Evidence of meeting #33 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 first.
NDP
Alexandre Boulerice NDP Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC
Thank you, Professor Nash.
You are presenting a certain type of mixed-member proportional voting model. In that model, does a voter have two votes, one for the local candidate and the other for the party, or are we basing ourselves on the vote for the local candidate and subsequently transferring it to achieve an offsetting proportionality.
Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta, As an Individual
No, I don't think that provides an open system.
There would be an option of voting for one candidate, which you would use as your candidate for the local MP, and your candidate by their party, for the calculation of proportionality.
On the other hand, there may be people who want to take the option of changing parties, changing candidates, so you would have a second part to the ballot, which I envisage being printed in slightly smaller type than the main ballot, that people could use to select a different candidate or a different party.
There is a question of their making a mess and choosing two things on that second one. Under those circumstances, if they were compatible, in other words if the person they voted for was with the party they'd chosen, that would be fine. Otherwise, that would just be a spoiled part of that ballot, and it would revert to their original one.
That's what I was thinking.
NDP
Alexandre Boulerice NDP Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC
All right, thank you.
How much time do I have left, Mr. Chair?
NDP
Alexandre Boulerice NDP Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC
Mr. Blain, many people have told us that districts with multiple members, three or more, would help achieve a certain proportionality threshold. However, you are talking more about five to seven members.
Why would the number not be three or four?
As an Individual
There are two reasons. One, a three-member riding requires 25% of the vote to get elected. A seven-member riding requires 12.5%. There's a marked difference in those two. If you plotted this out, it would be a long curve that goes out like this, so I don't think three-member ridings is the right number in that sense.
The other reason is that the study by Carey and Hix indicates that one- to three-member ridings don't do as well in terms of economic performance, in terms of government spending and stuff like that. Their sweet spot, they called it the “proportional sweet spot”, was four to eight members. That's the other reason I chose five to seven members.
Liberal
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good evening, gentlemen.
I think the witness group you two form is particularly interesting. One of you advocates regional representation and the other proportional representation. Without being Machiavellian about it, I would be tempted to pit you against each another.
Mr. Blain, what are the main reasons why you prefer the system you advocate, the single transferable system, to the mixed-member proportional system?
Then I will put the question to Mr. Nash so he can defend his position. These are the two systems we most often hear about. At the time, the Canadian Law Commission opted for mixed-member proportional representation. The British Columbia citizens committee opted for the single transferable system.
Mr. Blain, please go ahead.
As an Individual
I think the number one thing, front and centre, is something I call equal legislative power. What that means is under STV in five- to seven-member districts, if they had 100,000 votes to elect an MP, every MP would be elected with 80,000 to 90,000 votes. Every MP has the same authority given to them by the voters, and that is huge to me because every voter then gets equal legislative power because every MP who ends up in Ottawa has one vote, and every voter who voted for that group then gets one vote. I think it's a Charter of Rights and Freedoms issue.
Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta, As an Individual
I don't think that the two systems differ in this regard. They empower the people who are elected on the basis of their having numerical support within the country to allow them to have the force that they should have in Parliament, so I don't really have anything more to add to it.
As an Individual
I have just one more comment. If under mixed member proportional somewhere between 60% and 70% of the MPs are elected with first past the post, they're probably elected with 30% or 40% of the vote, 30,000 to 40,000 votes. Why not elect MPs, all MPs, with 80,000 votes instead of some with 30,000 and some with more? It's really back to the two items in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms: we're all equal under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and second we all have a right to vote. The courts, when they look at that, say that Canada's on a gradual step towards effective representation. We haven't got there, and we need to get there.
Bloc
Gabriel Ste-Marie Bloc Joliette, QC
British Columbia established a citizens assembly that sat for nearly a year.
Do you think that would be a good way to proceed with the federal reform?
You may answer in turn.
As an Individual
I think we should proceed and implement it now, and I think after two election cycles we should have another go-around to see if we can't make it better. If people wanted to have a citizens' assembly then, I think that would be wonderful, but I think we're long past due the point that we need effective representation. I would proceed now, without a referendum, and after I would follow up with some kind of almost sunset-type of legislation to re-examine the weaknesses. Then probably the citizens would be the best to re-examine that.
Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta, As an Individual
I have no comments to make.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to both witnesses. Here in Edmonton we've had extraordinarily fine testimony. I don't know if you were here earlier for Sean Graham's presentation on dual-member proportional. I just wonder if I could ask each of you—and forgive me if you've already touched on this—what you thought of that system. We have two advocates before us who want proportional fair voting, one who favours mixed member proportional and one who favours STV. I think you're very familiar with the merits, the pluses and minuses of other systems.
Have you looked at dual-member proportional before, and what did you think of it?
I'll ask Professor Nash first.
Professor Emeritus, University of Alberta, As an Individual
I looked at it before. I must admit I was discouraged by his insistence that we should go through a very complicated process of amalgamating provinces, but it is possible to do it without that. It seems to me a perfectly sensible system. It is essentially an extension of an MMP.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Mr. Blain, do you have any thoughts on the dual-member proportional system?
As an Individual
I thought the idea of combining different regions was unique. I probably wouldn't have done that myself. I don't know the answer to whether or not it gives us equal legislative power to the voters. That's the key thing that I'm driving at because we are a representative democracy and we need our MPs to represent us equally. That's the bottom line for me.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
As you've described equal legislative powers of voters, that for me is one of the things that we as a committee, regardless of what we recommend, will have to strive to explain to Canadians and the rest of Parliament who haven't been on this journey with us. The goal of electoral reform is not to make things better or fairer for political parties, but to make things better and fairer for voters. I think that's the essence of what you're both trying to present here tonight.
I want to switch to one of the other recommendations you made in your testimony, Mr. Blain, that we didn't touch on. Obviously you had to compress a lot of material. You have also recommended reducing the voting age to 16. I want to ask you why, and then ask Professor Nash if he agrees that it's a wise idea.
As an Individual
Yes, for two reasons. One, if you catch a voter early while they're still studying civics, I think they become a voter for life. That's one piece of the equation. The other piece to the equation involves long-term decisions that MPs make. Frankly, they're going to live with the decisions a lot longer than I am.
