Electoral Reform Committee on Oct. 7th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I call the meeting to order. Good afternoon.

We are very happy to be in Fredericton to conclude our three weeks of touring Canada to consult experts, stakeholders and citizens about electoral reform in Canada.

This afternoon we welcome Ms. Lise Ouellette, who was co-chair of the New Brunswick Commission on Legislative Democracy between 2003 and 2004.

Welcome, Ms. Ouellette. I am very pleased to meet you today.

We also welcome Ms. Joanna Everitt, professor of political science and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of New Brunswick.

Welcome, Professor Everitt.

I have to point out that Ms. Ouellette has to leave us around 2:30 p.m. because she has another engagement. I wanted to let you know that she will have to leave us at that point.

For the benefit of those in the audience, there are interpretation devices that connect to the interpretation booth. You can use those to listen to the testimony in the other official language or you can use them simply to amplify the acoustics because sometimes it can be hard to hear everything.

We'll start right away with Madame Ouellette, for 10 minutes. Each witness will have 10 minutes to present, and that will be followed by a round of questioning. In the round of questioning, each member will have five minutes to engage with the witness, and that includes questions and answers.

Without further ado, I invite Ms. Ouellette to take the floor.

[Lise Ouellette, Co-Chair, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

In 2003 and 2004, I had the pleasure of co-chairing the New Brunswick Commission on Legislative Democracy, together with Mr. Lorne McGuigan, who unfortunately could not be here today. Of course over the years we have kept an attentive eye on these issues, but it is really interesting to come back to these matters 12 years later. I thank you very much for this invitation.

The commission was made up of eight citizens that I would describe as ordinary people, more or less. There were people who had active political experience and others who did not, but none of us were experts on electoral systems, certainly. We learned a lot as we went along. Fortunately, we were able to benefit from the support of Mr. Bill Cross and his team; Ms. Everitt was a member of that team, and I am happy to see her again. To study these questions, we benefited from strong support from the scientific and academic community. We held several working sessions to train the members of the commission, but also to share this information with the population.

In the beginning, the members of the commission were rather skeptical as to the necessity of changing the electoral system in some major way. That said, we were also interested in several other issues. I'll get back to that. Of course, we learned as we went along. The issue is complex. Voting is a sensitive and important topic for the population. After having heard all sorts of viewpoints and analyses, we finally recommended a mixed proportional representation system. We also made other recommendations, naturally.

What led us to change our position, to some degree, on the matter?

The discrepancy between the number of votes and the number of seats obtained in the Legislative Assembly or in Parliament is very obvious. Sometimes it is considerable. It really is a major flaw in our electoral system that needs to be addressed, whatever our convictions are in other respects.

Moreover, over the decades there has been a decrease in voter turnout at elections, and this is concerning.

Women are also chronically under-represented, still today. That was an important concern for the members of the commission.

As for the low level of representativeness of the Legislative Assembly, we talked about women, but third parties are also a concern, other minorities. The fact that a legislative assembly is not really representative is problematic.

Those are the main factors that led us to think and change our position in favour of a mixed proportional system. That is the system we recommended.

Which issues were most important for the commission in this process?

Certain systems, such the single transferable vote, are very appealing. For citizens it is powerful, extraordinary, but in practice, it's a revolution. It can also have consequences on the stability of governments. Contrary to what British Columbia did at the same time, we did not opt for that system, despite the fact that it was really attractive to citizens. Government stability was a factor we took into consideration. There are more ways than one to further that stability, such as the single party and coalitions. Political coalitions are not a part of our culture, but they work very well in some other countries.

As for the issues, the Legislative Assembly needs to be more representative. The quality of governance depends on it, as many studies have shown in other circumstances.

We also wanted to find ways to increase the engagement of citizens, that is to say encourage them to take a greater part in the governance of our province.

As for the idea of a referendum, it was appealing in the beginning, but it lost some appeal as our discussions progressed. Referendums can be extremely dangerous tools. Look at Brexit, for example. The commission became increasingly less favourable to referendums, as they can pose a significant threat to democracy, except when they concern more innocuous questions, less sensitive issues that are less emotionally charged, more neutral or less complex. However, generally speaking, when it comes to our democracy, they are not a panacea, quite the opposite.

Of course, these are my personal opinions. Here we are 12 years later, and I think that change is even more necessary federally than it was, or than at the provincial level. The risk of regionalization of the vote, particularly, the partisan regionalization of the vote, is very great. We are really playing with fire. Up till now, we have been lucky and there have not been any historical accidents, as I like to call them, but it is very clear that our current system makes us vulnerable to this type of risk.

The risk of an unrepresentative federal government or of an unrepresentative Parliament, be it geographically, ideologically or demographically, is even greater within a system like the one we have. So changes are needed to our electoral system, especially at the federal level, but also at the provincial level. That seems very clear.

In New Brunswick, if you add the votes obtained during the last election, the Conservative Party and the NDP, if I remember correctly, obtained 43% of the votes, and yet those parties have no representatives in the Parliament of Canada. The discrepancy between the percentage of the vote and the number of seats is clear, whatever the allegiance. This is very clear. We have seen situations in this province where a party that obtained fewer votes than another formed government. That does not respect the will of the population, obviously, and it is clearly dangerous in several regards.

In Canada, a party could govern without any representation from a given region, or with very weak representation. A party could easily govern without a region being represented, or with very weak representation. That is not healthy. That the two most populous regions dominate the federal government while the other regions are practically absent is really not healthy, and it is dangerous for Canada.

Some form of proportional representation is really the only way to ensure better regional, ideological, and demographic representation, as well as better representation of the various interests, whatever they may be, within the Parliament of Canada.

I also spoke about the representation of Canadian values in Parliament. It is in the interest of all of us that the various tendencies be represented, so as to avoid that at a certain point in our history, for all sorts of reasons that may also depend on circumstances, some minority current in Canadian values forms power. This could lead to an upheaval in the values and functioning of our country. These situations could happen easily enough.

As for the representation of women and third parties, our current system is not very conducive to that. In fact, I do not believe there is any government in Canada, either federally or provincially, that has more than a third of women members, despite some very great efforts. This is a very clear signal that changes have to be made at that level.

I also want to talk about minorities, and I will use Nova Scotia as an example, where the Acadian community has launched a court case. I don't know at which court level this is taking place. With the redistribution of electoral ridings, the Acadian community is now in the minority everywhere, and so it runs a very high risk of not having any representatives in the provincial Legislative Assembly. I think our representation system has to be sensitive to minority issues.

We could also talk about the first nations. I think we have to find innovative representation models in order to ensure that those communities, those minorities, are well represented within the Parliament of Canada or legislative assemblies.

In New Brunswick we have developed various formulas, which we call superimposed electoral maps, in the school environment. There are models that exist to represent the communities well, so that they will be represented in the decision-making structures, whatever they may be.

Another major element is the need to encourage citizen participation and improve the credibility of the electoral process. That is extremely important.

The funding of political parties is a matter of capital importance. On the issue of public funding, you have only to look at what is happening south of the border, in the United States. We don't want to wind up with that type of system. From a democratic point of view, there are incredible risks. We have to take advantage of the exercise being conducted by this committee to examine the funding of political parties.

It is also extremely important to recognize the importance of the role Elections Canada and the Chief Electoral Officer play. The Chief Electoral Officer has to have the tools he or she needs to carry out extremely rigorous monitoring, otherwise the credibility of the electoral process will suffer, with all of the cynicism and disaffection this implies.

I think the time has come also to start using electronic tools. We have to encourage voter turnout. In a lot of cases, it can be difficult to vote.

We also have to think about the possibility of reducing the voting age. This is being discussed in New Brunswick at this time. I think that young people as of 16 years of age are just as well informed and perhaps better informed than those who are older than that. I think we have to look at that issue.

I'd like to get back to the issue of referendums. From a democratic point of view, they are very risky. We have to be careful. The risks are enormous. We must not fall into this trap as they can be very appealing on the surface, but they harbour enormous risks.

In conclusion, we first have to determine the objectives we wish to reach. The discussions should clarify what our objectives are. In this regard, several models can be of assistance.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Ms. Ouellette.

Before we move on, I just thought I would highlight the fact that we are meeting today on the traditional territory of the Maliseet people along the beautiful Wolastoq River, also known as the Saint John River.

We'll go on now to Professor Everitt, for 10 minutes, please.

[Joanna Everitt, Professor of Political Science, Dean of Arts, University of New Brunswick, As an Individual]

I know you've been listening to people for a long time, and you've probably heard all the different arguments, so I'm not going to go into a broad range of points. I'm going to focus primarily on the question of representation.

I know there are five principles driving this commission: trying to make sure you have a good balance between voters' intentions and electoral results, encouraging engagement, creating a system that's accessible and inclusive, safeguarding the integrity of our voting process, and preserving the accountability of local representation. Those don't always work in conjunction with one another. I'm going to highlight how there is a bit of a disconnect.

As I said, my main focus is going to be on point number two, and that's greater participation of under-represented groups, and the most under-represented, which are women. My comments today are drawn on over 30 years of research in the field of gender and politics, with a particular focus on the Canadian political system.

When I first began looking at the impact of the electoral system on gender representation, Canada ranked quite high in the world in the representativeness of its federal Parliament. At that point, probably about 20 years ago, we were ranked in the low 20s in the world of, say, 190-odd states. In 2003, when I was looking at this for the New Brunswick legislative democracy commission, we had fallen to 33rd. Five years ago, when I was looking at this again for another presentation I gave, we were 44th. Today, in 2016, we rank 64th in the world in the representation of women within our political structures.

In terms of the overall gender equality index, we rank 25th in the world, but as I said, 64th in political representation. Now 25th is better than 64th, but I would argue that our ranking at 25th could be a lot higher, a lot better, if we didn't have our political representation numbers that are built into that index pulling us down.

Why are we ranked so low? I would argue that, given the majority of those who are ranked higher than us in Canada are using a more proportional system, a PR system or an MMP system, it's hard to question the conclusion that the electoral system is having an effect. Since Wilma Rule's influential 1987 paper on the impact of electoral systems on women's elections, study after study has shown that SMP systems, such as we have, typically result in lower numbers of women being elected to legislative bodies than do proportional systems.

We in Canada do quite well in comparison to other SMP systems, but we fall far behind MMP or PR systems. The reason for that is—I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but let me just say it, anyway—in a single-member system, parties have to choose only one candidate, and so they're going to choose the best candidate. Frequently, the best candidate looks like candidates they've had in the past, coming from the networks of people they have been drawn from in the past. Typically, those individuals have been men.

In the PR system it's easier to challenge a party's list, where you put together a list of however many candidates you need to represent your size of district, and it's much more difficult to have all the people at the top being men, or anglophone, or from a particular region. There's much more public pressure to make sure that those lists are representative, and that people are distributed in a representative way throughout the ranking of that list.

It's much more difficult to challenge individual riding choices, where a party has nominated individuals in one place after the next, after the next, who they think are the best. Ironically, the majority happen to be men: 70% to 80% of the parties select men. In today's society, that doesn't seem what you'd expect to happen.

Proportional systems tend to have greater central party control over who they put forward. It's much more difficult in our system, where individual decisions are being kept at the grassroots level, to encourage parties to seek out and nominate more women, minorities, under-represented groups. As a result, I would argue that real representational change is only likely to occur with significant electoral change: electoral reform to a PR or an MMP system. Simply changing the balloting structure to a preferential list, which is one thing that has been proposed both federally and provincially, but keeping that single-member option would do little to increase the number of women because you'd still have one person being put forward by the parties.

Having said this, I acknowledge that these systems present some challenges to that fifth principle of local representation. Canadians are very used to having a member of Parliament or an MLA to ask questions of and to seek support from. I think our members play a really important role in Canada being ombudspeople for their constituents. That's a really hard principle to move away from, so your task is going to be very challenging as you try to grapple with the disconnect and conflict between these different principles of representation versus local accountability.

However, I would suggest—and I think this is what is really important here—that there is a possible solution to this conflict. The most obvious is to provide parties with some carrots and sticks, some incentives and penalties, to encourage them to be more inclusive in seeking out a diverse range of candidates. This could easily be done through our current electoral rebate program that we have had in place for decades. As it stands now, candidates and parties recoup a significant percentage of their electoral expenses if they meet minimum thresholds of votes. This was put into place decades ago because we, as Canadians, believed that different voices should be participants in our electoral system and not just those who had deep pockets. That dramatically changed how parties engaged in election campaigns, opened up opportunities for new parties to become involved, and ensured new ideas could be incorporated into our political system.

I think it's important to note that by funding parties, we are in a sense supporting them, but we can also hold them accountable to the values that we hold important as Canadians. If equality and diversity are important to us as principles, we can use that rebate system as a way of enhancing those principles.

It's only, as a result, a small step further to argue that, if Canadians are really committed to ensuring the participation of all Canadians, and in particular female Canadians, more could be done to use these rebates as a way to encourage parties to nominate more women. Decisions would still be left with the parties, but it would be more likely for the party to nominate, go out and seek more women, if they could be guaranteed a higher rebate if they had female candidates. More importantly, it would be an even higher rebate if they were nominating them in winnable ridings.

One of the real challenges, I think, that we face now is that women are being nominated, not in equal numbers to men, and likewise with minorities, but they're not being nominated in the strong ridings, the ridings where they're likely to win. We just have to look at what happened here in New Brunswick in the last provincial election, where all the Conservative women lost their seats and all the Liberal women won their seats, and not one of the incumbent Liberal seats in that election, where someone had stepped down and resigned, was replaced with a woman. The strong seats were all replaced by men. The swing seats in both the Conservatives and the Liberals were nominating the women.

I would argue that here in New Brunswick, where we're at the back of the pack of the country with a 16% representation, we're not likely to see much change going forward if parties continue this way. There have to be incentives to nominate more women and nominate them in strong seats.

Similarly, parties could be penalized by having their rebates reduced if they don't meet a certain threshold.

These reforms would not result in significant changes to the electoral system. They wouldn't require major referendums to make changes with. They would be easily legislated, and they would have an impact on the way parties react and respond to the nomination processes. They could still choose not to if they didn't want to, but there would be incentives for them to do so.

The end effect would be enhancing representation while maintaining those other principles that you've outlined here as being the goals of this commission's tasks.

I'll leave it there.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

We'll start our round of questioning with Mr. DeCourcey, please, for five minutes.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank you very much for your testimony today.

I also want to thank all of the participants for being here this afternoon.

It's great to be in Fredericton with my committee colleagues. We've had a wonderful couple of weeks.

I will note that this is the first committee of the House of Commons to come to Fredericton since the Committee on the Status of Women came to Fredericton in 2010, appropriately enough. We're glad to be here.

I'll also note the presence today of MLA David Coon, and former MP Maurice Harquail, who've joined us here.

Professor Everitt, I'm sure that my colleagues beside me here will speak to the issue of women's representation in legislative bodies. I want to expand that a little bit further to talk about other minority groups, indigenous Canadians, persons living with disabilities, racialized minorities, and young people. Do you have any advice on how the electoral system can potentially privilege or disadvantage other groups of Canadians from having the opportunity to serve as elected representatives?

[Joanna Everitt]

I think they're disadvantaged in the same way women are. I spoke with some women, as an example, about the challenge in our electoral system, because it is the greatest imbalance. Fifty-one per cent of our population are women, and you see the greatest disproportionality in their elected numbers.

That's not to say that we don't have an imbalance with respect to visible minorities or indigenous Canadians or those with physical disabilities or other under-represented groups in legislative bodies. Focusing on women is easy, but it's possible to say that we should create a rebate structure that requires parties to look not just at the traditional norms but at, say, candidates currently under-represented within our political structure, or something like that, to encompass a wider group of individuals.

It's hard, and I wouldn't necessarily advocate saying that x per cent have to be this and x per cent have to be that, but there can be ways parties can be encouraged to be more inclusive in looking at new candidates.

This is a commission on electoral reform. There are issues with the electoral system, and as I said, if you really want to make a change, change big and go to a more proportional system. That is going to have an impact.

In my mind, however, parties are the real roadblock. They are the gatekeepers in getting individuals. If you ask me how you can change parties and what they do, I can tell you that part of it has to do with making some rules and regulations for parties. But that's not really what this commission is tasked to do, and parties are private organizations, so I hesitate to make those sorts of recommendations at this point.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Your testimony, though, corroborates testimony we heard on Tuesday in St. John's from Professor Bittner at Memorial University, who talked about the symbolic advantage of having a more representative legislative body in encouraging more Canadians to participate in the democratic process. Western democracies, right across the board, regardless of electoral system, are seeing a trend in the decline in voter turnout. My conversation with her focused on the difference, as well as the intersection, of both appearance representation and ideological representation. Her view was that as much as ideological representation is important as a substantial element of legislative bodies, the symbolic nature having someone you feel you look like in a legislature is important as well.

Ms. Ouellette, in your presentation you said that you had also thought about ways to increase the participation rate of minorities or unrepresented groups. Could you give the committee your thoughts on that?

[Lise Ouellette]

I'm going to talk about young people a bit, as their rate of participation in elections is declining precipitously. It is urgent that we intervene. I think that the voting age is an important factor. At 16, young people are still in high school. They have a lot of guidance and take civic studies courses. So we could as of high school involve those young people in the electoral process and help them to develop a sense of critical analysis as to the importance of the electoral vote and the positions of the parties.

It would be an important step to lower the voting age to 16. It would allow us to involve those young people. At this time, given the information tools they have and use a great deal, it would really be in our interest to lower the voting age.

As for minorities, I understood that you did not want to talk about the participation of women, but that you would leave that topic to other colleagues.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

I am going to let others talk about that. I don't have enough experience.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Lise Ouellette]

That's fine.

With respect to language minorities, I want to bring up Nova Scotia again. I think there should be flexibility in terms of the size of electoral districts. Other models can be considered to ensure that minorities are represented. For example, I referred to superimposed electoral maps.

At the time, we wanted to place greater emphasis on the representation of the first nations. However, we didn't manage to engage them. We didn't want to submit recommendations without the first nations being involved in the process. The recommendation instead was to sit down and hold a discussion with them.

I think certain options can ensure quality representation. However, there's no doubt the electoral quotient could easily be lower for the first nations.

We have options, but clearly we must innovate. When there's only one representative of the first nations at a large table, it's very intimidating and it doesn't encourage their participation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

[Lise Ouellette]

We need to find options that ensure quality representation for them and encourage their full participation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Ms. Ouellette.

Thank you, Mr. DeCourcey.

We'll continue with Mr. Richards.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thank you both for being here.

Professor Everitt, I certainly appreciate and commend you for the work that you're doing to try to encourage more women to be active in running for office, and hopefully gaining office. Hopefully I'll have a chance for some questions for you, but I want to start with Madame Ouellette.

In your opening remarks, you made mention of the change in viewpoint you had on referendums. I noticed that the commission here in New Brunswick made the following three recommendations. I'm going to read them because I want to ask you some questions related to them.

The first recommendation was:

That the government of New Brunswick take the steps necessary to hold a binding referendum no later than at the next provincial general election, to allow the people of New Brunswick to choose whether or not to adopt the Commission’s proposed regional mixed member proportional representation electoral system, in order that it be in place in time for the 2011 provincial general election.

The second recommendation was:

That the referendum be held under the rules and procedures recommended by the Commission and set out in detail in the policy framework for a New Brunswick Referendum Act contained in Appendix “K”.

Then the third:

That Elections New Brunswick initiate a comprehensive education and information campaign for New Brunswickers to allow voters to make an informed choice on the proposed question.

My questions relate to the second and third recommendations because if we were to decide to make sure that voters have an opportunity to have a say in this in a referendum—which I certainly hope we will—we would obviously want to make sure that we're setting proper, clear rules and parameters. The recommendation here indicates that the referendum will be held under the rules and procedures recommended by the commission.

Would you give me some comment on the rules and procedures that would be recommended? What would be important to us if we were to conduct a referendum to make sure that referendum was conducted in a fair manner?

I also saw in the report that there would be consultation on the wording of the question with the Leader of the Opposition and other leaders of political parties, and the question would then be tabled and debated in the legislature. Would you comment on the importance of those things in terms of the procedures and on the importance of an education campaign so that voters are well informed on the choices that they would have to make?

[Lise Ouellette]

You read the report. I read it some time ago. I looked at it quickly yesterday evening, but I think you're more familiar with it than I am now.

Regarding the referenda, the report warns us to be careful about using a referendum and to hold one only under certain circumstances, when no minority issues are at stake.

It has been a hot topic within the Commission on Legislative Democracy. Strong positions have been taken, and discussions have been held. Throughout the conversations within the commission, the warnings about the use of referenda have become increasingly significant.

Now, it's still possible—

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

Sorry, can I interrupt you? I only have so much time. I'm looking at the recommendation here. It seems to be pretty clear that it's saying there should be a referendum held, a binding referendum. My viewpoint is that we should be having one, and so I'll obviously be advocating that that should be happening. If that's to be done, if the committee would agree to that, I would be interested in any advice because it does indicate here that there were rules and procedures that were recommended as well as an education campaign. I wondered if you could provide me with some thoughts and advice on what those rules and procedure would look like and what an education campaign would look like in order to ensure that a referendum would be successful.

[Lise Ouellette]

Your question specifically concerns referenda. I'll answer by telling you what's going on with the recommendations made by the commission 12 years ago.

Some parts of the recommendations you read focused on limiting referenda, because we recognize the risks inherent to referenda. Take the current example of the Brexit. As soon as the question becomes the least bit complex, there's so much manipulation that misinformation is generated, either accidentally or on purpose. Education then becomes almost impossible. Why did the English population vote in favour of the Brexit? Was it really to leave Europe? Was it because Prime Minister Cameron's popularity was plummeting? Was it because of the migrant movement? In short, it's situational. I don't have the answer to these questions, and neither does anyone else.

That said, I think we must be aware of the risk. In this context, education is not a solution, because it's almost impossible. We must recognize the risks of referenda.

I'll give you an example from New Brunswick. A referendum vote was held in the 1990s. I think it concerned the voting age. I forget the question, but it wasn't emotionally charged and it was fairly neutral, so to speak. The vote was held, and a north-south-east line corresponding to the language communities was created. Afterward, everyone said that we needed to be careful with referenda and that they could have an absolutely enormous impact, even if the questions are innocuous.

Since no consensus was reached within the commission, we wanted to provide a framework to recognize the risk.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Banff—Airdrie, AB]

I'm not certain it really responded to the question I asked, but I appreciate your thoughts.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. Cullen.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses and the audience for being here, and also to the Maliseet people for allowing us to conduct our business here today.

My first question is for Ms. Ouellette. It relates to the last question asked by my conservative colleague regarding the referendum, which you consider a dangerous tool.

We're going through this now in Prince Edward Island, where a referendum will be held. In terms of knowledge and education, almost everyone says it's easy. The referendum is a very easy tool. It's a direct question, and it's truly democratic. If we educate people, there's no problem.

In this case, does the problem relate to the topic's complexity? The vote is not a matter of democracy. It's a matter of choosing a different system and determining the impact of each option. Maybe it's easier for liars to tell the population things that aren't true and it's harder for people to explain why something isn't true and describe the realities of the different options.

I have one more quick question. Is there resistance to change? Normally, people resist change if there's no culture of change. I'm very familiar with this practice, this system, when something is new.

Your commission recommended a referendum. Was it a good decision? What's your opinion now?

[Lise Ouellette]

I'll answer yes to all your questions.

Yes, it's a complex problem. However, there's also all the noise around a question. Even when we ask a question that seems simple, all sorts of issues are at play. I'll use the Brexit again as an example. It may be an exaggerated case, but it's an extremely blatant example. The question may be simple, but like it or not, given all the noise around the question, events can take unpredictable turns. We can't deal with these things through education or legislation, or by establishing regulations for the yes or no side. All the noise is significant and unpredictable in many cases.

Resistance to change is also a factor, but if it were the only factor, I could deal with it. It's a reality and something we need to deal with. However, all the noise around the question is another matter and it can't be controlled.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Exactly.

I am going to continue with Ms. Everitt for a moment.

I had not known this. I just learned yesterday that Swiss women didn't earn the right to vote until 1971. It was put to a referendum a number of times, in which men were voting. And I imagine, in Canada, in 1960 or 1921 for, first, women, if the question had been put to men whether women should vote or not, and then later if non-aboriginals were exclusively given the right to decide whether first nations people in this country could vote, I'm a hopeful person. I have great hope for human nature that in all cases we would have passed a referendum vote in favour of enfranchising others. Yet the Swiss are nice people and it took them into this generation in order to do that.

I want to talk about this. Canada ranks 64th right now in the world with regard to women in our Parliament, behind Afghanistan, Iraq, South Sudan, and other such notable democratic outposts. My question, more broadly, is in terms of representation not just of the diversity of Canada but also the will of the different regions. Madam Ouellette spoke of this, the regional expression. I assume it was the will of Atlantic Canadians to send 100% Liberal representation in the last federal election and everybody is—