Yes.
Evidence of meeting #43 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.
A video is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #43 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.
A video is available from Parliament.
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Oh, okay. Then the major barrier would be getting women nominated, because once they get nominated, they do, well, better.
9:40 a.m.
Advocacy Coordinator, Canadian Federation of University Women
Do you want me to answer? Can I say something?
9:40 a.m.
Advocacy Coordinator, Canadian Federation of University Women
I think we'd both like to talk, but I will give some generalities. I don't have the exact stats in front of me, but women do get elected slightly more often than men do, once they're nominated. It's the nomination process that really discriminates against women because of the majority system that we have. With the plurality system that we have, parties—and people who vote within parties, so party members—tend to want to elect somebody they think will appeal to the most voters, and that tends to end up being white men.
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Right. There's that built-in bias within the membership.
9:40 a.m.
Advocacy Coordinator, Canadian Federation of University Women
Yes. It's once they're nominated that women do quite well.
I think Sheila would like to say something, as well.
9:40 a.m.
Member, Canadian Federation of University Women
I would just like to address regionalism. In some areas, some parties have no hope of being elected at certain points of time, and first past the post definitely encourages regionalism. Even if you have women candidates, and I can think of many examples, if they're in a region where the party—
9:40 a.m.
Member, Canadian Federation of University Women
—is not popular, there's still no hope, because I know some excellent women who have not been voted in.
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
This is the two parts. If we want to get Canada...because we had this big election last year, a year ago yesterday. Many Canadians would perceive that with respect to women things changed dramatically, but the percentage of women in the House of Commons went up 1%, from 25% to 26%.
9:40 a.m.
Member, Canadian Federation of University Women
That's right. You have maybe more on the cabinet, but fewer in the committees—
9:40 a.m.
Member, Canadian Federation of University Women
—like the medically assisted death committee, I think, only had one woman.
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I'm in a state of confusion and mourning to hear the democratic reform minister say we're not just interested in getting women nominated. What you're telling us is that's the biggest barrier right now, plus the system in which we count. We know that proportionality helps women get elected once in.
We heard last night from people in New Zealand and the U.K. that under proportional systems those so-called “safe seats” or “no win seats”, depending on your point of view, diminished dramatically. Every party has to vie, and every party has a shot across the country, so it's no longer just nominating women to get your stats up.
I was looking at the statistics for how nominations went. Just in the last campaign my Conservative friends nominated 20% women, it was 28% from the Bloc, a cracking 31% from the Liberals, the Greens got up to 39%, and we did 43%. We have policies within our party to help women get nominated specifically for this.
Mr. Bozinoff or Mr. Schatten, I'm not sure who will answer this. One of the things you said in your survey was, “We have found electoral reform notoriously difficult to poll, because explaining each system adequately is challenging. We found, when the simple facts were presented, PR is favoured...because it sounds the most representative.”
What I'm confused by is the notion that you went on to explain the drawbacks, and then PR went down. Is that what you were saying in your report?
9:40 a.m.
Research Director, Forum Research Inc.
We asked if individuals could describe the different systems, and that's where PR came out on top with 63%, indicating that they felt comfortable describing what that type of system was, followed by first past the post at 54%. Then we asked which electoral system was best for Canada and which they preferred as their first choice, it was first past the post at 42%, followed by PR at 35%.
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Right. Did you explain the distortion effects under first past the post? Did you explain that women tend to get elected less under first past the post?
9:40 a.m.
Research Director, Forum Research Inc.
Yes. The first section we talked about was describing these systems and then which system Canada had. That was unprompted. There were no descriptions on what these systems are. We were just trying to get a perception of knowledge on these. When we went into preference on these systems, we gave a very short, basic summary description of what these were. You can't really give a knowledge transfer, or a civics lesson, when conducting a survey. The whole survey results indicate that there is a knowledge gap for Canadians.
9:40 a.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
The idea is that with that knowledge gap over something so fundamental that affects people's lives, this is something that we have to battle with. Everybody says education's important.
We would say something, though, like a trade deal affects everybody's life, such as TPP or CETA. I would be curious if we went into the field and said to Canadians, “Tell us about CETA. Tell us what TPP is going to mean for food security, or energy security, or drugs, or pharmaceuticals”. Things affect people's lives that we do here every day.
Yesterday, one of the presenters from New Zealand said that you don't contract out the hard decisions in politics. We get elected to do things. Some of them are hard and some of them are difficult. I'm surprised, because someone's been kicking around.... What was the percentage of awareness that this is happening at all?
9:45 a.m.
Research Director, Forum Research Inc.
About half of Canadians were aware this committee existed.
9:45 a.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Wow. I'd love to put us up against the transport committee right now or the agriculture committee. I'm impressed. That's wonderful news.
9:45 a.m.
Liberal
