Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 26th, 2016

[John Streicker]

Thank you for the question.

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to answer in English.

I'm not as big a fan of lists. I actually like Dave's system, to a point.

Let me say one thing to begin with. If we have a system that's adopted, and the Yukon remains not...either first past the post or preferential, or whatever the base level is, it does not mean.... I heard Mr. Cameron's response, and I want to emphasize it. The Yukon would still participate, or can still participate, in the proportionality side of the question, especially if it is national proportionality.

Mr. Brekke's proposal is not really national proportionality, it's these subregions of proportionality. He's choosing a small granular size of about four, but as Mr. Reid points out, it could be much larger. You could use your electoral boundary commission to try to choose what regions form. I think he has very smartly chosen that you don't need to rejig the rest of the boundaries, right? You just use natural boundaries as they pre-exist.

In terms of the list, my favourite is to use local representation. Mr. Brekke and I sat down to discuss the system and to talk it out ahead of today in a couple of meetings. One of the things that I would prefer is that.... The way it works in his system is within that region, you would use proportionality and you would grab the highest vote for those parties of people who are not elected. It's great as long as...and the reason he keeps the number small is that you still get the local.

But you could have local; for example, you could come up with or you could choose to say—I'm the son of two math teachers, so bear with me for a second—that we'll do pairs of ridings, or threes, or whatever. Just combine the ridings, as he suggests, wherever it makes sense. Keep them standalone wherever it makes sense, because the Yukon is its own thing, or elsewhere. Then you could say, all right; proportionality, we'll ask for that vote, and we will maintain proportionality across the country while maximizing the local vote in each riding. There are a lot of combinations at that point, but the math can figure it out. What that would mean is that you would take the highest vote.

Now, some parties with a lower percentage of the overall vote would get picked, and they wouldn't have a high representation necessarily within those ridings, but you would get the higher numbers of those people. You would still have local representation.

I don't like the list system. So if you're asking me to compare the two, I would take Ireland.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have 25 seconds left.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

To ensure greater proportionality in Canada's north, in addition to the three members for Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, would it be conceivable to have a fourth member to help ensure election results reflected greater proportionality? The member would be a sort of super MP for the north.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[John Streicker]

Right. I've discussed this with Mr. Cameron and I've discussed this with Mr. Brekke. Honestly, I don't believe you are looking to grow the size of Parliament. I would be very happy, but you need to understand that it is not the “north”, it is the “norths”. It is plural. It's different. We have a sorority with each other, but it's not the same.

That proportional person is challenged in that they would be trying to travel...and if you talk to Larry about his travel, then you will understand that it is very difficult.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Monsieur Ste-Marie.

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

Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you for coming to meet with us today.

I'd like to start with a few comments for Mr. Streicker.

First, thank you for reminding us that the three northern territories, “the norths”, as you call them, cover 40% of Canada's land mass. That's something. We've certainly noted your desire to include proportionality in the reformed voting system while retaining local representation, particularly for “the norths”.

I have a question for you, Mr. Brekke. The model you are proposing wouldn't apply to the northern territories. Is that right?

[David Brekke]

It would apply all over Canada. I didn't get to this part, but perhaps I could say it now. For proposed additional seats, only three additional proportional seats would be required for the preferential ridings proportional system to provide proportional representation in all provinces and territories in Canada. However, my proposal is to give those additional seats to an area that is already overrepresented population-wise but very under-represented when geographical area is concerned. We would have three—

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

I have to interrupt you.

[David Brekke]

—proportional seats in the north.

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

What about the three additional seats for the Northwest Territories? It doesn't involve giving a seat to Yukon, a seat to the Northwest Territories, and one to Nunavut but, rather, three seats for the entire north. That is what your model proposes, is it not?

[David Brekke]

Yes, for the whole north. My concern is to have as many parties as we can representing the north.

I'm not afraid of the three Liberal members here, but you never know what could happen in elections in the north. I think it's good to have both government and opposition.

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

As one of my colleagues pointed out, one of the big questions around the model you are proposing has to do with the size of the regions where this form of proportionality would apply. You gave the example of the large Ottawa region, which would have six ridings. Those ridings would be reduced to three, and three other members would be chosen to represent the region. The number six is a model. Then, you talked about Toronto, which would be split in two. I'm not very familiar with Toronto, but I believe we are talking about 20 or so members in each of the regions. That way, a candidate who obtained 5% of the votes could be elected.

The rest of Canada has many rural regions, so there wouldn't be a standard model where each region had six members. I'd like to hear you comment on that.

[David Brekke]

I'm not sure of the question here. Basically what I'm proposing is that we would have four, six, eight, or ten in an electoral area. I call them electoral areas. We have to put them together so they are adjacent and so on.

In the Yukon, we had ten ridings in Whitehorse: four in the north, four in the south, and Vuntut Gwitchin was left as it is—just preferential voting.

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

I have another question for you.

Why opt for preferential voting over proportional voting? Under preferential voting, if I vote for the Green Party candidate, they get five points, and my second choice gets four points, according to the examples you gave earlier. Five versus four isn't much of a difference.

People in other cities told us that preferential voting was a good system when voting for a president or party leader because they were the one who would be establishing the consensus, but that preferential voting didn't allow for adequate representation of diversity in terms of parties or ideas.

Why not just vote for one member and then have three members from the region make up the difference between the seats and the votes received? It wouldn't be based solely on the first choices.

[David Brekke]

It's just that, to me, sometimes there are second-place candidates, or even third-place candidates, or fourth-place candidates, as far as first-choice votes go, who could be the most wanted or accepted candidate in that riding.

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

I would just like to point out that such a system doesn't favour representation of third parties but, rather, large parties of the centre.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Ms. May, over to you.

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

I am going to pursue asking some questions, and I am going to try to get to two topic areas in the five minutes that we have. I want to ask whether you would pick up on the proposal Kirk Cameron made about dedicated first nations seats, indigenous peoples seats. I want to come back to that.

I want to thank both of you for being here, and all the people in the audience, here in Whitehorse.

I am fascinated by your proposal, Mr. Brekke. I am excited about your system, but I am wondering if we can make some tweaks to it. First, let me just summarize by saying we have had one witness before us who talked about the Condorcet preferential system. It was Professor Eric Maskin from Harvard, and I like the way you have thought of using that for half the seats and PR for the other half.

Do you think you could wrap your head around the idea that the seats for PR, in your system of cutting the number of ridings in half, keeping the number of MPs the same, and doubling ridings as opposed to bigger clusters...? I'm following you so far. But could the second MP, who wasn't elected by a preferential Condorcet ballot, reflect the national proportional vote and still be taken from that cluster that makes them both local? If the NDP are short a few seats, we could even tweak it more and say that we are going to look for an NDP woman in that seat, or we are going to look for a Green Party indigenous person. We are going to use that second runner-up spot for not the person who actually came second in the riding but meeting proportional requirements across the country.

Is that a possible tweak to your idea, or would it violate some of the principles you were using as you put this together?

[David Brekke]

I don't think so, but the voting for the proportional seats is also preferential.

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

Right, but at the end of the day, you have a cluster of people who ran and didn't win that seat on that method, and you have a national vote that could potentially still be a false majority, for instance, as the worst-case scenario under our current voting system. To correct for that, we could use your model and tweak it a bit.

I am always looking at this made-in-Canada blended solution. I have to say that I am extraordinarily impressed by how many new ways there are to look at this. We think we have heard everything and then we hear from someone in Joliette who says, “I have an idea”, and we come to Whitehorse and have a completely new idea, so thank you. But I'll shut up about it.

Can we play with your system a bit?

[David Brekke]

Oh, I think so. I hope you will find the ideas in there helpful. I think they're very representative in terms of the effectiveness of the vote. When we did Canada, we did 138 ridings in 19 electoral areas, and they came out very well. I don't have the numbers before me, I am sorry to say, but it went from around 50% to around 80% to 90%. If you had people who voted with their second or third choices for the riding candidate, they would have elected someone too. I just want to see votes count.

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

I am going to turn to John Streicker on this one. I like your phrase that there will be “ridings that strongly identify as stand-alone”. We know that there will be a resistance—as was manifested in the Ontario referendum on mixed member proportional—to the idea of enlarging the size of Parliament, but we just added 30 seats in the last round. It seems to me that where you can't cluster ridings because of geography and culture and identity, a small fillip of three to five additional MPs in a House of 338 will not meet much public resistance, particularly where they have been added for purposes of proportionality, giving northerners a bigger voice and potentially, again, meeting the requirement that every Canadian should feel there is an effectiveness to their vote. If, God bless you, you're a perennial Yukon Green Party voter, you would eventually feel that you had made a difference, because it would affect the proportionality of the national allocation, and you might even end up with a Green Party northerner—or an NDP northerner; not that we would forget Audrey McLaughlin.

I turn to you, John. What do you think of adding a few seats to give the north more of a voice?

[John Streicker]

Well, I am biased. I mean, sure, I would love that. I am just trying to be a little practical with the committee. I do think that Canada has a strong identity with the north. I think that Canadians could even see that this is necessary, but I want to be careful sitting here trying to ask for just us; do you know what I mean?

I will flip it back to the question you started with, where you were talking about whether we could use the system to help more readily reflect the diversity of our country. That is a challenging question. Do you try to push it to get that or do you try to encourage it to get that, and—