Evidence of meeting #36 for Electoral Reform in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was riding.
2:30 p.m.
Professor, As an Individual
Well, again, I wish I could be more definite in my answers to questions.
I think there's a risk of that. Maybe I'm exaggerating it. Maybe that wouldn't happen. I'm sorry, I don't have anything more to say on that.
2:30 p.m.
Liberal
October 4th, 2016 / 2:30 p.m.
Liberal
John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Professor Bickerton, I just want some clarification on your opening comments. I heard you mention “seat thresholds”, but I didn't hear any details. I wonder if you have any thoughts on the specifics. We've heard different evidence in this area. I don't know if what you're talking about is the same as vote thresholds.
2:35 p.m.
Professor, As an Individual
Yes, I'm sorry, that's what I meant. It's the same thing.
2:35 p.m.
Liberal
John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
We've heard anything from 2% or 3% to 15%. In fact 5% often comes up as a threshold. Where do you sit on that?
2:35 p.m.
Professor, As an Individual
Based on my understanding of the use of vote thresholds elsewhere, 3% to 5% would seem to be reasonable.
In terms of the concern about the proliferation of political parties, it turns out that it's very difficult for a political party to get 3% to 5% of a national vote. It's extremely difficult with first past the post, but it's very difficult nonetheless. Although 34 parties jumped in on the first opportunity in New Zealand, only a small number of those actually exceeded the threshold and gained representation in the New Zealand Parliament, one of them being the Maori Party. A certain number of seats had been guaranteed to the indigenous people, so they automatically had a new party there.
When we look at more reasonable examples, in northern Europe, for instance, Germany has only four parties represented. They have fewer parties represented in the Bundestag than we do in our Parliament, and they use MMP. The same can be said for the Scandinavian countries, with only a limited number of parties. There isn't a problem with the proliferation of parties if you have a reasonable vote threshold, which eliminates a lot of these tiny extremist parties that you find in Israel, for example, which would be an absolutely awful example for Canada to point to. There is absolutely no possibility that we would ever have Israel's model of one constituency for the whole country, no vote threshold, and of course just the social and cultural context that's so dramatically different there.
It just makes no sense to me whatsoever to point to those examples.
2:35 p.m.
Liberal
John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Thank you. I just wanted to clarify that piece.
I appreciated the testimony from both of you. I'll move to Professor Dewar now.
I had a look at your written brief, and you settle—I don't know if it's a soft landing—on the idea of maintaining a majoritarian system, either the current first past the post or some form of ranked ballot. If we stay with the existing system, one of the big flaws that comes up always is false majorities.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on how real a situation you see that being and how much of a flaw it is in our current process. Would something like ranked ballot be sufficient to overcome that?
2:35 p.m.
Professor, As an Individual
A ranked ballot would be sufficient to overcome that just because of the way it works.
2:35 p.m.
Liberal
John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
On the idea of false majorities, how concerned should we be?
2:35 p.m.
Professor, As an Individual
Well, I don't know; surely it's implicit in what I've been saying that false majorities don't concern me. How many majority governments have we had in the history of Canada? Jim could probably have it at his fingertips more than I could, but probably in 1958, and maybe in one other—
2:35 p.m.
A voice
In 1984.
2:35 p.m.
Professor, As an Individual
—1984—a majority of the electorate voted for the government that actually was formed. I think that's the result of a system that otherwise works quite well. It produces an accountable government, because you can blame the government that's done something and then throw the beggars out, in theory.
2:35 p.m.
Liberal
John Aldag Liberal Cloverdale—Langley City, BC
Okay. That's fine. I just wanted your thoughts on that.
I'll throw this out to both of you. In terms of some of the other reforms that could be made, we have heard about things like mandatory voting. Do you have any comments you'd like to offer on the question of mandatory voting in the Canadian context?
2:35 p.m.
Professor, As an Individual
I'm not in favour of it in the Canadian context. The only other example I'm familiar with is Australia. I'm sure that if we had mandatory voting, Canadians would, like Australians, get used to voting as not just a duty but the law. Of course, you can construct it so that fines for non-compliance are relatively minor, or you can escape it with a reasonable reason for not being able to vote. You can set it up so that it's not too onerous on people.
Honestly, I haven't given mandatory voting a lot of thought, because I've never considered it to be something that would be acceptable in Canadian polity. You'd have to prepare the way for it, I think.
2:40 p.m.
Liberal
2:40 p.m.
Professor, As an Individual
I share Jim's response to that question. It would only be a good thing if you could be sure that being forced to vote by the law leads to engagement. If that's true, then it might have benefits, but I don't think that's true. I think it might lead in the other direction, to being resentful of it. Really, it kind of undercuts the idea of voting, doesn't it? If you're engaged with the public affairs of your community and your country, then you vote. You voluntarily do it.
2:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you.
Mr. MacGregor, welcome to the committee. We're pleased to have you here today.
2:40 p.m.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Professor Dewar, I want to start with you. I want to go over one of the main criticisms of the current system we employ, and that's regionalism. I'm a first-time member of Parliament. Now that I've escaped the confines of my mountain kingdom in British Columbia and come here, I've really come to understand and appreciate the regional differences. I think everyone in every party can appreciate that MPs, even if they're in the same party, if they're from different regions can sometimes have different views, and appreciate how important it is to have those different regional voices.
I'm wondering if you could give your thoughts on the regional problem of our current system. What do we say to progressives in Alberta, or to the 38% of people who didn't vote Liberal here in Nova Scotia? Those voices seem to be lacking, and we have a system that kind of perpetuates that.
Have you ever given any thought to how that could be fixed, even though you are a fan of our current system?
2:40 p.m.
Professor, As an Individual
Well, I think when I suggest, at least in my understanding of the point, that parties that have performed a nationalizing function, it's that they have actually attempted to reach.... It hasn't always worked, clearly. Often it has been the case that parties have depended on overwhelming support from one region and less from another, or none from another. But the party, as a party, aims to set roots down across the country, in all regions of the country, and seeks to bring the representatives of those regions together.
The fact that all of the seats went Liberal in this region in the last election, which just boggled my mind on election night, is a sign of something. I think what the losing parties might think about is what that's a sign of rather than complaining that they received a minority of votes and were unrepresented.
2:40 p.m.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Moving on to the stability part of it, you mentioned that first past the post leads to stable governments. Just going over a few of the stats, Canada has had 23 elections since World War II, but if you look at some proportional representation countries, Germany has had 18, Ireland 20, and Sweden 21.
I remember the time between 2004 and 2011, and that was not a stable time in Canada. Actually, in my former job I worked for an MP. Many days I'd come to work and ask myself if that was the day we'd be going to the polls. There was a lot of playing chicken with each other.
I'm wondering if you could comment on that period. It seems to me that if we had parties where you could have that participation in cabinet, because we have such a powerful executive, then perhaps that might mitigate the instability that we did have during that period.