We'll go to Mr. Deltell.
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.
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.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
Thank you, Chair.
It's a real honour for me to see you gentlemen, and especially to listen to you. It's very interesting. As I say to everybody, it's quite fantastic to see new ways to elect people. We're open to discussion, and I think that we have a great opportunity to speak and to explain.
Mr. Green, first of all I'm very pleased to talk to you. Two personal points. First, you said that you're a grandfather. I can assure you that the best thing I've ever done in my life is to make my parents grandparents. I think just the way you act and just the way you speak, your grandchildren are very lucky to have you as their grandfather.
On the other hand, I would like to raise a question about your MP. Do you live in St. Albert—Edmonton?
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
Okay. I thought it was the riding of my good friend Michael Cooper. If you have any problems with Michael, just call me.
Seriously, gentlemen, I want to raise—
4:20 p.m.
As an Individual
I was told that if you have nothing positive to say, don't say anything.
4:20 p.m.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
I like everybody. This is why I'm a politician.
Gentlemen, I would like to raise some concerns. One concern I have, whatever the system, is the link and the relationship between the citizen and the MP. I've been elected to the provincial legislature, I'm new in the House of Commons, but I know the business. I can tell you that one of the most important issues when you are a politician is to talk to your people. You develop links with your people better than expected, and when there is new electoral map and you lose some borough in your riding it's very tough. It has nothing to do with whatever we'd say in politics, in our party; we are very linked to whatever party we represent.
I would like to know in your three propositions how we could preserve the link between the citizen and his or her MP.
Mr. Green.
4:20 p.m.
As an Individual
I made a couple of other points it would be nice to have in the reform. I wanted to bring your attention to the math or the consequences of this particular way of making a seat allocation.
It would really be nice if we elected an MP from a party who didn't cross the floor three or four days after, as has happened in Vancouver, I believe. We elect representatives mostly by party in this country, whether we wish to formally acknowledge it or not and the reason that's true is that independents don't fare very well.
If we were a nation that strongly wanted a particular way to elect our representative, then an individual independent member would matter, but it apparently doesn't. That would be my first point.
Second, I'm a citizen of the country. I elect people to represent me in my riding along with equal members or equivalent members from other parts of our country, and I expect you folks to make public policy. You're the mouthpiece for the focus or the explanation of what our public policy is supposed to be. You capture it in legislation. I expect you to make compromises. I expect you to have nice civil discussions and the odd meal and all the rest of that.
Let me talk now about the problem in the States—
4:25 p.m.
Conservative
Gérard Deltell Conservative Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
Mr. Graham, please, there are three options at the table.
Mr. Graham, the floor is yours.
4:25 p.m.
As an Individual
The main thing DMP has going for it in that line of thinking is that it keeps all MPs local. They belong to a two-member district. There is another positive side effect of DMP. It doesn't matter what the simulation is, whether it's a federal election, a provincial election, the election from last year, the election from 2011, 80% of the districts are always represented by two different parties. I think that would be beneficial to Canadians to not have to go to their Conservative or have to go to the Liberal MP, they would have the choice of going to an MP from a different party.
The other positive thing about it, the last one I'll mention here to give the other speaker time, is that it broadens party representation. In the simulations I did for the past four federal elections, in each case, roughly 50% or more of the districts would have an opposition MP. That's a novel idea in the current system. A majority of districts would be represented by the opposition. That's impossible in the current system. You can't have the opposition representing a majority of districts, because they wouldn't be the opposition, they'd be the government. But in this system you can have that as a possibility because you have those two-member districts.
The other interesting thing is the government's representation would be massive. In most cases by the time you put a coalition together, the government would be represented in roughly 80% or more of the districts. So you'd have representation from the government in almost every region in every district of Canada.
I think all of those would be a significant improvement.
4:25 p.m.
As an Individual
I feel there are a number of options. As you know, I'm not putting forward one particular system here, but if the committee were to recommend a system of proportional representation, a number of options would require a ballot in which the voters need to make a mark beside the name of an individual candidate. I believe that maintaining that kind of a ballot would be important in that it would be key to maintaining a link between the constituency and their representative.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all three of you for being here with us today.
Mr. Graham, I'm going to spend my time with you because I think we need to give you and your system as much time as possible to enter the testimony.
I'm going to run through a series of questions I have to dig further into this system. The dual candidate aspect of your system is effectively a closed list within the riding?
4:25 p.m.
As an Individual
Yes, you could say it's a closed list of two. Keep in mind, though, first past the post is a closed list of one under those circumstances. But don't mistake the two candidates on the ballot as comparable to an MMP list. The types of list that exist in MMP don't exist in DMP. They're different.
The other thing I'll mention is that was a design choice. I think it's best to keep the intra-party competition in open nomination processes before election day. If the committee decides they disagree with me, you could easily allow people to rank those two candidates.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
Do you have any advice on the nomination process that leads to that two-candidate effective closed list?
4:25 p.m.
As an Individual
That would be up to the parties. Ideally, parties would have open nomination contests and come up with a system where either they would, based on a plurality vote, take the top two candidates, or they would allow a ranked ballot in their process and take the top two based on that.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
Thank you.
In your experience with the P.E.I. committee, were there any questions that came up from them that have not been addressed to you today, and if there were, what were your answers?
4:25 p.m.
As an Individual
No, I don't think so. I think most of what we've covered today is what we covered there. Of course, the constitutional issues didn't come up in P.E.I., because they don't apply, but in terms of the questions on the system, we've covered a lot of what was covered in those discussions.
4:25 p.m.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
On the whole idea that proponents for proportional representation use in talking about a wasted vote, in your calculations, using that frame, what percentage would potentially exist under your system?
4:30 p.m.
As an Individual
The number of wasted votes is dependent on the number of regions you have. The more regions you include in your system, the more votes you will waste.
In first past the post, we have 338 districts, but those districts are also regions, and it's because we have 338 that the wasted votes are so high. Under my proposal, if you go with the four regions I've suggested, each region would have a fraction of wasted votes, probably around 3% to 4%, which is significantly smaller than the roughly 50% we usually see under the current system.
As you increase the number of regions.... With MMP, for example, or even in this system, if you decide to shrink the regions to be smaller, to be within provinces, for example, that number will slowly increase. Under the way I propose it, it's quite small.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
You and Mr. Reid had a good exchange about the legitimizing elements, the legalities surrounding your system.
As you've chosen to take on Atlantic Canada here in your submission, I'm thinking of the political legitimacy elements that exist there and some of the psychological barriers that would have to be overcome. I don't at all think they're insurmountable, but they would have to be overcome in that region of the country for the country to think of itself as a single region and not a collection of four provinces. It's an ongoing debate in our culture out east.
4:30 p.m.
As an Individual
One thing to note about this is that part of my reason for using the four regions is that I do think it fits with how many Canadians see Canada divided up into regions. I wanted to try to fit with that narrative as much as possible, while still making sure we count the votes of people in places like the territories and P.E.I.
The other thing to mention, though, is that in MMP the region is very visible to the public, because your ballot is informed based on that region. You would know whether your region is Alberta or western Canada. With DMP the region is not very visible to the public. The public would see their ballot with their local candidates, and they would have two MPs.
So I think the front that this would put to the public would not emphasize that. I don't think that gap would be very large. There wouldn't be much that people would have to get used to there. It's not something they would interact with on a daily basis, as they would with MMP.
4:30 p.m.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
It's undergoing a particular form of plebiscite in P.E.I. right now. What do you think of that process on a national scale?