Thank you.
Good evening, honourable members of the special committee, and members of the public. I want to thank the committee for coming to Whitehorse and incorporating northern voices into these very important consultations. Thank you also for providing me the opportunity to make this presentation on behalf of the Yukon federal Green Party.
My name is Gerald Haase. I am and have been the riding president of the Yukon federal Green Party for the last two years. That's right: this is the federal party that perhaps was impacted the most by strategic voting in the federal election of 2015. Locally our vote percentage went from 19% in 2011 to 3% in 2015. We were told by many of our supporters that they felt that they had to vote strategically to wrest control away from the previous government.
Some people are saying that Greens across Canada would benefit the most from the move to some form of proportional representation. This may be true at present, and certainly would have been true during the election last October. Most common forms of PR would have awarded the Green Party of Canada more seats than one. However, I think it's clear that the New Democratic Party would have benefited just as well from pretty well any form of PR and certainly, in given circumstances, the Liberals and Conservatives would benefit from proportional representation.
Please reference the Canadian federal election of 1993, in which the Progressive Conservative Party received only two seats despite a 16% popular vote across Canada. The Bloc Québécois, by the way, had 13.5% of the vote and garnered official opposition status with 54 seats. In these cases, the electorate could have benefited by having a governing body in the House of Commons that is significantly more representative of the will of the Canadian people.
Citizens of Canada, the numbers speak for themselves. Even in this great country, where elections are carefully regulated, single member plurality or first past the post does not result in fair election results, especially in current times where more than two political parties run for office.
I think anyone who says that first past the post is the best electoral system for Canada is ignoring a large body of evidence that says otherwise. The Green Party of Canada recognized some time ago that the present electoral system cannot accommodate the cultural diversity and political realities of Canada. We strongly support the present government in its efforts to develop a system of electing the federal representatives that reflects these realities. First past the post is a system of the past for many reasons.
Canada's current first-past-the-post system results in a monopoly of decision-making powers in a rapidly changing global environment where adaptability will be key for successful governance. Really, why should we continue to use a system in which a government chosen with 35% of the popular vote could possibly govern, without checks or balances, a citizenry that basically rejected the policies of this government?
First past the post also can result in, and indeed has resulted in, huge policy swings. Do we really want social, economic, and environmental policies to change radically at the whim of the latest government?
A byproduct of using the first-past-the-post system is the trend of decreasing voter turnout. With many voters turned off by a feeling of disempowerment, and others just seeing no reason to become engaged, fewer citizens are voting. I don't see how anyone can see this as a positive situation.
The winner-take-all scenario that arises from first-past-the-post voting is an illustration of what not to do in political science surveys. Thanks to the work of academics Arend Lijphart, Salomon Orellana, Dennis Pilon, and others, we have social science studies that illustrate that proportional systems outperform first-past-the-post systems in a number of key ways. By trying to make every vote count and allowing for a wider range of views to be represented in Parliament, PR empowers ordinary citizens. This can be expected to have an impact on inequality and access to social services over time and could determine how a country deals with diversity more generally.
This point provides the central argument in a recent book by Salomon Orellana in 2014. The following information comes from Fair Vote Canada's website, where Orellana argues that increased opportunities for diversity and dissent allow PR countries to outperform in four key areas. The number one stated area is policy innovation. One example is how quickly the public accepts and the government can act on new and innovative ideas. The other side of this coin is that these new ideas are vetted by a wider range of participants from varying ideologies, strengthening the innovation.
Point number two made by Orellana is that PR mitigates the pandering of politicians in the pursuit of voters by promising quick-fix solutions. This point I think speaks for itself. A word about that word “pandering”; I searched for a kindler, gentler word to use in a room of politicians, and Microsoft Word gave me nothing. It's buying votes, and we know that this can lead to quick-fix solutions.
Point number three made by Orellana is that PR increases the political sophistication of the electorate. Is this not a laudable goal?
Point number four is that proportional representation limits elite control over decision-making.
In closing, I'd like to commend Fair Vote Canada and say to the committee that this organization has done a lot of groundwork in its presentation to the committee and in providing resources to Canadians engaged in electoral reform. Fair Vote Canada suggests three different electoral systems for consideration. I'm not speaking on behalf of the Green Party at this point, but I believe that each of these systems, as well as the preferential ridings proportional system suggested by Dave Brekke of Whitehorse, would be a huge improvement over our current system.
Voters in over 90 countries around the world are smart enough to figure out PR systems. I'm confident that Canadians are too.