Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 29th, 2016

[Roderick Wood]

Well, our report dealt with electoral reform. We had a chapter that talked about it, but it would require further negotiations and discussions. We said that this should be encouraged, but this really wasn't something that we were dealing with in that particular report.

We looked at some other countries that did it, such as New Zealand, with the participation of the Maoris in their legislature. We talked about that, but really, our task was to look at the electoral reform system and propose something on that. We thought that we couldn't go off in this other direction as far as we would like.

[Georgina Jolibois, NDP, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

I'm having a hard time gelling that.... I'm a Canadian. I'm a first nation. I come from an area of predominantly first nations and Métis communities in northern Saskatchewan. I'm trying to figure out what this looks like with any system in terms of the kinds of changes that we want to see. How will it increase voter participation?

It makes me nervous about online, because the assumption is that every part of Canada has access to Internet. We know they don't. It doesn't matter what province or territory you're in. Not everyone has access to that. It doesn't allow for every Canadian to have access.

Are there any other thoughts and suggestions?

[Roderick Wood]

About the online?

[Patricia Paradis]

On the online, I think people need to have the choice of online or not. I don't think you have to make everything online.

[Georgina Jolibois, NDP, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

That's not fair representation. That's not fair for every Canadian, especially the new immigrants, the first nations, and the Métis, and the list goes on.

I'm a first nation and I have yet to speak my first language in the House of Commons, yet my family, my relatives, were the first people here. It's unfair. I'm looking for a system. I want to see change—I do—to increase the MPs in the House of Commons....

[Roderick Wood]

As a first step in a more proportional system—something like MMP with a closed list—what we do see is that there are more women, minorities, and first nations people elected.

[Georgina Jolibois, NDP, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

The current system doesn't work like that. I'm lucky that I'm here.

[Roderick Wood]

In New Zealand, where they did change, that was the effect, so that would be a first step. There are obviously a whole lot of other things, then, that have to happen, but I think that as a first step you need to be in the House.

[Georgina Jolibois, NDP, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

I'm just trying to figure out what that looks like. What you said earlier is that you haven't figured out the first nations and Métis participation, yet we're Canada. This is Canadian democracy that we're talking about. I have the right, as a Canadian, to choose who my MP or my representative will be. Every Canadian has that right, but yet the system.... I'm really curious to know....

[Patricia Paradis]

This is one of the things that maybe doesn't specifically involve electoral reform, but certainly, the nomination processes in each party might need to be looked at.

[Georgina Jolibois, NDP, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

I see it differently. I would encourage more universities across Canada, and more lawyers and different law societies, to really entertain this idea and to come up with a really good solution or a way to encourage this so that every Canadian, first nation, and Métis has access, has the right to vote and participate, not necessarily online, because not every Canadian has access to that option.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll go now to Mr. Kelly.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our participants, both in the audience and on the panel.

I'd like to allow you, Ms. Paradis, to finish an earlier point that you ran out of time on. At least, I didn't think you had finished. The question of legitimacy was discussed in an earlier question. We talked about a referendum as one possible means of ensuring legitimacy.

You also contrasted that with this idea of 75% of the members of the House. You said there was “less risk”. Those were your final words there, and I thought, “risk of what?” I'd like you to elaborate on what you meant by that.

[Patricia Paradis]

One of the criticisms of referendums is that you do take a risk because the question sometimes is not posed in a manner that people understand completely, or there might be a skewed result. There are all kinds of reasons that a referendum, if it's not carefully thought through, can end up with problematic results.

Once you have a referendum the people have spoken. A referendum is a loud shout.

It's a huge endeavour. It's not without risk, but it is also one that, if properly carried out, could be a wonderful affirmation by the people of Canada.

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

Indeed, and I absolutely agree that there are many challenges with referendums. The clarity of a question is probably one of the most important things. Having a referendum conducted properly, to ensure that the will of voters is expressed clearly, is perhaps a difficult undertaking.

And yet when I hear concerns about a problematic result what I hear is the concern about having a referendum because one might not get the answer one wants. If the question is put correctly and if the evidence is understood, there is no such thing as a problematic result. The result is going to be the will of those who are deciding through the referendum.

I've heard this repeatedly through the debates that we've had and it troubles me, this assumption that the only just result is the result that one advocates. You don't always get what you want in democracy. If you did, we wouldn't need democracy and we wouldn't need elections because we would all just agree with each other about everything. Democracy, whether through referendum or in a representative democracy, is a tool by which we agree to govern ourselves and there is sometimes disagreement.

I, too, agree with your earlier statement. I would love to see consensus at this committee or in the House on any number of items. I think any legislator who ever passed or ever tabled a bill or a motion hoped there would be consensus and that people would agree with them and support it. But the reality is that there are sometimes opposing views that can't be reconciled and this is the business of governance: how to have orderly government and as best as possible, how to allow government to function with the support of people.

These are very difficult questions. As many of the other experts who have spoken to our panel have already stated, there is no magic solution and no matter what system we may end up moving toward, there will be trade-offs and there will be difficulties and people will ultimately remain unsatisfied and think that the system is not perfect.

If I may just switch gears completely to the first point you spoke about—or maybe it wasn't your first but it was early in your opening remarks—I would like to talk about online voting. We had an expert speak to us yesterday who very strongly made a very compelling case. I see all the nods around the table of those who heard it. The witness completely scared the whole room and the committee around the possibility of an election being hacked, and maybe an election being hacked without our knowledge of it being hacked. A country could wake up and find that two years ago the election result that happened was in fact a fraudulent or a hacked result.

This witness was very compelling and there weren't too many people left in the room who had much interest in online voting when she was done. It was characterized by one of my other panellists who asked if there were ways to make it safe, and ways to mitigate, and the analogy was that any such exercise is similar to talking about how to make drunk driving safe, and that there is no way to do it.

Can you suggest a secure...?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Do you have a brief reply to that?

[Patricia Paradis]

It will really be for this committee to decide on those issues because you are hearing from experts, so I trust what this committee is going to come up with. It just seems intuitive that, at this point in time in our history with what's going on online, we would do that. But is any system ever completely secure?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You did mention in your opening comments, if I recall, that this was with the caveat that it be secure.

[Patricia Paradis]

Yes, and reliable, exactly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Okay.

We'll go to Ms. Sahota, please.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My question will be kind of along the lines of I think what my colleague was asking. We went to an aboriginal community a couple of days ago in Victoria and we were talking about the idea of having assigned seats set out for aboriginal communities, perhaps for females, for minorities, whatever you can think of. Did the Law Commission take a look at this proposition? If so, how would that fit into an MMP-style system?

[Roderick Wood]

Yes, I think you'd want to look at New Zealand as a model, because they've done that. We just didn't think that we could complete the process that would take us along that path in the time that we had for the report. That's why we said this kind of thing could be accommodated with MMP, but first you need some idea or some consensus about the need to change to another system before you get to that next step in terms of devoted seats for first nations people. We do talk about it in the report, but as I said, it was put off, saying that there would have to be more steps that would later be taken.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

One of our factors of our mandate that we're looking at is inclusivity. I find it hard. I know with the Law Commission's recommendations, you had basically left all that stuff up to the parties. Diversity and aboriginal inclusion are left up to the parties. It's up to the parties, really, to include them into lists. It's not mandated that they have to set aside a certain number of seats. That's something that we could even look at today within the current system and perhaps implement that.

If we're going through all that trouble to implement a new system, why would we not set something like that right in place? When I look at the numbers, yes, MMP systems might be doing slightly better with female representation, but I don't know if necessarily the other categories are doing incredibly great, other than that New Zealand example where they have set aside seats for the Maori.

Why would we not perhaps look at that? You must have had some presentations or interesting thoughts along those lines, even though you didn't put them into your report as a recommendation. You must have some ideas about how to go about it.

[Roderick Wood]

We did look at other countries, and some of them did put requirements that a number of list candidates have certain qualifications, attributes, and the like, so it certainly could be done. It's not something that can't be done within the system.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Do you think Canada would find that to be democratic to have seats set aside for specific people?