Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 27th, 2016

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I get to follow up on the “male, pale, and stale”. I think I am just going to leave that one alone, actually.

First, John Duncan is an old friend and a former colleague. John and I go back almost a quarter of a century. The first time we met was back in 1992. You were a brand new MP. John, please forgive me for the fact that I am going to ask my questions of the other witnesses.

Mr. Hodgson, I want to start with you. Your organization, in co-operation with Fair Vote Canada—I don't know to what degree you are different organizations and to what degree you are the same, but that is not relevant to the question I'm asking—has talked about, among other things, the rural-urban potential model. As you may know, there is a professor at the University of Waterloo, Byron Weber Becker, who has modelled a number of different versions of this. I actually have his models here—I've been lugging this brick around with me—and they are very interesting and very informative. At some point, hopefully I am going to convince the committee to take these in as testimony. We are hoping he will actually be a witness.

Having said all of that, one of the problems we face is that we have serious constraints on us that may make the rural-urban model problematic. I ask this because your organization has come forward with this. It has many things to recommend it, but, number one, we are required under our mandate to produce a system that could be in place for 2019.

Number two, any system that requires redistribution—as do some of the versions he has proposed—involves a two-year redistribution process. The Chief Electoral Officer, when asked about this, said it takes 24 months and gave us a detailed breakdown.

Number three, if we try to resolve the problem not by redistributing, at least not in the rural areas, but rather by adding top-up seats for each province, we run into constitutional issues relating to the proportionate representation of the provinces. It is actually laid out in the Constitution, and I think that is a very significant limit. We would have to go to the Supreme Court and confirm whether the top-up we are proposing is constitutional and whether we have a reference case. Otherwise, it would be uncertain.

Having said that, is there a way to overcome the second and third limit while still allowing us to achieve the 2019 deadline, using this model, as opposed to abandoning it and moving to either STV or MMP?

[Antony Hodgson]

Certainly. Thank you for the question. Byron and I have worked very closely on these models, so we've had a lot of input back and forth on these.

You are right that if there is a boundary redistribution process, there is time required for that. That would be required for every model, with the possible exception of STV—

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

I'm sorry.

The former chief electoral officer, Mr. Kingsley, indicated to us it was his belief that if we were simply squishing together two or three or some number, we could have a much more expedited process, and it wouldn't take 24 months.

[Antony Hodgson]

Understood. STV is the only model, with the exception of dual member proportional, which is being considered in Prince Edward Island, or a 50:50 MMP model where you are simply grouping together adjacent ridings.... The 60:40 MMP model would require a redistribution process.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Right.

[Antony Hodgson]

The rural-urban model would likewise require defining new electoral boundaries. The rural-urban model does have potential, because the number of top-up seats is relatively limited, about 15% or 12%, if you use more multi-member ridings. You could, in fact, do essentially an STV grouping process and then define regions covering some adjacent STV districts with additional top-up MPs.

I think those are the ways in which that might work out.

In terms of the constitutional issue, I am not a constitutional scholar, so I don't know, but if the numbers are all rising by 12% and you keep that constant across the country, I don't see that anybody would have cause to complain.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

The practical difficulty with that is that some of the smaller provinces, given the numbers in places like P.E.I. and Newfoundland make this hard to accomplish. I'm not saying it's insurmountable, but it's just something I think you'd want to test out to make sure it's okay.

Could I have a moment for Ms. Byford?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Go ahead.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Byford, you served on the citizens' assembly here in British Columbia. Your testimony was relevant because there has been a positive response to the idea that we should have a national citizens' assembly. That may or may not be a good idea, but let's say it were to be taken as a serious possibility. Participation would entail some sacrifices. If you're talking about something that's national and involves some travel, would that level of participation be a realistic demand to make on a citizen? Are there impediments that make it overly difficult at a human level?

[Diana Byford]

Nationally, it would become a real problem, simply because of the amount of travel that would be involved in addition to the time spent on the assembly. I'm not saying it shouldn't be considered, but I see it as a problem. For myself, if I were selected to be a participant in such an assembly and it was going to be held in, say, Ottawa, I would have to decline. I wouldn't want to, but I would have to decline.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you, and thank you for the extra time, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Sure. That was a good question.

Mr. Cullen.

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

Thank you, Chair, and my thanks to our panel.

First, let me start by thanking all of you for your commitment to serve our country. What this boils down to is an effort to serve, to seek a way to benefit our citizens more broadly. My thanks to John for serving, to Diane for your time, and to Antony for all of your ideas, including your tragicomic remark that our nominations often favour the “male, pale, and stale”.

You suggested a polarity almost, Antony, between representation and exclusion. I think that's a helpful way to look at the experience of many voters. At every open mike night we have conducted so far, and in many of the thousands of responses we've received on the survey we've put up, people expressed that they try to participate, they vote, they do all the things they're supposed to, and then the results come back and they find that more than half of the votes cast elected nobody. Is that the core issue you're trying to fix?

Someone once said the opposite of love isn't hate, it's ambivalence. I sometimes worry it's not just that people are turned off our politics. They just become ambivalent towards it. Is that true or am I stretching it?

[Antony Hodgson]

I think that's exactly right.

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

John, I think the question you're getting at of putting this question to voters in the form of a referendum is about legitimizing the process. Is it a question of legitimacy for you?

[John Duncan]

Absolutely.

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

You sat around the cabinet table. Did the cabinet at any point consider putting a similar question to voters when your government was changing the voting system?

[John Duncan]

It was never a discussion I was party to.

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

The tradition in Canada, and I think it was a good one, was that we should always have multi-party support for the idea of changing the voting system, because those involved are affected by it. Yet, when we attempted to do that with your government under the Fair Elections Act, it was rejected and some important changes affecting the ability of people to vote were left hanging.

You'll remember your colleague Gerry Ritz, who was the agriculture minister when the Canadian Wheat Board and its existence was being debated. The wheat board held a plebiscite, which I know you're in favour of as a tool. Minister Ritz repeatedly said the plebiscite would have no bearing on his legislation, which was written to dismantle the wheat board. He said that the Conservatives campaigned on a platform to eliminate the monopoly, and were given a majority mandate to do so by voters. Do you see the contradiction here? The farmers affected by the dismantling of a long-serving institution on the Prairies held a plebiscite confirming that they wanted to keep the wheat board. Your government's response, however, was to say, “We have the mandate already. Your plebiscite is irrelevant.” Similarly, the government now tells us that even though 63% or 64% of the people sitting in Parliament campaigned on a promise to change the voting system, there is no mandate to make this change.

[John Duncan]

What I would like to say is that the prairie provinces and British Columbia are not the same entity.

We have a long populist history in British Columbia, and we've dealt with a lot of referendums. The words were used today that this is too complicated for a referendum. Well, we got very engaged in the Charlottetown referendum as a population, and thank goodness we collectively made the right decision.

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

I wasn't asking about complexity, and my argument wasn't about—

[John Duncan]

But others are making that point.

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

I know, but I asked about mandate.

[John Duncan]

Things are not too complicated for the population.