Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 27th, 2016

[John Duncan]

There were some statements at the all-candidates meetings. It generated some interest, but I can tell you that in 19 years I never had somebody come to me and say, “I want a dual member district.” This is not in the conversation. In my opinion with the two referendums we had in British Columbia the people were so fed up with all of the wrangling and all of the discussion about changing the voting system that in the second referendum, they voted actually more strongly than in the first one not to proceed with it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Aldag.

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

Ms. Byford, my first question is for you.

The experience you had is fantastic, hearing it first-hand. I was doing the calculations and giving it some thought. The last questions on referendum relate to legitimacy. We've also heard some of our witnesses say that another way of gaining legitimacy would be to have a citizens coalition. If we did what B.C. did and had two randomly selected Canadians from each riding, we would have 676 participants. It would involve the kind of national travel that you'd indicated.

When I heard Craig speak, one of the things that seemed to really be an important part of the citizens coalition that you were part of was that you reached consensus. I think you touched on this, but I want to make sure that I'm hearing you right. How practical do you think it would be to have a national citizens coalition? Maybe you could answer that first.

[Diana Byford]

One of the things we learned when we first formed and met together at the Wosk Centre was that there had been provision made that if a certain number of members dropped out at the early stages, they were prepared to let us carry on up to a certain point. Beyond that point, the whole process would be stopped because there wouldn't be enough representation from the province to justify any results that came from it.

Putting this on a national level, as I said, I can't imagine the logistics of that. I don't think it would be sustainable for the 11 months like we spent.

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

With that, do you think there would be any benefit to exploring provincial and territorial panels? We could do 13 different ones, but I get the sense that we could end up with 13 different solutions and we wouldn't have that kind of consensus. Do you think there are any benefits to trying to do it on a provincial and territorial basis and seeing what we come up with, if anything matches up? Or does it simply seem that, in your opinion, legitimacy not be sought through trying to pursue a citizens' assembly at the national level?

[Diana Byford]

There's one thing different I would like to tell you about our citizens' assembly from the ones that were held back east. It was held in the Wosk Centre in Vancouver. I don't know how many of you might be familiar with that place, but it's circular. There are circular tiers of seats. Everybody felt equal. There was no head table. That was really brought home to us how valuable that was, because when we went to Prince George in the summer to go over what we'd heard at the public meetings in Prince George, we sat like this. There was a body at the head table and rows and rows of seats. A lot of us felt that was wrong. We really didn't feel like we were part of the process at times. That centre is an amazing place. It enabled us to settle in and to feel that all voices were equal, all voices were heard. I don't think they have anything similar to that facility in a lot of the provinces. I think that would have a big impact on the results.

In Ontario, as I understand it, they had this kind of set-up and you're lectured to there.

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

That's great. Thank you.

I'm going to move to Mr. Hodgson.

We've had a lot of different systems come at us, so I had to go online and find the rural-urban proportional piece again.

[Antony Hodgson]

Yes, I'm sorry about adding that.

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

Yes. It seems, if I'm understanding what you said and looking at the website, the multiple member ridings would be in urban areas, single member ridings in rural and small areas, and then a small layer of regional top-up seats would be looked at to get the proportionality for those. Further on in the document, they show a map of Alberta. I'm wondering if you've looked at what it would look like in B.C.

[Antony Hodgson]

Yes, absolutely. You can go to our website, fairvotingbc.com, and take a look at that under the PR model. We have some maps there of what it looks like.

I would say it's an extremely flexible model. It gives you a lot of choices. This was designed in a cross-country collaboration, and so you get input from across the country. With the B.C. perspective, we're much more inclined to pursue the multi-member ridings because of what we've learned through our own citizens' assembly. There is a greater ratio of multi-member ridings down to smaller.

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

I'll just jump in. Sorry, but I'm just trying to get in some more questions.

One of the things I saw is it indicates that you could either add 15% more seats or make the ridings 15% larger. When I did the town halls—I've done five of them so far—a clear message was that people don't want to see more of us.

[Antony Hodgson]

No, fair enough.

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

To me that seems that 15% is the only solution.

Mr. Duncan, you talked about the challenges of large ridings. Do you think adding 15% to the area that you represented would be an unreasonable additional burden? Where is that line between what's workable and what's not?

[John Duncan]

It's not workable. There have been statements here today about how all of this can be handled because we have these electoral boundaries commissions that do such a great job. Well, we went from six ridings to seven on Vancouver Island. We have the population for seven. They made the northern riding more challenging in that redistribution than what it was before. It's because the last three electoral boundaries commissions—I know now because I investigated—all started in the urban areas and did all their redistribution there, and then moved into the rural constituencies. My advice to them has been consistent: start with the rural constituencies and work towards the cities, because the cities have way more opportunity to be flexible in a constrained space. This is very problematic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thanks very much.

Okay, Mr. Boulerice.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

By way of introduction, I'd like to make a comment first. Then I will ask Mr. Hodgson to react.

I have personally been elected twice. In 2011, I received 51% of the votes and, last year, I got 49% of the votes. Let's say that roughly half the people in my riding did not vote for me. As has already been said, once people are elected, they represent all their constituents. If a constituent comes to my office needing help, my team will try to help that person with the federal administration. We don't want to know who people voted for. That isn't our business. We serve everyone.

However, it would be simplistic to consider that an MP's role is only to provide individual services. We also have another important role to play because we vote in the House of Commons. When I am in the House of Commons, I have only one vote. I can't vote both for war and against war. I can't vote pro-choice and pro-life at the same time. I can't vote to fight greenhouse gas emissions and let big companies continue to pollute. Basically, people who didn't vote for the policies, values and principles that I represent in the House of Commons aren't represented in the decisions I make. The 52% of people who, in recent federal elections, didn't vote for the people who were elected have reason to feel poorly represented or not represented in Parliament.

Mr. Hodgson, I'd like your reaction to that.

[Antony Hodgson]

Thank you again for that.

I absolutely agree that the 50% who did not vote for you are not represented legislatively. I think it's important for us to understand that historically, the constituency responsiveness and responsibilities of MPs really emerged in about the 1960s. For the first 100 years of our confederation, that was not considered a particularly important part, or even a recognized part, of the role of MPs' service.

The primary role of an MP in a Westminster parliamentary system is to pass legislation and to hold the government to account, so it is primarily in that vein that we are talking.

I think it's very useful in your discussions to distinguish between what means could be taken to provide better constituency service. I have no doubt that we should have much larger service budgets for MPs who are in more rural ridings. We should have more offices, more staff, whatever it takes to support them in that role.

However, from a legislative point of view, there was a 2004 case in New Brunswick that you may be familiar with. The Federal Court actually sided with a francophone town. The electoral boundaries commission had put them in an anglophone district and they appealed to the court, saying that members of the provincial parliament could not represent them. The judge had very clear language agreeing with them that they would not be adequately represented by an MPP they did not support.

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

In this regard, Mr. Hodgson, to follow up on your answer, earlier you touched on the question of the relationship between the electoral system or the voting system and the rights of citizens under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Could you clarify your thoughts on that? This is one of the first times I've heard this.

[Antony Hodgson]

For the first 100-odd years of our Confederation, we did not have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms in its current form. Two important rights in there are section 3, the right to vote, and section 15, the right to equality.

The first cases evaluating the effect of those new charter provisions on aspects of our electoral system—probably one of the earliest—was the 1986 Dixon case here in B.C. assessing the constitutionality of variations in riding size. At the time, there was a 15-fold difference between the northwest district that included Atlin and a riding in Surrey. Justice McLachlin ruled that was unconstitutional according to the charter, so there's now judgment language, precedent, around the importance of voter parity.

Actually, equality of voting power is only to be disrupted or attenuated in order to provide more effective representation. You've heard a ton of testimony that says that many people are much less effectively represented by our current system, so in our view that can't be countenance.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Kelly.

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

Thank you to the witnesses for attending our session today.

A number of my colleagues on the panel have already addressed this issue of representation, at least partially, and whether or not a person is still represented by someone who perhaps they didn't vote for.

Members of Parliament have every incentive to represent their constituents as best they can, presumably in order to win over those who didn't vote for them in the previous election. Certainly, we do it through our office activity in representing case work.

There are other ways that a member can do so, by raising issues on behalf of constituents that are important to constituents in caucus, through statements made in the House, and by influencing debate.

I'd like to talk about urbanization, and what that means to riding size in rural locations. We heard a little bit about this, and I'd like the Honourable John Duncan to tell us about this as a person who represented a large riding for so many years.

The way the redistribution of seats typically works is that the relative size of a riding by population doesn't change over time. We add seats to account for population growth. But urbanization, which has been under way for decades and still continues to be a factor, means that rural ridings just continue to grow.

What we've heard from a variety of witnesses, from the first nations community leaders that we met with this morning in Elizabeth May's riding, as well from the people we heard from in Yukon yesterday, sounded to many of us like a desire for proportional representation everywhere except in their ridings, so that we don't actually shrink or dilute their own representation on a local level.

I'd like you to tell us a little more about how urbanization is already a pressure on these larger ridings.

[John Duncan]

I can talk about the example of the north island. The southern part of the north island riding is growing very quickly, and the rest is not. What was 90:10 will soon be 92:8 and 94:6 probably.

We had an opportunity in this last redistribution in which British Columbia got six new ridings. I thought that was going to be a major boost to making the ridings on Vancouver Island more serviceable. The electoral boundaries commission I am sorry to say screwed it up, despite a lot of lobbying not to have them do that.

I think urbanization is just a reality. We have to live with it. I don't fight it. Representation by population is vital and elemental to our system. That's just the way it is, but let's not make it worse. Let's not compound it by making our rural ridings bigger.

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

How do you do proportionality without doing that?

[John Duncan]

You can't do proportionality without making rural ridings bigger.