Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 27th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

The meeting is officially open. Before we get started in earnest, I would like to acknowledge that we are meeting today on the traditional territory of the Songhees, Esquimalt, and Coast Salish first nations. We're very happy to be here on Vancouver Island. It's a beautiful place, and you're lucky to live here. We're lucky to be visiting as part of this tour.

I'll explain briefly how we go about things.

We have a panel of two today. We have Mr. Keith Archer, the chief electoral officer here in B.C., and we have Craig Henschel, who is a member of the B.C. Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform.

Each panellist will present for 10 minutes. Then we'll have a round of questions whereby each MP on the committee will have five minutes to engage with the witnesses, and those five minutes include questions and answers. If at the end of five minutes the witness is unable to answer because of time constraints, fear not, you can address the questions the next time you have the mike. Your views can be heard. We retain enough flexibility for that to happen. That's essentially how we operate.

I would remind the members that if we're at four minutes and 30 seconds into your allotted time, it could be used for a statement or a rapid question with a rapid answer, so that we can respect the time limit.

Without further ado, we'll start with Mr. Archer, for 10 minutes, please.

[Keith Archer, Chief Electoral Officer, Elections BC]

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee. Welcome to Victoria.

My name is Keith Archer. I'm the chief electoral officer in British Columbia, a position I've held since 2011. Prior to this appointment, I was a professor of political science at the University of Calgary. Mr. Kelly reminded me that he was a student in one of my classes back in the early 1990s.

Let me begin by setting out the terms of reference for my comments here today.

As chief electoral officer for British Columbia, my obligation is to administer electoral processes in British Columbia. As an electoral administrator, my role is to ensure that, whatever electoral system is used in my jurisdiction, it is administered to the highest professional standards, ensuring that all eligible voters can fairly and effectively exercise their franchise.

My remarks, therefore, do not take a view of one electoral system over another. My office would as readily administer a general election using single member plurality as it would any number of other alternative systems, such as proportional, mixed member proportional, or runoff systems. That's the role of my office.

An additional question that arises in discussions of electoral reform is whether changing the fundamental rules of the electoral process requires some level of public consultation. If so, should that consultation involve some type of public input process such as is being undertaken by this legislative committee conducting hearings across the country, or should it involve some kind of public input, for example, through the administration of a plebiscite or a referendum on the issue?

In my jurisdiction, the Election Act is silent on this topic, which means, of course, that from a legal perspective, the standard legislative rules apply. Since the Election Act is silent on this topic, then as the chief electoral officer, I'm not in a position to comment on the merits of any form of public consultation. The decision on whether and how to engage the public in a consultation on electoral reform is a matter for government and the legislative assembly; therefore, I will not be commenting on the merits of public consultation.

Now that I've outlined what I won't be speaking about and my reasons for doing so, let me turn to the things that I am prepared to discuss; namely, once the government and the legislature have decided to consult the public through a referendum or a plebiscite, what issues you may wish to consider.

Elections BC has administered three referendums and a plebiscite since 2005, and I would like to draw upon those experiences to highlight a number of issues worth considering.

First, why use a referendum or a plebiscite? Referendums and plebiscites are discretionary instruments of public consultations. A referendum is usually binding on governments; a plebiscite is not. Referendums and plebiscites are used when governments consider that an expression of public opinion is desirable.

Two of the referendums conducted in British Columbia in the past 11 years were on the question of electoral reform. The other referendum was on a proposal to rescind the HST and to return to a tax structure that included a GST and a PST. A plebiscite was held in metro Vancouver on transportation and transit options. Each of the referendums and the plebiscite had a different origin.

The 2005 referendum on electoral reform flowed from the recommendations of a citizens' assembly on that topic. The government had committed that, if the citizens' assembly recommended changing the electoral system and recommended a single alternative, it would consult the electorate through a referendum in conjunction with a 2005 general election.

The 2009 referendum on electoral reform was held because the government recognized, following the vote in 2005, that the electorate was unaware of the electoral districts that would be in use under the proposed alternative electoral system, that is, BC-STV, as it was known. Therefore, it charged the Electoral Boundaries Commission to propose new electoral districts using both SMP and BC-STV, and the commission did so. These districts then added some context to the referendum vote in 2009.

The 2011 referendum on the HST began under the Recall and Initiative Act, legislation that's unique to British Columbia. In the end, however, balloting was administered under the Referendum Act.

The 2015 plebiscite came about because a new source of funding was being proposed by the metro Vancouver mayors' council to fund transportation and transit in the metro area. The provincial government had committed that any such new funding would be subject to public consultation, and the plebiscite option was chosen for that purpose.

So the discretionary character of referendums and plebiscites means that the starting points may differ.

Second, what's a voting threshold or a decision rule? Well, the Referendum Act in British Columbia states that if more than 50% of the validly cast ballots vote the same way on a question, the result is binding on government. However, the act also provides that this rule is subject to change through regulation.

Recent experience in B.C. has shown a number of voting thresholds in operation. For the 2005 and 2009 referendums on electoral reform, the voting thresholds involved what I would describe as double supermajorities; that is, there were two thresholds. First, at least 60% of valid votes needed to be cast in favour of the change, and second, in at least 60% of electoral districts, more than 50% of the valid votes had to be cast in favour of change.

Parenthetically, in 2005, the second threshold was met, but the first was not. In 2009, neither of those thresholds were met. Therefore, the result was not binding on government, and of course, in the end, the electoral system was not changed.

For the HST referendum and the plebiscite on transportation and transit, a simple majority of votes was required for the question to be passed. This was achieved in the former, but not in the latter.

A third question is, how are electors informed about the process? Electoral events at the federal and provincial levels involve candidates offering differing perspectives and agendas, and political parties helping to communicate the message of their group. Over time, rules have been established for the financing of electoral competitions, including rules for disclosure, and in some instances, limits on expenditures and contributions.

Similar questions arise with referendums and plebiscites. For example, are there formally registered proponent and opponent groups? Are there limits on what each group can spend on advertising? Is there a particular public education role for the election agency? Are there disclosure requirements? Are there limits on contributions?

A variety of rules have been used in recent experience in B.C. In some instances, such as the second referendum on electoral reform and the HST referendum, there were registered yes and no groups and public funding allocated to those groups. In other instances, such as the first referendum on electoral reform, there was a requirement to register as an advertising sponsor, but no public funding was provided. In the recent plebiscite, there was no registration of advertising sponsors and no public funding.

Fourth, how are the ballots cast? Balloting in a referendum or a plebiscite can occur either in conjunction with or separate from a general election, and can either be in-person paper balloting or through an alternative balloting method, such as postal voting or telephone or Internet voting.

British Columbia has used paper balloting in conjunction with general elections for the referendums in 2005 and 2009. This has been described as using a thin layer on top of the general administrative procedures for the elections. The cost of using this method is very modest, but of course, there is limited flexibility in terms of the time at which the event can take place.

British Columbia has experienced relatively consistent turnout no matter which method of voting has been used. For example, turnout was 57.4% and 51% in the referendums in 2005 and 2009 when they were conducted in conjunction with general elections, and 52.7% and 48.6% for the HST referendum and the plebiscite, both of which were conducted with mail-in balloting.

In 2005, Elections BC's total costs in administering the general elections were $22.9 million, or just over $8 per registered voter. The cost of the referendum was just over $1 million, or an additional 37¢ per registered voter, so this thin layer is very inexpensive to administer. The cost of administering the HST mail-in ballots was just over $8 million, or about $2.63 per registered voter. The cost of the plebiscite in 2015 was $5.4 million, or $3.44 per registered voter.

The last thing I'll mention is a comment on Internet voting. I chaired an independent panel on Internet voting, which submitted a report to our legislative assembly in 2014. That report is available on the Elections BC website. I'm happy to make it available to the committee for your reference. I don't have time to discuss the report in my introductory remarks, but would be happy to do so in response to members' questions.

Mr. Chair, that concludes my introductory remarks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much, Mr. Archer.

We'll now go to Mr. Henschel, please.

[Craig Henschel, Member, BC Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Victoria.

My name is Craig Henschel. Thanks for asking me here this afternoon.

In 2004 I had the honour and privilege of serving for 11 months on the British Columbia Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform with 159 other randomly selected voters. Diana Byford and other assembly members are also here. She will be speaking more about the assembly process in the second session today.

I brought copies of our final report in French and English for the committee to examine, and I think you have them, as well as a small brochure that I've put together for the second referendum to try to educate voters about BC-STV.

I would like to try to give you a sense of our decision-making process and how we reached our 95% consensus for STV, the single transferable vote, in British Columbia.

One of our 50 public hearings was held in Valemount, a beautiful remote rural town of 1,000 people on the eastern edge of British Columbia. One gentleman there told us that he'd been voting in Valemount for 20 or 30 years and that he had never voted for an MLA who had won. He wanted someone he actually voted for to represent him in Victoria. I came away from that encounter understanding that exclusion.

The feeling of being excluded is a major failing of our electoral systems. Shouldn't we all have a say over the laws and policies that affect us? Isn't that what democracy is all about, citizens having a say over their own lives?

We also understood from other speakers that in rural areas, having someone local representing the area's voters was critical. To represent voters faithfully, the MLA or MP has to be able to see the world through local eyes, with local information and local understanding, and take this perspective into their party caucuses, legislative committees, and ultimately into the legislature when voting on the laws and policies that will affect those voters. Assembly members had heard similar frustrations from voters all over the province.

We looked at the results from several elections and found that an average of about 50% of voters didn't actually vote for their MLA. This came as a big surprise to us. We also noticed that MLAs were often elected by vastly different numbers of voters. MLAs who won with a 30% plurality might be representing half the number of voters of an MLA who won with a 60% plurality. Each MLA gets one full vote in the legislature, so this just wasn't fair. Some voters had twice the legislative power of other voters.

When half the voters don't have representation and the half who do have different amounts, it shouldn't be a surprise that election results often don't match voters' desires. If we could solve the problems of exclusion and unequal representation, we could solve the problem of disproportionality.

The single transferable vote solves this problem directly. STV uses multiple MPs in a district to represent multiple points of view. This greatly reduces the amount of voter exclusion, while at the same time keeping MPs as local as possible. STV is a preferential ballot, so that strategic voting isn't necessary and so that the voter can give the counting system a clear portrait of their desires. STV also uses a fair counting system that elects each MP in a district with about the same number of votes.

By dealing with exclusion and fairness right from the start, band-aid solutions like compensatory, non-local, party-list MPs are not required.

The flaw with first-past-the-post local representation is that only 50% of voters actually get local representation. The other 50% of voters aren't represented at all. The flaw with MMP local representation is that the district sizes have to be increased by 50% to 100%, which gives the MP less time with each constituent. The single transferable vote actually improves local representation by giving it to more voters and keeping the same voter-to-MP ratio, so MPs can spend the same amount of time with constituents as they do now.

We also wanted more choice. We absolutely didn't want political parties deciding who our MPs would be. Most of the assembly really liked multi-member districts. Multi-member districts are fantastic. The law commission rejected STV out of hand because it had multi-member districts, and I think that was a huge error. Multi-member districts are fantastic, and in my written brief to you, I go over the different details about them.

I am sure you've heard that women's representation improves with proportional systems, but it is critical to understand the electoral mechanism that makes this possible, and the key is multi-member districts. Academic studies have shown that in single member districts, where a party puts forward a single candidate, it tends to put forward a male of the dominant cultural group. In jurisdictions where parties put forward multiple candidates, they tend to diversify their slates with more gender balance and more diversity.

STV has a far greater potential for increasing women's representation than MMP does, with its single member districts. This was very important to the assembly, which greatly benefited from being gender balanced itself.

It is a really good idea in your deliberations and your process of making decisions to take specific designs of electoral systems for a spin. Try them out. Poke the tires. This is especially the case with MMP, because there are so many variations: open lists, closed lists, hybrid lists, voter-ordered lists, regions or no regions. If you are not looking at specific systems, it is very difficult to compare them and understand what is going on.

When the assembly designed the best MMP system for British Columbia and compared it to the best STV system for British Columbia, STV was favoured 80% over MMP at 20%. When we compared STV to first past the post, STV was favoured by 93% of assembly members over first past the post at 7%. This consensus was achieved not because the assembly members were practised negotiators, but because STV is so much better than any of the alternatives. The assembly then reached a 95% consensus to recommend that the single transferable vote be adopted for British Columbia.

As I understand it, the B.C. Citizens' Assembly has been the most extensive voter-based examination of electoral systems in history. If you choose to recommend STV to the minister, it will be accompanied by significant voter legitimacy. Is it possible that the B.C. Citizens' Assembly got it right? I think we did.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

We'll start our round of questions with Mr. DeCourcey, for five minutes, please.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you so much, Mr. Archer and Mr. Henschel. Thank you, everyone, for being here today and allowing us to visit and spend time in your beautiful city. It is my first time here on Vancouver Island, and I can say I've enjoyed the visual beauty of the place as well as the warm welcome we received earlier today.

Mr. Henschel, if I could spend some time with you, I'd love to dig into the process and the conversations that took place within the citizens' assembly. The place I'd like to start is the trade-offs between parties being able to deliver clear visions of their policy agenda in an election, as they are generally able to do through an SMP, first-past-the-post system versus the trade-offs that take place afterwards in a coalition or minority government.

Some would say that understanding where a party stands on a clear vision and knowing how we can hold it accountable is a value that we want to pursue. Others say, “No, we want parties to compromise, and if they have to do that behind closed doors, that's the way we want to go.”

Take me through the conversation in the citizens' assembly.

[Craig Henschel]

We had two different types of conversations: in the whole group, 160 people in one go, and in small discussion groups with 12 people in each room.

A key thing for us was.... We had Ken Carty, who presented to you. In the big room, he talked about the stability of first past the post. Then we all went to smaller rooms and talked about the instability as policy lurches back and forth. We live in British Columbia and have seen the government go between Liberal and NDP. That's our experience, as voters, that policy lurches and is often brought about by governments that didn't have the support of most of the voters. They had majority seats, but minority support.

When we were looking at proportional systems, we knew that probably two different parties would come together and cobble together a true coalition majority. We really liked the idea that instead of having a party leader and a party with less than 50% support, and instead of them going off in one direction that most of us didn't want them to go in, they would have to pause for a moment and talk with other coalition partners, at least the other coalition leader, and go through issues, talk about them, discuss them, and come to better solutions.

We really liked the idea that policy would come from more talking and less quick acting because, as you probably heard, when there is a policy lurch one way or the other, there is an enormous amount of disruption that can happen in society.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

In your final decision-making votes within the assembly, there was a clear preference toward STV over MMP, and then a clear preference toward STV over first past the post. Why was there the referendum?

[Craig Henschel]

That was part of the mandate of government. That wasn't our choice.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Was there a conversation around whether a referendum was the best way to go?

[Craig Henschel]

The referendum was set at the same time the assembly was established. But at that time, we didn't know that it was going to be a double 60% supermajority. When we all signed up, we thought it was a usual 50% majority referendum. We were only told about the double 60% several months into our process, and we all just sat there thinking that this proposal was doomed. We didn't think it would work, although we really did like the requirement to get 50% in the different districts. That forced us to make sure we satisfied the requirements and needs of rural voters, which we could have avoided otherwise.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Do you have any thoughts on how the B.C. model would translate to a Canadian model, given the unique characteristics of Canada's north, or Canada's “norths”, as we've heard as recently as yesterday, as well as some of the northern ridings in some of the provinces?

[Craig Henschel]

Yes. That was a huge issue for us, obviously.

If you look at the map, there are huge areas—and Nathan knows—of the province and it looks daunting. How can you add districts together, a three member district of the north? How is that going to work? Mostly it's rocks and trees. The people are along small stretches of highways, basically. The province is not as big as we think it is by looking at the map. There has to be a real sense of how long it takes and how difficult it is to communicate with people.

We have the Internet. We have Skype. We have video conferencing. We have scheduling. We thought we could manage a large district. The assembly members from those areas wanted multi-member districts, because they wanted representation. It was hugely important.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

We'll to to Mr. Reid now, please.

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

Mr. Henschel, I'll start with you. First of all, I concur with your observation that remote ridings are frequently ridings that have a single centre that has the majority of the population. We just came from Yukon, where something in the neighbourhood of two-thirds of the population are in the capital. It's not universally true, but it certainly is a feature of a number of northern ridings.

There are also rural ridings—I, myself, represent one—where people are spread very thinly over the ground in what is geographically a smaller area. But in practice, visiting your constituents.... In my case, I have no municipality with more than 10,000 people, no town with more than 10,000 people. That creates a different kind of problem. It's less spectacular on a map but very real. I simply mention this as something that is worthy of everybody's consideration on this committee as we move forward.

I think you answered the question about the 60% number instead of a pure majority. I have always thought that was a mistake. It sounds as if you're saying it was a mistake. I get the impression, from reading the Speech from the Throne following that referendum which took place in the election that the government recognized they had a legitimacy problem. The majority had voted in favour of something. They couldn't act on it, and that forced them to have the second referendum.

That's one thing—you can comment on that, if you wish—but what I wanted to ask this. In Prince Edward Island right now they're looking at having a referendum—they call it a plebiscite—in which they have a number of options listed. New Zealand used this when they went to electoral reform, and they used it again recently when they reconsidered whether what they had done was the right thing. What are your thoughts on that kind of referendum compared with simply one option versus the status quo?

[Craig Henschel]

As you know, because you've been doing this for two or three months, with just a full-on education, this is a complicated topic. Just the simple mechanics of the system are complicated. How they flesh out when you you work through them and look at how they're going to work for voters, MPs, and governance, that's super complicated and the average voter is not going to spend the time doing that.

Having a referendum about which system to have doesn't work. Maybe a better solution to find out what voters are thinking is to ask them about different values, in a polling sense or through the census guys in Canada. They could ask voters what their values are, what values they hold as important, and then take that advice and find a system that works for them.

We had a lot of people at our public hearings say, “These are our values. We don't know how to get there. You're the experts. Get us there.”

That's what I would suggest.

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

Let me ask this question. I know this is not something that sounds like a road you'd want to go down, but let's say you'd been asked to come up with the best STV system you could, and also the best MMP system, so that voters could choose between those two and the status quo. I think these are the two most credible options versus the status quo.

Would that have been feasible for a group like the citizens' assembly to do?

[Craig Henschel]

Well, that's exactly what we did do. That was exactly the process we used to determine that we preferred STV. We had two months in the summer with a new thing—it was online blogging, cool—and we just hammered out the two different systems and then we came up with the final designs in our plenary sessions and pitted them against each other. We'd been debating this all summer because we knew those were the only two alternatives for British Columbia. It was in that comparison of the best systems to address the values of British Columbians that we made those votes.

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

Professor Archer, you stated that the form of the referendum—mail-in versus the paper ballot at a polling station—did not affect turnout. Did it affect the cost of conducting the stand-alone referendum? Would it have been more expensive having balloting stations and all the normal paraphernalia of an election, or would it have been the same cost?

[Keith Archer]

One of the arguments that has been used in British Columbia for the mail-in ballot is its cost-effectiveness. Our budget for the last provincial general election was about $35 million. The HST referendum that was conducted with mail-in balloting was just over $8 million. It's a much less expensive option and in British Columbia we have confidence in the integrity of a referendum process that uses mail-in ballots.

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

Thank you both.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Reid.

We'll go now to Mr. Boulerice.

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

I thank our witnesses and the crowd here. I am happy to be in Victoria with you today.

I want to explain the empty chair here. My colleague and good friend Nathan Cullen is a little busy right now, because the government just announced an LNG project with the company Petronas, and he has to give some interviews on that.

I am now going to switch to French.

Thank you, Mr. Henschel. I wish I had more than five minutes to ask you questions.

I find your citizen assembly concept very interesting. The NDP had suggested this process, but it wasn't accepted.

I would like to get a better understanding of your enthusiasm for multi-member constituencies. You seemed to be saying earlier that they were fantastic. You mentioned that your written brief explained this concept in more detail.

Could you take a minute or a minute and a half to tell us why—and to what extent—constituencies with several MPs are the best solution?

[Craig Henschel]

The one thing to remember is that a single MP is not going to be able to represent everyone in that district, because there are many different opinions in a district. To represent multiple points of view, you really need multiple MPs. In that circumstance, you have to figure out a way to elect them.

In a multi-member district, different parties will be putting forward probably one more candidate than they expect will win, because if the election goes their way they'll want to be able to take advantage of that. That gives voters a very interesting opportunity to have a say in the candidate selection process of the parties—all voters—because with the preferential ballot, they'll be able to rank the different candidates in the multi-member district.

It's great for voters. It may be harder for MPs, but maybe not. For voters, you can have a say in it. If there is an MP who is doing a lousy job or who has done something that people don't like, voters can say that they will not rank them at all and they'll rank someone else, so that's very good.

You can keep people accountable if you have an MP who you voted for, but if you didn't vote for your MP and they're running again, how do you hold that MP accountable? You can't withhold the vote you never gave them in the first place, but in a multi-member district where more voters have a representative who they voted for, they can hold them accountable.

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

The Prime Minister said during the election campaign that the 2015 election would be the last to use the first past the post system. Many systems have been put forward, including mixed member proportional, closed list, open list and STV, or single transferable vote.

One advantage of the current system is that it's very simple to understand. A five-year-old could navigate it easily. But some people fear that a system like STV is essentially a mathematical calculations affair. We can even imagine that people would meet in an isolated room, do mathematical calculations and decide the outcome of elections.

Why did your citizens assembly decide that this wasn't a problem?