Thank you.
Mr. Cullen, over to you.
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.
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.
3:45 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I'll continue with you, Mr. Dixon. I may not have heard you correctly. You debated voting systems within the youth parliament. Why is that parliament built without the structure of parties, which exists in all parliaments that we know? Why is the choice made to have everybody sit as independents, government, or opposition?
3:45 p.m.
President, Newfoundland and Labrador Youth Parliament
I might be a little bit boring, so I apologize ahead of time, but politics is not supposed to be hockey. That's what it comes down to. When you put these ideas of parties onto people, especially youth, I think you can create quite a toxic environment. I think we like the independent stuff more because we get actual discussion, actual debate and discourse on these issues.
3:45 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
In your testimony, I missed the system that was decided on when you debated electoral reform. You decided on going with MMP?
3:45 p.m.
President, Newfoundland and Labrador Youth Parliament
We didn't actually talk about.... Do you mean the vote, or the idea of a referendum?
3:45 p.m.
President, Newfoundland and Labrador Youth Parliament
The idea of a referendum, yes. That wasn't brought up at all. I think if we were to have a discussion, that would be an entirely different discussion. I don't think anyone would have been opposed to it, but referendums, especially in this context, do present a number of issues.
3:45 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I wonder if you folks sat down and first had to discover what the bias is within the system presently, and if that bias creates problems. As you said earlier, a lot of young folks are maybe not aware of the system. I'd say that if you say “first past the post”, most Canadians know that as well as they know “MMP” in terms of what the system means. They don't necessarily know. It is what it is.
You said earlier about youth votes not mattering or counting. Then when young people are walked through the different systems and find one where their voice is strengthened.... Is there some particular combination with young people perceiving that they're not listened to in general, and then when you hear about a voting system that discounts half the votes cast in an election, it's almost like a reinforcing feeling?
I'm asking you to be a lay psychologist here. We often hear from young people, and we're trying to engage with them. I go to a lot of schools and I go to youth parliaments, and their perception is that no one listens. They haven't come to that point in society where people are listening to their opinions. Then you lay that on top of a voting system that is biased so that a lot of voices are just not listened to. Is that why young people you deal with are open to the idea of electoral reform, changing the voting system so that individual voices matter more?
3:45 p.m.
President, Newfoundland and Labrador Youth Parliament
Part of the debate was that we would feel a bit more empowered if our vote counted. I think when you're growing up, you do want to feel like you matter.
During this debate and discourse, that was actually part of it, that your vote will matter and people will listen to you. Then when we were walked through the system, that was....
3:45 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I want to say that was an attractive feature of going through that.
Do you have any opinion or did you discuss the idea of voting age? That's one of the terms this committee is also dealing with. It's presently 18, with the contemplation of lowering it to 17 or 16.
3:45 p.m.
President, Newfoundland and Labrador Youth Parliament
There's actually one member who fervently fought for lowering the age of voting to 16. He's been a huge proponent of that within this organization, and we've always debated it.
I think generally people do like the idea that if you start allowing people from a young age to vote, they get more engaged in the process. Look at Scotland and what they did with their referendum. They dropped the age to 16, and they empowered more youth to get out and have a say.
I guess I'd have to argue with psychologists, and they would know more than I would, but by the time you're 16, you have some semblance of an idea of the kinds of issues you face within your country, some very vaguely, but you would have some idea.
3:50 p.m.
As an Individual
Perhaps I could make a point on that. I'm a retired high school teacher. I think one of the biggest problems in our province is that any kind of talking of politics has been expunged from the curriculum, particularly the senior high curriculum. They got rid of the democracy course. They got rid of the world problems course. They got rid of the global issues course. We're supposed to turn all of our students into good workers. There's no place in the curriculum to talk politics. When I looked at curriculum across the country, I saw a similar....
We don't have the breakdown of our province for 2015, but in 2011, only 29% of our 18- to 24-year-olds voted. We were the lowest in the country, but it was only 39% for the country. I think the idea of lowering the voting age is really good, but only if you then put into the education system or reintroduce the concept of talking politics because it's just nowhere now and almost impossible.
3:50 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to the witnesses for being here.
Thanks to the people in the audience.
I hope I have a chance to get to more questions for Brendon Dixon. I want to say how impressive it is to see youth who are engaged. You said you did it because you're a nerd, but I think you did it because you're a good citizen.
I'm going to ask a few questions of Marilyn Reid because I found a column you wrote in the The Independent. I hope it isn't unfair to ask you questions about the two electoral reform sessions you went to that were on the Avalon Peninsula. I guess they were held there by the two MPs, Nick Whalen and Seamus O'Regan.
I wanted specifically to ask you a bit more about the mood there and what you saw there, because I see there was discussion of online voting and there was discussion of reducing the voting age. I gather in two different sessions you were the only person who thought a referendum was a good idea. I wondered about it.
Do you have any observations about those two sessions? I would be very interested.
3:50 p.m.
As an Individual
One session was with Ken McDonald. His riding is more of a rural riding—that is my riding—so the makeup of the audience was much older. It was really noticeable that they wanted to talk about things we could do to the present system. Did we want mandatory voting? Did we want to lower the voting age? Did we want online voting? Those were the questions that came up.
Seamus' and Nick's session was held at the university, and they were mostly young people. There was a huge difference. Every single person in the room was for proportional representation—every single person. I was the only one who wanted a referendum. They gave excellent reasons they didn't want a referendum, and it was that in the last two referendums they felt the process failed, so we don't know how to do referendums.
It was very interesting. The young people were against online voting. They said it was too risky. I think on mandatory voting people were iffy.
I don't know whether that tells you what it was like.
3:50 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
In your brief, you've set out that you think we should hold the referendum, if we hold one, accompanying the 2019 election. We were told by Marc Mayrand that a stand-alone referendum would cost $300 million. You're suggesting that we want to make sure there's a lot of money for public education, so clearly there's a really significant cost to a stand-alone referendum as opposed to having money for public education about why we're changing the voting system. But implicitly in your brief, although you didn't actually say it, doing it the way you suggest would mean that the current Prime Minister would have broken an election promise to ensure that 2015 is the last election held under first past the post.
I personally worry about the level of public cynicism and skepticism about politicians keeping their promises. I also have a lot of skepticism about whether we'll get this chance again after an election in which someone has made the promise. What happens when it's no longer a campaign promise? Do we get back to it ever again?
Do you have any comments?
If there's time, I'd love to hear from Brendon on the same point.
3:50 p.m.
As an Individual
I'm ready to backtrack on the referendum. My heart says to have a referendum, but it really needs to be done with a lot of effort. If it were done properly, I think it would be a way of reinvigorating political participation in this country. I really think it could be very exciting, but you've just raised the issue of money. There are all sorts of other issues around it, so I'm less concerned with breaking Prime Minister Trudeau's promise than I am with just asking if it could fail if it's not done properly.
I wrote that brief before I met the 30 people in the room, so I'll backtrack.
3:55 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
I wasn't trying to make you backtrack.
Brendon, can you jump in?
3:55 p.m.
President, Newfoundland and Labrador Youth Parliament
I'm actually going to speak more on my own personal opinion on the referendum bit, coming from my background of political science. I think that we shouldn't be putting a price on democracy, first and foremost. I think that's very dangerous, and democracy is one of those prized institutions in our country that we should value. Putting a price tag on it and being scared to do something because of the price is worrisome.
When it comes to doing a referendum, I don't think it is such a bad idea, but I think with the lack of education and how hard it is to educate during a referendum period, what you would have to do—and I don't know if this is even legal to do—would be to keep your options to solely the systems you'd like to change to rather than include first past the post.
The government has a mandate to no longer have first past the post, so I think you can make the case and the argument that, if you're going to do a referendum, on that ballot should be the systems you'd like to see implemented rather than the old system.
3:55 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
If we were to do that, how would you see that in terms of the amount of effort for public education to make sure people understood those options? I mean given what you said—and that was very powerful testimony and also backed up by Marilyn Reid as a former high school teacher—if you're looking at public education and the school systems have been.... That's my experience too. Local Liberal high school clubs or Green high school clubs are not allowed in any of the high schools. This is provincial jurisdiction, but they really don't want politics in the high schools.
Given that democracy is important, what kind of public education do you think can be done for your generation and for older people who also have no idea about what voting system we currently use or what ones we might want to change to?
3:55 p.m.
President, Newfoundland and Labrador Youth Parliament
Don't do it during a referendum or an election; simply put, don't do it.
I forget which prime minister said it, but elections are not the time to be educating people on these issues. It's not the time. You need to be doing it anyway beforehand and afterward. You need to revamp the school education system. That's what needs to be done first and foremost, not relying on groups like mine to be doing all the work.