Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 27th, 2016

Ken Waldron As an Individual

Thank you.

Before we consider lowering the age to vote, we might want to look at what we do with it right now. We say it's perfectly all right for 18-year-olds to vote in a federal election, but don't let them vote in the province of B.C. for another year. It's okay to let them join the military, but don't let them have a drink in the province of B.C. for another year or two. If we're going to make a suggestion, we have to be prepared to enforce it and have it have meaningful power.

I've worked for Elections Canada and Elections B.C. since the 1980-some election. It has to be kept simple, and the politicians do not trust the people and the people don't trust the politicians. I say that because in the current system of voting in the federal election, you have to prove beyond any doubt—not beyond reasonable doubt but beyond any doubt—where you live, but you don't have to prove you're 18 years of age; we'll take your word for that. Average Canadians are going to vote once and say who they are. We need a system that believes the voters when they say they're Canadians, when they say they're 18—oh, we already do that—and when they say where they live.

From time to time, it becomes an issue with other things thrown in, but at the end of the day, if 10 people want to go and vote for Elizabeth May instead of voting for the person next door, is it going to change the picture? Well, if we go to proportional representation it will absolutely have no effect on the outcome; therefore, the only reason we're spending so much money making people prove things that we should believe from them would already be in place.

First past the post is a system designed for two parties and to maintain two parties. That's a fact. There have been some statements made tonight that are not facts. Consensus is not watered down. Consensus is a starting point, as opposed to first past the post, which is a finishing point.

Thank you very much for your time.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Is Robert Waldson here? No.

Daniel Hryhorchuk, the mike is yours for two minutes.

Daniel Hryhorchuk As an Individual

I wasn't planning to speak tonight, so I don't have a presentation prepared. I'll just try not to ramble incoherently.

First, the question of whether your vote counts is not one that has anything to do with your feelings on the subject. It's not a question of emotion; it's a mathematical question. If your vote didn't contribute to the members of Parliament or the voting power in Parliament, then it was a wasted vote, and that's all there is to that.

Second, I heard a lot tonight about objections to proportional representation regarding challenges with local representation. From my own standpoint, that's of minimal importance, bordering on trivial for reasons I won't get into. But if we do have to care about that, there is an electoral system available where you don't have to change anything about the current method of electing members of Parliament and you still get proportional representation in the Parliament, and it's called direct—a gentleman was speaking about it earlier—

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Weighted voting.

As an Individual

Daniel Hryhorchuk

Yes, direct party and representative voting is the name. You can google it. That's all I have to say about that.

Last, I think “male, pale, and stale” is kind of offensive. That's it.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Go ahead, Ms. Jukes.

Tana Jukes As an Individual

Thanks for listening to the first 64 people, and thanks, everybody else.

I'm strongly in favour of proportional representation. I'm also here on behalf of five members of my immediate and extended family who won't be able to come to any in-person consultations, so thanks for doing this in a place where I can come.

I would like to see a system that encourages candidate diversity so that we see more women, aboriginal people, and other minorities running and being elected, and not being restricted to expressing views that are strictly party views or that are most likely to please the majority.

I'd like to see a system that encourages long-term co-operation across party lines between candidates and between elected representatives. I would like to see a system that ensures that elected representatives are accountable to their constituents and that all votes count in electing a representative for the voter, and also ensures that the system cannot be hijacked by corporate interests.

We are, at this point, very lucky to be able to draw on the deep consideration that has already been given to this issue by the B.C. Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform, and I think we would be foolish to ignore the conclusions that they came to.

At this point, I do not support alternative vote as it is not proportional. Open list MMP, I believe, could offer some improvements over our current system, but I am concerned about the complexity that would be required to keep representatives strongly accountable to voters. At this point, I believe that a system like BC-STV would do the best job.

Thank you.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Thank you.

Janet Lundman.

Go ahead, Mr. Bergerud.

Ryder Bergerud As an Individual

Thanks.

I'm interested in an electoral system that does the following:

I'd like an electoral system that allows for candidates with diverse views to represent the diversity of Canadians that we have, both through electing a variety of political parties, but also being able to elect a diversity of candidates within political parties.

I'd like an electoral system that provides more incentives for co-operation and collaboration between members and parties in the House. Something else to note is that how we elect our politicians and how we elect our MPs really changes the incentives about how they legislate in Parliament.

Also, I would like an electoral system that creates accountability to voters over parties. I'd like to make a note that there is a risk that if we choose a mixed member proportional system, there's a large difference between a mixed member proportional system that is closed list versus open list. That deserves to be mentioned. They're totally not equal. We want to give MPs responsibility to voters, and if you have a closed list system, then MPs will be more accountable to their parties because voters won't be able to choose among different MPs within a party.

With that, I believe STV gives constituents opportunities to have an MP who they feel represents their view, and also, it's local.

Thank you.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

I guess Janet Lundman is not here, so we'll go to Elie Hofer and Michael Brinsmead.

A voice

Mr. Hofer is not here.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Okay.

Mr. Brinsmead and Dana Cook. Is Dana Cook here?

Go ahead, sir.

Michael Brinsmead As an Individual

I want us in Canada to have a system that wastes no votes. I want a system that has as its result a Parliament that represents the full diversity of Canadian political opinion. There is only one system that will do that, and that is proportional representation.

Small parties with diffused support across this country are punished under our current system, and they would continue to be punished if we went to either an alternative vote or an STV system. Proportional representation, on the other hand, would allow Canadians' diversity to be represented on a provincial level.

Our current system exaggerates regional political differences. People might think that 100% of Atlantic Canadians voted Liberal in the last federal election. Clearly they did not. And, over many elections, you would think that 95% of Albertans were Conservatives. This isn't good for our country.

Finally, I don't want there to be any minimum threshold. If a party gets 1% of the popular vote, it deserves 1% of the seats in Parliament.

Thank you.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Go ahead, Ms. Cook.

Dana Cook As an Individual

Thank you. My name is Dana, and I'm speaking to you today in support of proportional representation.

I volunteered with a non-partisan political advocacy group, Leadnow, in their Vote Together campaign prior to the last federal election, to encourage strategic voting. In the riding I was working in, in Vancouver, we had just under 17,000 direct conversations with voters and collected 5,400 pledges. That was with 450 volunteers.

I spent two years of my life working full-time as an environmental consultant and spending all of my free time talking to voters about our broken electoral system, trying to motivate people to work the system to get the system to work for us, because many of the people I talked to are tired of this electoral system and feel it doesn't work for them.

Countless times I repeated the phrase, “Will you agree to vote together for the best candidate that can defeat Stephen Harper, not the best candidate that reflects your values?” We had to cast our ballots on guesswork of how those in our riding would cast theirs, or maybe voters didn't use strategy on principle and accepted that their vote didn't count. Both strategies isolate youth voters and sap them of motivation to participate in this democracy.

I never want to be a part of another strategic voting campaign again. I want my efforts to not be spent working tirelessly against the stream of a broken democracy but instead facing the real challenges of our time, like transitioning to a sustainable energy system to mitigate climate change, which has been proven to be politically easier in a PR system.

It has been said before but it's worth repeating that the 2015 election was a referendum, as the Liberals were voted in on a platform to change our voting system. Their election platform was also based on evidence-based policy, and if you look into the research, PR is the clear next step for our democracy.

I ask for a fair voting system where every vote is counted and represented in Ottawa.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Dauncey.

Guy Dauncey As an Individual

Good evening.

I've come down from Ladysmith, from up island, especially to present to you.

I'm occasionally invited to speak at high schools, where I get the whole school on the floor of the gym. I ask them the question right at the beginning, “When you think about the future, what do you feel, hope or worry?” Out of 400 kids, I'm getting only five hands going up to say they feel hopeful. Then I give them a whole presentation about exciting stuff and how we can tackle climate change and things like that, and that changes their views.

The point is that there's an epidemic of hopelessness happening in our schools. They're not engaged politically, and if they are engaged and they know the history, they'll know that in the last 100 years every government has been either Liberal or Conservative. Also, out of the last 33 elections since the year 1900, in peacetime only three have had a true majority. The two in wartime got just over 50%. Nine elections out of 10 have had a forced majority, which has not been a democratic result, when the majority of Canadians have not been represented by the parties they elected. This is deeply disturbing.

I get involved, like other people, in strategic voting. I see how it splits friends. It puts people who have the same values at each other's throats and creates anger and distress. It's not a pleasant thing to do, to have to vote against someone you don't want to vote against, blah blah blah.

My concern particularly is how to get more young people engaged. I do believe, like other people have said, that we need to extend the votes to 16-year-olds. Currently, if you have not voted before you leave school, you go into that kind of black hole, pretending you're not an adult, and adults vote so you're not going to vote but maybe when you're 30 you'll get around to it. If your first election is while you are at school, you'll get used to it, and you'll get used to the discipline, the rigorous debating, and the challenging of positions. Then you're hooked and you're involved in electioneering.

Another issue around this is that one-third of Canadians don't own property, don't have parents who own property, will never inherit, and will be renting all of their lives, unless we have a changed system. Renters vote far less. The voter turnout among renters is much lower. If we had either mandatory voting, as in Australia, where they have a turnout rate of 94%, that would solve the problem. Alternatively, there could be a $100 voting tax credit, so when you vote you get $100, and if you don't vote, you lose it. Also, it's tax revenue neutral, so it doesn't increase government costs at all, but it's an incentive for people who have to take time off work at low wages to come to vote, and it's a way of saying that voting matters to us.

Finally, I think on campaign financial reform we also need to make sure that if any party wants to bring back the ability of powerful interests to finance elections, we lock in a two-thirds majority against that happening, so we stay with good finance control. There are top penalties for attempted voter manipulation, such as robocalls, and we have a new system of mixed member proportional voting.

Thank you very much.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Thank you.

Mr. Jacob Nicholas Harrigan, but first, Ms. Patricia Lane.

Patricia Lane As an Individual

I'm a member of the national advisory council of Fair Vote Canada, and I'm also a co-founding partner at Leadnow. I chose to take on both those responsibilities and those honours because I am so passionate about electoral reform. For me, this has been the most important issue in the last number of years, because I'm a mother and I was frustrated and very sad to be unable to make a convincing case to my son and his friends, and my goddaughter, who I helped to raise, and her friends, about why they should participate in our electoral system.

I happen to really like our MP. He does a great job. But it's a death sentence for encouraging the young to vote because he's going to get re-elected. The young people around me, even though they're politically engaged and they support his values, say they should spend their time doing something else, and I think that's a great pity.

I'm in favour of proportional representation, which will change that. I'm in favour of lowering the voting age to 16. If kids in Scotland who are 16 can vote on the future of their country, then kids in Canada who are 16 can also vote. I really want you to provide some money to the provinces that would be dedicated to civic education in schools.

I'm also a woman. I know, because I've looked at the data, that proportional representation is the only system that will raise the ceiling so that we will end what the United Nations calls our democratic deficit. Let there be no mistake about it. We do not have a functioning democracy as long as we have a glass ceiling that refuses to elect more women than 27%. No system will change that other than PR.

I'm also convinced that the great challenge of our time is to balance the power of the market with the power of the values of people. We're going to be able to do that only if we have an electoral system that does not allow parties to become captive to corporate interests. I think that's what's happening with the decision today regarding Petronas and Site C. It's not that Mr. Trudeau is not well intentioned; I think he's become captured. I think that if he were forced to work in a collaborative system with more Green Party members, with more New Democrats, and with more parties that support those kinds of values, it would be harder for corporations to capture.

Finally, I'm a lawyer and I'm a mediator. I've spent my entire career helping people not to fight. The first-past-the-post system institutionalizes fighting, and we need less of that.

Thank you.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Harrigan.