Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 27th, 2016

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Okay. In Quebec we had a referendum, and 93% of the population participated in this referendum. That's democracy.

[Craig Henschel]

That's a much simpler question, with all due respect. Electoral systems are complicated. I know that separation is very complicated—

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

[Inaudible—Editor]

[Craig Henschel]

—but the referendums in Quebec were on issues that you could decide on as a personal value. The mechanics of electoral systems are going to be impossible to educate voters about.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Why?

[Craig Henschel]

We can have a referendum about the values we may want to see in the electoral system, but I think the actual answer is going to be very difficult for voters.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Why do you think it's impossible to educate people? Don't you think people are intelligent enough to understand what is good and what is wrong for them?

[Craig Henschel]

I know that average voters are extremely intelligent and extremely dedicated and want to do the best for the country, because I worked with 150 other randomly selected voters, and they were all dedicated. They all had very intelligent comments and opportunities to speak their minds. I trusted them implicitly, but there has to be a way to get the information to them and to have opportunities for them to deliberate and make decisions on what they think.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

This is the responsibility of a serious government.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Deltell, your time is up. That was a good discussion.

I'll now give the floor to Mrs. Romanado, or rather Mr. Aldag.

Go ahead, Mr. Aldag.

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

Thank you.

To begin, I'd like to thank everybody for coming out. We have an ever-growing crowd here in Victoria. I'd also like to thank everybody for keeping the wonderful weather you ordered for the Royals in place for the committee members. Many have joined us here for the first time. We had a brief walkabout, and it was a fantastic 20 minutes on the waterfront before we came back in.

Mr. Henschel, I want to acknowledge and thank you for the work you've done. You've been involved in electoral reform for more than a decade.

In the spirit of transparency, Mr. Henschel was part of a town hall in a neighbouring riding in the Lower Mainland. I represent Cloverdale—Langley City, so I was invited to be a speaker, and we had a great discussion that day. Then I had my own town hall in my own riding, and Mr. Henschel came to speak at that one and provided some great insight and experience. I'm pleased that you're here today and are able to speak about the experience that came from your experience with the B.C. Citizens' Assembly, because I think there are a lot of lessons we can learn.

That being said, I'm going to turn my attention to Mr. Archer for a bit.

I'd like to explore the question of referendums. As everybody knows, they come up from time to time in this discussion.

I have lived in British Columbia for many years. I was away for two years and then returned in 2005, so I was around for the referendums on electoral systems, the HST, and most recently, transit on the Lower Mainland. After each one of them, I'll tell you, I felt like I needed a bit of mouthwash, because they left a really bad taste in my mouth.

It's not that I feel that the people of B.C. got any of them wrong. They all had the opportunity and they spoke, but my experience was that each one became a question of something other than what was being asked. As an example, the transit one was very much about TransLink management and not about how to fund transit expansion.

I have two questions on referendums. We've been told by our Chief Electoral Officer that a Canadian referendum would cost $300 million. I was trying to do the calculation. If we use $8 per person, that doesn't seem out of line. What was the lowest-cost version you had? I don't want anybody to think I'm advocating for a referendum. It's just that I think, in the spirit of this discussion, that we need to be open to all options. What was the lowest cost you had, and was that for the mail-in one? The $300 million figure may be high, or it may be low. I'm just not sure what figure we were given. Could you maybe repeat what the range of the per person cost was?

[Keith Archer]

Sure. The costs I talked about in my original statement looked at the costs of what we call the thin layer, held in conjunction with the general election, and that was in place in 2005 and 2009. I brought the data from 2005.

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

Right.

[Keith Archer]

For that event, the additional cost to administer the referendum per registered voter was 37¢.

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

Was it that cheap just because it was laid onto a process that was already out there, as opposed to having—

[Keith Archer]

Exactly. We were already hiring all of our district electoral officers, who in turn were hiring all of their field staff, so the event was moving forward. Much of the additional cost was public education expenditures, so that people were aware that this was part of the electoral process for those events.

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

Okay.

Was the high one the $8? Was that the HST one?

[Keith Archer]

The $8 cost was the cost per registered voter for the general election. We've parsed those two costs. There was the general election, assuming there was no additional referendum put in place. The total cost of the event was that cost plus the 37¢ per registered voter for the referendum costs. The cost for the mail-in ballots for the HST referendum was $2.63 per registered voter. That was for the plebiscite in 2011. For the plebiscite in 2015, our cost per registered voter was $3.44.

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

I'm trying to think of the best bang for the taxpayer's dollar. I'm hearing that if we needed or wanted to go to a referendum question, to do it with an existing election process.

[Keith Archer]

If you're trying to minimize the additional expenditure for that consultation process, yes, then do it in conjunction with a general election. I think I've heard Elections Canada talk about their ability to do this with mail-in balloting, as well. I think there are a number of options that are possible.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

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

Is that it? Whoa. I thought I was at the start of it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Actually, it was over five minutes, and they were good questions, quality questions.

Mr. Cullen.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Witnesses, let me apologize for having to come in and out. I was very keen on hearing your testimony, but circumstances have intervened, and we're awaiting a potentially difficult government decision on something else.

A promise was made to...and this is the frame, I think, in which this conversation needs to operate for us. We're changing the electoral system. The question is to what and how. There are questions of how we make that legitimate and through what process.

I'm going to concern myself solely from the perspective of Canadian voters, what they hope to get, and what we hope to offer at the other end.

In terms of the assumed benefit of moving to a proportional system as you advised here in B.C.—and has been advised by every major citizens' assembly and study that's ever been conducted in this country—what's in it for the voter? What is the known benefit—I don't want to say “assumed”— for moving from the centuries-old first-past-the-post system to something different and something proportional?

[Craig Henschel]

The most obvious benefit is voter satisfaction. If you have a government that is supported by 40% of the voters, then 40% of voters are going to be happy with the policies and laws which are coming from that government, perhaps.