Electoral Reform Committee on Oct. 20th, 2016

[Madeleine Webb]

Thank you for your question. That's a great question because I think it's important for us to say we do not support proportional representation only for the reason that it can help women get elected.

I think the most important part of PR is that we think Canadians should go to the ballot box expecting their vote is going to translate into representation. Right now that is not the case. A huge percentage of votes get wasted under a plurality system. I think the biggest reason to move for change is that so many votes don't count right now.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

From all the different presentations, I think Professor Cross has given us some food for thought. That definitely is one of the reasons that comes up most often. Say I've been voting for a party, and they only have a couple of seats. I'm a minority among Canadians in my political view, and I want my minority view to be reflected in the House of Commons. However, we don't think about all the collateral changes and what takes effect after going to a PR system.

Professor Cross, you have given some testimony as to the different changes we could potentially see under different systems. Do you feel Canadians' views would be more reflected in a PR system than they are currently? Would people be able to check off at the ballot box and say this is how I feel, this is my political view, and then expect that to translate into policy in the future? Or do you feel the current system whereby parties go in with a clear mandate, and parties either win and form government, or they don't form government. We don't have a tradition of coalitions here in Canada yet. PR systems may create that.

We've had a lot of testimony about how it may create a co-operative environment. Collaboration could be a good thing, but we've also had testimony to say collaboration could end up causing a lot of parties at times to compromise what they value the most. We've had testimony in Nunavut recently where they have a consensus form of government, saying they don't get a lot done. They can't push through a mandate, and we're seeing frustration at the territorial level.

Could you comment a little on what you get as a result?

[Prof. William Cross]

There's a lot there.

I think what you're highlighting is that there are competing principles. You need to prioritize what it is you want to accomplish through an electoral system. No system is best, no system is perfect, and no system can accomplish all of these different legitimate objectives of democracy that you point to.

As to the unexpected implications, there are two things I'm not sure the committee has really thought about but I think would be worth putting on the table. First, there is the whole question of executive federalism in Canada and how that works. If we were to move to a system of proportional representation of some sort at the federal level that resulted in coalition governments, and if the rest of the premiers were still elected under first past the post and thus most had majority governments, when they meet, does the Prime Minister or a first minister of health or whatever, does she have the power to negotiate on behalf of her government, or does she have to come back and make sure that she maintains the support of the coalition partners and other parties? I think of what happened with the Meech Lake Accord, which was the first time that legislatures were brought into the constitutional process. After the first ministers came to agreement, it had to be approved by the legislatures, and that's where it fell apart. In respect of federal-provincial negations, this is something that has to be thought through.

Second, if I knew nothing about Canada and you told me about this great country and the demographics and the like and I had lived from coast to coast, I would say, “It doesn't make sense. It's not going to last. Good luck, folks. The centrifugal forces are too great.” Yet, we're about to celebrate the 150th birthday of a country that works and is the envy of people around the world. I think this is in part because we have a tradition of large, brokerage, accommodative parties. If a party wants to get to government, it knows it has to reach out to a lot of Canadians and find the broad centre. This was the incentive for the Progressive Conservatives and the Alliance to merge into a single party.

Under different systems, that incentive wouldn't have been there. They could have continued to be separate parties. Maybe that would have been a good thing or a bad thing. That's sort of a normative judgment, but it has profound implications on the way our democracy works. I think it's so important that we consider what would happen under different systems in the context of Canada, a highly diverse federal system.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

We had a witness testify before this committee who gave a great analogy, which our committee members talked about a little bit. It was about an assignment he did at school. He went in to try to teach PR to the students, and he used a method of ordering pizza. The ballot had different pizzas on it. As a result, under a PR system, everyone got the pizza they wanted. They had some pepperoni and cheese; they had some vegetarian; they had something else.

As other witnesses like yourself have appeared, it seems to me that not everyone in the end would get what they wanted, because that pizza in fact wouldn't be one pepperoni pizza, one vegetarian pizza. You'd have a pizza with anchovies on it, and you'd have a pizza with a mix of a whole bunch of things in the government at the end. Does everyone essentially get exactly what they want, or does everybody get a mismatch of pizza that they're allergic to at the end of the day? I don't know, but it was an interesting analogy.

Do I have—?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

No, we're really done now.

There's no time to answer the pizza question, unfortunately.

We'll go to Mr. Boulerice.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I must admit to everyone that this is making me hungry.

I would like to thank the witnesses for being here this morning. I would also like to thank everyone in the room. It's rather unusual, and I am very happy that you are here to listen to our discussions. Welcome.

Mr. Cross, we've had a first-past-the-post system for almost 150 years. We have never known anything else. Yet most other western democracies have a proportional voting system, either mixed member or single transferable vote.

In your opinion, what type of cultural change would a proportional voting system create within the Canadian confederation, particularly during government debates and decision-making?

[Prof. William Cross]

When I look at our system, beyond gender representation, which I think is a huge issue, and perhaps the representation of other minority groups that are currently disadvantaged and under-represented in our Parliament, when I look over time, I think one of the most troubling things is when we have parliamentary caucuses, particularly on the government side, that don't have representation from particular regions of the country. The Conservative government of Mr. Clark had essentially no one from Quebec, no voices at the cabinet table unless you went through the gymnastics of appointing someone to the Senate. I think that's highly troubling with our system.

When I think about possible alternatives, there is what is sometimes called a parallel system or a non-compensatory system whereby you would have another hundred MPs who would be elected from the regions on some kind of party list, so if the Liberals got 10% of the votes in Alberta, they'd get a few MPs. It wouldn't change things dramatically because it wouldn't be compensatory in the sense that if you did that, all the parties would get a share of those seats and you could still get a majority government. It likely wouldn't affect who ultimately would govern and you could still have a single-party majority government.

To my mind, that's one of the real shortcomings of our system, but of course, it has to be balanced against other things.

It was mentioned earlier that one of the disadvantages of our system is that it favours regional parties. I'm not sure this is a disadvantage. I'm not sure it's at all a bad thing. When there was western alienation in the 1980s and 1990s, our system allowed the Reform Party to have some success and for that voice to be heard inside our Parliament. I'm not sure it's a bad thing if 40% of Quebeckers who are frustrated with this fragile system want to vote for the Bloc Québécois. Our system gives them a voice and the ability to do that.

First past the post isn't the only system that would allow that. Others might as well. People will often point to that as a negative of our system. I'm not quite clear this is the case.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Excellent. That's actually a very good point.

Yesterday, Professor Byron Weber Becker showed us some modelling and extrapolations using figures from the last election. It was very interesting. He said that currently in Canada, a political party that obtains 40% of the vote can get between 0 and 338 MPs. In other words, having obtained 40% of the vote, a party may as well not have any elected MPs, should the opponent obtain 50% or 60% of the vote, winning in all the ridings.

Don't you find that there is the possibility for a clear distortion that means that the will of the electorate may be completely flouted, given that the voting system does not translate the percentage of votes into seats?

[Prof. William Cross]

Yes, and it's not completely hypothetical. In New Brunswick when Frank McKenna won with 60% of the vote, Mr. Hatfield got 40% and no seats in the legislature.

On the other hand, at the federal level and with the regionalization of our system, a party's not going to win 40% of the vote and get zero seats.

I would also caution that it's very dangerous to take past election results and extrapolate them to expose them to some other system because the cast of players would be different, and everybody responds to incentives: voters, parties, interest groups. I think that's a bit of a dangerous game to play, but yes of course, when you get those incredibly lopsided results that don't reflect the popular vote, that is a shortcoming of our system. That was very important in the New Brunswick case that Ms. May mentioned, but also in Prince Edward Island where they had a series of elections in the nineties that returned one or two opposition members.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Ms. Webb, in a previous response, you said that in our current system—

so many votes don't count.

What do you mean exactly? I have some idea, but I would like to hear you expand on it a little more.

[Madeleine Webb]

When I go to the ballot box and vote for my party but that's not the party that 40% of my constituency votes for, if they win in my constituency with that 40% because the 60% is split among a bunch of other parties, then my vote doesn't result in any representation at all. It's just gone. My vote only counts if I decide to vote strategically, as many people did in the last election, and to vote for a party that I think is going to win because it kind of represents my beliefs and I think that's how most of the people in my constituency are going to vote.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Your time is almost up, Mr. Boulerice.

We will now continue with Mr. Deltell.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the House of Commons.

I would also like to take this opportunity to greet the student groupwith us today. Welcome. You are seeing democracy in action, and that's what is more interesting.

I also offer my greetings to the people who are with us and who, am I to understand, are no longer in school.

Mr. Chair, I want to take a moment to wish a happy anniversary to everyone, although I'm one day late. A year ago, some of us were re-elected, while others were elected federally for the first time, as is my case.

Our committee has illustrated the very principle of democracy these past few months. We have held over forty meetings. We have travelled from coast to coast. We have met with thousands of Canadians. Every MP, in his or her way, has also held consultations. In fact, many have held meetings with constituents.

As for the Conservatives, many of our members have sent a backgrounder to the public, together with a reply coupon, and 81,000 people gave their opinion. The choice is clear: 91% of people who wrote to us demanded a referendum.

Having said that, each party adopted its own approach, be it the NDP, the Green Party, the Bloc Québécois or the Liberal Party.

In short, for several months, parliamentarians have been wondering about the future of the electoral system. As you know, from our side, we would like a referendum, if by chance there is electoral change. We are open to the discussion, and we feel that, ultimately, it is up to the public to decide.

My question is for you, Mr. Bozinoff and Mr. Schatten, from Forum Research Inc.

You work hard to know where people stand on those issues, and you have been working on that for many years.

Our party and every party has talked a lot about all the facts. We have had plenty of meetings from coast to coast, and thousands of people were involved in our process. Have you seen a change in the minds of people in the last months or years about the electoral system?

[William Schatten]

We would have to compare. That's something of interest. We would have to look at doing a time series analysis of some of our polls. That's not something that we had done in preparation for this; however, as you have pointed out, awareness of your committee has grown over the past few months. There has been a positive impact in terms of Canadians being aware that there is a dialogue taking place, but as our data alludes to, there's still significant work that would need to be done in terms of the knowledge of the issues and making sure that Canadians are informed about what the issues are regarding electoral reform.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Have you seen any change in the population's mood?

[William Schatten]

That's something we could check and then get back to you on. As I said, we've done several surveys on this and we're going to continue polling this issue. We poll federally every single month, so in the next release we'll add some time series analysis. We'll do some trending charts on questions that have overlapped in all of our polls.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

If we're looking at the last years, have you seen any movement of people saying that we need new things or a new electoral system, or has it been exactly the same thing for many years? Are there a lot of people who would like to make some changes? Are there a lot of people who don't want to make any changes? Have you seen any movement on that in the last years?

[Lorne Bozinoff]

Anecdotally, qualitatively, we saw a populist mayor in the Toronto mayoral election five or six years ago, so I think there is an interest in the 1% versus the 99%, populism, accountability, the average guy getting his say, and so forth.

We're seeing that now in the U.S. It's the same kind of populist thing. I think there is an interest in accountability and everyone having their fair influence in society.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Okay.

As you know, yesterday our Prime Minister, the one who calls the shots for this committee, made a statement. I will quote it in French because he said it in a French newspaper and I don't want to interpret what he has said. I'm sure that these people here are very professional and I hear they do a good job, as they have always done. What the Prime Minister said in Le Devoir, which is one of the most prestigious newspapers in Canada, is:

Under Mr. [Stephen] Harper, there were so many people unhappy with the government and its approach that people were saying, “It takes electoral reform to avoid having a government we don't like.” But under the current system, they now have a government they are more satisfied with. And the motivation to want to change the electoral system isn't as strong….

Is it true?

[William Schatten]

We don't have exclusive data. I can't recall if we polled specifically on desire for electoral reform leading up to the federal election. That's something we can go back to. We definitely polled extensively prior to the last federal election.

Lorne, do you recall if that was a question we ever asked, on any of those leading-up polls?

[Lorne Bozinoff]

No.

I think it's fair to say, though, that compared to a year ago—how to say this—the poll rating of the current Prime Minister is much higher than that of the previous prime minister by far. There is some feeling that people are happier with their government, and it's reflected in the approval ratings we're seeing for the current Prime Minister versus the previous prime minister. There's no comparison. The approval rating is much higher with the current Prime Minister.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

It's quite interesting to look at. You are professionals on these issues. You can identify year after year if people are moving towards a new electoral system.

What we saw yesterday is not good for democracy, because he is the one calling the shots. At the end of the day he is the one who will decide, because he controls the executive and he controls the House of Commons, the legislature. I can tell you that if at the end of the day he decides to call a referendum on the current system and the other options, I'll say, “All right!” I'm not quite sure he's there. It's very disappointing for those who thought that we were in the process of having a real reflection of that, based on principle and not based on a political agenda. That's exactly what he has done.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

We'll go now to Mr. DeCourcey.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all our presenters for the enlightening testimony today.

I also want to thank Professor Paul Thomas for bringing his class here. Paul and I both had the pleasure a decade ago of working with Andy Scott, the former member of Parliament for Fredericton. I know the experience Paul had, as well as my own, was foundational in leading us on the paths we're each on today.

To your students I say, soak in what your professor has to offer because it certainly comes from a lot of in-depth knowledge of the political system and our political culture.

Speaking of political culture, Professor Cross, your testimony has reminded me of the fantastic testimony we received from Maryantonett Flumian, someone with a long and distinguished career in the public service, who spoke about an electoral system as one part of a larger ecosystem that includes a constitution that has shaped the country; a charter that defends our rights and freedoms; a Supreme Court; a Senate; the public; the provinces, provincial governments, and the responsibility bestowed upon them; the public service; our international relations; and the media. These are all factors within the ecosystem that helps shape the political culture that leads us to this conversation today. We need to consider these factors in deciding where we go from here.

When we ask Canadians in a poll if they think we should change the electoral system, do you think that they're thinking about the magnitude of issues, actors, and pieces that will inevitably influence or be influenced by a change?

[Prof. William Cross]

At this stage, the obvious answer is no. Most Canadians haven't thought through the issue. I'm not sure that my answer would be the same if we engaged in a year-long consultation, information, and education process with Canadians.

In terms of that, I think the New Zealand example, where there were two referendums a year apart, is very important. The first one didn't determine the issue but it raised consciousness, and people then said, “Oh, this is something I need to pay attention to.” It was a good education process. I think that by the second referendum New Zealanders did understand what they were voting on. That's evidenced by the fact that two decades later, when they had another referendum, a solid majority reaffirmed their earlier decision after having lived with MMP for a couple of decades.