Electoral Reform Committee on Oct. 5th, 2016

[Kathleen Burt]

I would like to just say that I definitely agree with what Marilyn Reid and Mr. Dixon were saying about the lack of curricula in the schools to support a democratic system.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you for that cogent presentation.

Next, we have Mr. Greg Malone. It's very nice to see you.

[Greg Malone, As an Individual]

Thank you all for coming to St. John's, and thank you all for the work you're doing. We have apparently wanted this work done for a long time. For about 100 years we've been talking about electoral reform in Canada, I think. But governments, of course, don't like opposition, any more than corporations like competition. Governments like power; corporations like profit. They both try to minimize opposition and competition but we want to maximize both.

Democracy is subverted at every level. The first-past-the-post system is incomplete. In a way I think that's what's discouraged a lot of voters in the past two decades. Democracy is subverted through rotten boroughs and gerrymandering. Hitler was elected, so you can do anything with democracy.

In Canada, the first-past-the-post system, that open system, favoured the Chrétien government for a decade, while the right was divided with two parties, the Reform and the Conservatives. Then it favoured Mr. Harper when the left was divided between the NDP and the Liberals for that time. Even though during those decades, maybe 60% to 70% of the population was leaning to the left, they had a government that did not represent them. So you had people who did vote, young people who voted, maybe once, maybe twice, and they did not see any results from their votes or any representation from their votes.

I think that seeing that big gap was quite discouraging for that generation. The fact that they pulled out doesn't mean they're not political. They're differently political, and they voted for rejection and non-involvement. That is a vote of disengagement and that has its weight, too, on the political system. I don't think we want to see the consequences of that any further than we already have.

Yes, I'm totally for voter reform. We have to be careful, also. The Newfoundland referendum of 1949 was a fraud, let's say. I don't consider myself legally a Canadian, and there's a great point to be made for that. It was probably the most fraudulent referendum in our history. It resulted in our being consumed by Canada. Our fate in Canada was much the same as our fate with Great Britain. As a large jurisdiction with a small amount of population, we vote for people, not for jurisdictions.

The collapse of the cod fishery was a consequence of our small vote because the cod fishery, of course, was managed by the large jurisdiction, by Canada, but it's a resource that is vital to a small jurisdiction, which is actually a large jurisdiction. We have 500,000 people trying to run a place with 6,000 to 10,000 miles of coastline, if you consider Labrador as well. You have 10,000 miles of coastline to administer. That's a particular job of those 500,000 people.

When it comes to protecting the fishery they can't do it, of course. They're out-voted by Quebec or out-voted by Ontario who wants to give away fishing quotas for car plants, or wheat sales, or whatever it is. That is in fact what happened in the 1970s. We didn't have the votes to stop Quebec or Ontario or Alberta voting away those quantities of fish, and in the end a resource that belonged to this province, of course, was decimated because we didn't have the votes to hang onto it.

You get the situation where a large jurisdiction with a small amount of people is run by an absentee landlord, landlocked Ottawa. Of course, DFO is running it, but that's another whole story.

There has to be some sensitivity shown to small populations running a large territory. They're not just running a city. They have a lot of concerns that other jurisdictions may not have when they have the votes and the power over it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Essentially in terms of a voting system, are you coming down on the side of proportional representation?

[Greg Malone]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Okay, thanks.

Do you have maybe one more concluding comment?

[Greg Malone]

I'd like to.

I can understand about 50% of what's being said, and I know people around me are in the same position. My hearing is not what it used to be, but it's not that bad. It's the 21st century. It's not your fault either. You rent a room for a conversation, and you're competing with ceiling fans and furnace fans and air conditioners. It's quite quiet, by the way, out in the ante room. There are no fans at all.

But in here we're labouring to hear everything while the fans are continuing to take our attention. Make sure in the next room you rent you have something on your rider about the noise level in the room so that you can hear a normal conversation. They'll turn off the air coolers and the fans and the air conditioners so that you can hear people.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you

Mr. Malone, you can also use these earpieces. There's no need to use them only for translation. For example, in the House of Commons, a lot of people wear their earpieces and not for the interpretation. They just can't hear anything. It's like a shopping mall in there. The acoustics are terrible.

[Greg Malone]

Do you have them for the audience?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Yes, they're here. You can get them at the back.

[Greg Malone]

Okay, like the 3-D glasses.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Yes, that's right.

Ms. Power, go ahead please.

[Mary Power, As an Individual]

I have to say that I'm a single parent. My kids are in the 24 to 30 range now. I dragged them to every vote I could drag them to. I took them on marches. I discussed some of the politics with them. They don't vote. There's nothing in the schools. That's pretty simple.

I'm also poor and mentally ill. I represent the physically handicapped, as well. Through the years my vote has not counted. That's why people are disengaged. The corporations have more power now than they used to. The elite have more power. I've been watching. I pay attention and a lot of people don't. When you're struggling to survive, you don't have a lot extra to put into other things.

I'm for proportional representation. First past the post never gets.... We never get heard, ever.

That's about all I have to say, except thank you very much for doing this. I have been to numerous town halls, so I'm really hoping this has an effect. You're doing your job, and I want to thank you. I think if your hearts are put into it, then it will come out.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much. We appreciate those comments.

Go ahead, Mr. Reichel.

[Kelsey Reichel, As an Individual]

Hello to all the members of the committee. Thank you for all the work you're doing and welcome to Newfoundland, where it is like this every day, by the way.

My name is Kelsey Reichel, and I'm from Carbonear. I'm going to say a few words about why I think Canada needs to adopt a proportional representation system. Before I do, though, I'd like to speak to the idea of holding a referendum on electoral reform. I disagree with this for a couple of reasons.

First, I've heard that it would cost around $300 million, which would be an unnecessary expense for something that should not be put to a referendum anyway. It's my understanding that referendums are meant only for matters related to the Constitution, which to the best of my knowledge does not apply to electoral reform.

Second and the more important reason that I am opposed to a referendum is that I believe it is merely a way to protect the status quo. Let's take a moment to appreciate a reality of the situation. Electoral reform isn't exactly top of mind for most Canadians. I think it is likely that if some kind of referendum, whatever that may look like, were put to Canadians, then most people would either have no interest in participating or not be properly enough educated on the complexities of electoral reform to make a well-informed choice. It is best left up to our elected officials to assess what works best for Canada and put that into action.

As I said, this is not something most people talk about around the dinner table. Perhaps most don't even realize there's anything wrong with the way we elect our representatives. It is a complex, confusing, and intimidating subject for anyone who gets involved with it. I'm certainly no expert on anything to do with this, but it's clear to me that there is a problem, if nothing else but for the fact that it was such an important part of the Liberal platform in the last election in running on the promise that 2015 would be the last election held under first past the post. Hats off to the government for getting the ball rolling, as they have.

Approximately 85% of OECD countries currently use some form of proportional representation, with Canada joining the United States and the United Kingdom as the only three still using first past the post. What PR says, in a nutshell, is that if a party gets 20% of the vote, then it gets 20% of the seats in Parliament. With a PR system, there is a fair balance of representation where parties that get a significant share of the vote will have the appropriate number of seats to properly represent the people who voted for them.

It's easy to get bogged down in the details of the different types of proportional representation, and I'm not going to try to do so here today, but they all have much in common. Under a PR system, ridings would be redone in a way that would have several different MPs per riding, usually from various parties. This allows constituents to have an option of who they bring their issues to and that increases the likelihood that they will have a representative whose values line up with their own.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

That's good, thank you.

I should just add that it's really only in one form of proportional representation that you have multi-member ridings. However, we take your point, for sure.

Thank you.

Mr. O'Neill, you have the floor.

[Liam O'Neill, As an Individual]

Hello, everyone. Thank you for coming.

I'm going to try to be very quick because I have a lot of things I'd like to say. The first is that if there's a referendum, the referendum should say, “Should each vote be counted equally?” Currently, they do not.

I would ask you a question, and I'd ask you to answer it in your own minds, because obviously I can't have a conversation with each of you. Would you say that we live in a representative democracy? I do not think that we do. In a representative democracy, each person's vote would be represented equally. The issue of proportional representation is an issue of values. Do you value equality?

In the MMP system, that solves the main problem, but it results in another problem. In a national level, or whatever regional level you adopt, the outcome is proportional, but it does not represent my opinion of who best represents me. It represents which party I would support. In my opinion, the party system is the leading cause of voter disengagement. Proportional representation is not an optional part of representative democracy; it's the difference between representative and misrepresentative democracy.

On the issue of which electoral system to choose, if I cannot express my support for my most favoured candidate without it being wasted, then I cannot accurately be represented in Parliament. I can be misrepresented by someone's ideas, which I believe are maybe less awful than someone else's, but I'm not going to be accurately represented.

STV is the only system which is candidate-centred. That means it's the only system where the candidate is the focus, not the party. If you believe in regional representation, you're not really going to adopt a completely proportional system. If you believe in regional representation, the only system that preserves that and is proportional is going to be STV, single transferable vote. My vote will be such that I can express who I most prefer, but if there are not enough votes to elect that person, my next choice can be elected. Therefore, it can still be proportional. I can still represent who I actually believe is my best representative, but my vote still counts.

You have not talked enough about STV, in my opinion. Obviously, the main focus is proportional representation. That is obviously the biggest problem here. If you're going to be talking about what system you're going to use in proportional representation, the focus has to be on mixed-member systems versus STV, what the problem is with a party-focused system versus a candidate—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

Mr. LeDez, you have the mike now.

[Kenneth LeDez, As an Individual]

Thanks very much for fitting me in. I have five small kids and it would be hard for me to get back later on.

I'm a specialist physician and a supporter of proportional representation since at least 1972 or 1973. I've been involved in the Liberal Party since that time in this country and other countries, including the U.K.

An election where the results do not represent the will of the voters lacks legitimacy. It must be a concern to this committee and to all Canadians when you can have a large majority government elected by less than 40% of the people. It's just hard to get away from it. The first-past-the-post system has another hugely divisive effect, which is dividing different parts of Canada. It's possible, for instance, to have no Liberals elected in the province of Alberta despite large numbers of people voting, and no Conservatives elected in Atlantic Canada. This should be greatly troubling to all of us because it creates exaggerated divisions within our country. We have to hope that politics is about working together, with one another, inside and outside of Parliament, to get things done for the good of the country. It's a huge, distorting effect of the first-past-the-post system.

I personally favour a single transferable vote, but there are some problems with it. We want MPs to be elected to represent people, not parties, and we have to find a way to accommodate, in a good proportional system, that connection between members of Parliament and the individuals who elect them. It's nice if they have a choice to go to an MP who they support, but it's also very important that they have that connection. If we have very large electoral districts—say, one electoral district is the whole of Newfoundland and Labrador—one of the distorting effects of that is that if I'm trying to campaign and I'm in St. John's and I'm not hugely wealthy, it's going to be very difficult for me to campaign or have a realistic shot at getting votes up in northern Labrador and Corner Brook. We have to look at the actual systems. Is there some reason we have to have the exact same system in every part of the country? Can we not have some variation, some diversity between different provinces, and even within provinces, to take account of the real geographic issues that affect us?

There are advantages to a PR system. It helps also to make sure you have adequate representation of women, by gender, and by disability. We don't necessarily have to just adopt an off-the-shelf approach. We can try to be a bit creative.

I think referendums can be very divisive, as we saw in Brexit and in Quebec. I think a constituent assembly and involving Canadians and having a real dialogue is the way forward to finding a custom approach and maybe customizing by province and parts of provinces.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

Finally, Mr. Chalker, please.

[Michael Chalker, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I really have a couple of questions, and I do disagree with the previous speaker because I very much agree with a national referendum or a plebiscite.

In the last federal election, the Liberal Party received 39.47% of the popular vote. Now I would ask this committee, and the Liberal Party, whether they think that is a sufficient mandate to go forward and make such a historic decision for Canada, which has lasting, long-term, legal, economic, and political consequences, without holding a national plebiscite or referendum. That's my question.

On the other aspect, I'm talking more in generics. I would think the Liberal Party, and this committee, believes that Canadians are wise stewards of this country and can make quality decisions in the best interests of this nation. Then it stands to reason that, if the majority of Canadians can do that, we should be holding a national referendum or plebiscite on this electoral reform.

It's not just about first past the post versus something else. When I did the survey last night, it was almost like I was picking menu items, picking a value meal at McDonald's. We need to have something tangible that we can look at and compare, a living, breathing example of success in another nation or nations. In reading from your PDF document posted on the website, it looks as though you have a couple of countries in mind.

Why don't you further elaborate on those countries, tell Canadians what you're proposing, and give us those countries versus first past the post? To me, that's what you have to do out of respect for Canadians; otherwise, I do believe it smacks of elitism.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Thank you to all of those who made comments. That wraps up our open-mike session for this particular time slot. We have a panel at 6:00, but we'll have an open-mike panel at 7:15. We're going to break for about an hour. We'll be back here at 6:00 to continue with two more witnesses and an open-mike panel.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Welcome back, colleagues.

Welcome, Mr. McCurdy, for the third segment of our day of hearings here in St. John's.

It would normally be five minutes, but if you want to take 10, it's up to you. As I said, anything up to 10 minutes is fine, and then we'll go to a round of questioning, where each member gets five minutes to engage with you.

[Earle McCurdy, Leader, Newfoundland and Labrador New Democratic Party]

Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to appear. I've been to many parliamentary and Senate committees over the years. In a previous life, I was once going to one in Ottawa and I had to get a taxi from my hotel. The meeting was in a meeting room in the West Block. I hopped in the cab and said, “Could you take me to West Block, please?” The driver said, “I'm new in the city. Could you direct me how to get to West Block?” So I said, “Well, sir, I believe first you have to get the nomination for the party of your choice, and then you have to get yourself elected. After that, it pretty well takes care of itself.”

[Voices]

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