First I'd like to thank the whole committee for coming to the north. I know you've been on a journey throughout the north and west of Canada, but it's great to have the opportunity to speak to you in person here, beyond just sending in written submissions and things remotely.
First off, for some context, OpenNWT is a non-profit civil society organization developed to promote open and transparent government in the north. The focus has largely been on digital tools to increase access to government information. For example, we have a local territorial version of openparliament.ca. We've developed a few systems to do government financial openness and searching electoral information, a whole bunch of systems like that, which are available freely on the web.
Additionally, just from my own context, I've run previously territorially, so I have some experience on that side of the equation as well. Some of the things I'd like to speak about today are a number of the questions that the committee has put forward.
First off, improving the election process in Canada is a very important topic, and the reforms very much need to speak to all Canadians, not just those who choose to come to a standing committee meeting. That's probably a pretty select number of people. There are only so many who find the format terribly comfortable.
In previous years, there have been things like voter ID changes, and a number of things that have ended up disenfranchising Canadians. Obviously, it was not the intent, but looking at parts of Canada that are more remote, it certainly has different challenges than are faced in a lot of other places.
Too often when we talk about reforms, though, we often talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's how do we gut the system? How do we do things entirely differently rather than looking at what sort of incremental improvements, what sorts of tweaks and other improvements, we can make to a system to take us forward? There are certainly benefits to what we've been doing, and any number of things that we could do, but I think it's important to consider all of those.
One other consideration is that often we find, in speaking to people from the south, that the north is often considered to be an east-west set-up, that there are lots of links across the north. In reality, the northern territories tend to have stronger north-south links. Largely it's related to logistics, costs, that sort of thing. Quite often, even culturally, a lot of the links and similarities between the territories tend to be with the provinces they're above. There are more direct flights, for instance.
We were talking earlier, and the cost of a flight east to west in the north is quite expensive. Often it's actually cheaper to fly down to Ottawa to get to Nunavut than it is to fly all the way across. Until recently, there were no direct flights to Yukon. In the last year, there's been one created, which has been great, but those links don't always exist. When we talk about northern representation, there really is a difference in culture and in people who are required to balance that out.
Overall, there are a few points to touch on. One is the modernization of the electoral process. I know the committee has heard from previous speakers that there's a lot that needs to be done to actually modernize the way elections work: getting your voter card in the mail, having the standard paper lists when you go to vote. All of these things, frankly, are logistically challenging. They're difficult. In the north, we could have problems even getting workers to run elections.
In this past year, there were a number of elections. We had three in a two-month period. All of the elections had trouble holding on to staff. Trying to get all of these things to happen at once is a challenge, and there are a lot of ways that technology can be used to improve that. The act is obviously quite dated in its origins now.
On the note of modernizing elections, online voting has been a big topic, and I know it's something that the committee has considered. One of the things I'd like to ask about the whole issue is what problem it actually solves. It's worth considering, and it certainly has some advantages to it. Again, it helps modernize it. As you've heard already in the north, connectivity is quite an issue. Even Yellowknife only has a single connection to the south. In the north, we have entire communities that share the equivalent of a slow cable modem for 1,000 people.
There are a number of barriers that way that create problems. In fact, our smallest communities have probably our highest voting turnout rates in the north. Those in the small communities seem to have a strong civic duty on voting, which is fantastic, and often it's bigger cities and bigger centres, even in Canada, that occasionally have turnout issues.
One of the challenges in Canada isn't that it's too hard to vote. It's pretty easy to go out and vote on election day. There's a voting poll every time you turn around. There are a dozen parties telling you that tomorrow is the day to vote, today is the day to vote. You can get a ride; you can get all kinds of things. If you want to go early, you want to go late, there are a whole bunch of opportunities that exist. It's important that if we're doing it, it's not just for convenience, but about how it actually enhances the process and our elections.
Related to that is mandatory voting. It's an interesting concept. I think it's difficult for a lot of people to talk about and put their heads around, because it does seem like forcing people to go out and do something.
On principle, I'm not against the idea of mandatory voting, but there needs to be catches in the system that would allow people to not vote. Just because you go to vote doesn't mean you have to vote for someone on the ballot. We should probably have that anyway. I know that a number of provinces in Canada already do have the ability for voters to go and deny their ballots, and that's an important message to be able to send.
At the same time, we have to reinforce the importance of voting and the celebratory nature of it. I'll talk about that a bit throughout this, but too often we don't celebrate the importance of voting and how much of a big deal it is. It's not that we have to celebrate and have parties around it. Those deeply involved in the system do, but there needs to be ways to get the rest of Canada to consider it the great occasion that it is. It's something to celebrate that we get out to vote and elect the government. If there's a wholesale change, or if there are minor changes, it's a big deal and it's affected by one person going out and casting a vote. Everybody can count.
In a lot of countries the mandatory voting is also a civic holiday. It becomes a community celebration and that's something worth considering maybe not on its own, but with a number of these other pieces. Maybe there's some validity there. The more we can show Canadians that individual votes and going out to vote does impact the system, even in the current system today, the better. Just because you're in a riding where 80,000 people vote doesn't mean that an election can't be decided by a handful of votes. It's amplified a bit in the north where we have territorial elections. In our last one here we had ridings decided by three votes. It's a bit of a different scale, but it's still amazing to see, and people don't always understand that their votes matter. When you look at those kinds of numbers, how do you connect with everybody and show them? If that doesn't do it, we have to find other ways to demonstrate that.
The fundamental question...a lot of the efforts discussed today have been about the power of individual MPs and the balance on parties. I heard the first panel, and a lot of discussion came up around empowering MPs and minority governments, and PR leading to smaller groups and more MPs working together. I think that's an important thing, but why don't we look at finding ways to empower MPs right from today? I know some work was done in the last government on that. I know Michael Chong's bill did a few things.
Over the last number of years, power has been centralized in parties; power has been centralized in the PMO, and a number of other things have created an environment where perhaps MPs don't feel the full power of the position. The more we can do to empower MPs adds that strength to it. I don't think just turning to PR and turning to small parties necessarily does that, but the more we can do to strengthen that, then the more we strengthen Parliament, which is the most important thing in what we're trying to do.
When we're looking at party lists—and I know there have been some other discussions on other models—they don't necessarily lead to additional accountability. If people are voting for a party and getting a representative they don't know and didn't vote for, then I don't think that's necessarily a benefit. There are strong roots in our system and the accountability of an MP to constituents. I think that's something we'd have to find a way to uphold, however we develop it.
With regard to voting systems, there's obviously a number of systems proposed and a number of changes. I think one of the most important principles to keep in mind, which we've heard from other speakers, is that in the north, nothing could be considered that takes away the power of an MP for a particular territory or province, not that it's particularly an issue in the provinces. We only have one MP and one senator per territory. It's nice to see that representation, but it's important that no change would take that away. Rebalancing it, however that happens, needs to maintain the power of the territories to at least have a voice in Parliament for themselves.
While we had a unique constitutional situation with the territories, it's important that there's unique representation. I know some of the development of systems around PR takes that away, or blends that, and I don't think any of that would be acceptable to the north. That just isn't fair or right for Canadians.
The north is already a great landscape. A single MP from any of the territories could never possibly visit all of their communities in a single day and could barely even do it in a week without a chartered plane. I'd never want to see any of them have to do that or have any greater territory.
