Electoral Reform Committee on July 25th, 2016

[Brian Tanguay]

That is exactly what happened. I think that the two aspects of the proposal that came in for the most criticism were, first of all, increasing the size of the legislature—a lot of people were really upset about that—and second, the closed-list system. It was portrayed very negatively in the media as backroom individuals, usually men chomping on cigars, selecting their friends to be at the top of the list and guaranteeing them election in perpetuity. It was extremely easy for the media to portray the closed list as something inherently bad. Although, in defence of the citizens' assembly and the people who worked for it—I know Jonathan Rose is going to be appearing here before the committee—the closed list was always thought of as a means of promoting non-mainstream candidates, an easier way of increasing the chances of the election of women, minority candidates, or indigenous candidates. However, a large majority of voters who were voting on the merits of the system itself rejected that idea.

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

That raises a tension that I think has existed for some time. I know one can design an MMP system in which the list is open, chosen through some sort of democratic process. On the other hand, that will almost certainly mean—and you can correct me if I'm wrong here—that one of the chief selling points of MMP, that it will produce a larger range of the kinds of candidates who right now tend not to be presented and that they'll be at the top of the list where they're likely to be elected, is effectively cancelled out. I don't know if there's a way around that tension; you're the expert.

[Brian Tanguay]

You're quite right. The purely open lists would maybe not eliminate but reduce the opportunities for promoting non-mainstream candidates. That's why the law commission settled on a flexible list, which again is sort of the best of both worlds, part two, where you could have parties promoting a slate that would consist largely of non-mainstream candidates, and then the individual candidates for those voters who really are concerned about their capacity to reject elite control by the parties.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We go to Mr. Cullen now.

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

It segues nicely from that conversation to another question from Twitter, where we're trending, by the way, Mr. Chair. I don't know if you know that. The committee is trending. There's lots going on, and we're near the top of the list.

This is from Chardaye B. What's the impact of having women and minorities better represented in the legislatures on the public policy produced?

Is there a connection between voting systems—I'm going to suppose in this—and the representation of traditionally under-represented groups?

Mr. Wiseman, you seem to want to come in on this.

[Dr. Nelson Wiseman]

I just wanted to relate what happened in New Zealand—this is my understanding—when they introduced MMP. More women got elected, no doubt about it, but guess what? Power does not lie in parliament. It lies in the cabinet. Fewer women ended up in the cabinet because you had a trade-off among the leaders about how many cabinet posts each party was going to get and they were going to get to decide who's in them.

Right now there's pressure on the Prime Minister to have a diverse cabinet, but the pressures will be completely different when you have horse-trading among the parties.

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

I'm trying to follow this. If someone says to me that having more women in Parliament is going to be bad for women in power.... I understand this very explicit example you're using in this circumstance in New Zealand, but the other cases that we've studied here today show that the opposite is true, that more women end up running more things under proportional systems.

[Dr. Nelson Wiseman]

I don't know. I'm just saying the dynamic is different. It's parties that will want a lot of women or minorities at the top of their lists, but it will be party leaders who get together after the vote when there's a minority and say, okay—

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

Right. I suppose, but it's 2016, after all. I imagine if party leaders cropped up and put a bunch of—no offence—old white guys into their cabinet and nobody else, there might be a natural consequence to that the next time voters get to vote.

[Dr. Nelson Wiseman]

If we could—

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

I want to turn to Mr. Tanguay for a moment.

You've broken these down into two families of systems, voting systems. I'm trying to pull back from this a bit in terms of the details, to get the broad flavour. There are the consensus democracies and there are ones that use majoritarian systems. First past the post is in the second, the majoritarian. Where does AV, alternative vote, lie?

[Brian Tanguay]

Majoritarian.

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

It's in the same family as first past the post.

[Brian Tanguay]

Yes, as with the French two rounds system.

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

Right. That's the same thing. It's a winner-take-all type of approach.

[Brian Tanguay]

Yes.

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

The other families, the STVs, the mixed member, those are all the proportional, what you're calling “consensus democracies”. Is that right?

[Brian Tanguay]

Yes.

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

I just wanted to clarify the groups. Sometimes they get confused.

You talked about the tension within the parties, if we went to a proportional system in which there were lists of some kind and there were nominations within parties to formulate those lists as we talked about, maybe regional runoffs or some sort of primary. But there are obvious tensions between parties and their memberships now on nominations. Is that fair to say?

[Dr. R. Kenneth Carty]

Sure, and where those tensions get played out and by what rules will be governed by the new electoral system.

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

Right.

[Dr. R. Kenneth Carty]

The tensions will exist and different systems provide incentives for particular kinds of behaviours and they reward certain strategies and they disadvantage others. But when we're talking about changing electoral systems, we're not just talking about accounting rules, we're talking about nominations and finance, all aspects, because the rules change the incentives that govern the actors.

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

My last question is for you, Mr. Tanguay. I went back a bit and now I want to go into some details.

Mr. Kingsley has made a proposal in which there was a mixed system, in which there would be larger ridings in the urban areas of Canada, in which four or five constituencies would be made one. There would be four or five representatives who would come out of that and there would be a more proportional reflection. The rural constituencies, he has argued, would remain essentially the same size, which would eliminate the need to go and redraw boundaries in any significant way.

Do you have any comments on that proposal?

[Brian Tanguay]

It's interesting. I think Professor Wiseman mentioned it as the system that was in use in some of the western provinces from the 1920s on. It's an interesting idea. I would suggest that people take a look at Fair Vote Canada, which is coming up with a similar kind of system but where there would be more attention paid to compensatory outcomes, in other words, where the results would be even more proportional than with the system you're describing.