Evidence of meeting #6 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 voters.
A video is available from Parliament.
2:45 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks, everyone, for being here.
I wouldn't mind perhaps, Mr. Carty, later finding out some of those lessons learned from the citizens' assembly. That is not the direction the government has chosen, although we would have preferred one. Perhaps not today, but I know there was a great deal of...particularly on the side of the things that were learned.
2:45 p.m.
Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia, As an Individual
I wrote an excellent book on it.
2:45 p.m.
NDP
2:45 p.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
2:45 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I'm posing a question to you, Mr. Tanguay. It's with respect to what you learned at the law commission and what we learned from other research on the direct connection, that in whatever system we come up with there has to be some direct connection between a voter and the person who represents them.
You talked about the potential of a party primary to derive the list. There have been concerns about MMP systems around the world where parties and party leadership decide who will be on that list and there isn't as much of a connection. They're like senators suddenly. You don't know who they are and you don't feel any connection to them, and that wouldn't be healthy for democracy. Have we seen that anywhere? Can we find some modelling of how that primary system would work in terms of deriving those lists? I assume it's at the regional level.
2:45 p.m.
Professor, Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University, As an Individual
It would be at the regional level, and to my knowledge, no. My thinking is that the law commission advocated what we called flexible lists, where as a voter you could choose between either the party slate or individual candidates on that slate.
2:45 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I'm imagining something akin to what we have right now, which is candidates for each of the parties running in local nominations at that riding level and first past the post. But in a consensus-based system that proportionality can get made up also of candidates but who ran at a more regional level, who were picked and then presented to the voters that way.
2:45 p.m.
Professor, Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University, As an Individual
Yes.
2:45 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Okay.
I committed to taking some questions from Twitter, and Eleanor Grant has consented to me asking this. If a Conservative in Toronto or an NDP in Atlantic Canada, you would like a sympathetic rep to talk to who knows your region. As it is right now, if you're a Conservative in downtown Toronto, or if you're NDP out in Atlantic Canada, if you're a Liberal on Vancouver Island, what does the proportional system offer that's improved from the winner-takes-all system for people who happen to live in a region in which their political views are not being expressed by the winner at the ballot box?
2:45 p.m.
Professor, Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University, As an Individual
Again, if it's the law commission model, it combines the two of geographic representation, of single representatives in a defined constituency, supplemented by these compensatory list MPs, however they're chosen. What we seem to find in both the law commission and subsequently the Ontario referendum is that the regional compensatory lists have to be small enough that you can't be a voter in Nipissing getting somebody from Toronto representing you.
2:50 p.m.
Professor, Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University, As an Individual
Exactly, that's right.
2:50 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I have one follow-up question perhaps, and I don't know if Mr. Wiseman can comment on this, or you, Mr. Tanguay. I think you made reference about the stability of governments that are chosen by consensus democracies, by proportionality. How stable are those governments, because there are sometimes inferences that they're not? How successful are those democracies, and by that I mean economically, social programs, and that type of thing? Is there anything to fear in the examples that have gone ahead in other countries that have chosen proportional systems in terms of the effect on real people's lives and real outcomes in terms of policy?
Mr. Wiseman, do you want to start, then perhaps Mr. Tanguay?
2:50 p.m.
Director, Canadian Studies Program, and Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, As an Individual
We could talk about the Nordic model. It seems to have worked well up there, in Denmark, Norway, Sweden. We could talk about what happens in the Mediterranean basin. In Israel, in Italy, and in Greece, it hasn't been quite that co-operative, so I come back to my point that the electoral system is secondary to the underlying political culture. That's going to be much more influential. As Professor Carty pointed out, there's no way of knowing how things will work out, but I'd be fairly optimistic if you change the system.
In New Zealand after it was changed—and voters wanted the change, they voted in favour of it—they got the change and then they got very upset. Had we had another referendum, they would have reversed it because they felt that a small party was the tail wagging the dog. The smallest party joined with an unlikely—
2:50 p.m.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Did they not have another referendum? They had a second one, whether to keep it or return to first past the post, and they chose to keep it, did they not?
2:50 p.m.
Professor, Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University, As an Individual
They did.
2:50 p.m.
Director, Canadian Studies Program, and Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, As an Individual
Yes, they did, because after that election now the politicians and the citizenry were adjusted to the system. It seems to be working there. I'm not an authority on New Zealand.
I think that would happen in Canada.
2:50 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you very much for your input.
Mr. Wiseman, I quite appreciated your candour, even though I don't necessarily agree with what you said.
This is for all three witnesses. You talked about the political culture. I had the opportunity to travel across Quebec as part of the study carried out by the province's electoral reform commission. In every single region of the province, we frequently heard from people that, beyond the mechanics of the electoral and voting system, they were fed up with the conduct of politics, particularly when it came to party lines.
Political parties are ideological war machines. A compensatory mixed voting system would inevitably lead to coalition governments.
Would that necessarily make the public less cynical about governments? On the one hand, if the political culture does not follow, responsibility for the mandate is more or less clear come election time. I'm referring to the responsibility for the process. On the other hand, who makes the list? Even if it's voters casting the ballots and primaries are held, the list is still the choice of the top 15 members that the party has more or less given priority to.
Doesn't such a system strengthen the party line, when the government is made up of a coalition decided by the party apparatchiks after the fact, following an election?
I have to be critical, even though I am in favour of change.
Isn't the situation I described likely to make people even more cynical, if political parties don't adapt? What reason is there to think that parties would be able to adapt?
What value would election platforms have in 25 years if we ended up with coalition government after coalition government?
2:55 p.m.
Professor, Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University, As an Individual
As for whether the reform advocated by the Law Commission of Canada could lead to less cynicism among voters, I think the answer is partly yes. As Professor Carty mentioned, people are highly skeptical of political parties at the moment. That makes our jobs, as political scientists and members of a special committee on electoral reform, quite difficult. In some cases, that cynicism has simply become the reflex and is not necessarily based on the reality.
In my opinion—again, this is merely my opinion—a system in which the forming of a coalition government forced the political parties to work together could eliminate some of that cynicism. Confrontation-style politics, a key component of the Westminster system, reinforces the cynicism that Canadian voters have, in my view. I think voting systems based on proportional representation force political parties to co-operate, thereby eliminating some of that voter cynicism. That said, such a system would not be a cure-all.
2:55 p.m.
Professor, Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University, As an Individual
It depends on how candidates on the list are chosen. If the party machine or elite appear to have control over who is on the list, it will reinforce voters' cynicism. But if voters get to choose, for example, through primaries or completely open voting, I think it would be very hard to claim that party elite were controlling the process.
2:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Thank you.
That leaves about five seconds.
It's now over to Ms. May.
2:55 p.m.
Green
Elizabeth May Green Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all of the witnesses today.
I noted that Nathan Cullen had intended half of his question to go to Professor Tanguay, so I'm just going to follow up.
You may have been ready to jump in and we ran out of time. The question that was being asked was whether we had any evidence of how consensus-based PR systems perform in terms of indicators of stability of governments, economic performance, and so on. If you had any comment on that, I wanted to give you a chance.
2:55 p.m.
Professor, Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University, As an Individual
Thanks very much.
Again, I mentioned in my remarks the seminal study by Arend Lijphart, the Dutch political scientist, who divided up OECD countries into consensual versus majoritarian democracies. He found on a whole range of indicators that the consensus democracies, those that use some form of proportional representation, had happier, more content electorates, citizenry; performed better on a whole range of social indicators; and were certainly no worse, and in many cases better, than the majoritarian countries, such as the U.K., the U.S.A., and Canada, in economic performance. One of the key elements of consensus democracies is coalition government, which forces collaboration among parties, which leads to greater continuity of policy outputs. All of that leads, in a kind of beneficial feedback loop, to a happier electorate.