Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 28th, 2016

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses for being here with us this afternoon.

And thanks to the many people from Vancouver who are in the room for being passionate and interested in a fundamental subject that affects the quality of our democracy.

Our committee was given the mandate of studying the various options available to us. In the normal course of things, the 2015 election will be the last one conducted under the present electoral system, the first past the post system. I am using the English term even though I am speaking French, because it is quicker.

I have a question for you, Professor Kam. You say there are always compromises to make, because all electoral systems have advantages and disadvantages. You talked about one compromise in particular relating to accountability. There is also a compromise to be made between the proportionality of a system and the value of local representation. We have heard a lot about that in recent weeks and this summer, when people came to see us. You can have a system where local representation is very strong, but the distortions are also very strong.

The existing system creates distortions that are so large that the will of the people is sometimes overturned. We saw that situation at the federal level in 1979, as well as in British Columbia and three times in Quebec, in 1944, 1966 and 1998. The party that got the most votes lost the election.

Professor Kam, do you think that the fact that this kind of system can overturn the will of the electorate is a fundamental democratic problem?

[Christopher Kam]

The question, then, is about when you have a party that wins second place in the popular vote but forms government, that's a problem. Yes, that can be a problem. Ideally, we wouldn't like that. It's rare, but it happens. But I can point to other problems in other systems. When you have a centrist party that gets to make a coalition or be in a minority position regardless of what happens to its vote share, that also would be a problem. That's why I put forward a metric of the responsiveness between shifts in power with respect to shifts in votes.

I'm a little uneasy talking about what the voters' will is. Remember that these results of wrong-winner governments come about mostly because of the accumulation of votes, not just within ridings, but mostly the aggregation across ridings, so it could be that one party won very big in some ridings and very small in others. These distortions can happen either at the electoral stage—where that's what happens in the first past the post—or they can happen at the parliamentary stage, when you have a proportional system that generates the need to form coalitions.

There is a recent paper by G. Bingham Powell, of the University of Rochester, that basically says the propensity for these sorts of—what shall we call them—distortions to emerge is about equal under the two systems, it's just that they occur in different places in the electoral process. In the proportional system, they're almost always going to have to occur in the parliamentary formation of coalition governments, where parties could conceivably lose votes, yet because their ideological location gives them a bargaining advantage, they get into cabinet. Would we call that a distortion?

That's why I'm saying I'm a little.... We're making choices in a less-than-perfect world, so there is no first best electoral system. This is akin to buying the used car that you can. No matter which electoral system you get, it's like a used car. It's going to have some dings in it, and you're going to discover some of those problems once you drive it for a little while.

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

Thank you, Professor Kam. I think our committee is going to try to use Mr. Churchill's precept, when he said that democracy was the worst of the existing systems, except all the others. We are going to try to improve the best of the imperfect systems.

Mr. Jewell, I would like to ask you a question. I heard the explanation of your system just now. We have not done this for a long time, but I would like to read you a question from Keith Spoors on Twitter. He asks you what would happen, under your system, if a party did not elect any members, but got 3% or 4% or 5% of the votes. You assign different weight to the votes for each member. There might still be the possibility of a party getting 6% everywhere in the country but not electing any members. In that case, there is no way to assign any weight, or not, to that popular vote.

[P. Jeffery Jewell]

Yes, thank you for the question.

That's what I was alluding to with the simple statement that some accommodation is necessary to avoid wasting votes for independent candidates or parties that don't elect anyone. The possibilities I see would be to set a threshold, and that's a common thing in proportional systems. Set a threshold of 3%, 4%, or 5%, whatever it is, and if the party reaches that, then they are assured representation extraterritorially from a seat. It could be picked from the strongest defeated candidate or the leader of a small party, whatever.

You would have to do that. For the independent candidates, my thought was to have an ombudsperson type of idea where any of the otherwise unrepresented votes or independents would have some representation in a non-partisan form.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Kelly.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thanks to all of you for attending our session today. I've heard some excellent testimony and some new ideas that haven't come out so far this week.

I'll start with Dr. Kam. Thank you for your contributions so far in discussing the inherent trade-offs that have to be made or that are made when comparing the different systems. Your characterization of hunting for unicorns is particularly appropriate when I think of some of the presentations we've heard or remarks from the floor that simultaneously placed value on having an individual representative from their riding who can represent them because they know the local people and they are accessible to local people, but at the same time they desire a proportional system. These are trades. You can't have a perfect balance of these. We've heard this literally in the same breath of the people demanding proportional representation, and are also saying “but I still want to keep my local member of Parliament”.

In your opening remarks you said a number of things, and I was struck by the talk of majoritarian systems and their responsiveness to change. I'd like to give you a minute to explain that a little more fully if you care to.

[Christopher Kam]

Okay, the idea I was trying to set out is that one of the things I think we would like, and that anybody would like in an electoral system, is that there ought to be what we call a monotonic relationship between changes in the votes and changes in the legislative power. If a party gains votes, then it ought to gain legislative power. If it loses votes, and particularly if an incumbent government loses votes, then it ought to lose some power to continue to effect its policy agenda.

If we take that as a metric—and I'm open to hearing counter-arguments as to why that might not be a good metric—it's clear that majoritarian systems outperform proportional ones in the sense that if you take the votes from an incumbent government under a majoritarian system, then their power falls at a much faster rate than under a proportional system.

That can be tempered with a couple of remarks. It's still a positive relationship under PR systems. The worst performing system wasn't a proportional one, it was the Japanese electoral system, the old electoral system and the single non-transferable vote, which had the remarkable property that changes in votes were entirely uncorrelated to shifts in power. That's quite an accomplishment. It's good for incumbents, perhaps, but less so for voters.

We can take the New Zealand case as one, and there the responsiveness fell by half. These numbers are not for any given metric, but we can say that responsiveness declined in New Zealand. What did they get in return for that? They got more proportional representation.

It's up to how people made that choice. I don't know, I'm not a political philosopher, so I don't have guidelines for them on that.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

In a majoritarian system such as the present one, it's much easier to get rid of an unpopular government. People don't vote for the incumbent party and they get a new government.

[Christopher Kam]

Yes, majoritarian systems would be a family of systems that includes first past the post, the Australian alternative vote system, and the French two-round system. The shared quality of these things is they have a district magnitude of one. That really tends to be what determines how majoritarian a system is.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thank you.

Do I have time for another question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

A 20-second statement would be all.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

I wanted to ask Mr. Canseco if he had any more up-to-date data than what we heard earlier about the number of Canadians who are intently engaged in this process.

[Mario Canseco]

The number of Canadians who are intently engaged in this process is fairly low. Looking at the numbers, it's probably around 25% to 30% who are following this either very closely or somewhat closely.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

We'll go now to Mr. DeCourcey.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Actually, Mr. Canseco, following on the last statement you made that your polling would indicate that possibly 25% to 30% of Canadians are following the process closely or very closely, I wonder if you can elaborate further on what that means in your polling and how that would differentiate from the evidence we received from Darrell Bricker, which broke us down to possibly 3% of Canadians following this process closely.

[Mario Canseco]

I think different companies would have different methodologies and ways in which to ask a question. We've been asking questions about specific policy issues for the past three years using the same metric. There are certain times when you can get 50% or 60% of Canadians to be completely involved in certain discussions. We see it at the municipal level with specifications related to elections. We see it provincially, depending on certain decisions that are happening such as the pipeline issue in B.C.

So 30% might seem low, but it's still considerable. Three out of 10 Canadians are discussing this at the dinner table and talking to their friends. It seems low in comparison with other things that are generating more attention, but, ultimately, this is also the fault of the media that we follow. The fact that the two tables behind me are empty should serve as a careful analysis of the interest that the media in this province is putting into this issue.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Do you have any particular idea why your percentage would bias higher than Darrell Bricker's?

[Mario Canseco]

It's too difficult for me to comment on somebody else's surveys, and I don't think I should go there.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thanks very much.

Mr. Jewell, in your follow-up testimony to questioning, you believe that we should go ahead and move to an AV system and run a referendum on the perfect proportional representation. Is that what you concluded?

[P. Jeffery Jewell]

I did feel that a referendum on the PPR side, since it is unprecedented, is something that would need to have public acceptance, and I do believe that's quite achievable because of the merit and the nature of it. I think it's also something that's easy to explain to people, and especially, I think it's easy because it won't have the political opposition of opportunism, which we certainly witnessed here in British Columbia. The political parties had reasons to defeat that recommendation. I don't think they'll have the same motivation to defeat PPR because it is scrupulously fair to everyone.

Since I may not have another chance to talk on this, I'd like to also say that the relationships within the political world should also benefit enormously because, on the alternative vote side, you don't win by undercutting your opponent; you win by getting secondary support. In Parliament, you are not likely going to have a majority, and you need to work with other people, whether it's a coalition or a minority government, whatever.

I think the nature of having a truly honest voting system, where the political parties cannot gain by slagging one another, should help politics in elections. The public's fed up with this kind of nonsense, as you well know, but it wins. Unfortunately, under the system we have, that kind of bad behaviour is rewarded and, under an honest system, it will be punished.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you very much.

Professor Kam, you spoke about the relative trade-offs and merits of proportional systems versus first past the post. Could you speak to the possible trade-offs, merits, or pitfalls we and Canadians should be aware of when talking about alternative vote versus first past the post?

[Christopher Kam]

In some respects, the alternative vote—

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

—and/or alternative vote versus proportional representation.

[Christopher Kam]

First of all, let's take alternative vote versus first past the post. In many respects, these are going to be very similar systems in terms of their aggregate results because they have a district magnitude of one. If you look at the history of the Australian state and federal elections, you're going to find that the alternative vote generates a fair amount of disproportionality simply because of that district magnitude of one. However, you're also going to have a little more room for independents and smaller parties to get in on the basis of preferences. There are some arguments that centrist parties, parties that are positioned to capitalize on second preferences, do better under that sort of system. If you look at the Australian experience, the Labor Party sees itself as a right against two centre-right parties, and it gets power sometimes and gets to effect its agenda.

With respect to first-past-the-post and mixed systems, I think what we need to understand about the mixed member proportional system is that it is a proportional representation system. The district level representation is peripheral or subordinate to the proportional representation element.

Mixed systems are motivated by the idea that we can get the best of both worlds—we get a proportional result and we get local representation. I think they've been tried with, as I would expect, various results around the world. The German experience has been largely positive. The New Zealand experience has been, on the whole, satisfactory, although with different people complaining about different aspects of the system. The one aspect that gets on people's nerves a bit is the issue of dual candidacy. Here, if you lose an election, you lose an election. When you have dual candidacy, the members are allowed to contest the district and the list, and this can almost always ensure their election or at least insulate them from defeat. My reading of this is that it has gotten on people's nerves in New Zealand, but it's not a huge problem.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

That concludes our very interesting panel. There was a lot to get into in terms of mathematics and theoretical foundations. That was a slightly different flavour than we've had for a little while. It gives us a lot of substance for our report, and for that we're very grateful to the witnesses.

We're going to move on to the open mike. You're free to stay for the open mike.

In the open-mike session, we have 22 people. Comments are limited to two minutes. I know it sounds short, but it has worked everywhere else, so it's just a question of really taking the time to focus on the main points that you want to get across.

We have two mikes at the front. We'll make sure that there is always someone at each mike so that when one person is finished the other person is ready to go.

With that in mind, I will call up Mr. Timothy Jones and Mr. Maxwell Gerald Anderson.

Mr. Jones is at mike one. We'll start with Mr. Jones for two minutes, please. Go ahead, sir.