Evidence of meeting #44 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 ridings.
A video is available from Parliament.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
One of the things you said in your testimony, and I'm pressed for time, but you talked about how the system is strained, that when the system was designed the country we have now would have been unrecognizable to the country then.
NDP
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
It's like trying to drop a 2016 Ferrari on a village road 150 years ago and seeing how well it goes. It's not designed well for the adaptations we've gone through as a country. We've changed.
You also said the expectations of voters have changed. You talked about how they expect more involvement. You talked about public consultation, which is good and interesting.
The equality of votes was your third test. I like these tests you've put to us, that it must be legitimate and it must produce good government that represents voters' wishes.
Boy, I have a lot of questions.
Ms. Decter, I missed the numbers, but you talked about from 1974 to 1994 we went from 4% women to 18% women, so almost a four times jump in women in Parliament. One would have hoped maybe in 1994 that that trajectory would have kept on going, but from 1997 onward, it went up only a few per cent. Even with the big change we had in this last election, which was a big-change election where an entire government got tossed out, and with a whole bunch of new members, we only went up another 1%. I actually don't have confidence in your suggestion that if we just left it as is in another hundred years we'd get equality.
I wonder also, because I want to get this to the policy level, if we had 75% women in Parliament right now and had had for years, if pay equity wouldn't have been solved by now. Women would still be earning 72¢ on the dollar in Canada. I'm just guessing.
Director, Advocacy and Public Policy, YWCA Canada
Sorry, that's your suggestion? I hope not.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Yes.
The question I have is, do we need to do both things? Do we need to change the nomination process and how women and other under-represented groups can gain access to the political system, as well as how votes are counted in this country in order to get to the promise of some sort of equality in the country, and that our Parliament actually looks like this country?
Director, Advocacy and Public Policy, YWCA Canada
Yes, absolutely. I think so. As other people have pointed out—not today—you also need to look at how Parliament functions. Obviously, while women continue to do the majority of child care in the country, it's very difficult to be someone who is in a different city, say, four days a week.
There are things to do that are slowly happening in Parliament. We now have women bringing babies into the House and things like that. There are various sets of things that can be done, but those two are definitely part of it.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I can remember a fierce and private debate I had with a former speaker of the House when one of our members needed to breastfeed in Parliament and he wasn't so excited about it. I said he'd just have to avert his eyes because it was going to happen. Anyway—
We haven't talked enough about this, but would it be your suggestion that we need to apply a gender lens to the voting system we ultimately arrive at and the recommendations that we make?
Director, Advocacy and Public Policy, YWCA Canada
Yes, absolutely. We repeatedly talk to parliamentary committees about the need for a gender-based lens on all the work that you do. I think it would be of immense value to apply it in this process.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Great, because it's also in the government's 32-point plan for real change, that we have a gender-based lens applied to whatever it is we decide here.
We're number one in the world for having educated women, and number 64 in the world in actually electing women to Parliament. Did I get that right?
Director, Advocacy and Public Policy, YWCA Canada
I think it was 62nd, but I can check, but in the sixties for sure. So there's obviously a huge disconnect there. There are very talented women who aren't getting elected one way or another. They aren't stepping forward, aren't getting through the processes, and aren't getting elected.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
To our friends at Fair Vote Canada, we've seen your folks everywhere, from Iqaluit to Victoria to St. John's and all points in between. It's great. You have a bunch of enthusiastic people out there.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
That's within your organization.
I just want to get a sense of your feeling, especially for the last 24 hours but even beyond that as we head to the point of the rubber hitting the road, so to speak, the energy out there that you're sensing or feeling, Mr. Graves or others, points to that desire for this promise to come to fulfilment, for this committee to do the work that we are mandated to do.
Executive Director, Fair Vote Canada
I can say it briefly. I also hope somebody will ask me about the women's issue as well, besides that.
Our members are incredibly motivated. In the last election there was a lot of strategic voting that went on, and they parked their votes often around this issue. They are very motivated and yesterday, with the announcement that perhaps we were waning on this issue, actually put a lot of gas in our engine. This desire to change the voting system is not changing, because it's not about government or a party, it's about voters.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
On the heels of your comment, Kelly, that you were hoping someone would ask you about the women's issue, please comment on what you think is needed, within electoral reform and any other measures, to increase the proportion of women in Parliament.
Executive Director, Fair Vote Canada
Thanks.
It's a really important issue to me, the issue around electing more women, and I know there are barriers to electing women. We know that it's during the nomination process. There was a study by Kaminsky and White who talked about women's responsibility, confidence, barriers to getting into nominations, and different things, but the electoral system changes the mechanism by which women run. If you think about our ridings, the way that they are silos right now, we vote for certain members, and we don't know outside of our silo if a party is running a lot of men or a lot of women. When you change the dynamic of the way the electoral system runs and you can see multi-member regions, you start to see parties that don't run any women, and that puts a lot of pressure on parties to start running women.
The other thing is it's a diversity issue. Australia is a perfect petri dish example of this. When Kaminsky and White looked at Australia, the same voters vote in their Senate and in their lower House, which is the alternative vote. It's a winner-take-all one-member riding, and the upper House is STV. They have elected more women year-over-year in their upper House, and the study they looked at said it can only be the electoral system because of the population, because the ballots are the same, the voters are the same, all of these variables have been eliminated and it's the voting system.
When you look at New Zealand, you see a whole range of numbers on diversity that change. For women, the numbers go up, but from 1996 to 2011 the number of women in the House doubled. We believe it's the multi-member ridings. There are also ways that you can do zipper lists, when you give people the option to run males, females and, yes, some legislation would be great. There's quotas in some countries and different things, but I think it's tied to the electoral system. We're not saying it's going to give you gender parity, but it will certainly give us a bump in more women being elected.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Picking up on your point about Australia, I hadn't actually turned my mind to all the elements that are exactly the same, but the same people are voting on the same day in the same campaign.
Executive Director, Fair Vote Canada
They have preferential ballots with single-member winners in the lower House, a preferential ballot with multi-member winners in the upper House. When you have an opportunity to elect more than one person, you can elect women. It's not 50/50, either a male or a female. Now, all of a sudden, you have the opportunity to elect a team of MPs.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
It also occurs to me that the very same parties are running the candidates under two different systems.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
So it's a pretty interesting example.
I'm going to try to come back to Fair Vote versus specific questions on the rural-urban mixes. I wanted to put some questions to you, Mr. Graves, while you're here, because you're the third person, and I think I've counted correctly, who's come with polling information. We've heard from Darrell Bricker, we've heard from Forum Research, and then we heard from you today. There's some consistency in that it seems to be an issue Canadians care about. Most Canadians, but not overwhelmingly most, want to see some form of electoral reform.
I wanted to ask you, because I've asked the others, when you're doing these polls, and I see from the notes it's an online poll, how do you explain to the respondents the different voting systems before you put the question to them? We know that we're going to, one way or another, be explaining electoral reform to Canadians from coast to coast to coast. We've been hearing from people who are quite concerned and well informed, people who have gotten themselves up to speed. I think over 20,000 went through the online e-questionnaire the committee put out, which I think is extraordinary. How do you distill a complex system enough for respondents to be able to answer the questions?
