Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 21st, 2016

[Elizabeth Vandermeer]

I want to see much more outreach and education on the factual details of electoral reform. I'm very disappointed that sitting MPs were encouraged, but not obligated, to hold town halls on the subject. I applaud the work and the efforts of this committee. I've worked in public consultation all my career and I know how hard it is to get the information out, to get people engaged. If the media is not taking the initiative to cover this effectively, I believe that federal money should be going to make sure there is better coverage, so that the people who may be vaguely interested but are confused get better information and to encourage Canadians to regard this as an important issue.

I am concerned that the timeline that the committee is working in is going to make it very difficult to do this job effectively; the fact that it took such a long time for the committee to get up and running. I know these things take a while, but the fact that it took such a long time for me who was really curious to even find anything on the web about this was really dismaying, given the fact that you have to have your report in by December 1.

On those lines I absolutely oppose the idea of holding a referendum prior to implementing proportional representation or electoral reform. If need be, I think that the New Zealand model where they implemented it and then had a referendum after the fact, when people had actually seen how well it worked, would be a far better process.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

We have Andrew Stewart and then Jeffrey Edmonds.

Go ahead, Mr. Stewart.

[Andrew Stewart, As an Individual]

Hello. My name is Andrew Stewart.

Ten years ago this fall I served on the Students' Assembly on Electoral Reform, representing Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound. I was at the conference of high school students from across Ontario that ran parallel to the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform.

As a group we overwhelmingly agreed that proportional representation was important for Ontario, and our findings were similar to the citizens' assembly finding that mixed member proportional would be the best system. I still believe that would be an excellent choice for Ontario and Canada.

I campaigned for the change during the referendum, but unfortunately the vote was a week before my 18th birthday, so I could not vote in it. In that campaign I found great support for MMP among people who were informed about how the system worked, but the public awareness and education campaign around the referendum was too little and too late and the awareness just wasn't there.

As a committee I think you're empowered to make the decision without a referendum, but perhaps there is such pressure to have a referendum that you have very broad and long public awareness and education campaigns so people really know what they're voting for and really understand the issue, so they're not voting no just out of ignorance.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Goldstein, could you come up as well?

We'll go with Mr. Edmonds right now.

[Jeffrey Edmonds, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I'm a professor of computer science, and I'm impressed with how well you all sit and listen all day.

I have never had a person I voted for win, so I don't feel represented. I think it's important that everybody feels represented. What I'm proposing is to get rid of local ridings. Who I'm connected to in Canada is through social media, and the media is all across the country and it's not in my local riding. The advantage of that is you can have both parties and lots of independents run. The idea is that if one of those people gets one out of 338 fractions of the vote, then that person gets a win. In the various systems that I've heard about, you don't win until you get a third, or a fourth, or a fifth of the votes, but in this case you only need 0.3% of the votes to get a seat.

If you were to think about the topic that interests you the most and that you're most passionate about—maybe it's women's issues, or the environment issues, or pro choice, or black issues—then you can find somebody in Canada who you will feel represents you and can get 0.3% of the votes. That way everybody can feel represented.

There would be a huge list of candidates, but we can find them and learn about them through social media, through other media, and through political parties. You can still have political parties. I could vote for the head of the party, such as Trudeau, or a particular Liberal, and the fraction of them who get votes will still be proportionate.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Okay. You're in favour of proportional, that's the bottom line.

[Jeffrey Edmonds]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

I would invite Mr. Schreiner to come up as well.

Mr. Goldstein, please.

[Rhys Goldstein, As an Individual]

Thank you all for the important work you're doing.

I'd like to share an idea. Proportional representation requires fewer changes than most people realize. For example, we could stick to a single vote ballot because that's what we're used to. We could stick with a single tier of local MPs, and we could also avoid party lists. We could do all of that and still achieve proportionality.

There's one system that can do this, at least one. It's one of the five options in Prince Edward Island, and this is being looked at seriously. It's called dual member proportional. Here's how it works. You take the ridings, you make them twice as big, and each riding elects two local MPs. The first MP is the one who wins the most votes, just like now. The second MP in each riding is determined in a way that makes the overall results proportional to the popular vote.

I think this is a practical option. I like the fact that candidates will run in teams of two. Every party will nominate two candidates. I like that because I think that parties will try to nominate two candidates from two different demographics.

DMP is one of your options. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

If Mr. Arthur could come up, please.

Mr. Schreiner.

[Michael Schreiner, As an Individual]

Yes, hi. Mike Schreiner.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm the leader of the Ontario Green Party—

[Voices]

Hear, hear!

[Michael Schreiner]

Thank you. Not surprisingly I'm one of those 63% of Canadians who did vote for a party that wants to end first past the post. I'm one of 51% of Canadians who voted for someone who did not get elected to Parliament. As a matter of fact, in my lifetime I've never once voted in a provincial or federal election for the winning candidate. You would think with that history of futility that I would give up on the electoral system. Obviously, I haven't, but the reality is that far too many Canadians have given up on our electoral system. They believe it's unfair, that it's anti-democratic, and that their votes don't matter. You have a historic opportunity to fix it by bringing in proportional representation.

I want to thank you deeply for taking this committee around the country to engage Canadians. I want to live in a Canada where Parliament reflects the democratic will of the people, a Canada where Parliament reflects the diversity of this country, and a Canada where every vote matters and everyone has a reason to vote.

If you think about Canadian history, some of our most historic pieces of legislation have happened when people set aside their partisan self-interest and did what was right for the people of Canada. You have an opportunity to set an example for Canadians today, tomorrow, and in the future by bringing forward a proportional system and making sure every vote counts for now and for the future.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Would Sharon Sommervale come up to speak after Mr. Arthur?

Mr. Arthur, go ahead.

[David Arthur, As an Individual]

Thank you for this opportunity.

I'm obviously another advocate for proportional representation. Minister Monsef, at the town hall meeting in Kitchener, said one of the things she really wanted to happen was that Canada could be recognized as a model for democracies around the world. There are 85% of EU and OECD countries currently using proportional representation. Canada is one of the 15% that isn't, with gross distortions, frequently wasted votes, and all of the other problems that people had cited. We are not currently an example.

I would like to focus on two specific things that haven't been mentioned much so far. One of them is the business of a threshold. Most countries that use proportional representation obviously have a threshold. People talk about proliferation of a single issue and fringe parties and so on. One must remember that aside from the five major parties in the last Canadian election, 17 single issue or fringe parties gathered less than half a per cent of the votes.

That problem, I think, is somewhat exaggerated. A threshold of 5% has often been mentioned as being used in some countries. My feeling is that's too high. In the 2008 election, five million Conservative voters got 143 MPs, and almost a million Green supporters got zero MPs, instead of the 20 or so that proportional representation would have given them.

Five per cent is a fairly high threshold considering that. The threshold could be much lower and still be recognizing up to half a million—200,000 or 300,000—Canadians who deserve some representation in Parliament. That's a major consideration.

With regard to the various systems, whether they're STV with multi-member regions, MMP with top-up MPs in addition to the single-member constituencies—which has a lot to recommend it—an MMP, I think, is getting a lot of traction as something that would work in Canada.

The simulations that have been done using various systems and looking at all the results seem to be consistently showing that the larger parties gained proportional representation; the smaller parties often do not and are often still quite under-represented.

I am recommending that whatever system is used, and if it involves regions in order to use top-ups and so on, it be large enough to guarantee proportional representation. Proportional representations for larger parties and not for small parties is not proportional representation.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you so much.

Mr. Meslin, could you come up and speak after Ms. Sommervale?

Go ahead, Ms. Sommervale.

[Sharon Sommervale, As an Individual]

Thank you for the opportunity to address you this evening, it's an honour to be here. You've been listening to folks speak all day, so double thanks.

Expert witness Professor Wiseman, whom you heard in the early part of August, I think, described self-appointed electoral reform elites. Well, here I am; I'm one of those. But I would say that ER advocates aren't born; they're made. I became an electoral reform advocate on May 2, 2011, the night that Stephen Harper won his majority government. In his victory speech he said that Canadian values are Conservative values. That didn't really seem quite right, since 39.6% of the popular vote is actually 24.2% of the eligible vote. It's therefore not exactly the support of the majority by any means.

In the last five years I've become an electoral reform advocate and I've had the real honour and opportunity to speak with thousands of Canadians in my area, in high schools, university classrooms, community information tables, meetings and events of all sorts about our electoral system. In that time I learned that you can teach a 10-year-old how to use an MMP ballot in less than two minutes. I learned that many people see an MMP two-vote ballot as solving their problems. They say, “Great. I can vote for the candidate I like and the party I like. Super. That solves my problem.”

I learned that if you asked, “Do you think that 39% of the popular vote should result in 54% of the seats and 100% of the power?”, almost uniformly Canadians will say “No, that's not fair.”

There has been a lot of talk in the last couple of weeks about Canadian values. What are they? Do they even exist? I believe that the principle of fairness and equality is a fundamental Canadian value and a keystone in our democracy, and should be enshrined in our democratic system, which can only mean proportional representation. I would simply like to say one more thing—that's actually my thing about PR.

Only one more thing. Speaking to Ms. Romanado's point about whether the electoral system—you know, women, chicken, eggs, electoral system—not electoral system, but many people have encouraged me to run for office over the years. Would I like to serve the public good? Yes, absolutely. Would I like to participate in policy-making? Yes, very much so. Would I want to engage in a culture of adversarial politics? No way, José. Regardless of gender, an adversarial culture repels many good people. A renewed parliamentary culture based on collaborative and consensus policy-making—which is encouraged by PR—might draw different kinds of people to seek public office, and I think that would be a really good thing.

Thank you, everyone. Safe travel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

I'd like Gregg Hill to come up and speak after Mr. Meslin.

Go ahead, Mr. Meslin.

[David Meslin, As an Individual]

What she said—

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Meslin, go ahead.

[David Meslin]

Thank you so much.

We heard a few moments ago a new proposal for first two past the post. I'd like to propose the first 10 past the post. Pretty much everyone wins. There would be about 3,000 MPs and they could fit easily in the TD Stadium or the Canadian Tire Centre.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[David Meslin]

I just want you to explore that as an option.

On a more serious note, though, thanks so much for doing this. I've never seen an open mike like this for a federal committee. I think it's really innovative, and it's amazing for someone like me to be able to show up and speak to you. Thank you. It's really fantastic.

I've been working on voting reform for 15 years. I was involved with the 2007 referendum in Ontario, and I was the director of field organization for the 2009 referendum in B.C., on the yes side, so it's great to see this happening federally and to see a commitment from the federal party and from other parties to change the system.

I want to point out that not only is first past the post obscure within the OECD, we're actually the only country in the OECD that is using first past the post exclusively for all of our elections. No one else does it, just Canada. That's because it doesn't work very well, and that's acknowledged by other countries throughout the world.

I wanted to mention that in Ontario we just received legislation that allows for ranked ballots to be used in single-member districts, with a 50% threshold, or in multi-member districts using proportional STV. So this isn't something that's now obscure in Ireland or Australia; it's happening right here in Ontario. I hope you'll consider that proportional option.

I'm a huge fan of PR, either MMP or STV. You've heard from millions of people, though, who have said that, so I'm not going to emphasize that. I hope you do come to a consensus on some “Made in Canada” PR model. If you can't, though, which seems quite possible considering who's around the table, I want to urge you not to walk away and do nothing. I want to also urge you not to have a quick referendum with an uninformed population.

I want to throw two quick ideas out there. Two alternatives are having what I call a reform referendum, similar to the referendum we're having in P.E.I., except without first past the post as an option.

So the Conservatives and others are saying Trudeau might have a mandate to move beyond first past the post, but the Liberals can't pick their own system. Fine, let us pick the system. Have a referendum with MMP, STV, and AV. Don't have first past the post. Trudeau keeps his commitment, and the Conservatives' concern that parties shouldn't be rigging the system in their favour is all met. I think that would work. Do it in 2019, though; don't rush it. Spend millions of dollars on education, perform—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Okay.