Electoral Reform Committee on Oct. 3rd, 2016

[Douglas Jack]

The last word I would just say is, before we go ahead, we should be turning to first nations and asking, what is sovereignty here? What is democracy here?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Other people in our hearings have said pretty much the same thing, and we've been up to Whitehorse, Yukon. We heard actually from Chief Erasmus last week.

[Gerard Talbot, As an Individual]

Mr. Chair, thank you very much for holding this exercise in democracy.

I have two observations for you.

First, in my opinion, democracy begins by recognizing all votes. Recognizing all votes is recognizing the will of the people. I feel that, with the current voting system, the only votes that count are those that elect members of Parliament. The other votes have no weight. For example, when I go to vote and I vote for a candidate that does not win the election, it is as if I am putting my ballot in a garbage can rather than in the ballot box. I am not the only one to experience that. It has been said that millions of people waste their vote in that way under the current system.

My second observation is that, recognizing the will of the people also means that Parliament must be a mirror that accurately reflects Canadian society. That is why, if a party gets 20% of the votes, it should have 20% of the seats. The current voting system is a mirror that really distorts the reality. You do not need me to give you figures to show you how that happened in the last election.

What I see as the most serious aspect of the system, is that, at the moment, with our first past the post voting system, the outcome of the election is determined by mechanics and not by the will of those voting, the will of Canadians. I feel that it would be a fine project for our society to set as our objective the reduction of the democratic deficit by, for example, establishing a proportional system, instead of constantly talking about reducing the deficit and getting the deficit to zero at any cost. I don't think that is a major concern.

We were talking earlier about citizen participation. However, if we had a societal project specifically designed to reduce the democratic deficit, it would increase citizen participation.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Yes, okay. We understand, Mr. Talbot. Thank you for your comments.

I invite Mr. Samuel Leclerc to go to microphone 2.

We now move to Mr. Guy Demers.

[Guy Demers, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Basically, what we all want to achieve is a fairer and more sustainable society. Politics is one way of doing that. In politics, all points of view must be recognized and expressed. With that as a consideration, surely mixed proportionality is the essential way to achieve it.

There is also the matter of considering each and every one, particularly the weakest and those whose voice is not represented. Education is not the only solution, because we are going to have to be able to listen to those people. I extend an invitation to you to take the time to consider all the studies and everything that has been done on human rights that show how the poorest can be heard in politics. We know that there is legislation on the rights of the child. Even though children do not have the right to vote, that does not mean that they do not have the right to be heard and respected.

I would like to add a variation to Mr. Trudel's comments. Our outlook also has to be modern, meaning that we recognize that people do not just identify themselves as being from their own small community, but also as citizens of the world. Proportional representation is also a way to connect with others who may be far away, but with whom we share values and common objectives. In my opinion, that is also what mixed proportionality would allow us to do, that is to become citizens of the world. We no longer just have the old way of seeing things.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Demers.

I invite Ms. Gabrielle Tanguay to go to microphone 1.

Mr. Leclerc, the floor is yours.

[Samuel Leclerc, As an Individual]

Good afternoon, I would like to talk to you about my experience as a voter. I have had the right to vote for 10 years. I have taken part in every election I could, provincially as well as federally. In 10 years, my vote has elected not one single candidate.

Basically, my vote had no more effect than if I had stayed home and not participated in the elections. I was not able to have a representative in the government. The party for which I voted has never formed the government, partly because I have always refused to vote strategically. I feel that it is important to vote for a party that truly represents us and not to try to block another party.

So I am dissatisfied with the current voting system. I would like to have a proportional system that would let me feel that my vote is not being wasted and that the government really does reflect the opinion of all Canadians.

To reform the voting system, a preferential vote would absolutely not satisfy me. It would give me the feeling, not that my vote counted, but that I was being forced to transfer my vote to a party in which I had no interest. It would also not prevent others from voting strategically, whereas in a proportional voting system, I would not need to vote for a party other than the one I really want.

Finally, I do not think that a referendum is at all necessary. I think that the work this committee is doing is wonderful. You are listening to people. If you are able to come up with a non-partisan recommendation to the government and it is accepted, it would have all the legitimacy it needed to proceed to a change.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much, Mr. Leclerc.

I invite Mr. Olivier Germain to go to microphone 2.

We are now going to hear from Ms. Tanguay.

[Gabrielle Tanguay, As an Individual]

Good afternoon and thank you.

I am a Canadian citizen. I would like to let you know about my feelings and my opinion about the reform that is currently under way.

Unfortunately, I have never had the impression that the government was representing me because of the simple fact that the parties for which I voted have never been elected and I have never succeeded in electing a candidate in my constituency.

The current reform fills me with great joy but also with great fear, because it could as easily end up with something very good as with something very bad.

I want to thank the government and the members of Parliament for holding public consultations of this kind. I thank the committee for consulting experts and many who are qualified to represent the people. Personally, I do not feel the need for a referendum, because I consider that the government and the committee have done what they needed to do to get public support and to seek the opinion of the electorate.

I am asking the government to adopt a proportional voting system. It is clear to me that the status quo or a preferential system would not allow for more democracy. A proportional system would allow for more democracy.

I would also like better representation of men, women and minorities. That is why I am in favour of a pure proportional voting system with a closed list. This would allow certain rules to be set when the list is established. The rules would ensure that minorities, language groups, men and women would be represented, as well as the various regions and provinces of Canada.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Benoît Bouchard, you can now move to microphone 1.

Go ahead, Mr. Germain.

[Olivier Germain, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon.

Forgive me in advance if I talk too fast. It is because I am nervous about making this statement.

I will start by saying that I agree with Samuel Leclerc about proportionality. I will stick to my notes and that will help me.

At the moment, we are seeing a lack of interest and trust in elections. That has previously been highlighted very well. I wanted to arrange my thoughts around three key words: integrity, legitimacy and representation.

As I see it, one of the defects that mars our perception of the integrity of our elected politicians is that they can make a career out of it. In terms of their legitimacy, they are lacking in support, and in terms of representation, it is the extent of their power. To protect integrity, we must not permit elected officials to make it their career. To protect legitimacy, we cannot make it into a system, as the preferential method does.

So legitimacy is not born of a preferential system. That is a false positive. In my opinion, to make representation acceptable, the extent of federal power must be reduced.

That is all I had to say.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

I invite Ms. Veronika Jolicoeur to move to microphone 2.

Mr. Bouchard, the floor is yours.

[Benoit Bouchard, As an Individual]

Ladies and gentlemen of the committee, thank you for this consultation. It has been a long time since we have seen anything like it in Canada.

My name is Benoit Bouchard and I am the regional vice-president of CUPE-Québec. The organization represents 639,000 members in Canada and 110,000 members in Quebec.

We have held consultations on this process, and, at the moment, there is a broad consensus that the current democratic political system is no longer doing its job. We have a problem and it is plain for all to see. Disillusionment is taking hold in almost all political and democratic institutions in our society. The proof is that wonderful consultations like this can be held, and the rooms are practically empty. That is a great pity. However, it is the price that we have to pay for all those years in a political system in which people no longer feel represented. The Canadian Union of Public Employees therefore supports this reform.

We support a mixed-member proportional system. It is a system that makes room for all opinions all across the country. As a country, we are diverse. We have great cities and we have more sparsely populated regions. We therefore want to be sure that opinions across the entire country are represented in proportion.

The system could be very simple. Sometimes, we make life complicated. We just need one ballot and two votes. We vote for one member of Parliament and we vote for one party. Consultations with Canadians would help to make this change less complicated. It is a change that can become very problematic for people who have had no interest in our country’s democratic system for years.

A little earlier, there was discussion about the lack of democratic education. I feel that the idea of presenting notions of democracy would help to simplify the debate and to enrich the country’s democratic system.

With that, we urge you to continue the consultation and to move towards mixed proportionality.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Bouchard.

I am having a little difficulty reading this writing. I think it says Ms. Cymry Gomery, correct? You will be speaking after Ms. Jolicoeur.

Go ahead, Ms. Jolicoeur.

[Veronika Jolicoeur, As an Individual]

Good afternoon and thank you.

I do not understand those who want to keep the current system, given the huge injustices it has caused. Indeed, if we change to a system in which each vote counts, minorities or other groups will no longer be discriminated against because it will be fair for everyone.

As for young people, I feel that we could count on a training effect. If their elders are happy and if they regain trust in their government, young people will follow, because, at the moment, disillusionment is the greatest obstacle to participation, in my opinion.

If we were to choose the mixed-member proportional system with a list, I would propose an open list in order to reflect the will of the people as much as possible. I also propose that we not use the complementary list chosen by parties, but, for example, to move downwards, taking the person with the second highest number of votes and so on. That would give less power to the political parties, which have always tended to do their utmost to wield power.

Finally, the importance of local representation has been mentioned. In that context, I strongly urge parties to drop the party line. Local representatives can no longer represent their voters because they are forced to follow the party line. Voters elected them because of their qualities and their character. When they see that the representatives can no longer represent them, it subverts the system completely.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I invite Mr. Steven Scott to move to microphone 2.

Ms. Gomery, the floor is yours now.

[Cymry Gomery, As an Individual]

We live in a pseudo-democracy in Canada right now, and we have all my life. I've been working with Fair Vote Canada and Le Mouvement Démocratie Nouvelle. I've worked for more than a decade with Fair Vote, and we had a big campaign leading up to the 2015 election. Our slogan for proportional representation was “make every vote count”.

To our delight, the Liberals, after an unprecedented turnout on the part of youth, indigenous people, and everybody who was desperate because of the crazy system we had that managed to elect somebody like Stephen Harper and the Stephen Harper Conservatives twice in a row.... We had sunk to an all-time low as a nation, with no legitimate democracy, to effectively a dictatorship, and the Liberals were elected after having borrowed our own slogan.

They were elected and they promised to make the 2015 election the last under first past the post and to make every vote count, which was our slogan for proportional representation in Fair Vote. I take that to mean they promised us a proportional representation system and that you people here, me, and everybody here today is here to figure out how we're going to do that.

I'm hearing a lot of people say that we don't need a proportional system. Mr. Rémy Trudel was proposing another majority. That's what he was proposing, and that's not what we want. We've been there. We've done that. We want a proportional system. We want one of the many proportional systems. For me, I don't really give a hoot which one, just make it a proportional system.

I might point out that MMP allows for local representation. Under MMP there is a local representative. You vote twice. You vote for your local representative and you vote for your party representative, so you're going to have local representation no matter what under STV or MMP, which are both—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

No, mixed member proportional is—

[Cymry Gomery]

It's mixed member proportional, yes, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thanks very much.

Mr. Scott, and I'll call Mr. Green to mike number one.

Go ahead, Mr. Scott.

[Steven Scott, As an Individual]

The current government loves to talk about values, and most people have expressed the value here as being that Parliament should be as inclusive and representative of the diversity of political views in Canada as possible. It's very clear. I think a lot of people take this as a core value, and it's clear that only the PR system does accomplish this.

We've also heard that many Canadians do like to have local community geographic representation. I would also add I don't think most Canadians have been asked, “Which would you prefer, local representation whose opinions you totally dislike, or distant representation where the values accord directly with yours?” People may be surprised at what such a poll would come out with.

The current system is good at local representation; however, PR can accomplish this. You can define by law how many people by gender, ethnic community, indigenous people, even age.... It's just a matter of details. One can accomplish this. There's no problem with that.

The best system is perhaps a mixed system. Just because of the size and geographics, you can even have the bottom 25% of seats, the largest area seats, basically stay the same, and perhaps in the political sense they can be double. Geographically they would probably be still immensely smaller than those distant ones. The mathematics of that can be worked out on how they share, perhaps, offices for ombudsmen-type divisions. Again, that's a matter of detail.

There are many problems with the current system. Other people have listed them. I don't really want to go into that, but it's just crazy when you can have a majority of the population vote one way and get a majority for the second party possible. This has happened in Canada.

The current system has the advantage that it votes in centrist parties. That is why I am against also doing a sort of listed or majority thing, because it's going to advantage the centrist thing, and also for a referendum as well. Most people are going to say the systems are broken. Well, they're centrist, and the majority will defeat minority views, and we'll just be left with the same system.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Johan Boyden, please come to mike number two.

Mr. Green, you have the floor.

[Daniel Green, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The reason why you are here today and why you are doing a cross-Canada tour this fall is that some people, such as Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party, together with other parties like the NDP and the Green Party, have felt that our electoral system is broken. As you do your work, I feel that it is important that you always keep in mind how broken it is.

I have looked at the election results from a year ago and I am fascinated by the false representation in various constituencies. In Quebec, for example, in the constituency of Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, a Bloc Québécois member was elected with the lowest majority in Canada, just 28.8% of the votes. With 28.4% of the votes, the Liberal candidate lost. The NDP candidate won 24% of the votes. That means that the votes of a lot of constituents went into the garbage.

If we want to get our democracy moving again, if we want to renew it and convince Canadian voters that change is possible, we have to change our voting system. We must put a proportional system in place, with compensatory members, for whom each vote counts. That is your mandate. As members of this committee, your mandate, your mantra, from the time you get up in the morning to the time you go to bed at night, should be to think about what you, as elected members of Parliament, can do to make it so. You have been given a solemn mandate to make each vote count and to prevent MPs in this democracy from ever again being elected with 28% of the votes.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Would Daniela Chivu please go to mike one.

Mr. Boyden, go ahead.

[Johan Boyden, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Like others, I believe that we should start the discussion by insisting that every vote should count and by calling for the scrapping of the unfair elections act of Stephen Harper.

My name is Johan Boyden. I'm an organizer with the Communist Party of Canada, a socialist party with a 95-year history of fighting for peace and social progress. Our party fought to be on the ballot in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, with the Padlock Law in the 1950s, and most recently with the landmark Figueroa case. Having fought in elections and won and being the only small party that has historically won municipally, provincially, and federally in Canada, we were the first party to call for mixed member proportional. We believe this is a system that is fundamentally more democratic and one which creates the conditions for coalitions, which are easier for the public to pressure. We believe that no threshold should be imposed.

I think it is important to comment on some other questions that your committee is discussing, including the issue of why more people aren't voting today. I would suggest to you that people have to vote for something. If you believe strongly in peace but all the parties you see on your ballot are in support of NATO and are against the liberation of Palestine, you have little choice or motivation. Our party says no to mandatory voting, to online voting, which would threaten the sanctity and the secrecy of the ballot. We support lowering the voting age to 16. We think it should be easier to vote with fewer ID requirements, and we think there should be the right of recall of MPs.

Last, I'd like to say that the whole issue of electoral reform raises the question of the Constitution. The reality in Canada is that we are a multinational country not just of anglophones, not just of English speakers, but also of the Québécois, also of the Acadians and the aboriginal peoples. Our party has proposed for a long time to abolish the Senate and to replace it with a house of nations, and we're not alone in these ideas. They came forward in the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. Other countries around the world, such as Bolivia, are implementing this too.

I want to conclude by saying that this would guarantee two fundamental democratic principles. One is the equality of all nations no matter what their size, and the other is the fundamental question of majority rule. This is why we support mixed member proportional representation.

Thank you for your time.