Electoral Reform Committee on Oct. 6th, 2016

[Dawn Wilson]

Exactly. It is possible without the list. The open or closed list actually allows for contagion effects where parties are influenced by, say, for example, smaller parties in the context of P.E.I. historically, that have nominated more women as candidates, but it hasn't translated into more women elected. Considering the list holistically, in the context of P.E.I., the 27 districts as a whole and considering perhaps gender, diversity, and geographic representation within that list, currently what happens is that nomination processes take place within silos. They happen independently of one another and you don't know what will happen until all 27 are nominated.

As you say, it is possible to have regulation, legislation that requires gender parity without a proportional system. It is possible.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Perfect.

My next question is for Ms. Keenan.

I was very surprised to hear you say that a referendum would set back progress. I don't know whether those were your exact words.

Professor Rémy Trudel, in Montreal, Quebec, spoke of a referendum as a powerful way to teach, inform and educate the population. We experienced this in Quebec during the referenda on separation. We often hear that only a small segment of the population is interested in the matter. You said yourself that, for one year, you and certain organizations directed all your energy toward trying to educate people.

We might not obtain the result we want from a referendum because there's always a risk. However, I think it's an incredible opportunity to inform and educate people. Together, the political parties and organizations would have the financial means to really increase awareness. It would be better than changing the electoral system simply for the sake of changing the electoral system.

Don't you agree?

[Anna Keenan]

That's a smart question.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

There's no problem with the translation.

[Anna Keenan]

Une bonne question.

I would refer to what Marie Burge from the Cooper Institute said earlier. She spoke about a referendum on a question that requires people to create new knowledge. We are very actively trying to educate people about the plebiscite, the vote coming up in P.E.I. now and it is very difficult work. We want to be able to have one-to-one conversations with people. The reason there is low engagement in electoral reform generally is that Canadians have better things to do than to spend their evenings studying the details of electoral systems.

We are a very small minority—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

You're not telling us what we want to hear.

[Anna Keenan]

I would really like to be home with my nine-month-old baby right now. Most of you probably have better things to do as well. I would love to be investing my time in developing a sustainable transport system for P.E.I. or working on my dance school, or these sorts of things.

If it's a referendum on Quebec separatism, I find generally people in Quebec already know what that's about and have an opinion on it already. That's a great topic on which to have a referendum. On electoral reform, it requires people to build a huge amount of new knowledge before they can make that decision.

Please save the time and energy of Canadians, not only advocates—

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Please stop there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We need to stop here, Mr. Rayes.

[Alain Rayes, Conservative, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Things were starting to become very interesting, Mr. Chair.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I know, I understand.

We'll finish with Ms. Sahota.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

My first question is for you, Ms. Keenan. First of all, thank you for all the hard work you are doing, putting a year of your life into educating Islanders about electoral reform. I can't imagine how difficult that really is, and I'm sure those LEGO displays come in very handy.

You said somewhere in your presentation something about the DMP system allowing, perhaps not today but in the future, more independence from parties. Can you explain that to me?

As I understand the system right now, the way I saw the ballot is that two people are generally running in a team, the first runner-up and the second runner-up, based on their party, and that's how people are selecting, as party teams. How do you see that maybe switching around?

[Anna Keenan]

I wish I had brought with me a sample ballot for DMP. I don't have it with me, but I believe Sean Graham provided you with one last week in Alberta.

Parties can run either just one single candidate or they can run a primary and a secondary candidate, but in addition, independent candidates can also be listed on the ballot, exactly the same as they are now. You have four different parties and then an independent or two. An independent can be elected in dual-member proportional in the same way as under first past the post, if they win the seat, but also if an independent candidate places second in the seat, that candidate will be elected to the second seat in that district.

In that way, it actually might lower barriers to independent candidates being elected. If you had two independent candidates and they were the first and second representatives, the first and second most popular representatives or candidates in that seat, then you would have two independent candidates in that seat.

The way that I understand mixed member proportional, potentially—I don't want to say; I could be wrong on this—independent candidates can run for the district seat and it's more complicated to have them run on the open lists. It can be done. In STV, we know the ballot is very complex. Independent candidates can be included, but it's very rare that they're elected.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

When I was campaigning for this past election, I heard a lot at the doors about members being available to their constituents. That's not something I really thought that much about before running as the candidate, and then I quickly realized that it is what people are really attached to. They want to see their member out in the community. They don't want to have you disappear to Ottawa and then just come back next election to knock on their door again for their vote. They want to see where you are.

As you were saying in that quote, I would have been somebody who thought, yes, you don't need to be attached to a riding; you need to just represent a political view of a party and it's all about policy-making. Of course, we enjoy that and that's why we get into it, but then we realize there's this whole other layer and a realm of connection with people and helping people with the day-to-day federal issues that they might encounter. In some communities, the populations can be more vulnerable to maybe not understanding the system and might rely on their members of Parliament a lot more than in other communities.

I'm very much a constituency member. I work a lot in my constituency. Before becoming a member, I didn't realize there was that much work. I never went up to my member's office, ever, before to talk to them about a problem. Then I realized, wow, every day there are tons and tons of people who have problems. Hopefully we can get to a point where the bureaucracy is fixed in a way where those problems don't occur, but the way it is right now, they do and they're reliant on their member of Parliament to be connected, to be close, to be accessible.

I do like that the MPs still maintain that connection, although in some of the bigger constituencies you might not know where the members could end up setting up shop. I think that could be a little bit of a problem. Anyway, I don't even know where I was going with that, but I just thought that quote was very interesting. I think it's a value that a lot of Canadians do hold highly, and they don't realize it at first.

In terms of women and representation here in P.E.I., Ms. Wilson, you said you couldn't talk about why they don't run federally, but you do have some statistics on maybe provincially why they don't run. I come from Ontario, and in Ontario we have better numbers than the federal average. We have 35.5% representation of women. What's going on in P.E.I. that might be different from what's happening in Ontario, yet they're still both under the same system?

[Dawn Wilson]

I don't think this is specific to P.E.I. We see this in provinces across the country and in the territories as well, the under-representation of women in government.

We reached a peak of 26.7% in 2007. In the past two provincial elections, we've had a steady decline, which is concerning. What we do know about voters in P.E.I. is that they do not discriminate against women at the vote. Women are just as likely to win in ridings against men, which is good to know.

The problem lies with getting women's names on the ballots here. It's a nomination process. Parties are simply not nominating women in high enough numbers to make substantial change. Yes, work needs to be done there, and we've been working with individuals as well as political parties to try to increase that. We do see proportional representation as one way of addressing that.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Once again, even in the proportional systems they've talked about nomination processes, and they would still have to get nominated, would they not?

[Dawn Wilson]

Yes, so when we talk about the nomination processes in the proportional system, we're thinking within the context of the contagion of fact and lists, and developing a list or a slate based on diversity characteristics, such as gender, geography, language, and all those things you might be thinking about as you're looking holistically. As I mentioned earlier, the problem with the nomination process currently is that it happens independently of each other within districts, and you don't know exactly what the next district will do.

There are things we can do to address that within all systems. It's just that currently that's not happening.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

You would see proportional representation as one way to increase that.

Could I have a few more seconds? I just want to finish up with Professor Desserud.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Go ahead.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Professor, this may not even be that applicable to this committee, but at the committee that we were mentioning, PROC, that Scott and I sit on, we've been talking a lot about revisiting our procedural rules and making Parliament more inclusive. I know that you've done a report for New Brunswick, and you've talked about reformatting QP, question period.

Can you give us a bit of insight about what we could do to make Parliament a little more appeasing to more people who might even want to run for Parliament or government?

[Don Desserud]

I have not worked on QP. I did mention that this was an issue, but I haven't done anything on question period. I am interested in the British model, which the Prime Minister isn't talking about, but the prime minister's questions is a one day a week thing and a different structure than we have in Canada now. I'm not saying it's better, but I think it would be interesting to compare to see whether there's something that could be learned from that system.

We do know that one of the issues that has come from the televising of question period is the way in which MPs, particularly on the government side, are schooled to answer questions so they correspond with the media clip they want to see broadcast on the news. The last time I was visiting question period, and another government was in power at the time, by the way, I was interested to see cabinet ministers giving the same answers to a set of questions, even though the questions had changed, and for the simple reason that at the first time they answered the question, the microphones had turned off, and the second time they answered it, they cut it a little better so they got it within the time in which the microphone was on.

The microphones are not for each other, as you know; they're for the media who were listening. Clearly what they were trying to do was to get the clip in.... What do you do with that? That has changed considerably. People are recommending now that the Senate be televised. I think it's a really good idea, so we can't go backward on that one. That media influence on the way in which question period is functioning is a huge issue in a way people understand what question period is and the impression that they're getting from it. I think it's changed the behaviour of members.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thanks very much.

Thank you to our panel. It was very engaging. I think you could tell by the reaction of the members that all of today was very engaging for us.

Thank you, Ms. Keenan, for revisiting DMP. It allowed us to really make sure that we understand its characteristics.

Thank you, Ms. Wilson, for your work on the challenge of bringing more women into elected office.

Thank you, Professor Desserud, for giving us a bit of a reality check on how our system really works and how complicated the causes of the declining voting rate are. I must say that you brought up some very good points about how difficult it is for governments to get results in a globalized economy and system.

Thank you very much.

We're going to go to the open-mike session. We have about 10 participants who wish to come up to the mikes.

For those who may not have been here earlier today, I'll just go over how we do this. Essentially, we have two microphones. I'll call up two people to begin with, one at mike number one, the other at mike number two. While the first person is speaking at mike number one, that will provide time for the person at mike number two to prepare. Then when mike number two is free, I'll invite someone to take that position while they wait to speak, and so on. We will do a little rotation.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Chair, I don't want to delay things or interrupt. You said we had 10 people on the list. There are people who have wandered in more recently, and I just wanted to let them know—I think I'm correct—that anyone who is in the room and didn't put their name down earlier, we'd have them—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Yes, but there is a process to follow.

Go outside. There's somebody with a list, and you can put your name on the list.

I'd invite Peter Bevan-Baker and Eleanor Reddin to the mikes, please.

We have a two-minute time limit, which tends to work well. We'll see how it goes tonight.

Go ahead, Mr. Baker.