 50% of the elected representatives in the federal Parliament and in the other levels of government speaks partly to the failure of the voting system, but primarily to the failure of our society. A host of measures need to be considered. This needs to change. I think the private member's bill from my colleagues' party is a step in that direction.

I would like to ask you more about the system put forward by Kim Campbell, who was actually in the only party that had perfect equity, with as many men as women. As we may recall, she was elected with Jean Charest at the time. In her model, the size of the ridings would be literally doubled and there would be two representatives. Is that correct?

[Donna Dasco]

That is her proposal, yes. Of course, the ridings could be larger than they are today, but each riding would have two representatives, a male—

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

Would there be some sort of proportional representation, which would still be difficult to achieve with two representatives only, or would there be a risk to have a man and a woman from the same party?

[Donna Dasco]

I don't think her proposal has proportionality in it. I've spoken with her many times about this. I'm not the best person to relay her point of view, but I don't think it had proportionality. She felt that such a system would fit very closely with what we have right now, and it might include larger ridings, but it would essentially just double the number of members of Parliament—but it wouldn't necessarily double it, if you made the ridings larger.

That, essentially, as I recall, is her proposal. She's spoken about it very extensively, and she feels that it would fit Canada very well, although it does not have proportionality as part of the proposal.

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

Thank you very much.

In closing, I would like to ask you a question, Ms. Stephenson.

You are absolutely right in saying that the devil is in the details. All the details of a possible reform could benefit some parties and hurt others. Unfortunately, partisanship may hide in the details. We take good note of that.

You talked about the importance of personal contact with the member. You said that the largest ridings, which would have between three and seven members per regional constituency, could be functional.

In your view, in a mega-constituency with, say, five representatives proportionally assigned, would the contact with them be good, given that the riding would be five times larger?