Evidence of meeting #38 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 pei.
6:35 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Is this not simply a version of the system used in Baden-Württemberg, the best loser system where effectively you populate your party list from the people who were the top, the non-winning—-
6:35 p.m.
As an Individual
The best runner-up, yes.
It is similar to that system, but I have not looked into the Baden-Württemberg system in enough detail to be able to pull out the similarities.
6:35 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
What struck me as problematic about that system, although in many respects I think it may be a very good system—I'm a fan of Baden-Württemberg, not TPP—is that you would tend to have the best runners-up coming from the areas where the party is the strongest. You might exaggerate the geographical concentration of parties. To give a good example from this committee, what percentage of the vote did you take, 70%?
6:35 p.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
The new riding's different but in the previous riding it would have been over that, yes.
6:35 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Yes, so the 70%, 80% range. Your second runner-up would tend to come from ridings like that because the Conservatives are already overrepresented in Alberta and under-represented in Atlantic Canada. There is a national list, but you can see the point I'm getting at. Rural Alberta will produce more results for the Conservative Party because it's already stronger there. I'm worried about that geographical issue. You may have resolved it with TPP, I don't know.
6:35 p.m.
As an Individual
There is a chance in TPP that if a party has extremely strong local support on the order of 70% and 80%, it would be quite likely that with numbers like that, both candidates from that party would be elected because the second candidate from that party is still considered among the runners-up and this might be the differentiating factor between this and Baden-Württemberg.
The secondary candidate from that party is considered along with the first candidates from the parties that did not win the first seats. The secondary candidate is allocated 50% of the votes that were won by that party overall. I can only recommend that people read Sean Graham's 80-page report in detail, and have a look at the simulation.
6:40 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
There are also some videos I noticed. The Edmonton Journal has a link to one and a separate one has been put up for the P.E.I. electoral commission.
6:40 p.m.
As an Individual
There's also one that I created back in February before the P.E.I. electoral commission, which I did with my father-in-law narrating it. It's the DMP explained in under two minutes. So have a look at that.
6:40 p.m.
Liberal
6:40 p.m.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you very much to all three of you for appearing before the committee today.
I'll start with Ms. Keenan with just a few more questions about the DMP. Essentially, we would see Canada's 338 seats go down to 169 electoral districts, so we would keep the same seat count that we currently have in the House of Commons.
6:40 p.m.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
If you take a riding like in northern British Columbia.... My colleague, Mr. Cullen, has a massive riding, Skeena—Bulkley Valley—it's about 325,000 square kilometres—and if you were to pair that with North Island—Powell River, you'd get a riding that is 406,000 square kilometres, so it's massive, with a very diverse set of towns and first nations.
If you are running the DMP system with a riding that's potentially that large, have there been any concerns about accidentally getting two candidates from just one corner of the riding, and not really understanding the region as a whole?
6:40 p.m.
As an Individual
That is a concern that has been raised by one of the people who have shown a lot of interest in the model from Fair Vote Canada. That person has been wanting to learn more about the model and is trying to figure it out and has raised that as a potential concern.
I would say that the same problem currently exists in the first-past-the-post system where you can have a very large riding but you only have one person from one place. The fact that you have twice as large a riding but you have two representatives, you've got more of a chance to have people covered if you have two people from a similar area.
In order to win votes, a smart party in the nomination process would probably consider where it wants to put its candidates to draw the most votes. That is a potential chance, but I wouldn't say that would be a default or common occurrence. I'd like to give the model a chance and see how it runs for a couple of elections, and then make a judgment.
6:40 p.m.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Then just switching gears, Professor Desserud was mentioning the subject of mandatory voting and a very interesting point that, if you impose that system it can mask over some of the larger problems that might exist in the system. You've lived in a country that has mandatory voting. I just wanted to hear your personal perspective on it and your thoughts about it.
6:40 p.m.
As an Individual
I loved mandatory voting. I found it shocking that it was optional to vote when I moved to other countries. If it's the norm in the country you're from, it's quite surprising that the majority of countries in the world have it be optional.
The reason that I am a huge fan of mandatory voting is because of the way that it changes campaigning. I had never heard of a “get out the vote” campaign before I left Australia. Rather than a campaign being about why you should come out and vote and risking the appeal to very populist or extreme positions that can attract real fanatics on certain issues to come out and vote, everybody is already going to come out and vote. The campaigning becomes a lot more about the issues and the policies.
I had never seen such personality-based politics, until I really started looking at the U.K., the U.S., and Canada and these places that have the first-past-the-post system with optional voting. In Australia, my experience was always much more campaigning about the issues. I worked on issue-based election campaigns there.
6:40 p.m.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Ms. Wilson, when we look at Prince Edward Island and the history of getting women elected, it's not a very glorious history. I think the Liberals and Conservatives have only nominated six women, and half of them actually made it to the legislature.
In addition to electoral reform, what else do you think needs to be done to increase the representation of women? This has been a constant theme, and we've discussed this many times with many witnesses. I'd just love to hear your perspective on that particular issue.
6:40 p.m.
Executive Director, PEI Coalition for Women in Government
As you mentioned, there has been quite an under-representation of women in P.E.I.'s history in the context of the legislature here. We've only ever elected 26 women to the legislature, and as I mentioned, we're at 14.8% currently, which places P.E.I. among the lowest in the country in terms of gender equality in elected office.
I'm sure the topic has come up a number of times throughout your presentations. From our perspective, proportional representation would make a significant difference in terms of the number of women elected. However, we know that no electoral system in itself will address all of the barriers and challenges around electing women. Work will still need to be done on behalf of individuals, parties, and voters in order to make sure that happens.
I know that you heard earlier today from other organizations with a gender perspective, and there are voluntary measures, both regulatory and legislative. Based on our research, we know that voluntary measures on their own are less effective at creating significant change over time. Those combined with legislative measures or measures such as changes to the electoral system can be quite successful.
6:45 p.m.
Liberal
6:45 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Thank you very much.
Thank you to our panellists here. The event and the quality today in Charlottetown are truly amazing. This is the 16th location in which we have held sessions and it's our 38th meeting, and it's truly a tribute to Prince Edward Islanders that the quality of what we're hearing is so extremely helpful and fresh.
How do you do it?
I want to ask Dawn Wilson a question. One of our colleagues in Parliament, Kennedy Stewart for the New Democrats, has put forward a private member's bill. I don't know if you've seen it. It relates to tying rebates from the federal purse to how many women a party has nominated. You seem to have heard of it.
Do you have any comments on whether this committee should recommend that as part of our report?
October 6th, 2016 / 6:45 p.m.
Executive Director, PEI Coalition for Women in Government
As you know, P.E.I. is approaching a plebiscite on electoral reform. The Coalition for Women in Government, as Anna mentioned, has been a part of the coalition for proportional representation, and through that work we've had an opportunity to present to the provincial special committee a number of times. One of our focuses was on electoral financing and electoral reform. I did review Kennedy Stewart's private member's bill, which does suggest a negative incentive for parties that fail to meet a certain threshold of diversity among candidates.
We also know that the advisory council on the status of women in Quebec has a similar policy.
On the flip side, there are positive incentives as well.
We, as the Coalition for Women in Government, did not take a position on that, but we did provide some information regarding that bill to the Special Committee on Democratic Renewal at the provincial level.
6:45 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Thank you.
I will turn now to Anna Keenan, and for full disclosure, I will just say that I know Anna very well and I think she's fabulous and I'm so glad she has come to Canada.
I want to zero in on dual-member proportional, because I have to say that when Sean Graham presented to us, I was so impressed. He confidently proclaimed—and it's a bold claim given how complex and how almost infinite in variety the choices in proportional representation are—that his system was perfect.
Have you found any imperfections as you have advocated for it?
6:45 p.m.
As an Individual
This is a sneaky trick question.
I think one of the things that can be hard for people to understand at first is that in most districts, whoever is the most popular party and whoever is the second most popular party will both have their representatives elected in that district, which is great, because it means that many voters are fulfilled. If the winning candidate got 40% of the vote and the second-place candidate got 30% of the vote, then you have 70% of the voters in that district who have the representatives that they voted for, which is a very nice feature.
In dual-member proportional, sometimes it happens—and this is in a minority of districts—that it is the first-place and the third-place candidates, or the first-place and even the fourth-place candidates, who can be elected. You can imagine that that might confuse and upset people in that district, but I think it's understandable because of the provincial balance. If people vote for the second-place candidate in a district, and if that second-place candidate didn't win, then it would be because the party of that second-place candidate was awarded their seats in places where their party did better than in that particular riding, and so the third-place and fourth-place candidates would be the strongest showing for that party across the province.
One of the nice things about dual-member proportional is that the district where that happens changes every election. You wouldn't get one geographic district that is consistently disadvantaged over time. It might be that one riding gets their first-place and third-place candidates this election, but the next election it'll be their first-place and second-place candidates.
In learning about DMP and really looking at the models and studying it, I think that it is by far the strongest system that I've seen. I was spending a number of years working on climate policy in different countries, and I thought to myself, “What would my ideal electoral system look like?” I had a back of the envelope idea. When I was considering my submission to the provincial process, I was thinking that I'd sketch out this idea, but then I read through the other submissions and I found Sean's report. I thought this guy had written exactly what I would have written had I had a two-year period to research, report, develop the system, and test the model mathematically.
I think it's a very robust system. The weaknesses of DMP are very slight compared to the weaknesses of other proportional systems. Every proportional system, every system, has its pluses and minuses, and I think that DMP has the fewest weaknesses.
6:50 p.m.
Liberal
Sherry Romanado Liberal Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC
I'd like to thank you all for being here today and for bringing props. We like props, thank you. I think you're the first city that showed us some props.
I have not been challenging, but questioning how to get more women in politics. I absolutely believe we need more women in politics, we need more visible minorities, and we need more aboriginals, and I'm trying to figure out what's the best combination of tactics that we can use, including an alternative voting system.
There is one thing I have not heard. Does anyone know if any research has been done to find out from women who had been asked to run, or had considered running, for the nomination but did not, and why they did not? Do we know if any research exists in this regard?
