Electoral Reform Committee on Oct. 20th, 2016

[Francis Graves]

That's an excellent question, and I can walk you through, if you want, how we presented the questions. We presented them in a couple of different ways.

Our experience is that the public's level of fluency about these types of issues is relatively low. They are interested, but they don't understand all the plumbing and dynamics, nor are they that concerned with that. That's why I tried to translate this back to questions of ultimate principles and the idea that people were seeking equality or fairness or legitimacy.

By the way, our online approach is quite different from the other ones in the sense that we've actually called every one of those people, using random selection, and we recruited them to do the polls. So everybody has an equal probability of appearing in this. We often do a telephone hybrid to deal with the roughly 15% who still don't want to do things online, but it is still representative of the entire population.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

How many people were in the sample collection?

[Francis Graves]

There were 1,600.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

So it was bigger than our last one.

[Francis Graves]

One of the questions was a pretty simple one: under Canada's first-past-the-post system, Canada is divided into 338 ridings and in every riding the candidate who wins the most votes wins the right to represent their riding in the House of Commons, regardless of whether they have received a majority of votes. That's the first-past-the-post description.

An alternative system is called proportional representation, where parties share seats in the House of Commons, reflecting the percentage of votes they received. For example, if a party wins 40% of the vote, it will receive roughly 40% of the seats.

The final one was another alternative called preferential voting, where the voters ranked their preferences instead of voting for a single party. One by one, the least popular candidates are dropped and the votes are redistributed to other candidates based on those preferences. A candidate wins when they may have obtained more than half the votes.

I don't think we have time, but we had a much more detailed presentation that presented what we consider to be some of the major pros and cons out there. For example, in describing first past the post, we would've had a more detailed description. We would have said that the first-past-the-post system has the advantage of being easy to understand. It makes it easier for a party to win a majority of seats and govern on the basis of its platform, rather than having to form a coalition government with other parties. It also provides clear, local representation. The cons are that it doesn't require a majority of the votes to win a majority of the seats.

Both the Trudeau majority in 2015 and the Harper majority in 2011 won with about 40% of the vote. In a multi-party system, there may be an imbalance in the main options. For example, the Conservative vote may split across the Progressive Conservative and Reform parties. Today the progressive vote splits across...and so on.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll have to go to Mr. Aldag now.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Yes, I'm out of time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Go ahead, Mr. Aldag.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

That's fine, because I was actually going to go there. You're well into where I wanted to begin my questioning, so you can tell me if there's any more. When you outline at the high level that first round of questions about whether you want to see 40% of seats assigned to 40% of the votes, it sounds very nice until you get to the next level of discussion on the pros and cons. Are there any other examples that you have, examples that you needed a minute or so to finish responding to?

I was fascinated with the results you were giving, and I was trying to figure out how that was presented. We heard from Forum Research this morning, and the level of misunderstanding was really quite striking. People couldn't identify what the existing system was, yet they wanted to get rid of it. Are there any other bits of information you wanted to give, or does that give us a sample of how—?

[Francis Graves]

Since I've already walked through the example of the difference between the more reflected and the top-of-mind approach, the simpler approach that we use, I would point out that we did do a random controlled assignment experiment, where half the respondents actually received one version, and the other half....

There were some differences. The general ranking remained relatively the same, proportional representation was still on top, but the disadvantage that the first-past-the-post system had was a lesson somewhat, when people were presented with this particular argument about pros and cons. I think it reflects some of the difficulty of moving from the elegant simplicity of half the votes, half the seats, to the more complex questions about do you have local representation, and is this going to...?

By the way, on that question that we had in here, I would have actually liked to probe this a bit more. We are going to return to this sample representatively and give them a ballot and some more information with the results of this first survey. However, one thing I would like to point out is that we have extensive polling showing that the issue of coalition governments is not something that is seen as scary or dangerous by most Canadians. In fact, they're at least as warm to that idea as single-party solutions. That's quite a distinct change. It may be the case that as we move into a more pluralistic, complex society, the ability to solve all of this with a single party is not as evident. I just want to stress that it is, I think, a sea change change in the way the citizenry looks at the issues of coalitions, which historically was that they're dangerous and they can't work well. They really don't feel that way today.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Okay.

We had a really good example this morning that I hadn't even thought of about small parties actually influencing the election of the leadership of the other parties. I thought, wow, that's really interesting; are Canadians ready for that? Anyway, I won't get into that, but you get all these other kinds of implications that play out and I think it's a discussion that, as Canadians, we need to have as to how far we can go.

That leads me to my next piece that I found really interesting. In some of your comments, it was this idea of there being no need for undue haste, and I'd written down “no need for recklessness or speed.” So it's a question of incrementalism. Do you get a sense from the polling that you've done about, as my seatmate here likes to talk about, how quickly do we rip off the Band-Aid and go full throttle, exactly, or to throw in sound effects, snap, crackle, pop? How fast do we go with this? Are Canadians ready to throw it all out and start again? How do we get this right on bringing it in?

[Francis Graves]

No, they're not. As I said, Canadians tell us, to the tune of 51%, that they think we have the best democracy in the world. So it's not like they're saying to throw everything out, holus-bolus. On the other hand, though, they do say there are some parts of this that they really don't think are working as well as they could in terms of those principles of equality, fairness, and legitimacy.

I think the timing is that more people, by a significant margin, say we should do some things now. I mean, let's be blunt; we've been talking about this for a hundred years in Parliament and some of the problems still persist. They may be less aggravated right now for reasons that may or may not persist, but I think the public are ready and have given us some guidance as to what a citizen-built prescription for improving the health of the democracy would look like, recognizing that the fundamental system we have is something that still enjoys institutional legitimacy.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I'll leave it there.

In the time remaining, I'd like to turn to the other panellists who brought a bit of a different perspective than we got from the poll. It's a line of questioning that I had explored a bit this morning and I'd like to get your thoughts here.

When we look at disincentives or incentives for parties to change their behaviour, on nominations as an example, how do they get more women, a real basic part of our democratic process is that it's very grassroots. The political parties are able to set their rules and they implement them. That's what feeds this whole system. I'd like your thoughts about how much you think you would like to see us as parliamentarians, as legislators, imposing our legislative will on Canadians, on those political grassroots. If we're saying as with the bill from yesterday that there will be financial penalties if you don't achieve 50% women in your nominations, that starts taking away some real ability of the grassroots to run their nomination processes.

Do you have any comments to offer about how hands-off versus hands-on we need to be as government compared to political grassroots in this country?

[Kelly Carmichael]

I think the government is doing a great job listening to Canadians—and that is what you need to do first—but after you've received the information back from Canadians, I think some leadership is needed to create an evidence-based decision and go out and justify to Canadians why you are doing that. I think it's a dialogue.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Is there anything else, or can I move to Ms. Decter?

[Kelly Carmichael]

Go ahead.

[Ann Decter]

I would agree on the issue of leadership. I think it's good for the government to think about where the country needs to get to.

Also, you are talking about grassroots as if barriers and prejudices don't manifest at the community level. I think they do, so some encouragement to act differently is a good thing. Setting a standard—“This is a benefit you can get if you meet this affirmative action level”—is good.

The federal public service is a great employer of women, and it's because these kinds of affirmative action programs happen there. I think you can show some leadership, and people will respond.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thanks.

Mr. Richards, go ahead.

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

I have all kinds of questions here, but we'll do what we can.

The first thing I'll say is to my friends at Fair Vote Canada. I am looking at the package we have in front of us, and I have to confess that, even after the questions that have been asked by Mr. Reid and others, I'm still a little confused. I appreciate that you are going to provide us a link, and I'll have a look at that. If there is a little time at the end, maybe I'll ask you some things to try to get some clarity, but if not, I can do it that way, and I know how to find you if I have further questions. I'll come back to that if there is time.

I want to start with a question for either of you from Fair Vote Canada, whoever would like to answer.

It might not be a very smart assumption to make, based on some of the comments the Prime Minister has made in the last 24 hours or based on his record of keeping promises, but let's assume that he is going to keep the promise and that there is going to be some kind of change. Is there a type of change that you would see as a negative change?

In other words, would any change be positive, in terms of a system, or are there systems that you would see as a negative change, something that you wouldn't want to see supported?

[Kelly Carmichael]

Our mandate from our supporters is voter equality. People want equal, effective votes, so we support proportional representation.

On the other side, just another shift to a majoritarian system would not be a great idea: You still leave half of the electorate unrepresented; you still have problems with false majority governments; and you have exactly the same problems that you have with first past the post.

We support proportional representation. We put three systems on the table for you to look at, which we've worked very hard on and which we think are very proportional. They are based on a lot of feedback that we get from Canadians.

There are some decisions and trade-offs to be made. How big are ridings going to get? Fair Vote Canada believes in local representation. We think that all candidates should face the voters. There are some nuances within the system that we feel very strongly about.

[Réal Lavergne]

I'd like to add one thing on the other majoritarian system, the alternative vote. It worries me tremendously, because what that system does is create pressure towards a two-party system. As you move towards a two-party system, getting new reforms gets even harder, because the two parties that are dominant have vested interests against reform. I think that's what we have in Australia, where they have that system. For that reason—it's kind of a political-economic argument—I think it's worse. There is more risk.

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

Along the same lines, I saw a report today from the Fraser Institute. I want to read a one- or two-sentence clip from it and see if you agree with this assessment. It says,

The AV system fails to address any of the five values the government seeks to address in its electoral reform initiative, and, in fact, it would create a new problem: our future elections would be less competitive.

Is that a statement you would generally agree with?

[Réal Lavergne]

Yes.

[Kelly Carmichael]

Certainly on some points of effectiveness.... If you are still leaving half the electorate unrepresented, you are not hitting that bar on effectiveness.

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

Thanks.

I'll come back if we have time.

Ms. Decter, I don't know if it's obvious, but I would hope it's obvious, everyone in this room I think can agree that the goal you've expressed is important, which is to see more women serve in our Parliament, our legislatures, and elsewhere. It's a goal I think we all would agree with, and one we should all be doing everything we can to encourage.

The one concern I have with regard to the idea of incentivizing parties or punishing them based on the idea of a quota is the idea of democracy within the parties themselves. At some point when you're talking about a certain number of male or female candidates needing to be chosen, then you get to a point somewhere along the way when you're telling a riding they must choose a candidate who's male or who's female, whatever it might be. My concern is we're then interfering a bit with the internal workings of the party by these carrot-and-stick approaches.

Could you make some other suggestions that would help to provide encouragement that wouldn't require that sort of incentive or punishment approach in a nomination process, things we could do to help encourage greater participation by females in both nomination processes and elections?