Electoral Reform Committee on Sept. 30th, 2016

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Do you find that things like spending, as being part of the executive.... How does that work? One of the things, whether it's true or just scare tactics in trying to get people away from a proportional representation system, it has been said that if you get into coalition governments, often compromises are made on spending, policy decisions, and those types of things. Is that your experience? Are you able to actually come up with agreement and decisions that truly reflect the best interests of the population you're serving?

[Louis Sebert]

Of course, we like to think that we do come up with decisions that are the best for the population. What I have found is there's always some back and forth with respect to spending issues. If there's clear and sensible opposition, we tend to make changes in budgets. Yes, we do hear from the regular members, and we do have meetings with them. Ultimately, we need to win at least some of them over, and often a compromise is made.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Great. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

This has been a very interesting discussion, especially given the way government works in the Northwest Territories. It's very interesting to hear your perspective on governing, Mr. Sebert, and to benefit from the fruit of your experience, Mr. Bevington, knocking on doors and hearing what the mood is with respect to how the country governs itself. Thank you very much, both of you, for being here.

We'll take a little break before we get going with our next panel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

This opens our second panel.

We have with us Mr. Andrew Robinson from Alternatives North. We have as an individual Janaki Balakrishnan, and we have the co-chair from the Council of Canadians Northwest Territories Chapter, Ms. Lois Little.

Each individual will present for five minutes, and we'll do the round of questioning that you were witness to. I believe you were all in the audience for that last round so you have an idea of how things will function.

We'll start with Mr. Robinson for five minutes, please.

[Andrew Robinson, Alternatives North]

Since I only have five minutes, I will go quickly. Thanks for coming. It's nice to be here.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Don't go too quickly. If you go too fast, the interpreters won't be able to keep up. Just a normal pace will be fine. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

[Andrew Robinson]

What I meant was I'll dispense with the long thank you and welcomes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Okay, go ahead.

[Andrew Robinson]

The translators have a copy of my notes, so I'll mostly stick to those.

First I will acknowledge that we're on the traditional territory of the Dene people, Chief Drygeese territory.

I'll tell you a little bit about Alternatives North. It's a small non-profit. We're a social justice coalition with members from churches, labour unions, environmental organizations, women and family advocates, anti-poverty groups, and quite a few just individual citizens. We meet once a week to discuss what's going on in the territories.

Generally we operate under a consensus-based system, which means that we rarely need to vote on an issue. I think perhaps even when you look at your own lives, that's quite often the way you try to make decisions. Whether you're ordering pizza or running a business or whatever you're doing, you generally don't need to vote on every single thing. You find consensus by listening and accommodating different viewpoints until you get to where you're going.

It's interesting that Mr. Sebert was here from the territorial government, which also calls itself a consensus-based system of government. As he outlined, we elect members to that body, they then select a small number to be in the cabinet, and that cabinet stays in a minority position all the time. This forces them to talk to all of the members, and they do. We think proportional representation would move the federal government in a similar direction, which would allow for more listening to a diversity of opinion. We would end up with more representative decisions being made.

That's the introduction. At Alternatives North we met as a whole group and came to a consensus on a position on electoral reform in the federal government. Alternatives North fully supports a strongly proportional system for Canada in general. This would be a system where every vote influences the outcome, and the seats in Parliament reflect the proportion of the vote that each party got.

We prefer that proportional representation be implemented without needing to change the Constitution, because we think that would take a huge effort, at least in the short term. Perhaps when you get to Senate reform, we might look at some other reformations as well.

For now we suggest that any of the systems proposed by Fair Vote Canada would be acceptable. We looked at a few of them, and we think the mixed member proportional system would be the easiest to explain to people. We looked at the Law Commission report of 2004, which makes a solid 600-page-long recommendation and case for mixed member proportional.

We also understand, and were surprised to discover, that proportional representation involves creating electoral regions that go within Canada. When you talk about proportional representation, you don't use the whole Canadian vote. You have these different regions, and these regions can't cross provincial boundaries. We also understand, although we're not experts, that the Canadian Constitution does not prevent them from crossing territorial boundaries, as was discussed earlier today.

As I think you heard in Yukon, the three individual territories are very attached to having their own representation, with at least one member each. We understand that any attempt to go towards a system where I think we would share three members would not be received very well. We understand that and we agree with the rest of the north on that.

We also understand that proportional representation would not be possible for the Northwest Territories if we had only one MP. That's kind of obvious. If there's only one, he'll represent only one party.

We propose a couple of things. One, we propose that there would be some degree of proportional representation in the NWT if we had at least two MPs. It's interesting; we also listened to what people were talking about in Yukon. It's a very Canadian thing almost, where the territories are saying, well, we've discovered that to do this, we're going to need two MPs. We really don't want to suggest that we need more MPs, but because this is the way it has to work, we suggest that we have two MPs. We understand that we have a low population and all those things, and we're not demanding more representation, but we see that for this to work on a fair basis, we're going to need two.

It could work either through a mixed member proportional system or through a single transferable vote system. The results wouldn't be as proportional as in the rest of Canada, because even with two MPs you might get your first and second choice, but it wouldn't be very easy for the third and fourth choices to get a seat. However, it's still better than nothing.

We also looked at what's being discussed a bit, the idea of combining the three northern territories with the additional MPs, so that Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut would each get to elect one MP directly, and then the remaining three could be pooled, and some form of proportional system could be used to select those three seats. It seems the best way to do that would be mixed member proportional, where there would be some form of a list, so you vote twice, once for your local MP and once for a party that would represent the whole north. Basically, that would probably work.

Finally, we also came across the dual member proportional system which I think you just heard about yesterday, which is a form of mixed member proportional, as we understand it. As far as I understand it, that seemed like the most elegant solution. I won't go into the details of it, but that would be a very simple ballot and that would also allow for a mixed member system to operate in the north.

To wrap it up, we really think that proportional representation in Canada is the key point. As Alternatives North, we would be willing to accept things that wouldn't work quite that well for the north, as long as we get it for Canada. Also, a single MP for the Northwest Territories is really important, and for the other two territories. The last remark is that it is interesting that our own Minister of Justice was saying we have to keep things simple and that people have trouble understanding different systems. Last fall, in Yellowknife, we had three elections in one month, and they were all under different systems.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Yes, that's like the Scottish example. They have four systems: one for local, one for national, one for the U.K., and one for the European Parliament.

We'll go now to Ms. Balakrishnan, please, for five minutes.

[Janaki Balakrishnan, As an Individual]

Good afternoon.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and respectable members of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. I consider this opportunity on the important initiative of improving Canadian democracy an honour and a privilege as a Canadian citizen.

My submission on electoral reform has provided the following: one, the personal background and experience that led me to make this submission; two, the reason for my support for proportional representation; three, my views on Northwest Territories and electoral reform; four, the method of proportional representation; and five, expectations in the implementation of electoral reform.

I came to Canada as an immigrant 35 years ago, at the age of 28. As a newcomer in the first few years, having less privilege to access connections and networks, I struggled for my well-being both financially and professionally. Later, during my 28 years of life in Ontario, I had the good fortune to come across a few political parties, and I learned about the democracy of Canada and the positions of various parties on different issues. Soon, I realized that taxes levied from the Canadian citizens are spent partly to sustain the democratic system in Canada. Therefore, I looked upon Canadian politics as a way to improve my well-being. I freely used my voting rights as a Canadian citizen, choosing the best candidate who would represent me.

But more now than in the last two decades, election campaigns, in the name of strategic voting, are fearmongering, indicating who should not represent us more than who should. The last few days of campaigns are generally taken over by only two rival parties. This leads to voter confusion, panic, and frustration, and to unexpected losses for certain candidates and their supporters. This is a result of the current winner-take-all system and does not help to maintain integrity or to maintain Canadian democracy.

My connections and networks made me become an ardent supporter of Fair Vote Canada, which advocated to “make every vote count”. The referendum on electoral reform in Ontario gave me an opportunity to learn about proportional representation through Fair Vote Canada in terms of how the number of votes gained by parties would be distributed in equal percentages to the number of seats. This gave me the confidence that, with my vote, I will not be deprived of electing a representative.

In the last four and a half years, I learned about the benefits of consensus-building governments in the north, based on issues and matters that impact the general population. With proportional representation, there will be continuity in the enactment of laws and the delivery of policy, and efficiency in resource management in serving the interests of the voter population and its affiliates.

As I understand it, any proposal for change in NWT needs to be processed through a duty to consult. My submission was as a witness taking this opportunity to express my views as an individual. NWT and other territories are represented by only one MP in each, and one political party at a time, regardless of what position the party holds in Parliament.

First, the implementation of proportional representation becomes impossible with only one representative. Second, in spite of the territories' makeup—almost two-fifths of the geographical extent of Canada—only three MPs represent the Government of Canada. The territories are not only underfunded, but also are very much under-represented. Elections Canada can provide for electoral distribution by geographical area as well.

In the 33 communities in NWT, with the lack of infrastructure and hardships due to harsh arctic weather conditions, a constituent and the representative may not meet each other in the entire term or sometimes may not even communicate. The all-party committee on electoral reform shall provide a way to be represented by members of all parties by increasing the number for representatives in the NWT to five. It would not be too much to expect, where 19 MLAs represent the government of NWT.

The prime motive of my witnessing is for an electoral reform with proportional representation, rather than for which PR system is applied. When in Ontario, I became familiar with the MMP system. Lately, through Fair Vote Canada's extensive efforts, I've learned of different systems and found that STV is also a good system. I do not support any system of closed list, which again deprives electors choice.

Any process implemented needs to be clearly understood by the participants, and the participants should respond with no biases. The subject matter behind any referendum is generally not simple. Many citizens are busy with their day-to-day matters and are unable to focus on such matters. Instead of putting the onus on voters, elected members should take responsibility for deciding on what is best for Canadians. The general public depends on non-profit organizations and advocacy groups that specialize in areas and advocate to the governments.

In the past, referenda on electoral reform in different provinces set the threshold much higher than 51%, deviating from regularly accepted democracy. This indirectly sends a message to the ordinary public that they were expected to vote on something undesirable. Therefore, my humble request as a responsible Canadian is that the special committee limit the electoral reform work to wide public consultations only, and not extend it to a referendum.

Once again, thank you, Mr. Chair and respectable members of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform, for having provided this opportunity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Ms. Balakrishnan, for your excellent testimony as someone who has learned so much and taken such an active interest in our democratic system. It's a great act of citizenship to do so.

We'll go now to Ms. Lois Little, please.

[Lois Little, Co-Chair, The Council of Canadians-Northwest Territories Chapter]

Good afternoon. Welcome to Yellowknife.

It's a privilege for us all to be here in Chief Drygeese territory in the Treaty 8 area.

I'm speaking here as a northern resident and also as co-chair of the NWT chapter of the Council of Canadians.

I want to focus my comments in the short time that I have on two areas. One is on representation, and the other is on the rule of law. These are the two principles that underpin our democracy.

On the principle of representation, I want to make it clear right off the top that I don't support the first-past-the-post system. There is no way that we should be living in the year 2016 and having millions of votes wasted in every federal election. It's no wonder that Statistics Canada reports tell us people are too busy to vote, that they don't think that politics matter, or they're not interested in politics, when their votes are wasted. It is clear that the current system has to change.

It's also pretty outrageous that we can have a party with 39% of the popular vote and likely about a quarter of the eligible voters in the country having control of the public policy agenda and making decisions for this country. If there is any way of saying to citizens that they don't count, or sending the message that politicians don't care about us and they don't care whether we participate, the current system is the system that's sending that message. That's not something that we need to continue. It has to change.

I'm sure you all agree that representation is a fundamental principle of our democracy and that we must value every citizen and every region equally and we must end this false majority and the winner-take-all system.

I'm sure you've heard in your travels that every region is unique. The NWT is unique as well, and we need to see our uniqueness reflected in the House of Commons just the same as every other region needs to see its uniqueness reflected in the House of Commons. The best way for that to happen—and other folks have spoken to that—is with a proportional system. Given our experience here in the Northwest Territories and also the experience in Nunavut, we know a lot about picking people to represent us based on their knowledge, their skills, and their compassion, rather than a party with which they may or may not be affiliated. The mixed member proportional system offers a lot of opportunities for us to honour the traditions we have here in the north to really get good quality representation.

That's all I'll say at the moment about representation.

The other area I want to speak to is the rule of law, the other principle that is really fundamental to the health of our democracy.

As you well know, the Fair Elections Act was passed not so long ago. It is misnamed. It's anything but fair, and I will refer to it as the unfair elections act. I'm sure you know that the Council of Canadians launched a charter challenge with respect to the unfair elections act. Unfortunately it was unsuccessful, but on the good side, I'm happy that Justin Trudeau is committed to repealing that act. I am really hoping that you folks are going to hold him to his word.

The unfair elections act is punitive when it comes to northern communities. You heard some of the previous speakers talk about the circumstances of our communities, where people don't have IDs and there are no street addresses in lots of our communities. People are not coming to the polls with ID. What's happening is that people are losing the right to vote, and they're losing the right to citizenship. I'm sure you're aware that there's a bunch of northerners that come from the experience of not being recognized as citizens and not having the right to vote. The unfair elections act is not encouraging in supporting a change in that attitude. I'm sure you know a lot about the intergenerational trauma that has come from years of colonial governments and residential schools. Not being a citizen, and not having the right to vote, has had deep-rooted impacts on people's participation in our democracy. We need to have a robust election law that encourages and supports that right of citizenship.

We also need an election law that unmuzzles the Chief Electoral Officer and empowers Elections Canada to be that kind of non-partisan independent facilitator of open, transparent, and fully participatory kinds of federal elections. Given the shenanigans that have been happening around spending and around robocalls, you'll know that the Council of Canadians also launched a challenge around the whole robocall scandal. The courts did admit that there was widespread fraud. We need to have laws that protect citizens' right to vote, that ensures no party or individual has unfair advantage, and that ensures there is no particular interest that is buying an individual or a party.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Ms. Romanado for five minutes.

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

Thank you to our three panellists for being here today. To the citizens who are here in the audience, thank you for being here.

It's my first time in the Northwest Territories. I wish I were outside playing, but I'm enjoying my time here with you.

I have a question about fairness.

We've heard from a lot of Canadians that our current system is not fair, and that we need to move to a system that's much fairer.

We've heard today, Ms. Balakrishnan, you feel that in order to have proper proportionality, you would recommend that the Northwest Territories have five members of Parliament. As you know, the devil is always in the details. How can I say to people in my riding of Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, in which I have 83,719 voters, that they'd get one MP, but for voters in the Northwest Territories, with 29,432 voters, you want five? Each member of Parliament would represent 5,886 voters. The time that a member of Parliament could allocate to their constituents would be much greater in the Northwest Territories than it would be in downtown Montreal, or Toronto, and so forth. I think it's great; I think we should be able to give even more time to our constituents.

We would also have to look at the costs. For each member of Parliament that we increase in the Northwest Territories, there is a cost of approximately $637,220 just in terms of our member's operating budget, travel budget, and salary, not including the travel back and forth. We're talking about $2.5 million every year to have four more members of Parliament. When we're talking in terms of fairness, it would be difficult for us to go back to Canadians and say that just to satisfy proportionality we need to increase members of Parliament in whatever region or whatever constituency to x number, but it's not proportional to the number of constituents.

I'm just throwing that out there because we're talking about fairness. It would be difficult for us. I'm not trying to pick on the Northwest Territories, or my riding, or anything, but how would we sell this to the general public if we told them they're not going to get to see their MPs as often as someone in the Northwest Territories? Could you comment on that?

[Janaki Balakrishnan]

There are a number of things that I can speak to on that one. This is not an argument in a court of law, but I want to say that when you say 83,000 people but you don't meet with all 83,000, and all 83,000 may not need to meet with their representative.... You have heard our Minister of Justice talk of the status of the borders, or people, those who live in the north in different communities.

You talk about travelling. It takes a lot of time for a representative to travel to a community. That is where the time is mostly spent, not with the members and not with the constituents. The infrastructure in these communities is lacking. Unless you have local representatives, these constituents will not be served well. That is where the representation is lacking.

Further, I would like—

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

I'll stop you there.

On the flip side, one of our members, Nathan Cullen, who's not here unfortunately, lives in a very, very remote riding in B.C. He has the same situation. It takes him hours to go from one side of his riding to the other and to travel back and forth.

If I'm going to do that for the Northwest Territories or for Yukon, shouldn't we also do the same thing for him?

[Janaki Balakrishnan]

Probably.

These are the concerns that northerners have in general. Unfortunately, I am presenting only for NWT. If you had asked me to present for that community, I'd represent the same argument here.

My concern is, when you look at the ridings—this one is submitted in the revision—I have listed how many provincial representatives there are in each province and federally. For example, when you look at Ontario, the number of federal MPs exceeds the MPPs. I don't know how that happened. They should either have increased the provincial MPPs, or they should have reduced the federal MPs.

These things happen everywhere. It's only in the territories that it has not happened for a long time. It has remained as one. This kind of objection has perhaps never come up because of the situation of the people who live here. They have many more things to look after, and they have not taken this issue to the Parliament to ask them for local representatives.

Here, again, you have talked about the cost. I'm suggesting a different way to reduce the cost.

Ms. May has suggested how in New Zealand they have have introduced seats for the aboriginal people. Likewise, we can form an NWT caucus. You have one representative who travels to sit in Parliament, and we have other representatives stay within the communities and look after matters while also attending to issues that are common to NWT as a whole, by working there.

My suggestion is for proportional representation. We will have all parties who have been represented already, and they have different views, and they can work together.

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

You would have four in the riding, and you would have one who travels. Is that correct?

[Janaki Balakrishnan]

Five in the riding.

When you look at NWT, they are very complex. They have five administrative regions, and about 11 languages altogether, including English and French. They have municipal affairs communities in six regions, and each divides the community. So if you happen to bring a system to that, it is difficult. Yet, if we are going to do it, we have to consult with them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Mr. Reid now, please.

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

Thank you to our witnesses.

I have two thoughts. First of all, I should say I have to agree with my colleague Ms. Romanado about the underlying problem, but I actually don't think you can add seats for the north unless you were to do the same thing in the south, which would create massive constitutional issues. It would also guarantee enormous unpopularity for our proposal if you were to quintuple the number of seats up here. Given the fact that the north already has half or less than half as many voters per MP, I think you would really have to quintuple the numbers down south, and I don't think the Canadian people would go for that. We'd be talking about 1,500 members of Parliament.

Just to make this point, there are 44,000 people living in the Northwest Territories, and in my riding of Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston there are 98,000 people, so that's more than twice the number in the territory. You can say they are southerners and they've got it good, but it's actually one of the poorer ridings in Ontario. I know of constituents who don't have electricity. We have an aboriginal population which, while it's actually been very, very successfully integrated, still has an unresolved land claim very similar to situations up here. And being a rural area, people are very spread out on the ground. It's not like they need less representation. I would say they need representation and service to the same degree, but already their vote is worth less than half of the vote of a person up here. I don't, by any stretch of the imagination, have the most populous riding in my province. To say that your vote should be worth one-tenth of the vote up here is just not something that is saleable, and I would add as well, not defensible, in my opinion, although I appreciate the good intentions you have in bringing it here.

I am very much aware of the fact that the Northwest Territories has a large number of official languages trying to accommodate the fact that it has so many different indigenous cultures, unlike Nunavut, which has a relatively homogenous indigenous culture that predominates. There's an enormous amount of complexity, and I have no clever idea how to resolve it except to say that your MP, if well chosen, will have to be a very skilled individual to accomplish that.

I'd like to start with you, Mr. Robinson. Three times in your presentation you said, “We are not experts”, and you proceeded to get right a number of things that a number of people with Ph.D. after their names got wrong before our committee, so I was impressed. I think you're more of an expert than you give yourself credit for.

We did hear when we were in Whitehorse about what New Zealand has done. They have Maori districts. I think one American state, the state of Maine, has three aboriginal districts, which they would call Indian districts, one of which is assigned to each of the three, as they would call them, Indian tribes—we would say first nations—of the state. There are a bunch of restrictions on them, and I won't go into details.

The Maori model, on the one hand, is very impressive, but, on the other hand, Maoris are essentially ethnically homogeneous. They aren't spread evenly across the country, but they're spread in such a way that you can accommodate them, and as a further consideration, they don't have the kind of restrictions we constitutionally have. They aren't federal, so you can design your ridings like anything you want. That's why they can deal with their seven districts.

Having put all those caveats in place that are problems, what in general do you think of trying to figure out a way of pushing through, either aspirationally, which we could do, but we'd have to change the Constitution, or perhaps practically, the idea of providing separate indigenous representation?

[Andrew Robinson]

I'm here to speak on behalf of Alternatives North, and we haven't discussed that, so I won't give an answer on their behalf, but, myself, I would look at two things. One is this issue of how to run a proportional system in parts of Canada where there's a low population. It's not just the three territories. I grew up in Labrador, which is very similar. It has one MP. Talking about northern provinces, you talked about Nathan Cullen's riding. If we could come up with a system that gave a little but more representation to the northern parts of Canada, you would also inherently give more representation to indigenous peoples, not all of them, but some.

I would suggest, again personally, that perhaps the Senate would be a good place to put.... When you get to reforming the Senate, when we do, it's a fantastic place to have a council of elders or something like that where it's a place of second thought. That seems to fit better with the whole idea of indigenous representation. Some Senate seats could be set aside.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Reid.

Mr. Boulerice.