Electoral Reform Committee on Oct. 5th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thanks.

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

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Thanks.

Ms. Reid, I'm going to start with you. In your opening comments, you brushed over territorial weighting, and I don't know if that would apply to some of the large rural ridings in the provinces as well, but when I look at your brief, I see that you talk about considering a model put forth by Brian Eddy in his submission to the committee.

[Marilyn Reid]

I didn't hear that last part.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

In the written brief we have, it says that we could consider looking at a written brief by Brian Eddy. I tell you, it's all starting to run together and I don't actually remember what the brief was by Brian Eddy. I don't even recognize the name.

Could you start by telling us how you would deal with this?

[Marilyn Reid]

I went through all the briefs. I never thought I would be presenting to the committee, but did you notice that they're all men who...?

In his brief, he suggested that each riding have three members of Parliament, one who would actually go to Ottawa and the others who would be divided between the other two parties. Whenever the MP would go to Ottawa he would have to have the agreement of all three. In other words, he would have to have more than 50% support, so he could not be governed by the whip in Ottawa, or the Liberal Party, or whoever, because he would have to go back to his other two MPs.

I thought that would be a wonderful system for the north, because if there is one area that doesn't fit first past the post, it's the north. That was what I was thinking.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Okay, perfect. It wasn't ringing a bell with me and I needed that refresher.

I was going to direct this one to Mr. Dixon but with your experience as a high school teacher I'll get you to weigh in on it as well. We started talking about this whole idea of disengagement, and fortunately we have campus clubs and we have some of the political nerds who get involved in this and follow it, which is fantastic. But in my experience dealing with youth, there are a lot of youth from a wide range—I'd say from 18 into their early thirties—who are just not engaged in politics.

I would like your thoughts on how we create relevance in the absence of civics education? When I was out door-knocking and campaigning, whenever I had somebody in that 18 to 30 demographic who opened the door, I was greeted a lot of times by them saying, “I'm not going to vote”. I would try to explore and encourage people to do it, and people either didn't see themselves reflected in it or they didn't see the relevance.

I would try to find things from our platform. One I've used before is that I'd say to them, “Well, the previous government is going to change the retirement age to 67 from 65,” and they didn't care. That simply wasn't the connector.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I could have told you that.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Things like enhancement to financial aid for post-secondary education was great for those wanting to go to school, but there were a lot of youth who simply wanted to get on with getting into the workforce, making money, and pursuing other dreams.

I throw this out to both of you. How do we try to gain greater political engagement among our youth? What are the messages and the connections, based on your experiences?

[Brendon Dixon]

We need to be able to answer the simple question, “Why should you care about politics?” When I look at the TV, I see that, as the other member stated, we always use pale, stuffy white men, or something.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Male, stale, pale.

[Brendon Dixon]

Male, stale, pale; that's what we see. We see people who can't keep their promises, don't keep their word, lie to us, and do all kinds of things. It turns us off. All this pettiness turns us off.

We don't have any real reason to care about the idea of politics, what this is, and why this is actually real. In terms of history and our political culture, this is really important, but we have no idea why this should matter. Figure out how to answer those questions first, and then figure out things that youth care about and go for that.

I think the Prime Minister's youth council is a fantastic start to a bigger, longer, drawn-out conversation.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Ms. Reid, do you have any thoughts?

[Marilyn Reid]

I think it has to start with curriculum. I really think that you have to put politics back into the curriculum, and it won't work unless you start there.

I'm part of a group that has been lobbying the department of education in my province for the last two years to get politics back in the curriculum. I can tell you it's very difficult. They're co-operative, but it costs money and it takes a long time. It can be very discouraging.

Having said that, I will tell you also that within the school system at the moment, debating seems to be out. This is amazing because—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

From my own point of view, debating seems to be one of the doorways into an interest in politics. It's too bad that extracurricular activity is not more fervent.

[Marilyn Reid]

I'll give you another example. We came up with this idea because we were grappling with these problems.

What's the one time the school is a community? It's during morning announcements. We came up with a “question of the day” idea, which would be largely political, multiple-choice, and would enable the home rooms to compete with each other. What we found out is that in many schools they don't have announcements anymore because kids don't listen. They're just posted on the boards.

There's a real problem. It's not just the curriculum; they're doing their own thing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

There are many factors.

We'll have to go now to Mr. Nater.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to begin with Ms. Reid. I very much enjoyed your presentation. As has been mentioned before, we always seem to have slightly new things each time we come together. I was very fascinated by your proposal. I might come back to the proposal, but I want to start with what you wrote in your brief. I know you backtracked a little bit on the need for a referendum, but in your brief you proposed a two-step referendum, which I believe is similar to what was initially done in New Zealand when they changed their electoral system.

I was wondering if you might briefly walk us through your thinking behind this two-step referendum.

[Marilyn Reid]

I'll look at what's happening in P.E.I. at the moment, where they have five different models. It's a small island. The people are great and they vote. P.E.I. has the best voters in the country, but they have to choose between five things. I think that really favours the status quo, which is first past the post.

I think we need to decide if we want first past the post or proportional representation. I'm assuming alternative voting isn't going to be there, but I could be wrong. That's the first question, because if you then are grappling with proportional representation being too complicated..., so I had a part A and a part B. First was “Are you for first past the post or are you for proportional representation?” Then within proportional representation, I gave the voters two choices. If alternative voting was on there, that would be one of the choices, but there would be no more than two choices.

I'm really interested in what P.E.I. is doing because they're doing the opposite, and it will be really interesting to see how it works there.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

We are going to P.E.I. tomorrow so it will be fascinating to hear from the witnesses tomorrow.

You mentioned briefly the alternative vote. Could you walk us through why you don't think that's a—

[Marilyn Reid]

I think it's biased towards the party in the middle.

Australia doesn't have a party in the middle. It has two major parties, so it's not a problem. We have the Conservatives, the Liberals, and the NDP. With alternative voting, if the NDP candidate is discarded and the second choice votes are taken, what are the chances they're going to vote Conservative? I don't think so. When the Conservative votes are discarded, what are the chances they're going to vote NDP?

The CBC did a study of the 2015 election and what the results would have been had we had alternative voting. The Liberals would have had 40 more seats. They would have had 66% of the seats with 39% of the vote. I honestly don't think that you can choose an electoral system that favours one party. It doesn't in Australia, but it would here.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you're talking about context mattering.

[Marilyn Reid]

Yes.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

You can't pick and choose.

[Marilyn Reid]

Exactly.

It's the same thing with the proportional representation systems. What works wonderfully in other countries.... We have a unique geography. That's my point about that.

[John Nater, Conservative, Perth—Wellington, ON]

You mentioned that the population density is completely different and that would have an impact as well.