Okay. We'll—
Evidence of meeting #29 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 young.
Evidence of meeting #29 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 young.
2 p.m.
Liberal
2 p.m.
Professor Emeritus of Economics, Concordia University, As an Individual
You look at the party and you see how many seats they got. Let's say they got 40% of the seats. You look at the party and you see how much of the vote they got. Let's say they got 50% of the vote. You divide the 50 by 40, and you get a weight of 1.2.
2 p.m.
Liberal
2 p.m.
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Thank you to our witnesses and everyone else who is here to partake in and listen to the proceedings this afternoon and this evening as well.
Professor Nikolenyi, I wanted to touch base. You made a number of statements that caught my attention in regard to some of the three different options you put forward to us. One of them was that the PR system would create greater turnouts but provide weaker governments. Then you mentioned that it's more complicated; it may be easier to use, but it's tougher to administer under an STV. Can you make a few comments and expand on those statements?
2 p.m.
Professor, Department of Political Science, Concordia University, As an Individual
Sure. Thank you very much.
When we talk about a weak government, we need to be careful, so let me nuance that particular claim.
PR typically leads to avoiding a majority parliament. In other words, if there is a party that wins a majority of the votes, PR will reflect that, but that's rare. What normally tends to happen is that you have an undominated legislature, which is a legislature with no single political party having a majority. Then you need to either form a coalition government or have minority governments.
Whether a coalition government is going to be weaker than a single party majority government is a function of many variables. Two or three political parties that are cohesive and that are ideologically close to each other on various policy dimensions may be no less strong and no weaker than a similarly united, strong, single party majority government. Whether a coalition government is weaker or not is a matter of how ideologically aligned the coalition parties are.
What I do want to stress, though, is that the preponderance of such coalition situations is far greater with proportional representation than with the plurality or majoritarian system. It's not that there are no exceptions, because there are.
With respect to the single transferable vote, there is a reason it has been popular as a proportional choice in the Anglo-Saxon electorate and political world. It's largely because it preserves local representation, and largely because the identification of the voter with the candidates continues. That remains, but it gives you choice. In contrast to the alternative vote, it does become proportional because each district has multiple seats assigned to it, so you are able to allocate and offer proportional rewards among the candidates of the various parties in reflecting the number of votes they have received.
The transferring of the votes when you start calculating the votes of candidates who didn't qualify and who are not meeting the electoral quota—which is a term that's used in order to determine whether a candidate is entitled to those seats—becomes complicated, but that's a question for administration. Our colleagues in Australia know more about it than anybody else. You can get around that. Australia offers instructive lessons in that regard by giving the opportunity for voters to essentially entrust their choice to a political party.
2:05 p.m.
Conservative
Larry Maguire Conservative Brandon—Souris, MB
Thank you. I have one more question.
There are going to be trade-offs in regard to whatever change might take place, or finally comes out in the report, or is voted on by Canadians, or however it is implemented. You mentioned the coalition governments, and it's my experience that those are weaker than a majority government, as far as direction from the country goes. There's perhaps more enticement for spending and to have some other things get out of control that don't in majorities all the time, although sometimes it does. Do you see the mixed proportional process or any of these other options leading to the formation of more parties? We're talking about present parties that are here now as coalitions, but what about the formation of more parties in society today? What are your comments on what impact that has on future governments as well?
2:05 p.m.
Professor, Department of Political Science, Concordia University, As an Individual
Yes, the more proportional the system gets, the greater the number of viable parties there are going to be. That means there will be alternative new associations capturing new interests that may proceed, because now there's a realistic chance for them either directly to penetrate the system or by forming coalitions with other organizations to do so. So the answer is yes, I would certainly see a greater partisan fragmentation and proliferation of parties if a more proportional system were adopted. The more proportional the system that's adopted is, the more I think that would be the case.
September 23rd, 2016 / 2:05 p.m.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.
I thank our witnesses as well.
And on behalf of my Acadian and Brayon brothers and sisters from New Brunswick, I'd like to thank all the people from this lovely community who are with us. I'm very happy there's a window in our room, so we can enjoy the beautiful landscape on offer.
Thank you, everyone.
Professor Nikolenyi, I'll start with you.
In your testimony, you referenced the 2011 New Zealand referendum as demonstrating a desire by New Zealanders to move away from MMP. I note that in the referendum 58% voted in favour of keeping the current system.
Is there more evidence to suggest, in your research, that New Zealanders are seriously considering this, or is it similar to what we hear today where you have swaths of people arguing that we must have electoral reform, and you have many others arguing that there is no need, and you have every shade of opinion in between?
2:05 p.m.
Professor, Department of Political Science, Concordia University, As an Individual
That is a great question. Thank you very much.
Yes and no. The point there was that New Zealand was an example to illustrate that. Even a country that has adopted the most successful MMP system, that being Germany, and by successful I mean in terms of longevity, seriously considered putting it on the menu of options in the referendum for change. There were reasons why they got to that moment. It didn't start with the referendum.
I mentioned earlier that the first institutional efforts to remedy some of the pitfalls of the new system had to do with the introduction of the electoral integrity legislation, because New Zealand wasn't prepared for some of the intricacies of coalition or governance that paralyzed their parliament soon after the introduction of the new system.
The central point I want to drive home there was less about New Zealand and more about the system. If you look at some of the important publications—and I would be very happy to submit those to the clerk for future reading—they surveyed how attractive mixed member systems were just about 15 or 16 years ago. They don't seem to have that appeal anymore. Many of them are gone and have been replaced. Whether you look at new democracies, and certainly that's where they were the most prominent, or you look at Italy and Japan, the countries that experimented with mixed member systems in the early 1990s, they didn't stay, and New Zealand seemed to fall into that.
2:10 p.m.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
Thank you very much.
You spoke about the electoral integrity and the potential for legislation there. It brings me to a subject that I want to give you a chance to answer on, and then on that subject, I will have a different question for Professor Breslaw.
My colleague Mr. Aldag mentioned this. Is there an element of accountability woven into the idea of a member of Parliament being able to leave a political party on moral grounds or on a matter of integrity that they perceive, and do they have some relational accountability to their constituency?
Also, on the matter of accountability within this system, is there a psychological barrier or a real barrier to the notion that I, as a representative for Fredericton, could vote a certain way and then have to explain to my constituents that I tried my best but my vote was worth only 0.73%, whereas the vote of so-and-so from somewhere else was worth 1.3%? I would contest that there are matters on which parties do not necessarily vote as a bloc and they are matters of regional contestation and of competing interests.
Perhaps we could split the time left equally to answer those two questions.
2:10 p.m.
Professor, Department of Political Science, Concordia University, As an Individual
Very quickly, thank you very much. That question is very, very dear to my heart and central to my current work, as a matter of fact.
There is good reason why Edmund Burke, a few hundred years back, speaking to the electors of Bristol, actually argued something very similar to what you said. When you elect your representative, he should be free. He should be your agent, representing according to his wisdom of expertise what he thinks is best for the constituency.
You would think, and you should think, that should include the right to cross the floor, to leave a party if that can be defended on justifiable grounds to accord with the changing needs and preferences of the constituency.
The problem is that in the intervening more than 200 years, political parties have developed—functioning, modern political parties. When you have a functioning party system, that accountability, the linkage that you so eloquently described connecting the voter and the representative, gets complicated and becomes triangular, because all of a sudden you have a political party that also galvanizes interest, that also wants to capture the preferences and the interests of the voters, and that also has the representatives to become the representative. That direct connection becomes triangulated.
That's why countries and parliaments around the world, and more and more of them, are grappling with this issue.
2:10 p.m.
Liberal
2:10 p.m.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
Could I allow Professor Breslaw to answer it very briefly, around the notion of accountability—
2:10 p.m.
Professor Emeritus of Economics, Concordia University, As an Individual
Are you married?
No? Okay. So you've not yet learned the real idea of compromise.
2:10 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
2:10 p.m.
Liberal
2:10 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
2:10 p.m.
A voice
I think we need more time.
2:10 p.m.
Liberal
