Electoral Reform Committee on Oct. 4th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Thomas Trappenberg, please.

[Thomas Trappenberg, As an Individual]

Hello. My name is Thomas Trappenberg. I am a professor at Dalhousie University. I'm also the interim leader of the Green Party of Nova Scotia.

I've run as a candidate over the last 10 years in all provincial and federal elections but one. One of the nice little comments I always get goes like this: “I really like your ideas. Elizabeth is wonderful. I would vote for you, if you would win.” I get this really often in one form or another.

As you've probably noticed, I grew up in Germany, where one of the most modern electoral systems was forced on us. Luckily it worked out quite well. We already had a democratic system, but we learned that actually a threshold is very useful. I would recommend, from the discussion this morning, that it shouldn't be too high. I think 5% turned out quite well. If you cut out below 10%, you're really cutting out important voices. That's one of the things I would recommend. I did choose this country, because quite frankly, it's just awesome. It is wonderful. But we're getting behind. We have an old electoral system. Its roots are probably 200 years old. Times have changed, and we have to respond to that. Our system at the moment cuts this out.

Finally, there's a lot of discussion that lists are not good. Actually, in Germany we could all get behind the people we liked to see in government. Even if they were living in Saanich—Gulf Islands, they could still represent me and my concerns, my voice, here in Nova Scotia. So the mixed member proportional turned out actually quite nicely.

It's good to have a list. We had good, strong people who were not re-elected in the last election here. That was really a shame. They had contributed a lot to our government and to our country. I think it would be good to have a list so that we could still have faces from our province.

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

Go ahead, Mr. David Blackwell.

[David Blackwell, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I'll be very brief, hopefully within the two minutes.

In response to earlier remarks made here within the hour, I'd like to say, very bluntly, that I oppose any referendum, at least until down the road, and then if desirable, clearly desirable. Because of the hesitation of many Canadians to change what they already know, and the need to better understand what a reformed voting method would mean in practice, I suggest adopting the recommendation of the 2004 Law Commission of Canada report that a parliamentary committee review the new electoral rules after three elections have been conducted under these new rules.

I have just one other thing, and it probably doesn't even need saying. I'm not speaking as a Fair Vote Canada representative, but having studied their website material and supporting documentation, I sincerely hope—I'm sure I don't need to say this—that the committee will give Fair Vote Canada's submission to this committee the serious attention it deserves.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Michael McFadden, please go ahead.

[Michael McFadden, As an Individual]

I have voted in every election since I was able to vote, sometimes from places like the middle of the Mediterranean with the Canadian Armed Forces. I have never elected my particular candidate to become a member of Parliament, an MLA, or whatnot. However, I have never wasted my vote. I have voted.

Whatever we do, select a made-in-Canada approach to a proportional voting system. Many good ideas have come out here. We might have to mix and match. I hope you will not consider all of them as separate entities but as something to together make a Canadian solution.

Don't be afraid of a detailed system. Canadians can handle any system, with proper education. We're not dumb...well, maybe I am. Consider mandatory voting with time off guaranteed, without penalty, so the person can vote. Start education early, at the elementary school level. You want to develop in that person, when they get up to the age of majority and can vote, a feeling of obligation and responsibility so that it is absolutely natural for them to vote and unnatural for them not to vote.

A proportional system, in my viewpoint, will encourage a more productive and truly Canadian government, i.e., co-operative. Consider the independent member. How do we fit that into a proportional system? As part of it, and I'm not sure if it's the mandate, can we control campaign spending and allow all voices to be heard, with air and other media time?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

Ms. Kim Vance.

[Kim Vance, As an Individual]

Thank you.

My name is Kim Vance. I'm not here to represent anyone. I'm here as a mom. I'm also here as someone who works in the field of international human rights and as a dyed-in-the-wool maritimer.

As a mom, I'm very worried about the low participation of youth in the political process, extremely worried. As the mom of a daughter who's of African-Nova Scotian descent, I'm also worried that time after time she sees nobody who looks like her from this region going to Parliament. She also sees nobody who looks like her in the current makeup of the cabinet. As much as I'm appreciative of the current Prime Minister for gender parity in the cabinet, it is a one-off act, not an institutional step that this government is taking. We need more institutional steps, like proportional representation.

On the international front, I'm embarrassed actually when I do human rights work and people talk about how great Canada is. That waned a little bit in the last 10 years. It's getting better again, but it stands in stark contrast to where we rank, for instance, on the role of women in the democratic processes in our country. We're very low, and that is unacceptable for a country that goes out and hallmarks itself as a beacon of human rights.

As a maritimer, I cannot imagine a more troubling situation than the one we're in right now. Three out of our four federal parties have no representative, no voice from our region. This cannot happen. Even though I may not support those other three parties, I still think it's important that our voices are in those caucuses. It's essential. I can't imagine a situation where the next time around, if we have a different government, that government has had an absence of perspective from this entire region of the country for four years, eight years, or whatever. That is unacceptable, and proportional representation is the answer to that.

I disagree with some of the other people who have spoken today. I do think you have to act quickly. I think you can get it right in a tight timeline. I have listened a lot to the committee deliberations, and I have read a lot of material. Other than getting rid of first past the post and moving to some system of proportional representation, I don't think there's a lot of strong debate about what the options are. I think you can act. I think you can act quickly and act on an option that works.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Very good.

We'll have Mr. David Barrett.

[David Barrett, As an Individual]

My name is Dave Barrett. I have been a Nova Scotian all my life. I'm 78 years old, so what you do doesn't really make any difference to me.

I have always been interested in politics. I took civics at school. They don't teach it anymore. Something is wrong there. I have seen countries, mainly in Africa, but others too that had democracies which disappeared.

We have a great country here, and it has been 150 years. I consider that we are one of the greatest countries in the world. If you start changing the electoral system, then that makes for dictatorships. When I have voted, sometimes my party went in and sometimes it didn't, but I have always felt that I was represented because the people who are elected by first past the post are basically the best people in that area. I've always felt that I could go to them and discuss things.

I also think that to have credibility you have to have a referendum. We're from Nova Scotia. Things get done behind closed doors in Ottawa and Toronto, Ontario. It happens every day. We just know it. You have to have a representative here.

Every time you vote it's important, and first past the post is something that has been accepted in Canada and has worked. You have so many different things on the table. We all have our problems.

I didn't vote for Elizabeth May, but I'm pleased she got elected, and because our media takes into consideration her vote, they gave her the thing. The minority people do have a representative and they get represented a lot.

I only have a few things to say, but referendum is one of them, and for goodness sake make sure the Maritimes is represented, not like that judge that they were going to kick out and not have anyone from Nova Scotia. That's just wrong.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much, Mr. Barrett.

We have Mr. Brian Gifford.

[Brian Gifford, As an Individual]

Good afternoon.

I thank you very much for this opportunity. I'm here because I feel so strongly about this. It's fundamental to fairness and to our democracy that we make a change to the system.

I've lived in Nova Scotia most of my life but I've also lived in other parts of Canada. I have relatives in Montreal, Toronto, rural Ontario, rural Manitoba, small-town B.C., and small-town Alberta. Our family is a pan-Canadian family.

I favour mixed member proportional as the best system. We need to maintain that strong local representation and people need to feel a connection to Parliament. We have huge geographic diversity and diverse political cultures across the country—I know that from my own family's experience—but we also need to accurately reflect the political views that have been expressed nationally. This is where, of course, we're failing so badly. Non-geographic seat distribution by party seats that reflect the popular vote is an essential element of the new system that is going to be devised.

I wish you all the best in coming up with a good system. I hope it's mixed member proportional or something very close to that...in your brilliance.

In response to Alistair's question about diverse candidates, I do think that mixed member proportional with the list being part of the system will enable a greater diversity among the people who are in Parliament as well.

Thank you very much for this opportunity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

We've had wonderful witnesses and a great audience with really good commentary.

The committee is going to take a break for about an hour. We'll be back at 6:15 and we'll see you then.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

The meeting is under way. We have a great panel tonight.

Representing the Springtide Collective, we have Mark Coffin, executive director. From Fair Vote Nova Scotia, we have Andy Blair, president. Appearing as an individual, we have Larry Pardy.

Each witness has five minutes to present. We'll get going right away with Mr. Coffin kicking off the evening.

Go ahead, sir.

[Mark Coffin, Executive Director, Springtide Collective]

Thank you for inviting me to speak with you this evening. I'm eager to talk about this topic. It's one that I'm fairly passionate about.

I'll tell you a little bit about myself before I start sharing some of my thoughts on electoral reform.

I'm a Cape Bretoner at heart. I've been living in Halifax for the last 10 years, which is longer than I've lived anywhere else. I'm a marine biologist by training and an educator by calling or vocation. I dropped out of teacher's college because it was easier to start an organization that teaches civics than to become a civics teacher in Nova Scotia.

Now I run the Springtide Collective. We're an organization that is dedicated to bridging the gap between Nova Scotians and our democratic institutions. The way we do that is through education, public engagement, and research. We're weighing in on this topic because we thought it would be of benefit to share some insights in terms of how alternate electoral systems could work in Canada with Canadians. We're extending our reach for this particular issue.

We've written a paper called “Better Choices: Voting System Alternatives for Canada”. Unfortunately, we didn't write it fast enough to have it translated for the committee, but there are copies here in English for those who would like them.

I won't get into detail on that, but one of the things we do at Springtide is we try to fill a role somewhere between academics, who generally have a fairly accurate grasp of how complex systems such as our electoral system work, and lay people. We know that academics can talk in really robust and accurate language. At the other end of the spectrum there are people who work in politics, who often have an agenda and can talk in very pointed, specific, and persuasive language. We're trying to do what academics often don't spend as much time doing, which is to put their work into plain language.

I thought that with my brief time of unrestricted comments before we get into questions I'd share just a few ideas that I have, or a few tidbits of information, as someone who has observed the electoral reform debate in Canada. As an educator, I feel compelled to weigh in on it at this point.

The first point I'll make is that, because I'm trained as a scientist, I look at information with a bit more scrutiny than I think perhaps people in the social sciences have done. I look at information on electoral systems, and I see that the best, most statistically sound and robust data and research on electoral systems and governmental systems generally concludes that the benefits lie with proportional representation. The least robust, the most suspect evidence or research that seems based mostly on conjecture or hypotheses that have been long proven wrong concludes in an AV or a first-past-the-post system as that having the majority of the benefits.

I say that first because I'm going to say some things that I feel have been misrepresented in the proportional representation argument.

One is that proportional systems give more power to parties. This seems to me about as accurate as saying that wet streets cause rain.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Do you mean they don't?

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Mark Coffin]

We can get into that in the Q and A.

The only system where parties have more power than proportional systems is the first-past-the-post system. We talk about these lists, and they could be closed lists. The only systems that allow open lists are proportional representation systems. First past the post has an absolutely closed list. Party members get together in gatherings and nominate a candidate, and then, as voters, we are given a closed list. There just happens to be only one person on that list for each party. In proportional systems we have the option to say, “I like this party and this is my favourite candidate in it.”

I thought we had 10 minutes, and I know I'm coming up on five.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You can keep going.

[Mark Coffin]

Sounds good.

The other element of “proportional systems give the party more control” that I find challenging to accept is that proportional systems bring more parties into the mix. On average, any existing party will have less power than they do right now. Some will get more, but on average most will be less powerful. Other parties will weigh in to hold them to account.

The other myth is not so much a myth as a challenging piece of resistance that comes up when people say proportional systems will create a more collaborative politics, or will create politics with more representation of women. Somebody on the devil's advocate side will say, well, if we wanted those things, we could just make them as MPs; or if we wanted those things, as Canadians we could just make that happen and elect more women.

I'll use a story as an analogy to demonstrate why I think this logic is flawed. We've all been in the situation where we've been in a new shower, perhaps in a hotel, where we're waiting for the hot water to come on. We wait and wait and wait. It doesn't come on, so we jam the tap over to the hot side. Then when it starts to warm up, we get in. A few seconds later, we start to burn. We jam it back to the cold side. A few seconds later, it starts to get cold again.

I think the MPs who we all probably agree, at least in public, are part of the problem in creating a toxic environment in the legislature are the ones who are quick to push it to the hot side. They lay on the heat. I couldn't tell whose voice it was earlier, but I was listening to your conversation this afternoon about a group of rookie MPs who decided to sit on their hands. They are the people who are pushing it back to the cold side. Neither approach is actually effective in getting us the politics that is the right temperature for Canada.

The electoral system, I would say, is the plumbing in this analogy, and what we need is more responsive plumbing. We need to be able to put the right amount of input by pushing the tap to where we want it to be and seeing an electoral system that gives us that instead of having this back and forth, now 10 years of Conservatives, now 10 years of Liberals, erasing each other's policies.

If we want to have a more collaborative and intelligent politics in our country, I think one of the ways to do that is to look into unintuitive solutions. Our first response that says, you know, we need a code of ethics for MPs to not do any of these things, and to only do these things, will probably, I think, ignore some of the larger incentives that exist.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

That was a very interesting analogy.

Mr. Blair, please.

[Andy Blair, President, Fair Vote Nova Scotia]

I'll keep it short, and keep the water-based analogies to a minimum too.

Thanks very much for the invitation to present here today. I'm presenting on behalf of Fair Vote Nova Scotia, which is a grassroots multi-partisan association of Nova Scotians concerned about our democracy. While we don't advocate for any specific system or model, we do promote reform based on certain principles.

As has been pointed out many times before, there's no perfect system, only systems that emphasize certain values over others. I think the minister has recognized this and come up with a list of principles against which to measure reforms.

The first amongst these is democratic legitimacy and effectiveness. Any system should produce results that are an accurate and fair reflection of the democratic wishes of Canadians. It should also produce governments that are effective, and encourage government policies that are effective and durable, instead of policies that are reversed after the next election because they don't enjoy the support of a true majority of electors.

The second principle is voter engagement. Any system we use should let every Canadian feel that their vote really counts, and counts toward the election of a representative of their preference. It should incentivize collaboration among political actors and not hinder under-represented groups from participation.

We feel that these principles can best be respected by adding an element of proportionality to our current voting system. This can be done while maintaining strong local representation and direct accountability of MPs to voters. A number of highly proportional systems that accomplish this have been proposed here. You've heard about many of them. Many more will come in the briefs. It's up to you to craft a system that would be well-suited to Canada and recommend it to Parliament. I hope this will be done with an eye to improving some of the more dysfunctional political dynamics set up under our current system.

When I see the partisan incentives and confrontational politics often encouraged by our winner-takes-all system, I see something that holds us back as a nation rather than helping us realize our full potential. It's not who we are. I don't think it suits our character. As often as not, we are conciliators and consensus builders. As an example, on the international stage, Canadians are often referred to as good diplomats and peace brokers. It's who we are, and who we should strive to be.

Moving toward a more proportional, consensus-style system where legislators are encouraged to work across party lines to come to agreements supported by a true majority of voters, where politics is no longer a zero-sum game, I think will have far-reaching, positive impacts on policy-making in Canada.

The committee has a historic opportunity. I'm convinced that future generations looking back will see the decision to move to a more proportional system here—if that is the decision—as no less an advancement for Canada than the adoption of medicare, pensions, or even women getting the vote. It's up to this committee and Parliament to seize this unique opportunity to effect real change.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

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

[Larry Pardy, As an Individual]

Thank you for the opportunity to present to your committee today.

Let me be clear on my perspective on electoral reform. I am unconvinced that adopting proportional representation in Canada would improve our democratic outcomes.

As many witnesses have made clear, there's no single best system. Consequently, the choice of one system over another involves trade-offs. This is particularly true when considering moving from our current first-past-the-post system to a proportional representation system. Adopting PR would certainly improve proportionality, and depending on the specific model could have potential benefits for diversity, but at what cost?

First, I would suggest to you that a majoritarian system, which allows voters to directly impact who forms government, and as importantly, determines when a government should be removed from power, is more democratic than proportional systems where the question of government formation could be left to negotiations among party leaders.

Second, our national unity is better protected under first past the post, which compels parties to take national approaches and soften rhetorical edges in order to maximize appeal to the broad political centre, rather than opting for a PR system, which risks the rise of regional and issue-specific parties that target Canada's historical fault lines: language and regional alienation.

Third, local representation is stronger under a first-past-the-post system, which provides the smallest possible riding size for each MP to represent and thereby maximizes opportunities for contact between voter and representative, than a PR system, which increases riding size.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Mr. Pardy, could I ask you to go a little slower for the benefit of the interpreters?