Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 27th, 2016

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

May I speak, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Go ahead.

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

I really want to apologize if you thought I was doing something else. What I just sent out was “Joan Robinson has been returning officer, including from province-wide mail-in ballots. It will be very cumbersome, like first past the post”. Then there's the code for this hearing. I am live tweeting every single presenter so that people who aren't in this room will know what you had to say.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Habgood, go ahead please.

[Richard Habgood, As an Individual]

Greetings to the ERRE committee. My name is Richard Habgood, and I am the president of the greater Victoria chapter of Fair Vote Canada.

Our chapter would like to start off by acknowledging the work of Wendy Bergerud. Wendy was chosen as a member of the B.C. Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform, where she became a committed advocate for proportional representation and electoral reform, right up until her death in March of this year. She served as the president of our local chapter, and she is greatly missed for her wisdom, activism, and warmth.

Vancouver Island's experience with first past the post in 2015 demonstrates multiple ways in which the current system does not uphold the principles referred to the committee for consideration. Around 100,000 Vancouver Island Conservative voters and 100,000 Liberal voters, making up more than two-fifths of all the voters on Vancouver Island, are without a Vancouver Island MP who aligns with their political beliefs. The 2015 election returned six NDP MPs and one Green, while a proportional result would likely have elected three NDP MPs, two Greens, one Conservative, and one Liberal.

Our conclusion is that democracy is not well served when a voting system does not represent the full diversity of a nation. A party that receives less than the majority of votes should not receive, in any way shape or form, 100% of the power. We need change, namely, a proportional representation voting system.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

I would ask Ms. Diane Guthrie to speak to us.

[Diane Guthrie, As an Individual]

It's past time that we turf the outdated first-past-the-post system and switch to some form of proportional representation, as the majority of civilized countries have.

There is no need for a referendum before we bring in proportional representation any more than we needed to have a referendum on giving women the right to vote. Having a fair voting system is a human right. It has been studied enough by experts, who have strongly endorsed it.

Why not have a referendum after we have had an election with proportional representation? Some who are pushing a referendum first are doing it so that their party can hang on to power in future elections. Party allegiance is more important to them than fairness to Canadian voters.

I want to see a parliament that fairly represents all the viewpoints of Canadians and moves toward gender parity.

The government has given our country a chance to change our electoral system. Let's urge them to bring in real proportional representation and not alternative vote, which is neither proportional nor fairer than our current system.

Let's get it done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Guy Laflam, you can take mike number one.

[Guy Laflam, As an Individual]

I thank you for your efforts.

I am in favour of STV, so I hope you will seriously consider it. However, democracy is a work in progress, so you might consider trying the next federal election on some system that is conditional. If it turns out to your liking, ratify it.

I congratulate you for trying.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Najari, go ahead, sir.

[Mehdi Najari, As an Individual]

I will be frank. I am not a member of any party, so I am not partisan.

In the last two federal elections, 62% and 67% of registered voters voted. These are not eligible voters. These are registered voters. I don't know what percentage of eligible voters voted.

What did we get? We had 39% of the 62% elect a majority government that did whatever it wanted. It was an elected dictatorship for four years, with omnibus bills that didn't even allow the Parliament of this country to really look at what was being proposed, but they pushed it through like a dictatorship.

In the past election, Mr. Trudeau got elected with 39% of the 67%. He promised us he would make decisions based on evidence and science. He promised that this time they were going to be really decent with first nations people and get their consent when they are doing things on their traditional territory.

What did we get? We got the Site C dam decision. Some 250 members of the Royal Society of Canada, scientists, said that this is the worst project. Mr. Trudeau ignored that and betrayed his promise. He betrayed his promise of respecting aboriginal people.

What can we do? Nothing. For four years, we have another dictatorship. This is not acceptable.

I am a member of the part of society that makes less than $27,000 a year, that medium income. Who is representing me? You are making $165,000. You are not even coming close to understanding the reality of my life, and half of the population's. This is not democracy. What I am saying is that this is the first step: to change the electoral system.

More important, you have to become responsible and accountable to us on a regular basis. If you want to be accountable to us, you come every month to us. Meet your constituents, on the record. We put it on the record, and at that time you give us 20 minutes to report about what you have done and listen to our concerns and issues. Listen to the fact that 18% of children in British Columbia are undernourished and living in poverty. Then we are going to have a parliament that is responsible.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Jeffers, the mike is yours.

[Mark Jeffers, As an Individual]

Electoral reform is extremely important to me. Why? To borrow a phrase, because it's 2016.

My wife and I are both political refugees from the Conservative heartland of Alberta. We moved here five years ago, looking for, among other things, a change of political scenery. Most of my life as a voter, I've had to live with the bitter disappointment of knowing that in a supposedly modern democracy, my vote, like more than half the voters in the last election, did not matter to anyone except myself.

We get phony majorities, no representation for my views, ridiculous results, increasingly aggressive politics, exclusion of women, and a general failure to truly represent all Canadians. I am tired of all this nonsense.

We have a profoundly broken democracy, which, not surprisingly, more and more people are disengaging from because of a sense of futility and hopelessness. Electoral reform and specifically proportional representation is the only acceptable outcome for this process. Why? Because it's fair.

Self-serving interests of politicians and their parties need to be set aside for this historic opportunity. In the last election, three of four national parties campaigned and were elected on platforms of electoral reform. Now they have an unarguable mandate to deliver.

I know there are Conservatives who support proportional representation, yet the party line repeated ad nauseam by them and the media is “referendum”, knowing full well that referendums block change and are disturbingly easy to manipulate, as we have recently seen with the Brexit fiasco.

We need more from you. Please do the right thing. We see all around us deteriorating democracies. We now have a chance to fix this very broken democracy. Bringing in proportional representation is just a start. There's much more to do. This is your chance to be on the right side of history. Let's make ours a kinder, gentler, real democracy.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Carmichael, the floor is yours, sir.

[Craig Carmichael, As an Individual]

Thank you.

As an inventor, I pull together disparate facts and ideas and information from all over the place, and I often come up with unique solutions. Over the decades, I've perused the whole way that society and politics operate, and I've come up with quite a number of suggestions as to how we might improve things. We have the core values, equality of life, growth, opportunities to grow to be what we can be, and equality. I've put those together in a website called handsondemocracy.org.

I see what we have here tonight as two pieces of a much larger puzzle. I'll address those now that I've already made my major point. First, a referendum should not be a way for the government to ask the public for their opinion. It should be a way for the public to say what they want the government to do. Referendums should be initiated by the public in practical, easy terms. They should be voted on by the public and then presented. The government doesn't always have the same priorities as the public.

Also, I think the illiterate X voting system really needs to be replaced—the closest-to-the-post-on-the-first-toss voting system. I definitely think that STV is the way to vote, but I would prefer to call it the choice-ranking vote. It's also been called the instant runoff vote. Either of those two names gives a better idea. STV sounds contrived to me. I didn't like it when I first heard it because of that.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Those are two good ideas. Thank you very much.

Mr. Arney.

[Jeremy Arney, As an Individual]

Contrary to your desires, I'm going to thank you and all your staff for the work you're doing this summer. Thank you very much.

I would like to acknowledge the Songhees Nation on whose land we are now standing. Now I'm going on to be very partisan.

My name is Jeremy Arney. I am the interim leader of the Canadian Action Party. We think the STV is just another form of first past the post, but it goes down through the ranks. That's not acceptable.

MMP, on the other hand, can be adapted to be a Canadian form of doing things. We have in this country 22 registered political parties, and how many are there represented here? That is not the way it should be.

Our suggestion is simply that if you have the MMP, there will be a first past the post, probably from one of your parties, but the list that goes with it should be attached to who is running in the riding. We cannot have 22 members on a list in every riding. Many of the ridings will not have small party candidates, but for those that do, those candidates should be allowed to have a list attached to their party, no matter which one it is. That's my major point.

Small parties are under-represented—we all know that—and yet they have fantastic ideas. One of the fantastic ideas that every single small party, except for the Libertarians, believes in is that the Bank of Canada should be brought back to financing Canada and its needs. There are none of your parties here who will consider that. I don't know why. It makes tremendous economic and logical sense, but for some reason you won't do it.

Small parties will bring new ideas They will reinvigorate Canadian politics. They will reinvigorate the Canadian people. You have an opportunity here for real democratic process for Canadians and I urge you to take it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Proctor, go ahead, please.

[Merran Proctor, As an Individual]

Hi, I'm speaking for myself and my women friends. We know you're designing a new electoral system, and we're asking you to build three features into your recommended model: fair proportional representation, the opportunity for visionary policy-making, and collaboration and consensus in this country.

By fair representation we mean genuine proportionality with seats reflected by the vote. We want politicians who can speak to regional issues. We want politicians who can reflect gender, racial diversity, and economic class. Please don't leave the low-income people out of this reform. They're not all on computers. We may also need from you a recommendation on electoral financing.

The second thing is a system that encourages visionary government. We ask that you build a system where parties are clear on what their platforms are and say what they want to do, so that we can encourage them to work together on the priorities of all Canadians, and we can judge if they are doing what they say they're doing.

The third thing is collaboration and consensus, because all of you know that more heads are better than one. We thank you for putting yours together for all this time.

My personal preference would be a mixed member proportional system with regional representation, but all the people in our group agreed on those priorities.

In terms of the vote, three parties ran on improving the electoral system. Let's do it. Let's give it a chance, and then let people at some point say whether they are happy with the way Canada votes. Make it the best system in the world. There are 90 others you have to beat.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Well, it's a tall order, but we're up to it.

Is David Charles here? Oh, there he is, okay.

[Trevor Moat, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

I want to pick up on a remark I heard from this panel a little while ago, maybe a couple of hours—I've been here for the whole session—and that was that the first-past-the-post system has served us well for 150 years. Honestly, I beg to differ. Think of what's happened in 150 years. I just made a quick list of things, like the Internet, mobile communications, nuclear power, radar, television, radio, aviation, automobiles, vaccines. All of these things have evolved. Our electoral system hasn't. It's time. It really is time.

For those of you who still think first past the post is viable, it may be the devil we know—and I understand change is difficult to implement—but it is the devil.

I'm old enough to remember the McKenna election in New Brunswick, in I think it was October 1987. Under 60% of the population voted in favour of Mr. McKenna and he won 100% of the seats. Does everybody remember that? It was 60% that won every seat in the House.

Now, when you have a situation like first past the post promotes, such as division, diversity, single-issue voting, then you get these very polar outcomes. Imagine if it had been someone who was not as benevolent and nationally oriented and kind-natured as Frank McKenna. Imagine if it was more of a Donald Trump type, who had a slim majority and a substantial majority of the votes. It could be disastrous. This is what the system promotes.

It's a very disenfranchising system, and it's particularly disenfranchising to the young, as many, many polls have shown over the last number of years.

A new electoral system, whatever it is, needs to have some of the following notions. It needs to be fair, democratic, and very importantly, it needs to be perceived as being so. It needs to be Internet savvy. It needs to be open-sourced. It needs to allow input from the citizens in order to be accountable to the citizens. It needs to be responsive.

I will close with borrowing a notion from Marshall McLuhan: the medium is the message. I'm sure you have thought about this. It's certainly pertinent in today's media. This system is the message here, and as long as we have an archaic, outdated system that promotes this kind of division in our society, we will have these polar arguments, with very poor representation and disenfranchisement. We need to change the system if we want to—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Go ahead, Mr. Charles.

[David Charles, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I'm part of that boatload of SGI people who came down today to support our member and to present our views on proportional representation.

I was also a part of the crew that met you this morning at the airport. We're delighted to see you.

I didn't expect to be able to get on the list today, so I came somewhat unprepared, but I want to share with you my views that we need proportional representation. It's going to be up to you to sort out the best that you can do, and I believe you can do it. I want to thank you for all the hard work that you're doing. It can't be be easy. Every day must be Groundhog Day for you.

What I'm about to say may also sound like a groundhog because we have had many people say much of what I would like to share with you. I think you've all heard it before.

I do want to make it clear that I do not favour a referendum. Referendums were not used for some of the most important things that Canadians have done. One of them was going to war. Now, they did try a plebiscite to see if we should have conscription. However, when so many thousands of Canadians lost their lives and we sent them off without a referendum, I think we have to think about that.

The second thing I'd like to do is to comment on the Honourable John Duncan's point of view that we should have—I'm searching here for words. I'm sorry. We really need to have a situation where the member of Parliament is the one who is doing all of that work to represent their constituents. You all do a pretty good job of that. I know you were talking about that earlier. We forget, I think, sometimes—and I think Tony Hodgson brought this up—that we have a situation in Parliament where most parties are whipped, so your representation is compromised.

Thank you for what you're doing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Go ahead Mr. Layne.

[Larry Layne, As an Individual]

Thank you, sir. I would like to thank all of you for hosting a meeting like this.

Earlier, we heard that the provincial citizens' assembly met in a circular arena in Vancouver where all felt their voices were equal. The existing federal election system, first past the post, does not make representation equal to votes cast.

Earlier, we heard a concern raised over the logistics for an MP of a larger rural riding. Ms. May has for the last five years hosted twice a year town halls in at least eight localities. That includes five separate islands. Eighty town halls. It can be done.

Earlier, we heard of a tradition which for 150 years has been voiced as a reason not to change. Many old European countries have proportional voting. You can try proportional voting and refine it for the next three elections and then call for a vote on a ballot on the third election.

Someone tonight spoke about how long it would take to do one of these proportional votes, but voting electronically would get the results automatically. It's true, though, that not everybody has a computer.

I would like to suggest that no party name appear by the candidates' names on the ballot.