Thank you very much, Chair and members of the committee, for the invitation to appear today.
I want to address one of the principles for electoral reform that form the basis of the committee's mandate, namely, that of effectiveness and legitimacy. In particular, the principle states:
...the proposed measure would increase public confidence among Canadians that their democratic will, as expressed by their votes, will be fairly translated and that the proposed measure reduces distortion and strengthens the link between voter intention and the election of representatives;
The fair translation of votes into the election of representatives to the House of Commons seems to have been a major theme in the discussion of electoral reform. The common argument is that an increase in proportionality of the electoral system will lead to better representation of Canadians' democratic will.
I want to make two observations related to this point.
First, while we might agree that the party system as a whole should be as representative as possible, I would argue that it is also important that each individual party is not based on too narrow ethnic, religious, or regional concerns.
More proportional systems tend to result in a greater number of political parties; thus, include more small and/or single issue parties. Although the actual numbers of voters for a given single issue party might be small, parties can create an ideological wedge, splitting up support for larger mainstream parties. Arguably, we have seen it occur in several European countries after a radical right-wing party gained an electoral foothold by exploiting anti-immigrant sentiments.
The existence of small and/or single issue parties is obviously not necessarily bad, but my first caution is that we should acknowledge the increased propensity of parties in multi-party systems to increase rather than lessen conflict in society for solely representing a single issue or small segment of society. The traditional counter-argument to this is, of course, that the rise in the number of parties that is likely to result from a more proportional electoral system will increase the need for parties to build consensus in governing. This brings me to my second point.
Not only must there be confidence among Canadians that their democratic will will be exercised through a fair translation of their votes into the election of representatives to the House of Commons, but there must also be a fair translation of votes into the policies pursued by government.
When parties form coalition governments or when minority governments must maintain the support of opposition parties in the legislature in order to stay in office, compromises over policy are more likely. This compromise happens in at least two different ways.
First, after an election, parties will negotiate who will form the coalition government and what policy priorities the government will pursue. The evidence on how representative the outcome of this process will be is inconclusive. Some political scientists argue that the composition of the government coalition will not reflect the composition of the parties in the House of Commons. Consequently, the policy positions of the government will not reflect the policy positions of the average voter. Others argue that the government coalition's policy positions will match the average voters' positions better than one might expect, given the positions of the parties in the coalition.
Second, compromise happens in the allocation of ministerial portfolios, both in terms of the number of portfolios, but also in their importance. Clearly, this ultimately will also impact policy. Here, political science theory and evidence tend to diverge. On the one hand, there's a concern that, because of their strong bargaining position, small parties will have a disproportionate say in determining the policy agenda as well as the allocation of portfolios of the government. Evidence so far, though, seems to suggest a fairly proportional distribution of ministerial portfolios according to each coalition party's relative share of the legislative seats, with a slight advantage for minor parties in obtaining a bit more than their fair share of the ministerial portfolios.
My second caution, then, is that electoral systems that make the House of Commons more representative will not necessarily make government and the policy it pursues more representative.
In closing, let me emphasize some of the points my many predecessors have already raised and which I think are worth highlighting again.
Although there are certainly aspects of the current voting systems that could be improved upon, some of these can be addressed through smaller incremental reforms. Moreover, as I am sure the committee is by now well aware, any electoral system design inevitably involves trade-offs. In overly focusing on what the current system's weaknesses are, we are failing to appreciate its strengths. In weighing the weaknesses and strengths of our current system, we should also take into consideration that changing the electoral system will take time, energy, and a substantial amount of money in particular, given the need pointed out by a number of my fellow political scientists for wider public consultations over an extended period of time.
Thank you.