Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 26th, 2016

[Shelby Maunder]

Yes, absolutely, and anyone who works and lives here has experience of our one fibre optic cable getting knocked out, but I don't necessarily think that should deter us from exploring online voting. That's maybe an issue of having some redundancy in our communities.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

With respect to the voting age, no province or territory has experimented, that I'm aware of, with a voting age below 18. However, many political parties at both the provincial and federal levels have candidate selection, leadership selection, delegate selection to conventions, and any of a number of activities of political party membership available to some at 16 years and some at 14 years; I don't know if it goes lower than 14.

Having participated in a competitive nomination for a party with a voting age of 16, I'm wondering to what extent opening up the vote to a 16-year-old is an exercise in granting an extra vote to that child's parents.

[Shelby Maunder]

That's a great question. I think we're all influenced by the people who raise us, but I don't think that negates a youth's ability to think for themselves and explore the issue.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Most other candidates here have had various experiences with this, but many families tend to vote in blocks in candidate nominations. I don't think you have too many instances where a family of four votes for two, three, or four different candidates in a nomination. I wonder if a general election would be similarly granting additional electoral strength to single families.

Am I okay for time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You have about 30 seconds left.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

In the interest of keeping our meeting going, I'll turn it back over to you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Kelly. I appreciate that.

Finally, Mr. Aldag, please.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Ms. Michaud, I'll start with you. I'd like your thoughts as somebody who has served, who has campaigned, and you're here representing the NDP with a position for some form of proportional representation.

The riding that I'm in had been held by the opposition party since the early 1950s, so I hear from a lot of those constituents and I hear from a lot of my Liberal supporters. Between those two groups it represents about 70% of the votes for my riding. A perspective I've heard from them is that many of those supporters like the idea of majority governments. They like the idea of being able to have the Liberals in and bring in policies, but if the Liberals make a mistake then they can get rid of them and bring in the Conservatives.

There's this sense—and it may not be true—that minority governments can lead to compromises in policies, that you can have minority governments wielding a disproportionate share of power. A party can influence big spending. In your opening statements you talked about day care, and it reminds me that there was actually a national day care strategy that been negotiated under the Liberals in a minority government and it was through the Bloc, the NDP, and the Conservatives collaborating that brought down the Martin government and that saw the end to a national day care program, and the Kelowna Accord—

What's that?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

You can do it now.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

There was also Kyoto, essentially. So there's always this fear, I think. A lot of my constituents ask why we would go to any sort of system that leads to a proportional representation system because of those things. You've campaigned and you're representing this. What are the arguments we can put forward to try to solve this as the best idea for Canada at this point in time?

[Élaine Michaud]

In the case of mixed member proportional representation, what I'm seeing is not necessarily minority government but coalition government. There would be a possibility of more parties represented around the table, so there's a need to compromise. There's a need to actually take into account not only the government's ideology and ideas but everybody else's as well, which are generally pushed aside because, you know what, we're a majority government and you can take a back seat for a few years and we'll see next election.

What I heard when I was a member of Parliament from my constituents was that they were disheartened by all this bickering that happened in the House, first of all. Also, they did not like the fact that a majority government could just dismiss any opposition that was being voiced by the public, by opposition MPs who represented them.

So I would argue that a lot of people would actually prefer more dialogue, more compromise in the House to actually get with a better solution. I think very often each political party holds a bit of the answer for big issues that affect all Canadians, but if there's a majority government that doesn't need to listen to the opposition parties, well, they won't. They're just going to do their own thing. Then many Canadians are just not represented at all and don't feel their voice matters.

So I would argue that more discussion, more negotiation, and a coalition government would make a lot more sense and would be a fair resolution for a lot of issues that we're seeing right now with the system we have.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Okay, thank you. It's great hearing that from the perspective that you had over a period of time as a member of the opposition under a majority government. Thank you.

Ms. Maunder, I wanted to ask you about something you touched a bit on in your comments. I'd just like to go back to it. You said the youth will get out and vote when there's a big issue at stake. I know in my campaign I tried engaging youth, and talked to them. There were things like the fact that the current government was going to change the retirement age to 67 instead of 65, which wasn't very immediate. A lot of the young people I was looking at were looking forward to the weekend, not 50 years down the road.

You indicated that you did see youth come out because there was something at stake, but this was, I think, maybe an extreme case in 2015 where people were ready for change. What kinds of big issues do you think actually will get youth to participate in electoral processes?

[Shelby Maunder]

I know that here when we do our Yukon Youth Want campaign, a lot of the issues are not necessarily youth issues. We hear youth talk a lot about job opportunities, minimum wage, housing, affordable housing specifically, and education and access to education. I think those are issues that concern lots of people, not just youth, but I think that our generation is feeling the squeeze on a lot of those things. I think those are the types of issues that will maybe bring some of us to the polls.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

We're at the end of hearing from our witness panel. We will now go into the open-mike session.

We're setting the witnesses free. You can stay, of course. You're most welcome to stay, but we're going to have members of the public come up to the two microphones that are directly in front of me.

Thank you so much for your testimony, by the way. It was very informative and allowed us to look at things from a different angle.

The way we proceed in the open-mike session is to give each member of the public who wants to speak two minutes to present their views. So far it has worked beautifully. Everybody speaks for around two minutes. By respecting the two-minute limit, it gives everybody a chance to speak.

I'll ask two people to come to the mikes—to mike one, Donald Joseph Roberts, and to mike two, Michael James Lauer.

Mr. Roberts, go ahead, please. You have two minutes.

[Donald Roberts, As an Individual]

I've been in the Yukon for over 50 years. I came here as an educator, as a school principal, and retired as a school administrator. I have always been involved in politics in one shape or form.

I really took advantage of that when I retired and decided maybe I have something to learn. I went into politics and became a minister in the government at the time, in 2000. I only lasted two and a half years as a minister, because basically I challenged the system. I challenged the leader.

What we have in first past the post is almost a dictatorship if you have leaders who don't know how to deal with people. You have to remember that I was a school administrator, so I dealt with people all the time. Basically, collaboration, working together, was the issue, not trying to set up your own strength. We're very fortunate here to have an MP who does collaborate, but that doesn't happen all the time. Basically, in territorial politics, it's even worse. We hear many people in the Yukon—I've been to many doors—say, “We don't need party politics here in the Yukon”. When you're looking at 15,000 voters, you have a lot of issues. We meet these people all the time, whether you win, lose, or draw.

The important part for me is that we need a change. I'm not going to tell you what kind of change we need, because there are many models. Today we've talked about that.

I appreciate being able to share my concerns. Many Yukoners want a change. It doesn't matter what it is, but I think we will have to make sure it's something that reflects what the north is.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Roberts.

Before we go to you, Mr. Lauer, I would ask Lauren Elizabeth Muir to take mike one.

Go ahead, Mr. Lauer.

[Michael Lauer, As an Individual]

First of all, I want to welcome all of you and thank the committee for coming to Whitehorse. As well, I'd like to thank everybody else who's been participating in this process in a thoughtful and respectful manner.

No solution will be perfect, and not everyone will be happy with whatever the outcome is of what you put forward or what the government will end up putting forward. If something is adopted, there will be a number of Canadians who still aren't happy for various reasons.

I feel we need a system that will guarantee local representation and be consistent across the country, as we need to also defend whatever the system is. It must work in rural and urban ridings. One of the questions that was asked about the north is that if we get special status, then that's something we have to defend. About a third of the ridings in the country are rural. It's just something that needs to work across the country.

The system must also be easy to understand and communicate, as some of the proposed systems mentioned have been anything but easy to understand and communicate.

There are also constitutional issues, as a number of jurisdictions are guaranteed a number of seats based on the number of senators. Some of the proposed changes could run into problems around the Constitution. I don't think there's any desire to open up the Constitution.

Looking at the Yukon where we have only one seat, as with our sister territories, or even for some of the smaller provinces that have four, seven, 10, or 11 seats, we see that not all the proposed solutions are workable while maintaining local representation. With proportional representation or mixed member proportional representation, how would any of the single-seat territories elect their MP? Therefore, there are only two potential solutions that would work in the territories. One is the current first past the post. As we've seen since 1979, all three territories have elected members of all three national parties. The process has worked for all the major parties. The other potential option is the ranked ballot. I think the majority of the pundits and those who have talked about a ranked ballot favour the Liberal Party as a centrist party over the rest of the parties.

Just dealing with the issue of a referendum, there's been an argument that 68% of Canadians voted for one of the parties that proposed change in the electoral system. But the three parties didn't propose the same type of change. We've also seen recent polling that had between 55% and 73% of Canadians in favour of a referendum if we're going to change the voting system.

Last but not least, our democracy is far too valuable to let fewer than 1% of Canadians decide how we will elect our government for generations to come.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

I would invite Mr. Colin Whitlaw to take mike two.

We'll hear now from Ms. Muir.

[Lauren Muir, As an Individual]

Hi. I'm talking to you tonight both as a parent of two teenagers, one 16 and one 18, and also as someone who grew up in southern Ontario, in the ridings where there are a lot of people. I also moved north. I lived in the Northwest Territories and experienced that system, and now I also live in the Yukon.

I'm also speaking to you as a policy analyst. With that in mind, I was speaking with Mr. Aldag at the break. We here in the Yukon do things collaboratively. It's the same in the Northwest Territories. Basically, because you don't have the population, you have to work together. We do know each other on an individual basis. Half of the time someone will ask me what someone's last name is: “I don't know. It's Larry, our MP.” That's how it works here. We need each other.

But the other thing, too, is that when we had to basically come to some really tough decisions, we did it, even though it was a complicated answer, by basically identifying first the values that we wanted to keep and the principles. After that, we sat down to figure out the formula. It was a mathematical formula; it was not one simple system. In order to account for the rural communities, in order to account for the larger municipalities, that's what we had to do.

Once we did that, then we took it back out to everyone, because it was everybody's right to know and to have a voice on it. Then we were able to say, as a checklist, “Oh, and by the way, it meets these values. It meets these principles.” We could prove that. We did have to basically do up a calculator as a tool for the spreadsheets so the people could see what it did for them. They need that kind of an example.

As far as the youth go, I'm sorry, a big part of it, yes, is the education system and having them walk through it. Even though it was kindergarten, you remember that event. But we also dragged our kids out every time we had to go to vote.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thanks very much.

Could Brook Land-Murphy take mike one?

Mr. Whitlaw.

[Colin Whitlaw, As an Individual]

Hello.

I'd like to talk about the importance of geographical representation in a federal system. I've been around a few federal systems. I spent some time doing a couple of degrees in Belgium, and I spent some time in Brazil. In a federal system like Canada's, it's very important to have geographical representation. The reason for that is that a federal system, of course, splits the competencies, the powers, between your federal, provincial, and municipal types of government. Those powers are administered by those particular governments.

If you go to a non-regional form of representation, then those regions no longer have a direct say in federal politics, such as national defence, fisheries, pipelines, or first nations. For that reason, I think any form of proportional representation is the wrong way to go. It's not because proportional representation is a bad thing, but because there are other ways to adequately represent Canadians. There are other democratic considerations that need to be taken into account in terms of representation, particularly geographical.

That's all.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

I would invite Ms. Mary Elizabeth Amerongen, please, to go to mike two.

Ms. Land-Murphy, please go ahead.

[Brook Land-Murphy, As an Individual]

Good evening. I am honoured and truly excited to be able to address the committee tonight. Your being here and your mandate are amazing. It gives me hope.

I have three points I want to make. I hope I can make them in two minutes.

First, regarding the proposal to have the decision ultimately put to a referendum, which I understand is being floated by at least one party, I strongly oppose this. I think this is really a backdoor and slightly cowardly way of trying to avoid change to the system. The Liberals were elected on a clear platform for change of the electoral system, and that is all the mandate that is needed to actually change the electoral system.

Second, I am strongly in favour of proportional representation. I do not have a specific system I'm endorsing, as I'm not an expert in that, but I do want to share with you my experience with first past the post. I have voted in every election that I was eligible to vote in except for this last one, when I was travelling. I have never had someone for whom I voted get elected. That could be because my values do not align with those of a lot of Canadians. At the same time, my values, my opinions, and what I want to see our government do—I think I should have a voice in that.

Third, just because a large number of the committee members seem to be focused on the issue of local versus proportional representation, and on Mr. McKinnon's testimony specifically, I want to address that. In our current system, with votes and centralized power in the PM's office, I do not personally place a large degree of importance on local representation, and certainly not in having a proportional representation system implemented.

I would note that I worked with Fair Vote Yukon for a number of years. We got hundreds of signatures to petition the territorial government to look at electoral reform, so I'm not alone in prioritizing, if it comes down to a choice, electoral reform over having perhaps strong local representation.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Samuel Connor Whitehouse, please go to mike one.

Go ahead, Ms. Amerongen.

[Mary Amerongen, As an Individual]

Thank you all for your work here. It really is hopeful that we're discussing this.

I have been involved in elections since I was 10 years old. I grew up in Edmonton, and I've lived here now for 16 years. I've done a lot of door-to-door on both sides of the spectrum.

I really believe people need to have their vote count. We need a form of proportional representation, possibly the mixed one, but I'm not an expert in that. I don't know how it would work in the Yukon, but we really need a fair and proportional vote.

When a government that doesn't have a majority can assault the environment the way a previous federal government did, there's a serious problem; we don't have a working democracy. There are many other examples of that. When the people who form the government can steamroll over all opposition, that's wrong. At least with a minority government people talk and have to co-operate, compromise, and listen to all views. That is more fair—not perfect, but far more fair and far more right and just.

I do not think there should be a referendum. Prime Minister Trudeau was very clear that the election we had last October would be the last first past the post one. There is a mandate for change that should go ahead.

I also believe there should be no forced vote in which people are fined. People who don't want to vote tend to be people who really don't know what's going on, so I don't think they should be forced to vote.

I've just left work...for many years with people who are somewhat disadvantaged and have difficulty with housing at times. We're also in a very tight housing market. In that situation, where people need to have an approved address to vote, it is not fair. People are disenfranchised by that.

Thank you for your attention.