Evidence of meeting #39 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 women.
Professor of Political Science, Dean of Arts, University of New Brunswick, As an Individual
It was not all Atlantic Canadians. You have to take a look at the proportion of the vote—
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
No, but you sent 100% Liberals, so that must have been your intention.
Professor of Political Science, Dean of Arts, University of New Brunswick, As an Individual
That's because of our electoral system.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Right. Someone said Canada has worked well despite our electoral system, not because of it.
Professor of Political Science, Dean of Arts, University of New Brunswick, As an Individual
I would agree.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Okay.
We have a bill in Parliament right now, Bill C-237 from a colleague of mine from the west coast that would do exactly what you suggested, incentivize parties to nominate more women. I'm assuming, after we've heard so much testimony from people like yourselves, that we're going to get near-unanimous support for this, at least one part of it, while we change the electoral system. Should the committee be considering doing these two things together—changing the way parties nominate and also changing the voting system—rather than saying we can only do one thing at a time? Should we consider both the mechanisms of the party nomination as well as the way that Canadians vote, and that their votes be counted for better voter equality across the country?
Professor of Political Science, Dean of Arts, University of New Brunswick, As an Individual
You have to be careful because, as I said, parties are independent organizations—
Professor of Political Science, Dean of Arts, University of New Brunswick, As an Individual
You can change the funding component of it and the rebate in the elections component of it. I do think that if you are making incremental changes as opposed to drastic changes to the electoral system, those incremental changes will not affect the representational questions that I've been raising today but that the solutions I've suggested, the rebate tinkering, could have a positive effect and definitely in combination. Actually, I would do the rebate even without changing the balloting structure. If you do anything, and walked away from here and went away saying, let's do something to increase representation, that would do it.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Lovely. We're going to have a vote on that sometime soon in Parliament.
Professor of Political Science, Dean of Arts, University of New Brunswick, As an Individual
You could do it easily. You wouldn't have to have a referendum on it because it's legislation.
Liberal
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm going to just follow up on that line of questioning.
We've been talking a lot about female representation and minority representation in our Parliament, and how we can increase that. Oftentimes presenters have said that the electoral system would be one way, and it would be key. I definitely think that it wouldn't harm it. If anything it would maybe inch it up a little bit better, and that's what we're seeing.
However, when you look at the countries that we're comparing ourselves to, those with ideal systems and the same parliamentary style.... New Zealand is doing better but it is still 39th on the list. I would expect it to jump up a lot higher than that.
Since you've probably done a comparative study of a lot of countries, what are those other things that we need to do in addition to perhaps making these changes? In our women's caucus we discuss this quite a lot. Also, in another committee I sit on, procedure and House affairs, we've been talking about how to change standing orders and do other things to make Parliament more inclusive. I know from my experience and that of other colleagues that there is often resistance to modernizing a lot of things because there is always some argument for continuing to do what we do in the way we do it.
There has been a lot of talk about shortening our workweek, but politicians are worried about doing that because there would be a public backlash. However, our parliaments, federal and provincial, sit for more days than almost any other parliament around the world. We travel great distances to work, leaving our families behind, and for people like me with young children, the decision to run is a really difficult one to make. All parties, I'm sure, have worked hard to try to recruit women at times.
I wasn't really recruited. I tried to make the decision myself. I ran in a riding that may have been unsafe; there was an incumbent from another party. Those are choices that I had made. All my opponents in the nomination and in the general election were male, but somehow I made it through, and I want a lot more women to make it through.
We don't want to just inch up a couple of percentages and not deal with all of these other issues that are big factors. I know that the United Nations has listed six ways in which female participation can be increased and none of them include the electoral system. They included equal education for women, quotas for females, legislative reform to increase the focus on issues that affect women and children, and so on and so on, but electoral reform didn't necessarily come up.
What are those other things that countries are doing?
Professor of Political Science, Dean of Arts, University of New Brunswick, As an Individual
One thing I would note is that we don't often see countries changing electoral systems. When we do, we see big jumps. To go back to New Zealand, we did see a big jump from before it had the MMP system to after.
However, I would point to the fact that parties still play a very important role and that parties are still choosing candidates. The single-member districts that are a component of that MMP system still make it a challenge, in many cases, for the number of women or Maori—the aboriginal population in New Zealand—to increase, but increases have occurred over time.
You need to look at the institution and the institutional constraints that are currently there. You are right about the various factors that have made it difficult for women, in particular, to get involved in politics. Those are things that have been talked about a lot and I think need to be discussed. You pointed exactly to what the challenges are: a large country with long distances of travel far away from families. Do you move your family to Ottawa? Then where is your representation in your home community? These are all very difficult things that are more specific to Canada than to Britain, Germany, or other countries, which might fit into one province, although we still see those challenges at the provincial level. People in New Brunswick complain all the time about how far they have to travel from their constituency in the North Shore to get down to Fredericton. When you compare that to someone coming from the Northwest Territories down to Ottawa, those are big differences. That does have an impact.
We could look at quotas. I don't think it's really part of what our culture is. We could look at other things that could be taking place. You have to be aware of what the culture is prepared to accept. I come back to what is realistic, what is doable. If we are not going to do a significant overhaul of our electoral system, think about the incentives that are there to encourage parties to nominate more women and other under-represented groups. If you just look at the parties themselves and how well they do, you see that different parties have different incentives. The New Democratic Party actually has regulations about when they can hold their nomination meetings. It can be done only after they have a certain diversity of candidates running for nomination. They do that. They've taken that as a stance themselves.
The others haven't done that, but when the Liberals have a leader who has said, “We want to have more women” and the parties have responded, change has occurred. Internally, parties can do things to make change. In my mind, the real roadblock has tended to be parties.
Liberal
Ruby Sahota Liberal Brampton North, ON
Sometimes there is also the criticism that women may get in, but they don't get into the higher-level power positions. Even with the cabinet change, maybe the portfolios that women have are not as good, but making the choice that the Prime Minister made for a gender-balanced cabinet changed things overnight for the cabinet. It was a quick change, and it is gender-neutral now. Maybe it is not the Canadian way, or the way we have done things before, but everything that we are looking at here is not the way we've done things before. Changes definitely need to be made in certain areas.
Liberal
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Again, thank you to both of our witnesses for testifying today. It has been a fascinating discussion thus far. I want to follow up with a few questions.
I am going to start with some comments from you, Dean Everitt. My colleague down the way, Mr. Cullen, made a bit of a tongue-in-cheek comment about the entire Atlantic region voting Liberal, and this being, therefore, the unanimous wish of the region, which of course was a little tongue-in-cheek.
I want to follow up in that vein just a bit.
There was a commitment in the Liberal platform that 2015 would be the last election under first past the post. Coming from the same tongue-in-cheek comment that Mr. Cullen made, do you believe that issue was top of mind for New Brunswick voters or Atlantic voters?
Professor of Political Science, Dean of Arts, University of New Brunswick, As an Individual
No, I don't think it was.
There are so many factors that go into voter choices. One of the things I do, beyond studying gender, is study voting in elections and voting behaviour. I was on election study teams surveying voters after the 2004 and 2006 elections, and after the 2014 election here in New Brunswick.
That's not what people think about. Health care, education, jobs, economy—these things are much more important. One of the challenges of our system is that so many things get put into a platform that we can't pick and choose and say, “This is what made people vote this way.”
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
Absolutely.
To follow up on that, still today, despite this committee having met for 39 meetings now, the public isn't engaged. About 3% of the population is following what this committee is doing. What would you recommend to improve this process, to improve the engagement with Canadians, to improve the legitimacy of this process going forward? If we're going to be making recommendations, how can we ensure that we have the legitimacy of Canadians behind us on this process of what we're doing here today?
Professor of Political Science, Dean of Arts, University of New Brunswick, As an Individual
That's a really good question. I think the challenge is that Canadians have so many things they're dealing with on a daily basis that this is not something that's top of mind or front and centre. The same thing happens during election campaigns. You're all politicians; you know that people aren't often paying attention the first week, the second week, the third week. It's kind of in the last week that they say, “Oh, I have to make a decision. I need to make up my mind now.” That's when they start focusing and paying attention. To my mind, they have so many different balls in the air.
I'm a perfect example. I knew I had to come to this talk. When did I do my presentation for it? Yesterday. I sat down then and thought about what I'd say.
I don't know that there's anything you can do. That's just the complexity of our lives these days. I think going around and having these sorts of hearings, allowing those who are interested in engaging to learn more, to have their say, is a very important component of that. You can walk away saying, okay, maybe only 3% are engaged, but we offered the opportunity. We gave people the chance to give their feedback to us. We heard a range of different points of view. We feel comfortable making comments and decisions based on that.
Conservative
John Nater Conservative Perth—Wellington, ON
Absolutely.
You only wrote your presentation yesterday, but I thought that was only for CPSA papers. That was always my process, to finish off my CPSA paper the night before, so I appreciate that.
I want to follow up with regard to the language issues in New Brunswick. Ms. Ouellette, you mentioned the dividing line in terms of French speakers versus English speakers. We're pleased to be in the only officially bilingual province. It does present its uniqueness.
I want to get comments from both witnesses on how we can ensure that in our consultations, as well as our recommendations, we respect minority language communities. In my other life back on the Hill, I'm on the official languages committee, so it's something I have a special interest in. How do we ensure, in whatever changes or recommendations we do recommend, that we respect minority language communities not only here in New Brunswick but across Canada, for example, the English-language minority in Quebec, Franco-Manitobans, Franco-Ontarians?
Co-Chair, As an Individual
That's an excellent question.
It's not always obvious. We need to conduct a fairly detailed analysis. I mentioned the example in which, following a vote on an innocuous issue, the province was split in two between francophones and anglophones. It can happen very easily.
In Nova Scotia, the decision was made to use the electoral quotient. It's a very objective measure. However, the electoral quotient makes it nearly impossible for Acadians to elect a representative to the Legislative Assembly.
We need to be aware of how the changes affect minorities.
Within the Commission on Legislative Democracy, mixed member proportional representation required us to divide the province to establish proportional regions. It was an extremely difficult task, and yet we're very familiar with our province. In this case, so many language issues arose, and we didn't anticipate them at first. It was very difficult.
We need to be very aware of this. We must always ask questions. There's no magic formula, but awareness is important. It's not always easy, even when we're aware of the issues at the start.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
You need to leave at 2:30 p.m., correct?
You wanted to answer Ms. Sahota's question about the representation of women. Can you speak to us about that for a minute?
Co-Chair, As an Individual
I agree with Ms. Everitt. It's one of the issues that inspired the most passion in the commission. It was even the most important issue. In the end, after many discussions, our approach was to tie the funding of political parties to the proportion of women among the candidates for election.
I remember we wanted to talk about the women elected. I didn't find anything about that in the report yesterday evening. The issue is promoted through the funding of parties. The parties are the most important institution when it comes to selecting representatives. They're the frontline in the electoral process. If we miss this step, everything else will suffer.
These issues will remain very significant. Women also need access to the most important positions in the government.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
In your report, did you propose that funding be tied to the proportion of women elected or women candidates?