Evidence of meeting #32 for Electoral Reform in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was votes.
7:15 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
In fairness to Dr. Lijphart's work, it's 36 countries and he has looked at every election since the end of the Second World War, so there's quite a body of information there and data, don't you think?
7:15 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Several...it was every election since the Second World War for 36 countries.
7:15 p.m.
As an Individual
But there are just 36 countries, and I'm not saying that he doesn't make a number of very good points and he is one of our major political scientists in this discipline, but I think you have to be very careful with drawing causal conclusions.
7:15 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
I wasn't drawing causal conclusions, but I appreciate your raising it. Let's just tease out some of the things to eliminate concerns on this point. I know you said you don't want to make a recommendation for Canada, but in terms of the concern you raised, we have to look at everything and none of us wants to create a system that increases the rise of an extremist party that has very small support but somehow makes its way into Parliament.
Would you agree with me that it's very unlikely that single transferable vote systems would give rise to small extremist parties? They would have to at least have the voting power to win a seat in a multi-member riding where they have no guaranteed seat based on a small proportion of the vote.
7:15 p.m.
As an Individual
I find it very difficult to say since we also, again, have a very limited number of countries where they have STV—
7:15 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
No, it's a matter of the way the math works. A party that doesn't have substantial support basically in our current Parliament.... We've had representations from smaller parties at our microphones here who have said, if you go with single transferable vote you're basically saying that none of the parties that exist, that are the roughly 20 parties that collectively get less than 2% of the vote across Canada, will ever get a seat in Parliament. At least that's what they've said at the mikes here. They're very concerned that unless we go with a list system, the smaller parties will never get into the House.
7:15 p.m.
As an Individual
Sure, depending on how large you make district size, STV can be less proportional than a classical PR system and then, yes--
7:15 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
In terms of the kind of influence that smaller parties.... I'm co-chair of the Global Greens Parliamentarian Association, so I talk a lot to the Greens who have been in other coalitions around the world. Certainly, the experience they have is that it's not that they've ever had disproportionate influence, but the concern within the Green parties of Germany, Finland, and New Zealand and all around the world is that when you go into a coalition—it certainly happened to the Irish Greens last time, two elections ago—you get lost because the larger party basically squashes you out. That seems to be the real life politics of the Greens in Germany or Finland. Certainly, if you look at a first-past-the-post coalition between Nick Clegg and Lib Dems and David Cameron, the Lib Dems did very badly as a result of going into the coalition.
7:20 p.m.
As an Individual
That's what I believe I said in my statement, that policy portfolios tend to be allocated proportional to the seats.
7:20 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
So it's not the case that we have any evidence of really small parties gaining undue influence in coalition governments. It's more—
7:20 p.m.
Liberal
7:20 p.m.
Liberal
John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Thank you.
To begin, I thank all of our audience members. I see that people continue to come in. We have a great turnout from the greater Vancouver area. I see a number of faces from my riding out in Cloverdale—Langley City. I just want to thank the many of you who have made the trip in from the valley, and those who are more local, for coming out this evening. We look forward to hearing from you as we get into the evening.
In the spirit of a little rivalry we've had about which riding is the most beautiful, we've been to Mr. Deltell's, Ms. May's—
7:20 p.m.
Liberal
John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Yes, and Gabriel's.
I'd like to throw out that perhaps we're here in the most beautiful suite of ridings in the country. I just wanted to weigh in on that one—including my own riding of Cloverdale—Langley City. There you go.
7:20 p.m.
Liberal
John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Exactly.
Dr. Simons, I want to start the questioning with you.
I found the information you provided fascinating. As Mr. Cullen had noted when we started, it seemed that online voting could be a solution to a lot of our problems, including accessibility. You've just taken that and thrown it in the trash can for me. It causes me some concern. Is there any hope for any application down the road?
One of the things we've been asked to look at is increasing accessibility and voter participation. I know from my own experience during my first election in October, I did have people who were unable to make it to the polling booth, and Elections Canada did some great work to make their votes accessible. I thought there could be some great opportunities for those who are homebound dealing with disabilities.
Then we had a witness from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind who spoke with us more recently. Her testimony really touched me. She talked about never having been able to have a secret ballot. One of the many messages I got from her is that many persons with disabilities, particularly visual disabilities, have technology that they work with at home that uses oral prompts and other things to help them. I thought maybe we need to go with a limited-reach online voting. We heard that from our Chief Electoral Officer, to maybe go small and do some test populations.
Until you spoke, I was hoping that we could convince Elections Canada to start with a population such as those with sight disabilities and pilot something, but with what you're saying, the risks are so high.
Would you advise us and direct us away from even going that far, because of the vulnerabilities?
7:20 p.m.
As an Individual
There are safer alternatives.
In the United States there's been a lot of concern about voters in the military overseas, because it takes a long time, and about people with disabilities. What's done there, and I think this could be done in Canada, is that you can make the blank ballot available online. In the U.S. for military voters, by law it's made available at least 45 days in advance of the election. They download the ballot, print it out, fill it out, and mail it in.
Now, with voters with disabilities, you could download the ballot onto the computer, and they could use their tools to vote. One thing you need to be careful about is that when that happens, you don't want their computer communicating with the main server, because that's basically Internet voting again, and you have lots of issues, such as the secret ballot. But they can download it onto their computer, disconnect from the Internet, and then fill it out locally so that they can take advantage of the tools they have. A blind voter can fill it out, print it out, and then mail it in by postal mail. Again, they can use the tools, and if it's done enough in advance, they don't have to worry about the time for the postal mail.
7:25 p.m.
Liberal
John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
It's a wonderful suggestion, very practical.
What else have you encountered in this area of research that you can get to us while we have access to your expertise, before the chair cuts me off? Are there any other gems you can give us that will help us reach out to some of these populations that have been disenfranchised from our voting system?
7:25 p.m.
As an Individual
I know there's been concern among first nations. I've heard some testimony in another event where a first nation person was strongly advocating for Internet voting.
Again, I think it does a disservice to voters with disabilities, to first nations, to anybody, to provide them with a tool that is fundamentally insecure. We owe it to them when we provide them with alternatives to make sure those alternatives are secure.
That would be my recommendation.
7:25 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
I don't have any questions for you, Dr. Simons, and that's because you've resolved matters in my mind. I'm now firmly committed to not moving to electronic voting. In fact, I'm completely paranoid. That was very convincing.
7:25 p.m.
A voice
Don't blame her.
