Evidence of meeting #37 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 seats.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
You said at the beginning that before we embark on solutions, we need to know what our goals are. Do you think the mandate that this committee was given was a pretty admirable goal for us to pursue?
Associate Professor, Memorial University, As an Individual
As a voter, I would say that I would probably be confused about what the mandate is. As a political scientist who follows things a bit more closely, I would say that I think it's a big job you've been given. I don't envy you, in a sense, having to figure out what to do, and I think that's challenging for sure, especially if there isn't a lot of clear guidance up front about the specific problems.
I know there was talk about this being the last election that will take place under the existing rules, and I get that there's a pressure there. I'm not sure that's a mandate, but I don't think that's saying it shouldn't happen.
Is that an answer?
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Professor Dunn, I just wanted to move on to you quickly. You mentioned the North Atlantic triangle. Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. share similar systems of governance in how we elect our people. We all have strong executives, and that leads, as you said, to a strong foreign policy.
I just wanted to draw your attention and ask for your comments on the government in the U.K. from 2010 to 2015, when that executive branch had members from two parties within its cabinet. It happened under an SMP system, but that is the norm for PR countries. Do you think that diminished the U.K.'s foreign policy during that time, or did it get along in a business-as-usual manner?
As an Individual
It's a very good question. The fact that the lib-dems were weakened during that process and sidelined is testimony to the fact that the government in place began to act as if it were a one-party government. In effect, you can have a coalition government, but you can have a system in which the dominant party really dominates.
The fact that every government that experiences a coalition in the Westminster system tries to extricate itself as quickly as it can from this "unnatural situation", as viewed in their eyes, is testimony to the fact that they're unnatural from that perspective. I don't think that specific juncture in history demonstrates too much.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses and to everyone here today. It is great to be back to the granite planet.
I'd like to start with you, Professor Bittner.
Thank you so much for your testimony and for providing us with an overview of the problem that we're trying to solve and disabusing us of the notion that there is an easy solution to this problem, that being to enhance diverse engagement in politics, both through the way citizens and voters engage in the system and in the way it effectively leads to greater diversity in the House of Commons and in Parliament.
I will leave reminded of what you said, that greater levels of diversity in PR are still dependent on a greater commitment from the parties to enact mechanisms to ensure that it is institutionalized.
There are two sorts of diversity that I think we're talking about, and my colleague Mr. Cullen touched on it maybe from a different angle. It's diversity as represented in the way people look, meaning men, women, people from ethnic or racialized minorities, indigenous people, people with disabilities, and/or it's diversity in the partisan or ideological leanings that people share.
Do you have any view on both the intersections and diversions of those two sorts of diversities that you can help tease out for us so that we can be a little clearer on how we're trying to address one and possibly the other?
Associate Professor, Memorial University, As an Individual
I think there are two things. In nerdy political science terminology, we talk about symbolic representation and substantive representation, so there's a separating out about how we look from our ideas. For example, we often point to Thatcher. She was a woman, but obviously not great for women.
I would say that both are important. You want to have symbolic diversity, or the diversity in the way that we look, so that we can look at Parliament and think, “I should be there.” However, we also want to believe that people of all parties and all ideologies and all ideas can bring their ideas forward and have a chance as well. I think sometimes those two things match up and sometimes they don't, but they're both important.
I would say symbolic representation is not enough to ensure substantive representation, but also substantive representation is not such a big priority that we can sacrifice symbolic representation, if that makes sense.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
There's an intricate web linking the two. Sometimes I feel we've all been culpable of mixing the two together, and while they're interrelated and interconnected, they're not necessarily the same thing.
What's the link between enhanced diversity and voter participation or voter turnout in an era when, across western democracies, we're seeing a trend of declining voter participation regardless of the electoral system employed?
Associate Professor, Memorial University, As an Individual
Yes, that's a problem.
I would say too that changing the system or increasing diversity doesn't ensure increased participation and engagement either. There are a lot of things that come together. The question is complex, which is again why I'm not super-envious of your job.
The important thing for me as an instructor, as a political scientist, as a voter, and as a citizen is that I don't think it's good enough to say that because there are progressive white men who believe in women's rights, we don't need women in the legislature. The substantive, in some ways, for me, is less important than the symbolic, although there are plenty of feminists who disagree with me on this.
l think that no matter what, how we look matters. We cannot afford to have a legislature that visibly excludes large parts of the population, and that is a huge priority.
If it's the case that there are women in Parliament who disagree with my particular views, I'm okay with that, because that's the nature of Parliament. There are a lot of people in that legislature who don't agree with my views, but I want to see the potential for people like me to get there—I'm saying “like me” broadly. I'm concerned about women, but I'm concerned about women who are not white in particular, because I think that's an especially large hurdle to cross. They may or may not have ideas that reflect how they look, and that's okay.
Liberal
Matt DeCourcey Liberal Fredericton, NB
The key to overcoming that current problem of still lacking in some areas of diversity, in your view, is more by finding ways to either incentivize or discipline parties as to the way in which they help enhance diversity.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you.
That concludes our round of questions.
Again, this has been an interesting panel with some well-defined views. You've added to the mill, if you will, of our thinking process on all these issues, some of them very complex, surrounding electoral reform.
We'll break for about five minutes while we prepare for our next panel.
Thank you again for being here. Thank you for that original system of voting and for giving us the results. It was almost like election night at that point.
Thank you as well, Professor Dunn and Professor Bittner. I wish you continued success in your work.
We'll adjourn for about five minutes.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
We'll get going. Here we go with our second panel of the day.
We have two witnesses before us. We have Marilyn Reid and Mr. Brendon Dixon, who will each present for five minutes.
I don't know if you were here for the first panel and saw how it worked. You were? Perfect.
Without further ado, we'll start with Ms. Reid, please, for five minutes.
Marilyn Reid As an Individual
Thank you very much for inviting me here.
I want to start by saying I wholeheartedly support proportional representation. However, I'm here because I believe that the more conventional PR models won't work for Newfoundland and Labrador. We don't have enough seats to achieve real proportionality with traditional MMP or multiple-seat ridings, and I honestly think the Maritimes might have a similar problem. That realization led me to look at weighted voting.
I know other people have done that with the committee, but as you know, in weighted voting, proportionality is achieved simply by applying a weight to each party's vote in Parliament. That can be a weight of less than one if a party has more than their fair share of seats, or it can be more than one if the party didn't get their fair share.
However, I discovered something when I began explaining weighted voting to people. People often said, “I don't like the idea of my MP having a weighting of less than one.” I think what they were really saying was, “Why should my MP have a weighting of less than one because of some disproportionality that happened thousands of kilometres away?”
That concern led me to consider a weighted voting system that would be applied at the provincial level, or even subprovincially. The end result would be the same, but by weighting the votes regionally, those thousands of kilometres actually disappear in people's minds—or at least I think they do. Because the reason for the weighting is seen within a local context, the weighting appears more like a fair and meaningful way to make every person's vote count.
I was here for the other presentations, and I thought that weighted voting could almost be applied to a lot of the PR systems at the top, just to tweak them. However, I have my own system, so I'm going to go through it. It requires the addition of a minimum of two top-up seats in each province. It doesn't have to be the same number of seats in each province.
Who would get the top-up seats? Well, if we base it on the 2015 election, the NDP and the Conservatives would each have had to receive a top-up seat in all four Atlantic provinces, because the Liberals hold all 32 seats here. In B.C., if it's two seats, both would have gone to the Green Party, because they were the most proportionally disadvantaged in the 2015 election.
Once the seats are assigned, the parties would appoint the MPs to those seats. That would be based, of course, on who performed the best among candidates who lost in ridings. Then the weighting would be applied to all the seats, both the top-ups and the ridings.
If I could use Newfoundland and Labrador as an example, we now have nine seats instead of seven. In the 2015 Parliament, the Liberals would have had seven of those nine seats, with 64% of the voters. However, 64% of voter support really only entitles them to 5.8 of the nine seats. Every time the seven Liberals vote in parliament, they would be given a weighting that would reduce their collective voting power, or their seat power, to 5.8.
Now, the NDP party got 21% of the vote, so they would actually have a weight of 1.9, and the Conservative weighting would have been 0.9. If you add up 5.8, 1.9 and 0.9, you get a weighting of 8.6. You're aiming for nine, to match the province's nine seats, so the remaining 0.4 can be explained by the independent vote and the Green Party. The Green weight would be transferred out of the province.
Even though the party weightings would be different for each province—and they certainly would be—the end result would be a proportionally represented Parliament. Of course, every time there's an election, the weightings would change. You'd have to make different accommodation for northern territories and small parties, and I have some ideas on that, but for another day.
So what are the advantages? First, weighted voting gives the highest proportional representation of any system.
Second, the top-up seats fix, in a very simple way, extreme regional distortions, such as we've had in Atlantic Canada with the Liberals taking everything.
Third, the filling of the top-up seats introduces the concept of sharing the pie rather than having the winner take all in the top-up seats, because they go to riding candidates. If the concept is popular with voters, I could envision that you would introduce more top-up seats through riding distribution as time goes on, but this is a start.
Fourth, compare the other systems in terms of minimal or no change to the existing ridings. I really want to emphasize that last point, because proportional representation lists were developed in countries with high population densities in small areas, and in its essence, proportional representation makes no allowance for geography. Geography really counts in Canada. If we embrace one of the more common PR systems, there's a real danger that we will alienate or disappoint rural Canadians, who especially don't want to be lumped together with townies or city people in a multi-seat riding, and in some areas of the country we won't even achieve meaningful proportionality.
I believe Canadians will want three things in a proportional representation system: a voting system that is genuinely proportional, a voting system that respects the identify of rural Canada, and a voting system that is simple to understand. I understand how difficult it is to find all three, because there is always something wrong with every system that gets proposed; for that reason, I know you have a very difficult path in front of you and I wish you patience and insight in the challenge you face as a committee.
Thank you for coming to St. John's.
Brendon Dixon President, Newfoundland and Labrador Youth Parliament
I'd like to start by thanking everyone for inviting me and my organization, Newfoundland and Labrador Youth Parliament, to come in and speak with you all and testify. We really appreciate it. It speaks volumes about what the government and committees think of youth engagement and youth voices. We appreciate that.
I'm a student here at Memorial University. I'm a political science and history double major. I'm also the president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Youth Parliament. This organization strives to engage youth from across this province and in Labrador specifically. We have a big emphasis on including Labradorians in our program.
We take over the House of Assembly for a few days, and for just a short time we become MHAs, known as MPPs in Ontario. We become the provincial representatives. The government puts in resolutions that we debate in depth, and we propose amendments. The opposition, a very short bench, will critique and will often try to critique constructively, although sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's not.
Everyone involved, by the way, is an independent member. We do not assign political parties to anyone, but we do assign the seats to make it feel as though you're an MHA. We're a non-partisan organization, so it's very good for us to remain unbiased.
What's really neat about this program and very pertinent to this discussion is that in one year, we actually had a resolution on MMP. We debated it and we ended up having it. It was very interesting. I just goes to show how complicated the question is that you folks have to deal with. One of the debates we got into was on whether we should have the PR system based on a closed list or an open list. Is it a regional? It is a national list? How do you do it? Even here, as youth, we understand completely the difficult task you folks are assigned.
First and foremost, our program strives to engage youth and we also do strive for gender parity within our program. Last year we actually had a 50-50 split of males and females, which was fantastic.
I'm going to leave it there. I found out about this last night and thought I'd give you an introduction. I look forward to all your questions.
Thank you very much.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you very much. That's very good. We'll have a good discussion, I'm sure.
We'll start with Ms. Sahota for five minutes.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
Thank you.
Ms. Reid, my first question is for you. To both the panellists, thank you for being here and for having us here in St. John's.
A few people have presented the weighted voting idea to this committee. I find it very intriguing because we don't have to make a lot of changes to the system. However, yours has a slightly different twist on it in assigning votes across the country, or leftover votes, I guess. Can you explain that? I didn't quite catch it when you were saying that some votes for the Greens from Atlantic Canada or from Newfoundland would end up being transferred back to B.C. How would that work?
As an Individual
I think that would make sense if we think that the Green Party is a national party.
What happened was that in Newfoundland, there were people who voted for Greens, but of course they didn't get any party representation here. Why shouldn't their votes go toward the national representation? It would mean that there ought to be some sort of ability at the national level to take the Green Party vote in Atlantic Canada, or whatever the provinces are, and give it to the national Green Party. It would mean, of course, that the Green Party would be responsible for Newfoundland and Labrador as well, because they have part of our vote.
I don't know whether that answers the question, but I would really like to see that kind of ability. It's proportional representation. They got 0.4% of the vote, or whatever it is, and it could go towards a Green Party candidate who already exists, or the government could look at making accommodations for more Green Party people at the national level.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
I don't know. For some reason, it just seems a bit more complicated than the previous system we were presented with, whereby the local members would still be elected under the current system of first past the post, and then you would take a national percentage of what the parties had received across the board and assign voting power according to that proportionality. Each member of the Liberal Party would have an equally weighted vote of under one, and the NDP would have over one, but it would have the same number of members.
Have you heard of that proposal? Why did you choose to make it slightly different from that?
As an Individual
I think that with this regional weighted voting, you are going to have different weights.
I'll give you an example. In the 2015 election, the NDP in Newfoundland and Labrador didn't get enough votes, but the NDP in B.C. got too many votes, you could say. That is going to balance itself out exactly in the national Parliament, because we are insisting that the weighting adds up exactly to the number of seats in each province or region. If the Liberal Party has a 0.83 weighting, let's say, it will still have that 0.83 weighting when you take the different parts.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
But individual MPs in the same party could have slightly different weighting.