Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 30th, 2016

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

This is such good news.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

It's on the testimony, Liz.

I really want my Green Party candidate to win, but I go there and I don't think my Green Party candidate's going to have a chance. It kills me, but I'm going to have to vote for somebody else. If that person lost by only three votes, I would actually have had a hand in making sure that my preferred candidate got defeated.

I'm just throwing that out. On the flip side, suppose everybody said, “I'm going to actually stay true to how I feel. I'm going to stay true to my party. I'm going to stay true to my candidate. I'm going to vote for them regardless of whether I think they have a shot or not.” Could that in fact change the result of the election?

I'm just playing devil's advocate.

[Alexander Lambrecht]

I like it. That's fine. I'm a direct person as well and I play devil's advocate, to my own demise sometimes.

I would say that if we had every single riding, every jurisdiction where the MP that won, won by such a close margin, then we wouldn't have an issue. But we're not talking about a widespread case. We're talking about a very small percentage of people who won by a very slim margin. I think you have to look at the reasons that people win by slim margins. There are very many reasons and factors that play into how a vote plays out. If there's a strong candidate, or the incumbent running against two completely new people, there's a good chance the incumbent's going to win, unless there has been some huge conflict. Maybe one of those two new people is going to split the vote, and one of the new people will win. There are so many factors, so many ways that you can split a vote, and a vote can come right down to the wire, so to generalize and say that it's not an issue.... Well, we don't have widespread close margins.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Okay.

[Alexander Lambrecht]

If we did, then we wouldn't be here.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

I have one more. I'm sorry.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Very briefly then.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Generalizing, you said that first past the post creates barriers for women and minorities. How do you know that?

[Alexander Lambrecht]

From what we've seen, the people who get elected, when I talk to various people in the community about different reasons why they don't run in elections, well, people—

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

I want to stop you there. Running for office and getting elected are two different things. The decision to run has nothing to do with getting elected. They are two different things. What you're trying to say is the decision to run is not based on the electoral system; it's a personal decision. The barrier for women deciding to run is definitely, and I can guarantee because I'm a woman, not the electoral system. It's usually the job. I've heard it a lot. A lot of people tell me how women don't win elections, or first past the post prevents women from running. I'm a woman. I ran under first past the post. I was the underdog and I still won, and I can guarantee you it wasn't the electoral system that prevented me from running.

I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll go to Mr. Reid now.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

There we are.

When my party had to choose an interim leader to replace Stephen Harper, a majority of the candidates were female, including the winning candidate, Rona Ambrose. I'm willing to share that electoral system we employed. We could just use that maybe.

I think we have to be a little bit careful, too, about making mechanistic assumptions that one system or another will produce substantially improved vote results regarding inclusiveness, whether it's gender parity or other forms of parity. I'm not saying it's not material, but I actually do think that if we're really serious about this, we need to focus more on some of the other problems.

Ruby, who sits with me on another committee where we're actually studying these very issues, I think can attest to the fact that there are some other very significant impediments that exist. I don't throw that out to say we shouldn't look at the systems. It's simply to say that this is not going to be the silver bullet, no matter what system we pick.

Mr. Wasylciw, you made a none-of-the-above comment about how to handle these things if you have a mandatory vote. I think it was you who made that comment, wasn't it?

[David Wasylciw]

Yes.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

It was you. Okay.

I agree with you. I used to live in Australia, where they have mandatory voting. Of course they don't actually get 100% participation, notwithstanding the mythology, and they don't enforce the fines—except against this one guy who makes a fuss about pointing out that he...you actually have to see this guy—for the obvious reason that there are all these people who are dispossessed and don't vote. There's the Australian aboriginal population, homeless people, people who haven't mastered the English language yet, people who are disabled. Notwithstanding the law, I think they recognize that there is something inherently perverse about fining those people for not participating. So I agree with you.

The other thing about it is that I think people staying home and not voting because they just don't like any of the candidates or the parties is actually a legitimate expression. They may not be motivated by the nature of the election. Those are legitimate points that would be disguised if you were forced to vote. It might actually be better to include a “none of the above” option, a box you could tick off. I think that would actually be great. I wouldn't want to do that and also have the mandatory voting, but I wouldn't mind having that as a way of letting voters who are unhappy express their point of view.

That's my editorial. Now I want to actually ask you a question.

I also believe there are significant barriers to people voting who are not part of the electoral system. You alluded to something that may be fruitful when you talked about people who are not literate. Several aboriginal languages in Canada, and Inuktitut is one, don't actually use the Latin alphabet. That does raise the question of whether or not someone can be literate but not in one of the official languages, and therefore are no more able to read a ballot written in our alphabet than I would be able to read a ballot in their alphabet. Is that something that is an issue, or am I just going in the wrong direction?

You can see where I'm heading with this. If a territory has an official language that uses syllabics, should we have the ballots printed in more than one alphabet?

[David Wasylciw]

It's probably a lot easier in Nunavut, where they only have the two languages. We have the 11. It is a factor.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Some of the 11 use the Latin alphabet, though.

[David Wasylciw]

Yes, definitely. It wouldn't be prevalent in younger people very often these days, but definitely some elders and some community members wouldn't be able to read English.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

You have to be inclusive of even the exceptional cases when you're dealing with this sort of thing. Another possibility for those people might be not to change the form of the ballot but rather to have some kind of special instruction to the returning officers. This may already happen, I don't know. Presumably if you're in a remote community that has only one of the non-official languages spoken there and used, the returning officers are drawn from the community. I actually don't know that for a fact. I'm just guessing that's the case.

[David Wasylciw]

They often are. I don't know how Elections Canada always runs things, but I know that at times when they haven't been able to, people have been flown into a community to help as returning officers. I can't speak with certainty as to how they help people with voting. Certainly with any of these more complex systems, that would be hugely required.

I actually rather like the territorial solution of a little picture. I think it actually meets the literacy need quite well.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

May I just ask this question? The Northwest Territories is huge. Let's say I'm a candidate for the entire territory for one seat. I'm from Yellowknife, and the voting for this particular person is taking place in Inuvik. The person may never have met me or seen me. Well, maybe that's not realistic. Maybe they've seen me in the media.

I don't know, it just strikes me that this could actually become an issue. This is why state portraits used to to be painted, before we had photography, because someone could show up in town and just say they were the king: you wouldn't know. That's a true story.

[David Wasylciw]

In the north it costs the MPs and candidates running in an election $60,000 to $100,000 by the time they're done travelling around. I know that the campaigns here in the last election cost the candidates a fortune. It's quite a bit of money to do all that travelling. Certainly not all of them were able to do that. That's been met by trying to send out more signs digitally, more information and that sort of thing, but that is certainly an issue.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Boulerice, please.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to our guests for being here with us.

I am very pleased to come to Yellowknife. This is the first time for me as well, and I hope it will not be the last. I am a southern guy, and I come from a big city. I am an MP from Montreal, and my district is much smaller than your territory.

Mr. Lambrecht, I am pleased to meet the president of the Northern Territories Federation of Labour and to be able to ask him questions. I am a trade unionist too. Before being elected as a member of Parliament, I was a union advisor to the Canadian Union of Public Employees. I am currently on leave without pay.

I am pleased you are in favour of the proportional voting system that you referred to. There is in fact no perfect voting system, but that one is consistent with certain values and principles. For some, the purpose of an election is, first and foremost, to elect a strong government that can implement its platform. For that purpose, the present system, the single-member plurality or first-past-the-post system, fits the bill very nicely.

Others think the purpose of an election is to represent or reflect citizens' will, choices, and voices in Parliament. For that purpose, the proportional system produces much better results because it does not lead to the distortions or false majorities caused by the single-member majority system.

You stated your preference and that of your organization. Could you give us more details on the type of mixed-member proportional system, with a single transferable vote, with open lists or with closed lists? How do you think a proportional voting system would be implemented in the Canadian federation?

[Alexander Lambrecht]

Basically the entire process would have to be based on the foundation of what proportional representation is. Therefore, I'm not a fan of STV personally. I'm not going to take a specific position on either one, but the entire process that is electing our leaders must be open. There is no reason that people cannot decide on who the party lists are. The entire process has to be based on the founding principles of what proportional representation is, and that is simply fairness and openness. This is exactly what PR does.

MMP would be a much more preferable system to use. Anything that increases representation in three territories and for the three territories whether we stay with one MP each, or we get two MPs.... The one thing that we do not want is one large territory being represented by one MP, or having three MPs for one big territory with no designated jurisdiction. What happens when you have more than one jurisdiction in the north is somebody gets forgotten. The NWT and Nunavut are huge jurisdictions, and I know. I'm the president for both of them and I have 58 communities that I try to touch base with, and 25 in Nunavut all fly-in, with all sorts of infrastructure issues, and communication challenges. I can only imagine what it's like to be an MP for the NWT and Yukon, let alone Nunavut, where you don't have the ability to simply drive on a road.

Basically the north needs more. We need something that's going to work and where people are heard, and something that represents Canadians right down to the facet of what makes Canada great. Right now our government represents the people who chose to go out and vote, and as I heard earlier today, the people who are generally coming out to these committee meetings are people who are experts, lobbyists, have interests. Those are the people who don't represent the majority of Canada. They represent a very small minority and segment of the population, but they do not represent the average Canadian who is simply just trying to get by.