Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, for your very kind invitation to appear today. I believe that a country that is willing to examine its electoral system is much stronger for doing so.
Twelve years ago, the Law Commission of Canada published its report on electoral reform. I was a commissioner with the Law Commission and I participated in the production of that report. What I wanted to do today was to talk a little bit about how it was that we came to the conclusion that we did. I can say that in the 12 years that have passed since the publication of the report I have not changed my view that the mixed member proportional system is a better choice than the existing system, and is to be preferred over other alternatives.
However, there is one element of the report that I have changed my mind about in light of new information that wasn't available at the time of the Law Commission's report. That is the issue of open lists versus closed lists, which I can talk about in a while.
In looking at the question, as law reform commissions do, we asked, “Is there a problem with the existing order?” What we heard was that there were severe concerns about the existing system. You are likely very familiar with these so I won't dwell on them, but briefly, the existing system results in disproportionality, the creation of artificial majorities, regional imbalances, and what the Jenkins commission referred to as the creation of electoral deserts, in which whole regions of Canada may have little or no representation in the government. It results in the under-representation of women, minorities, and first nations peoples. It gives a sense of the lost vote—“Why should I vote? It's not going to be counted. It's not worth anything”—and may even lead to strategic voting, the feeling that you have to vote for a less preferred candidate because otherwise your vote simply wouldn't count. It can also lead to what is viewed as a hyper-partisan adversarial political culture in the country.
Having looked at these problems, our next step was to look at whether there might be some alternatives that would better address these concerns. In order to do so, we had to come up with some criteria, some political values that may be promoted in a given electoral system so that we could test the other models against these criteria. When I look at them, they seem congruent with the criteria mentioned in the mandate of this committee. We thought that fairness in translating votes to seats, proportionality, and giving citizens the sense that their votes will be counted were all important matters.
We looked at the promotion of regional balance. All parts of Canada should be represented in the government. We should try to avoid the electoral deserts or wastelands that can be created, which then sometimes pit one region of Canada against another. We wanted a system that would promote effective and accountable government and effective opposition.
We looked to demographic representation, the idea that the government should reflect the diversity of the people in the society, particularly women, minorities, and first nations people. We wanted a system that might better promote inclusive decision-making and consensus-building in place of adversarial partisan politics.
Having defined these criteria, we then looked at the different electoral models and tried to evaluate how they stacked up against these criteria. We looked at alternative voting and saw that it has benefits over the existing system. For us, the difficulty with alternative voting was in its disproportionality. It really didn't address the question of proportionality, and possibly it might make things worse. It didn't address the problem of regional balance. It didn't address the lack of diversity in terms of the representatives in government. So, we moved on and looked at systems of proportional representation. We looked at list PR systems, such as they have in Europe; the single transferable vote, used in municipal politics and for a time provincially in Alberta and Manitoba; and mixed member proportional representation, MMP.
What we concluded was that of those, MMP for us was the best choice. I think the key factor for us was the geographic representation that it provided, that direct link between the voter, the constituency, and the MP representing that. We thought it was important to retain that feature of the electoral system, and the MMP had that element, yet it also addressed the other problems we had identified. As for the lack of proportionality, it was addressed by MMP; the idea of the wasted vote, that was reduced in the system of MMP; the regional balance, that was addressed; under-representation of minorities and women... We saw in New Zealand there was a sharp increase in representation after the introduction of MMP in those countries. For that reason, we thought that MMP was a better choice.
Following that, we looked at criticisms that had been launched against MMP, to see if they carried any validity. The three criticisms that are often made against MMP are that it creates unstable governments, that it creates two classes of MP, the list MP and the constituency MP, and that it is susceptible of having a splinter group, a small political party holding the balance of power, which would be undesirable. We looked at that and we thought that these criticisms were exaggerated.
We looked at countries that do have MMP—Germany, Scotland, Wales, and New Zealand—and there's no evidence that their governments are unstable. Yes, they govern without having a majority, but they're not unstable democracies.
We looked at the argument of the creation of two classes of MP, the worry being that the list MP, not being voted in, would be the second-class citizen. We saw that wasn't the case. In Germany, in New Zealand, they're both MPs and their parties ensure that the list members have an equitable division in terms of constituency work. In fact, for voter choice it enhances them, because you can go to your constituency MP, you also have a regional MP you can go to, and that may be a person from a different party.
Finally, the splinter-party worry and domination by a tiny, little party...well, that's controlled through thresholds, so we concluded that simply wasn't a problem.
After doing this, after deciding on MMP, there are a number of technical issues you have to address, if that were the route you were taking. There'd be the question of the open list versus the closed list, or the semi-open list. A decision would have to be made about that; you would have to decide about dual candidacy. Can a person run both on the constituency list and also on the party list?
On threshold requirements, what is it? Is it two-thirds, one-third for constituency versus list, or should it be sixty-forty, fifty-fifty as in Germany, and on what basis do you make that determination?
Finally, on threshold requirements, how severe do you want to make it? The more severe you make it, the harder it is for new parties to come into existence. It's a check against the splinter parties, but you don't want to make it too hard. You must get that balance right.
In terms of implementation, we thought that essentially there had to be a broad consensus. There had to be a public consultation and a broad consensus. We did not think there must necessarily be a referendum, although one should very carefully consider the possibility of a referendum on the matter.
One of the difficulties with a referendum, of course, is that in many cases, regardless of how much you try to have a public information campaign, many voters will not be informed and when it comes time to cast their votes it will be, better the devil we know than the devil we don't know, and first past the post will remain, out of inertia.
One possibility would be to have the referendum after the change. That may sound strange, but essentially what you'd be doing is offering people a trial period.
You'd say, “Voters, here's a new system. We've consulted broadly. This is what we are proposing to put in. Try it out for an election, and at the next election you'll vote on whether to retain it or revert to the old one.” Then, voters would be voting fully informed. They would have experience with the old system and the new one. You would have an informed choice made by the electorate, which otherwise is difficult to achieve with electoral reform.
Thank you very much.