Electoral Reform Committee on Oct. 20th, 2016

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for being here this morning.

I'd like to thank you all for your participation. To the class that's here from Carleton University, thank you for being here this morning. We have some future MPs in the room, I'm pretty sure.

My first question will be for Mr. Bozinoff.

I read with great interest your submission regarding the recent poll you did. It was an interesting question you asked, whether Canadians could describe different forms of electoral systems. Of course, a good majority claimed they could. When prompted to explain the current system, very few were able to, which, to me, is indicative of the fact that there is not a lot of substantive knowledge about what we are trying to achieve, in terms of what system we currently have in place, what problem we are trying to address, and what some possible solutions could be.

What would you say would be a requirement in order for us to pursue changing the electoral system, given the fact that those who claim to be very aware are not as aware as we would hope them to be? Can you elaborate?

[Lorne Bozinoff]

We need to really think about the complexity of some of these ideas. In the other testimony today, some of those systems sound extremely complicated to me. We may have the simplest system right now, and people are unaware of a lot of the details of that. I made opening comments about making sure there is consensus and collaboration, and part of that is based on the assumption that the public knows what we are talking about, but they really don't know, yet, exactly what is being discussed. They are very unaware of the different systems, as our survey data has suggested.

You can ask people a question and they'll give you an answer, but you are never sure that they actually understand what you are asking them. We have to be very careful when we see survey results and questions about preferences. Do they even know what they are talking about? Right now, I don't think the public is there. I am not sure it's a good thing to come forward with a recommendation and ask the public for input, when the public does not understand what it is providing input on. That's just a warning. This is a kind of beltway issue to most people, to use a U.S. term. It's a Hill issue. It hasn't really resonated with the general population.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you.

On that note, you just mentioned that our current system is probably the simplest one to understand. In a Broadbent report on the top five goals of a voting system, 55% said it was important that the ballot be simple and easy to understand. The issue of simplicity is one of our guiding principles. I thank you for that.

I'll now move on to Professor Cross.

You brought forward a wealth of information that we hadn't heard before. I really appreciate your participation this morning.

One thing you mentioned was that under an MMP system, there is a shift from ridings to a more regional focus. At the local level, you are a citizen, and you have specific issues that you want your member of Parliament to address. You want to make sure that your representative is focused on local issues—which is an issue in every campaign—but who actually represents you could be decided somewhere else.

Say you are in Longueuil–Charles-LeMoyne, my riding, and you think the most important thing is social housing. The party that you want in is going to focus on that, but because of the national vote, that gets changed. How would you feel, as a local citizen, when decisions regarding who is going to represent you can be made at a national rather than a local level? Can you elaborate, please?

[Prof. William Cross]

We're using New Zealand as an example of MMP, and of course, it's important to acknowledge that there are many variants. When we talk about an electoral system, the details really do matter.

Local voters have two votes, right? They get to vote for the person they want to be their local MP and for the party they want to govern, separately, and we see that in many cases they split those votes. Using the example of Auckland Central, a downtown Auckland riding, in the last election Labour received 44% of the MP vote, the electorate vote. They lost in a very close race to a National incumbent, but they only received 22% of the party vote. This is really important, because it's the party vote share that determines how many seats they end up with in the legislature, not the electorate vote.

From the party's perspective, they want to try to maximize the party vote, but you can imagine that the local candidates and the local members in Auckland Central and other places, especially if they're incumbents, want resources to get them re-elected to be the local electorate MP. It has created real tension in the party. That's why they've just moved—it'll be used in the next election for the first time—to these sort of regional hubs, where they hope to put a lot more resources and emphasis not on the local electorate but sort of regionally, to try to get people to vote for the party to maximize their share of the vote on that part of the ballot.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Madam Webb, thank you for being here.

Last night we actually had a vote in the House on having parties receive reimbursements depending on how many women are on the ballot and so on. I think it's incredibly important that we have more women representatives in Parliament. I'm delighted that this side of the table has two women sitting at this committee.

The majority of us on this side actually abstained from that vote last night, because we wanted to make sure that this committee could do the work it is doing to look at ways to get more women to run. I think the nomination process absolutely needs to be revamped.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much, Ms. Romanado.

Mr. Reid.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I wanted to start by directing some questions to the representatives of Forum Research, Dr. Bozinoff and Mr. Schatten.

The first question I have is whether you have posted the results of this. It sounds like this is a new poll and these are new results you're giving to us. Have they been posted on your website?

[William Schatten]

Yes, I believe they have. If not, then they will be this evening.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you.

You went through a series of questions you asked and gave the answers to them. In July, you posted on your website a poll you had done that asked, “Do you agree or disagree Canada should have a national referendum on electoral reform before any changes are made to the way we elect our MPs?”

Did you replicate that question this time around?

[William Schatten]

That wasn't included in the most recent poll, no.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Okay.

In that poll, you broke it down, as you well know, as this is your poll. You said that 65% of Canadians felt that there should be a referendum. Broken down by party, a majority in every party favoured it: 79% of Conservative supporters; 56% of Liberals; 75% of New Democrats; 63% of Greens; and 74% of Bloc supporters.

That indicates to some degree a consensus on that question. I won't ask you about that further, but I would ask whether you are finding that there is cross-party consensus on the other questions you're asking. That is to say, are we divided in a partisan manner among parties in the way we treat the importance of the issue, or is there a general consensus, as there appears to be, on this matter?

[William Schatten]

There are some nuances in different elements of this topic. For example, we asked a series of important issue questions on the most recent poll. Electoral reform was on there. The economy was on there, and marijuana legalization and a few others. There were some nuances in terms of how those were ranked that divided on party lines. I sort of alluded to that previously.

The importance of electoral reform is fairly high across the board. However, it's much higher for the NDP than it is for the Conservatives. The Liberals and the Greens fell somewhere in the middle, but that's just on importance. In terms of whether Canada should change its electoral system, across the board, regardless of party, there's pretty strong support for that. About half of Canadians felt that the system should be changed.

In terms of issue importance, there are some nuances, but in terms of whether it should be changed, there's consistency and agreement across the board.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

When you say that people give high importance to electoral reform, it sounds as if what you're saying is that they would give electoral reform a high place on the policy agenda above some of the other things the government could be directing its attention to. Is that what you mean when you say that?

[William Schatten]

Yes. I don't have the full table in front of me right now, but the economy was the highest across the board. The average score was eight out of nine. Electoral reform fell somewhere in the middle. The other ones were—these are averages right now—climate change at 6.8; relations with Canada's first nations, 6.4; electoral reform, 5.5; Syrian refugees, 5.3; and marijuana legalization, 5.0. All of these are relatively high.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Okay.

There's a different way in which the electoral system would be seen as being important by people. I wanted to run through an impressionistic view I've had of public opinion, based on our hearings, reading your polls and the polls of other firms, and the consultations we've been engaged in. I want to see if you think, based on the data you have available to you, whether I'm potentially getting close to the mark or missing the mark.

It seems to me, first of all, that Canadians as a whole, both those who think electoral reform is a good idea and those who think it's a bad idea, those who would rank it high and those who would rank it low, all of them regard the electoral system as being of foundational importance, effectively part of the Constitution in the sense that the British refer to the Constitution as a foundational part of the system, whether it has protection under our amending formula or not. Second, there is not an actual majority in favour of change. There's a wide division. Third, among those who do want change, proportionality is strongly favoured over non-proportional options. Effectively, those who want change want proportional representation, but within that subset of the population, there is no strong preference for one or another of the proportional models.

Does that sound roughly like an accurate view of where Canadians are, from what you can see?

[William Schatten]

Yes. We didn't ask which system Canada should change to. We asked, in their view, which system is best for Canada? When we phrased the question that way, first past the post is the most popular, with 42%; proportional representation follows, at 35%; and as I said, ranked ballot, at 23%. Asking which system they thought was best for Canada, the majority felt first past the post was best. When you ask which system Canada should change to, which we didn't in the most recent one, it's possible that a PR system comes out as the most favourable alternative. That could be true.

With regard to your other points, this issue is fairly high in importance.

In terms of Canada changing its electoral system, it's not the majority. It's 48%, about half of Canadians. A third disagree that it should change, and about a fifth are in the middle somewhere. I'm unsure. I don't have an opinion.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

We'll move to Mr. Cullen now.

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

Thank you very much.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here, especially with the pollsters here. This is like catnip for politicians. You know that. We want to dive in and challenge.

I have a few questions for you, but I want to start with Ms. Webb for a moment.

I was just looking through some stats and some quotes. Just this week the minister was asked about an effort to get more women nominated. She said that in the House they're not interested in just having more women run. They want more women winning. I found that statement confusing.

You said in your testimony that there's no evidence that when women get nominated that there's inherent sexism, that the voters are not electing them to office. Did I get that right?

[Madeleine Webb]

Yes.

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

Okay. Canada is ranked 64th right now in the world, behind—

[Madeleine Webb]

Yes.

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

—Afghanistan and Iraq and South Sudan and other great democracies. The notion then would be, if we know that once women get nominated they do as well as anybody else—

[Madeleine Webb]

They do better.

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

They do better...?