Really?
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.
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.
4:05 p.m.
Executive Director, PEI Council of People with Disabilities
Yes. I absolutely do not feel that my values, or I, were represented for the 10 years that the Conservative government was in power. I don't feel that.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Sherry Romanado Liberal Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC
This is news. I'm glad you're talking about it, because if people honestly felt that, even though the person who was elected was elected and that person was the MP, but if they felt even after that person was elected that they couldn't go to him or her, that's important to know. It's really important to know that.
4:05 p.m.
Executive Director, PEI Council of People with Disabilities
It's particularly the environment on P.E.I. If you were the person who ran against the person who was elected, and then you had an issue that you wanted to bring forward to them, that creates a whole other dynamic.
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Sherry Romanado Liberal Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC
This is good to know. This is the first time we're hearing this, that you felt, especially if you had run against the person, you couldn't go to that person and talk about a case or talk about your ideas. I'm going to note that because it is the first time we're hearing it.
In terms of getting more focus.... Am I out of time?
4:05 p.m.
Liberal
Sherry Romanado Liberal Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC
Sorry. Hopefully someone will pick up on disabilities. I wanted to get on there.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
I'm just going to move over here where the mike's a little more accessible, speaking of accessibility.
I want to thank all of you for being here, and I want to in particular thank you, Ms. Ledwell and Ms. Carroll, for your work to make sure that you're doing everything you can to ensure better opportunities for women and disabled people to be part of the political system as candidates and, I would assume, as voters as well.
I wanted to just get your thoughts on a few of the other items that were in the Liberal Party platform. There are various options that were going to be looked at as part of this consultation process. You've, obviously, all expressed your viewpoints on proportional representation and your belief that it's the route you'd like to see. But they also listed the idea of a preferential ballot, and also talked about looking at online voting and mandatory voting.
I want to hear thoughts from the three of you on those topics and whether you think those should be looked at, and what your thoughts would be on those three things.
4:05 p.m.
Member, Cooper Institute
I already expressed the concern that we have about preferential voting appearing anywhere as an electoral system. It's a handy mechanism. It's a tool. It's an instrument. It's a way of marking your ballot and it's a way of counting the ballots, but it's not an electoral system. It isn't anywhere an electoral system. It's very disturbing for us to hear, coming from the federal level, the possibility that maybe that's going to be considered as an electoral system.
Once again, it's a majoritarian system. There's no way that we would have any different relationship between the power of the so-called elected party and the other parties. It would not change that. That's just to say really as clearly as we can here that for us, it should not be an option. It shouldn't be one in P.E.I. It's giving a very bad recommendation to the rest of Canada that we have that on our plebiscite ballot to begin with. It's disheartening to think that might be a consideration at the federal level to avoid proportional representation.
4:05 p.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Ms. Carroll and Ms. Ledwell, do you have any thoughts on preferential ballots?
4:05 p.m.
Executive Director, PEI Council of People with Disabilities
I agree. I don't think preferential ballots are the way to go. Again, it's a mechanism that works within our current system to figure out who's going to win, if I can use that terminology, but it doesn't change how we capture our popular vote and how we capture the seats in our elected bodies. I don't see how that would be beneficial.
In regard to mandated voting, on P.E.I. that is not needed. We have a really active voter engagement level here on P.E.I.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
We just need to replicate whatever's being done here. Instead of trying to have it be compulsory, we just need to try to get the kind of engagement we have from voters in P.E.I. We just need to figure out what it is that's happening here, and what's causing that, and replicate it all across the country.
4:10 p.m.
Executive Director, PEI Council of People with Disabilities
We can talk later.
4:10 p.m.
Executive Director, P.E.I. Advisory Council on the Status of Women
I haven't done an intensive study of mandatory voting or of the electronic voting option. Both, I think, would be stronger proposals if put through a very strong gender lens and diversity lens to assess the positive and negative outcomes that could be associated with mandatory voting or with electronic voting. With mandatory voting I think there's some data that suggests that women are actually marginally less successful under mandatory voting systems. I just read it recently and I couldn't cite the source.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
4:10 p.m.
Executive Director, P.E.I. Advisory Council on the Status of Women
I probably got it from the Twitter feed following this committee.
4:10 p.m.
Executive Director, P.E.I. Advisory Council on the Status of Women
Yes, I don't know that either.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
4:10 p.m.
Executive Director, P.E.I. Advisory Council on the Status of Women
Yes. With electronic voting, what barriers do to socio-economic factors might come about? I think a strong analysis that takes gender and diversity into consideration would be worth doing.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Okay. On the preferential ballot, do you have any thoughts on that?
4:10 p.m.
Jean Ledwell
The preferential ballot isn't our preferred option. It has a few advantages primarily on the negative campaigning side, but based on the factors that we looked at, it doesn't have as many advantages as the proportional systems on the P.E.I. ballot.
4:10 p.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Okay, thank you.
I don't know if there's any more time, but if there is, Ms. Burge, I know you didn't have a chance to comment on the online, because we're going to mandatory voting if there's any time left, but if you had any comments on that....
