Thank you very much to the committee for inviting me to be a witness tonight.
I had three topics that I wished to discuss, but in five minutes I can really only do justice to one. At the end, I'll mention what the other two were, and if you'd like to ask me questions about that, feel free.
I want to speak today about dual-member mixed proportional representation, or DMP, designed by Mr. Sean Graham, who I understand gave you a great rundown of that system in Alberta last week.
First, I'll speak about what I like about DMP and why I decided to advocate for this model as one of the options in the provincial plebiscite coming up, which, obviously, was successful because it is now on the ballot in P.E.I.
Second, I'll speak about my experience of how DMP has been received by the island's public in our work today.
These are the top four things that I like about dual-member proportional and why I think it would be an excellent choice, not only for P.E.I. but also for Canada.
First, it is a strictly proportional system; however, it relies entirely on local district candidates. Open-list MMP and STV agree very well with my personal values, but I do know that any form of a regional list, which is a reality in both MMP and STV, and a two-tier Parliament are two real sticking points for a lot of people. I especially find that true for people who strongly value accountability to local geographic communities. DMP is a proportional system that satisfies that criteria.
Second, DMP demonstrates diversity within small geographic areas. You've heard a number of times today that it's just not right that the Conservative Party has been entirely shut out of the Atlantic provinces despite having 40% of the vote here federally. Likewise, looking at the first-past-the-post map of Canada, the U.S., my home country of Australia in the lower house, and the U.K., you would get the impression that everybody in this region votes red, and everybody in that region votes blue, and there's no showing of the diversity of both communities.
In my few short years that I've lived in this country—I have been here for three years, in Montreal for two and P.E.I. for one and a half—I've learned that Canadians strongly value diversity, and the electoral system here should reflect that, not only across the whole country but also within the communities that we elect our representatives in.
In dual-member proportional, diversity is visible in a very small geographic area, not only in the large regions. In DMP, each local riding would be represented by two candidates who are likely going to be from two different parties. What this means is that many more voters are locally satisfied than in the current system.
The other two points that I like about dual-member proportional, very briefly—there's a long list, but these are my top four—are that DMP allows for the theoretical possibility of a legislature that is composed entirely of independent candidates. I don't know of any other proportional system that allows for that possibility. I think we're probably 50 or 100 years off that, but I think it's an interesting theoretical feature of the system. Finally, it has an extremely simple ballot for a proportional system; you mark a single X.
My second point is how DMP is being received by the public in P.E.I.
Through my work as the founder of the PR action team and also now as an employee of the P.E.I. PR Coalition, I have personally spoken with hundreds of people one-on-one across the island, on the street and at their doors, about the upcoming provincial vote. I'm very happy to report that most people who prefer proportional representation are not fussy about which model they want. Where it gets interesting is speaking with people who don't object to the principle of proportionality but who are uncomfortable with some of the specifics of one of the proportional models.
As an example, I will share some words, which are available on the public record, from Sidney MacEwen and Brad Trivers, who are both Progressive Conservative MLAs here on the island. Both of them have expressed publicly that they are in favour of either dual-member proportional or first past the post in the upcoming plebiscite, but not mixed member proportional. Why is this?
In a recent CBC article, Mr. MacEwen was quoted as saying:
First and foremost, the MLA gets elected on a district level...The MLA or the MP must be responsible to its constituents...Before I got into politics, I might have thought maybe a mixed-member proportional system might be OK. Now when I look at it, it creates two tiers of MLAs where you're not directly accountable to a constituency, so in the next election you don't have to go back to the doors and answer for the decisions you made in the house.
You can agree with that or not, and I personally would argue with some of those points. I'm quite a fan of MMP personally, but I know there are some people, like Mr. MacEwen, who just can't square their specific values with that particular model, because their values are so strongly rooted in local communities.
I'd like to suggest that DMP offers a way for people who share those values regarding local community accountability to feel comfortable supporting a proportional representation model.
I'll leave it at those initial points. I truly think that DMP could be a model that could gather majority support or perhaps even consensus support from this committee. I'm happy to answer questions on the technical details or the values behind DMP, as well as on two other topics. One is the question of a referendum on Canada and why I—acting as one of the campaign directors for the P.E.I. plebiscite campaign— think it would be a terrible idea. I'm also happy to answer questions about features of the electoral system of Australia, the country of my citizenship, regarding things such as majoritarian preferential voting, mandatory voting, or STV in the Australian Senate.
Thank you.