Sure.
Evidence of meeting #27 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 women.
Evidence of meeting #27 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 women.
8:45 p.m.
As an Individual
My grandson just joined the military. He got his paratrooper wings. There's a lot of nonsense going on in the world. You guys right here may decide to send him into a hot spot. There'll be no referendum that could cause my grandson to lose his life. If you guys can send him into a hot zone that could take his life, then you can change the electoral system without a referendum.
Thank you.
8:45 p.m.
Voices
Hear, hear!
8:50 p.m.
Liberal
8:50 p.m.
Ryan Germann As an Individual
Hello, and thank you all for being here.
I learned about this very late, just today, and I don't have much prepared, like some of the previous speakers, but I think you can see the commitment to this issue that all of the people who have attended have expressed. I live down the block. People have come from a long distance. This is an important issue. To anyone who says it's a minor issue and no one cares, I challenge that. I care.
I voted for this, against my usual party, because I thought the candidate in my riding who had the strongest, clearest electoral reform message...it was a close call, but this candidate was the one who said more strongly, “We are going to change this system”. So I voted. I've never ever voted on a single issue before. That was my issue this time.
I will address a few comments, just my opinion, I guess.
I believe that the two major parties in Canada both benefit from first past the post. It's not just the Conservatives; it's also the Liberals. When the Liberal Party reluctantly kind of committed to it—and I don't think there were clear, strong statements from the Liberals until nearer to the election itself—that was when I thought, well, at least it wouldn't be terrible if the Liberals got in. I voted NDP. I usually vote Liberal, but I really wanted to see this issue addressed.
I'm wary of a referendum because of all the issues with the money in the referendums, the kind of messages, the confusion. People are apathetic and they don't always want to study and learn the rules. They just say, “Meh, whatever”. I have to admit that in my kind of demographic I benefit from the Liberals and Conservatives. Personally I benefit, but I see a lot of those policies that aren't beneficial to others, and that hurts me. It makes me feel un-Canadian when I see that.
If there is going to be a referendum, let it be a two-part referendum: Do you want to see change in electoral reform, yes or no? That's it. One question. If people say yes, well then, obviously first past the post isn't an option. Then you can present the other options perhaps as a ranked ballot.
I don't like the idea of a referendum. It scares me. But if there has to be one... Again I'm a bit wary because the Liberals do benefit from first past the post. So will this go through? I'm counting on you guys to make this really happen.
I've been listening for a while and it sounds as if the majority of those here, in this room, do want proportional representation. The people who are against it had their chance to be here and say so. If 51% of those people are here and were the majority and wanted to keep it, they'd be here, and they're not. So that has to say something about—
8:50 p.m.
A voice
They didn't get the invite; that's why.
8:50 p.m.
Liberal
8:50 p.m.
Liberal
8:50 p.m.
Raymond Li As an Individual
Good evening, committee. My name is Raymond Li.
Time is short and ideas are complex, so I must gloss over some details. Most of these ideas I have posted on Mr. Dave Meslin's website, 100 Remedies for Broken Democracies, so you can find out more details about it.
The first idea is that ranked ballots and proportional representation are not mutually exclusive. You can do both. You can have a ranked ballot, then you count everybody's first choice for the purpose of deciding which parties get how many additional proportional members for the purpose of proportional representation.
A gentlemen earlier said that he didn't want ranked ballots, because then his first vote doesn't count because he's voting for a minority party. This takes care of that, because the first vote still counts for the proportional representation part.
The second idea is a close runner-up to proportional representation. A couple of other speakers have already alluded to this. Instead of having a party put a list together of people who are not elected or running a campaign, the people who lose by the closest margin should get those proportional seats from the party that gets the additional seats. In this way, in the riding where the contests are the closest, you get that additional member. The second member, the proportional member as opposed to the elected member, is going to, in most cases in a divided riding, vote against the first one, and they will cancel each other's vote out, so you don't get that double vote. On issues that are of mutual consent in a riding, where everybody agrees, those two members from that riding will agree.
You can also end up with a person who wins by a squeaker. Should somebody who wins by one vote get the whole voice from that riding? No, if you win by only one vote, your opponent also gets in, and then the next election, both of you can campaign as incumbents.
I have more reasons for that, but I won't go into them now.
The final point, just a quick side point is, right now we announce vote counts in the east coast way before the polls close in the west coast. The electoral officer has said this is a problem in an electronic age, but you can't close that down. The simple solution to that—
8:55 p.m.
Liberal
8:55 p.m.
As an Individual
Don't announce the vote. You can count them in the east coast, but don't announce until the polls close in the west coast.
8:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
We will hear from Mr. Klimuntowski, and then Mr. Neacsu.
Please go ahead, sir.
September 21st, 2016 / 8:55 p.m.
Michael Klimuntowski As an Individual
Good evening, members of the committee, members of the public.
I'm not happy to be here. I don't want to be here. I'd rather be at home watching TV with my family, but I'm here. I'm here because I don't think hijacking our electoral system is a good idea. This isn't something the Trudeau Liberals campaigned on. It was relegated to a couple of bullet points in a campaign platform that numbered a couple of hundred pages.
If we're going to go about embarking on these kinds of reforms that will change the rules of the game, we should go directly to the people through a referendum, where all Canadians of the age of majority are able to voice their opinions. My parents left a country, where one party did rig the political process, and I don't want the Trudeau Liberals to rig our political process.
Go directly to the people. This is what I'm asking of you here tonight. I don't think this wonderful teacher, who said she speaks for her classroom of children, speaks on my behalf. I want a referendum. I think Canadians are smart enough to voice their opinion. I think you owe it to us, if you're going to change the rules of the game so fundamentally and with such grave implications, you should go directly to the people.
Thank you very much.
8:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you.
Please go ahead, Mr. Neacsu, and then after that Mr. Kenneth McCracken.
8:55 p.m.
Andrei Neacsu As an Individual
I just want to thank everybody for being here. I very much appreciate this opportunity for people to talk and members of Parliament to listen to us.
This is just a little background about me. I was born and raised in Romania in the late 1970s, and that involved being born in a dictatorship. So I know what being raised and living in a dictatorship means; I know what living in an undemocratic country means. So when I see that political parties can gain full control of the country with 40% of the vote, that to me is undemocratic.
It's very simple for me. Just pick up the dictionary and look at the definition of “democracy”. It involves the will of the majority, right? You get the will of the majority and then you implement the issues that the majority agrees upon. That's one point.
On the point of a referendum, with so little information, with so little education—I spent the summer just talking to friends, talking to people on the street, acquaintances, about the electoral system, and I've had many people literally ask me what first past the post is. If you don't understand the system that we have now, how can you possibly vote on whether you want change or not? I don't want to blame anybody; it just seems there's some sort of failure in the educational system maybe or, I don't know, engagement with people, and so on.
A referendum doesn't work when people don't fully know what's going on in the country and what it might change to. Perhaps, like many other people have said, a referendum afterwards might actually be useful when everybody knows what's going on.
Other than that, I don't know how mandatory voting would be enforced. It could lead to spoiled ballots. That's, I guess, something the committee could look into. Engagement in general, I think, should be promoted a little bit more, because people are just not aware of what's going on, altogether, on the street and so on.
9 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you very much.
We have Mr. McCracken and then Mr. Trevor Ball.
9 p.m.
Kenneth McCracken As an Individual
My name's Ken. I support proportional representation in any form, including the one that was mentioned using each column. That sounds okay to me.
A list of points came from Fair Vote Canada in research that's over 30 years. You probably have heard all these points, right, but a couple sort of stand out. One is prudent fiscal management. That is something Canadians seem to care about a lot. Anyway, that was the one that kind of stuck with me, but it's really an important thing for people, especially Conservatives apparently, not to waste money in this policy lurch thing that's going on.
The thing that happened is—this was my number one issue in the election—a few of us who are associated with Fair Vote Canada went to our politician, our representative, Julie Dabrusin, and she seemed to know nothing about the issue when we first went there. The second time she threw back some kind of talking points, kind of throwing out flack, I would say. The third time, I attended a town hall meeting a week ago in her riding, and she was very well informed. The audience was very well informed. It was overwhelmingly for proportional representation, although there was a status quo movement there—planted, I believe.
The thing is that, after the meeting, I asked her if she could send out the notice of this meeting, today, this most important meeting in Toronto, I'd say, to the people who attended that meeting and maybe even the constituency list. She said that was a good idea. A couple of days later, I reminded her about doing that.
9 p.m.
Liberal
9 p.m.
As an Individual
MMP seems to be the consensus; the other ones seem complicated.
All I can say is that it seems as if the Liberals, perhaps, are dragging their feet on this one. I've heard some comments from the House recently, saying that perhaps they're trying to make this process sort of just go through the process and they can afford to break this particular promise because there won't be a lot of people pushing back on it. And I think that's probably true.
Also, the liability—
9 p.m.
As an Individual
The point is that I believe the committee may come up with the recommendation for proportional representation, but will it actually create the kind of change that's been promised? I wonder.
9 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you.
Mr. Trevor Ball. Then the last speaker tonight is Mr. Kinsey Schurm.
Go ahead, Mr. Ball.
9 p.m.
Trevor Ball As an Individual
I'd like to start by saying that I think change is absolutely necessary. I think it's a travesty that the majority of votes cast in the last election were essentially ignored, and the majority of voters then did not have representation of their choosing. I think that's despicable.
Personally, I would support any form of proportional representation. It would be a massive improvement. But my preferred form of proportional representation would be single transferable vote. The reason is voter choice; it gives voters more power because they have more representatives to choose from.
Also, I don't think single-member districts are practical. I don't think it's reasonable to think that one person can satisfactorily represent every constituent of a riding. There will always be people on one side of an issue and on the other side of an issue within the same district. Single-member districts just don't make sense to me.