Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 28th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Cullen, please.

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

Ms. Simons, I think I'm very much like you. I started off, even at the beginning of this process, very much a fan of the idea certainly of exploring it. I think I need to put this quote on the record from your book, from Professor Ronald Rivest from MIT. He said that coming up with the best practices for Internet voting is like coming up with best practices for drunk driving. You don't really want to go there.

We've had several moments of testimony from people in your field who have advised us very strongly to either not do it—that's usually what we hear—or be so exceptionally cautious to leap ahead into this because of that question. I've always imagined the scenario in which during the course of an election night, if the system were to crash, whether the results would seem valid. I've not yet fully contemplated the idea of some months after an election someone comes up, as Yahoo just did—which I assume are pretty good at the Internet, being Yahoo—and says, “Oh, by the way, two years ago we were hacked.”

Ms. Rooij, I take your point well about any system that would lead to, as Ms. Sahota was exploring, the idea of anti-immigrant policies or xenophobic policies. We wouldn't want an electoral system that produced policies like Japanese internment camps or Chinese head taxes or banning Muslims from a country, as was a suggestion by a leading Republican candidate for president. Any system that would produce those types of policies must have an inherent flaw within the system, clearly. Yet, all of those came and continue to come. Having parties elected purely on one issue, narrow regional principles like the Bloc Québécois becoming the official opposition under first past the post, or the Scottish National Party winning 50% of the vote yet 95% of the seats under first past the post....

It reminds me of the caution, as you just pointed out, around referendum. It's much easier to spread the myth and the fear than it is to explain change, and it's easy to spread the myth that somehow a proportional system leads to racist parties running countries. We look for a system that expresses the will of Canadians, and I don't think the will of Canadians is actually for things like banning Muslims or for barbaric practices hotlines. Our system has a way of correcting. We just need a system that doesn't distort the will of voters.

A last point is that the mandate of this committee is change. We're changing the voting system. That's our work here. Under that rubric, because that's what we're doing, which system would you recommend we change to?

[Eline de Rooij]

First, I want to point out that just because you might see anti-immigrant parties—and by no means is this a given—that doesn't mean they will be the ones making policy, which relates to my other point. They might not end up in government. I know of some research which shows that even if they end up in government, we don't necessarily see a substantial shift to actual changes in policy. That's a big caveat I do want to make.

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

That's a big caveat.

[Eline de Rooij]

Yes.

Then when it comes to Canadians, and with all due respect to Canada.... I love Canada as a country. I love the people. I love the values of tolerance. But I come from the Netherlands, and I grew up in a country that was very tolerant, very multicultural, and then there was a sudden shift. I think it is a bit, I'm sorry to say, idealistic to believe that somehow Canadians are above that. I think tensions can play out. You don't know what situations will look like in 10 years. If there's an economic downturn, we know that people tend to find a scapegoat, so we don't know what will happen further down the line.

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

The questioning from my Liberal colleague was to ascribe that to somehow a proportional system encouraging such wedges, such shifts. We all imagine a proportional system. No one has advocated a purely proportional one, and most recommendations that have come to this committee have suggested that there be a national floor, that if you do not attain some number—5% or 6% of the national vote—you can't gain power of any kind, any influence. No one is looking at Israel as a model, nor Italy—

[Eline de Rooij]

I know that, yes.

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

—for various reasons. So the idea of just simply removing the distortion, wherein 39% of the electorate who choose to vote...granting a party 100% of the power is, as the Prime Minister currently has described it, a false majority.

[Eline de Rooij]

Yes.

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

So, again, which system do you prefer if you were to follow under this committee's mandate to develop a new one?

[Eline de Rooij]

I'm certainly open, and you misunderstand me if you think I'm necessarily against more proportional systems. That's not what I say. I see my role more as placing some caveats and opening up the information to the Canadian people.

As for the system, I will refrain from actually setting a system for Canada because I feel I can talk about systems, and I can talk about costs and benefits of systems generally, but my knowledge of Canada is fairly new. I don't feel comfortable in a place saying what would be best for Canada. I came to provide information.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Ste-Marie, you have the floor.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good evening, ladies and gentleman.

You can put your earphones in to hear the interpretation. Unlike my colleague Mr. Deltell, I am going to continue to speak French, since I have no aspiration to become the leader of a Canada-wide party. I am kidding!

Thank you for your presentations. I am going to start by addressing you, Ms. Simons.

Thank you for coming and warning us against electronic voting. The points you raised are disturbing. As you said, in the American election campaign, Russian computer scientists got hold of emails belonging to the woman who is a candidate for the office of president of the United States. In Canada, it would be unthinkable to realize, a year or two after an election, that the entire thing had been tampered with by foreign interests and that this had even put, who knows, the Bloc Québécois in power. That would be hard to believe, but in any event, we have to be careful.

What is good about our system is that we have a little piece of paper and a little pencil, we mark an X and we put the paper in the box, so it can be counted and examined.

I have a concern about electronic voting. The fact that the person voting would not be alone in a booth concerns me. We could have vote-buying, negative influence, fear, and so on. In your eyes, do these factors also amount to obstacles to electronic voting?

[Barbara Simons]

I think when you talk about the person not being alone with Internet voting, that's an issue for any kind of remote voting. It's the same for voting by mail. With Internet voting, you have to worry about voter coercion and vote buying and selling. That's of concern to me. I think remote voting should be held to a minimum. There are people who have to do it because they are not well, or they are away and they have to vote remotely, but generally speaking, it shouldn't be, as it is in many parts of the United States, made available to everybody. My experience in Canada is that it isn't made available to everybody. It's not that easy, and I think that's a good thing.

You talked about the paper ballots. I was a poll worker in a provincial election here, and I thought the way the election was run was wonderful. I've also worked on an election in the United States, and believe me, it's done much better in Canada. It really is.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you.

[Barbara Simons]

One of the things that's nice about the way it's done in Canada is that when the election was over, we all tabulated the ballots. There were all these rules. They had to come out right. There was a lot of double-checking and triple-checking, and nobody could leave until it all worked. There was one table that hadn't quite...they were off by one, and the rest of us were hungry, but we couldn't leave until they finally worked it out. I thought it was wonderful.

Another thing I hope you will keep in mind when you think about moving to another form of voting is whether you can retain this spirit, this counting locally, and this being able to check locally and have observers from all the parties who can look at what's going on. If you move to a complicated form of voting, then you're going to have to use computers, and you won't be able to see what's going on inside the computers. You'll be dependent on the software, which could have software bugs or it could have malware.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Thank you, Ms. Simons.

I have a brief question to ask you, Ms. de Rooij.

Thank you for warning us about the rise of far-right parties in the event of a reform involving proportional voting. In France, Socialist President Mitterrand had reformed the system to favour the rise of the National Front, cause a decline of the right-wing party and retain power. He did not retain any more power, but since 2002, at least, the National Front has started to become an increasingly serious threat. There are also right-wing ideas in the major parties, as we see in the American election. I think the best way of arming ourselves against this kind of rise is through citizenship education and conveying a culture to the public.

Otherwise, in the event of a voting system reform toward greater proportionality, what can you suggest to us for arming ourselves against the possible rise of far-right parties?

[Eline de Rooij]

I wish there were a simple solution, and I'm not convinced there necessarily is a way to avoid a rise of a radical...other than if it's not an issue in the population and if it's indeed not an issue that is relevant. In that sense maybe what's more important is the social base. If people don't see this as an issue, and if you can create a society that is based on mutual trust and co-operation, then it won't have to become an issue. That is maybe more important.

If there are tensions in society that are not being addressed, and people are not able to give a voice to them, or people are in insular communities, then a more proportional system may—and I stress again, may—give rise to certain radical right parties. But this should not be the only consideration of political party change, I should emphasize that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Ms. May.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you to all the panellists who are here today.

I'm going to start by picking up on the conversation that Gabriel was having with you, Mrs. de Rooij.

Are you familiar with the work of Professor Arend Lijphart, who's also originally from the Netherlands?

[Eline de Rooij]

Yes.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

What he's found from his 36 country study of patterns of democracy is that the countries that have PR are more likely to have greater social cohesion and have a more egalitarian society, less of a gap between the very rich and the very poor, as a pattern.

Given that, isn't it at least possible that such voting systems will create the conditions that make extremism less likely?

[Eline de Rooij]

I'm very familiar with his work. I think one of the programs is the causality issue. We're not quite sure whether changing electoral systems creates the types of society he described.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Fair enough, but in terms of looking at the evidence from PR countries on a basis of statistical evidence, and I'm not making the case for causality, what we know of PR countries is that they are less likely to have great gaps between the rich and the poor than countries that operate under majoritarian oppositional systems.

[Eline de Rooij]

Yes, but some of these countries are also very different. Some of these countries are smaller. I know he claims to control for some of these small sizes, but certain factors are hard to control for. When we have only a limited number of countries in the world, statistical analysis is limited. I do a lot of statistical analysis—