Electoral Reform Committee on July 25th, 2016

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, gentlemen, to your Parliament. It's always quite impressive to have such great minds at the table. Your contribution to Canadian democracy is greatly appreciated, as is your input into our study on this fine July day. While it may not be nice outside, here, in Ottawa, it certainly is pleasant in this room.

You've made numerous points, gentlemen. Although I may completely disagree with some of your views, I can definitely agree on one point.

Mr. Carty said at the beginning of his speech today that there is no perfect way. We have to understand that what we're talking about is nothing but trying to get the best for Canadians because there is no perfect system. If we had one, well, we'd use it.

There's a commercial in Quebec that goes, “If it existed, we'd have it.” If the perfect system was out there somewhere, we'd have it. We are well aware

that there is no perfect system on that.

Something really surprised me, and I'd like to discuss it further with you, Mr. Wiseman.

You talked about the free vote and you said you do not disagree with a free vote, but you said that if there is a free vote, no change will happen. I would like you to explain more about that. I want to hear about that. How can you come to this conclusion today?

[Dr. Nelson Wiseman]

I come to the conclusion.... Look, I'd love to be proved wrong, and I'm wrong 70% of the time, but I don't think that many people who ran as Liberal candidates stressed that bit of the Liberal platform or that it was vital to them. Most of the people right here, I think, were not elected on a majority vote. They look around and they know how they got elected. Now, they're taking a risk by having it.

You're going to be travelling around. I want to get back to this point about how we find out what Canadians think. Professor Carty talked about the limitation at town hall meetings. I have a suggestion. Every MP sends out householders. You'll find out. Ask them a specific question on this, and I think you'll find a lot of detachment about it. Again, it's self-selected who responds to these householders and the surveys, but you might be surprised about how few responses you get.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

I totally disagree when you say that there is no free vote or if there is a free vote, well, we will lose. As far as I'm concerned, first of all, we are always free to vote. Whatever the vote, we are always free. But the most important thing is that we should let the people decide. I do agree with you when you said that the Liberals—and I will not talk on behalf of them, those people in front of me—didn't hear a lot of talk from their constituencies about this issue. I can quote for you. The member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek said a few weeks ago:

It’s not something I’ve heard anything about on the campaign trail.... I don’t recall one conversation at the door that had to do with that.

It's clear, crystal clear. I can assure you it's exactly the same thing in my riding in the Louis-Saint-Laurent and Quebec City area. Since the beginning of this committee no one has talked to me about the issue, except those who are involved in politics.

But you know what we're talking about is very serious. We're talking about making a big move. This is why it's quite important, and at least if we follow your guidance, if we follow what you're saying to us, saying, don't have a free vote—

[Dr. Nelson Wiseman]

[Inaudible—Editor] free vote.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

But you said, don't try a free vote because you can lose.

[Dr. Nelson Wiseman]

No, try it. I'm just speculating that it will be defeated. I support the free vote. I'm eager for you to have your free vote.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

That's not exactly what you said at the beginning—

[Dr. Nelson Wiseman]

Well, I'm sorry.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

—but I do appreciate your evolution.

The point is that if we don't have a free vote on that issue and if we don't have any referendum, at the end of the day, just one man will decide, the Prime Minister, and we know where he stands.

The Prime Minister said many times before he became leader, before he became Prime Minister, that he did strongly support, and he does strongly support the preference vote. That's his choice. I do respect that. But when you are the Prime Minister and, as you describe quite well, you hold the power as the Prime Minister holds the power, all the decisions belong to one person. Is that fair? Is that democratic? I don't think so. This is why we support a referendum. Don't you?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I think this is more of a rhetorical question, and we're out of time.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll go to Ms. Romanado.

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

Thank you.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being with us today.

My question is for Professor Carty.

In your scholarly article entitled, “Political Turbulence in a Dominant Party System”, you wrote that Canadian electoral politics is both regional and volatile and that the result of this volatile, multi-party contest in single-member districts is a high level of turnover in the House of Commons.

I have two questions for you.

Do you have a preferred electoral system that would remedy the volatility and reflect the regional and local political preference?

Second, in your opinion, how does the current electoral system reflect the many social cleavages of Canada in the House of Commons?

[Dr. R. Kenneth Carty]

I don't think I have a preferred system. I worked awfully hard for a decade not to have one, when I was working with the British Columbia citizens.

Frankly, I can see the advantages of an MMP system or an STV system, which you'll hear about, I guess, tomorrow morning, or a finished list system, which someone described as one in which every candidate in the country is listed on the sheet, and you just pick the one and it's translated....

There are hundreds of possibilities and they all involve trade-offs. If you give a little bit more proportionality, you lose a little bit with less local representation, or if you give a little bit more voter choice, then you lose a little bit with less of the parties' capacity to discipline their members. They all involve trade-offs. I don't have my own preferred system.

The great success of the Canadian party system, in my judgment, has been in some sense preventing the enormous variation in the cleavages, in the divisions of Canada, from spilling into our Parliament in a way that would make us a dysfunctional country.

The New Democrats exist as a kind of coherent national party. I don't think we want to produce a system in which the Leap Manifesto New Democrats and the Notley New Democrats have been sentenced to run independently because they would see that they could get more votes in different parts of the country from different elements of their constituency. One of the strengths of the way our system has worked is that it has in fact forced the parties in some sense to work hard at preventing that expression of so much division, in a country that's constantly changing.

The Canadian political system has been a remarkable experience. Our electorate grew in the 20th century far more than any other electorate in the world, much more than that of the United States. We went from being a country of small rural people to the most multicultural urban place in the world. However you measure the transformation of Canada, our democratic social order has probably been transformed more than that of any other democracy, and somehow our big national parties have found ways to accommodate that. It was different in the First World War, in the Second World War, and in the sixties, and in the eighties. I think it gets high marks, frankly.

Our system of governance was just rated by the people in Davos as ranking second-highest in the world. We're at the top of the United Nations' political development indexes. I think by most comparative indexes we've done pretty well. The electoral system hasn't been responsible for all of that, but it has been one of the pieces. If you start undoing the pieces, you start undoing that system. That's a sort of “small c” conservative view, I guess.

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

My next question is on something we touched on briefly, mandatory voting. Professor Wiseman, you mentioned in The Hill Times that if politicians were serious about increasing voter turnout, they would put mandatory voting in place. I know you mentioned earlier that you're not a supporter of it.

My question is to all three of you, actually. How would you see a Canadian mandatory voting system, if we were to implement one? What would we do to incentivize or penalize people? What would your suggestion be in that regard?

[Dr. R. Kenneth Carty]

The system the Australians use works, I think, perfectly well. Simply, the law requires you to show up at the polls and cast a ballot. You can spoil the ballot, if you like. You can write anything on it you like, but you must attend and take a ballot. For those who don't attend and don't have an excuse, there's a modest fine.

The first time, there would probably be a number of people who didn't, but after a while people would start to obey the law in the way they stop at red lights and pay their taxes, and do all the other things they're required to do. It would probably be a bit sloppy the first time, but like any change—and we have talked about other kinds of changes—the public and the players would adapt, and the campaigns would run probably very differently. We'd end this mass-voter mobilization stuff, because the voters would get themselves to the polls themselves; you wouldn't spend money on that. Parties would be engaged in other kinds of activities.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

That concludes our first round. We'll start the second round with Mr. DeCourcey.

Mr. DeCourcey, you have five minutes.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to get back the idea of more preference or more choice for electors. In the reflections that you've had from the different commissions, assemblies, research, is it likely to enhance voter turnout if electors could check more boxes, claim more preference in their votes? Relative to the ease in which people understand the system now versus the change towards more preference, where is the increased complexity? Thirdly, on election day, as the results are tabulated, what could electors expect for a return on a ballot where there was more than one check box or multiple choices, or two different streams of election?

I'll be happy to start with Professor Tanguay.

[Brian Tanguay]

In terms of what might happen on election day, it might take longer to tabulate the votes. If you have more choice that is one of the drawbacks. In, say, STV, it can take longer. The vote-counting process is much more complicated and time-consuming.

Will it increase turnout? Most comparative research seems to indicate that proportional systems provide a bump in turnout of about six to seven percentage points. That may be a reflection of the fact that, again, more currents of opinion are reflected in the resulting legislature, which brings more people to the polls, but it's not a social scientific law. If you want to look at the experience of New Zealand, voter turnout increased in the first elections using the new system, a mixed member proportional, from 1996 on, but afterwards it fell again. The constraints, the factors, the dynamics that are driving down voter turnout extend well beyond the electoral system. I think if you want to get a handle on what's happening, you have to look more and more at what young people are thinking and why they're not coming to the polls in the numbers that we, older, aging boomers, think they ought to be coming to the polls in.

Personally, I do think that if we offer more choice to voters, and I'm just going to editorialize just a second.... I think that so far we've heard a lot about the fears of what might happen with a change: national parties would disintegrate, fringe parties would proliferate. The system has worked well as it is, but you have to ask for whom? I think the one group that consistently has been excluded is young people. I think by offering greater chances to newer parties, non-mainstream parties, you would mobilize more young voters and bring them into the system in a way that the status quo does not.

[Matt DeCourcey, Liberal, Fredericton, NB]

Thanks very much.

With the time left maybe I'll go to Professor Carty.

[Dr. R. Kenneth Carty]

I think the evidence on turnout is pretty complicated. You're going to hearing from André Blais later this week I believe. Nobody in the world knows more about the relationship between turnout and electoral systems than André, so I would recommend you listen to him.

The reason that the citizens' assembly in B.C. chose the single transferable vote, to the surprise of everyone, was that they believed it offered them more choices, because they could choose both candidates and parties in whatever order they liked. It's true that the counting process is a more complicated one. The Irish, who use it for their national elections, don't start counting until the next day, and in some of their districts it takes two or three days to count. A few years ago in a couple of ridings they actually instituted electronic counting of the ballots, which gave them instant results, and they hated it. They actually liked the one- or two-day kind of “who's ahead on the first count, who's ahead on the second count” process and they would crowd in and watch the process. So they sold all the machines, at a huge loss, and they're now out of the electronic machine-counting business.

However, they were recognizing that there was a social dimension to the electoral process that engaged them all, and the count was part of that, as well as the vote counting.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

We'll move on now to Mr. Reid.

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

Thank you.

I don't know if you know the answer to this, Professor Carty. In Ireland, they have multi-member districts; I believe the boundaries conform with the traditional counties. For each party in the Irish system, when they have a number of candidates running in a single district, how are they chosen? Is it some sort of internal party process, or is it a more democratic process?

[Dr. R. Kenneth Carty]

That's changed over time. The boundaries are less and less coterminous with county boundaries, as the population is becoming more mobile and they've been less and less successful at doing that. The parties vary in terms of how they choose their candidates. In, say, a five-member district, parties would not run a full slate of five candidates, because they know the result would be sort of proportional. If they thought they had a chance of getting maybe three elected, they would probably nominate three. They don't want spillover waste in the counting process. By-and-large the parties have now gone to a convention process—it's not unlike ours—to choose their candidates. They were organized differently in branches in the past; they now go to conventions.

That's been complicated in the last year by a new law that requires that 30% of the candidates be women. In the next election it will be 40%. Now, the parties can violate that regulation, but if they do so, they lose financial support from the system. In a number of ridings, to make sure the party got to its quota, they've had to go in and say, okay, you can have two candidates in this district, and one has to be a woman and one has to be a man, or things like that. So there's been shifting tension between locality and central party, as there are in any proportional systems, in terms of who gets to choose the candidates and how that process works.

That would be, in fact, one of the biggest changes—if we changed the electoral system here—that the parties would have to experience: the process of how to identify candidates, how they would be chosen. There would be a lot of conflict transferred into the parties in the first round or two.

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

Professor Tanguay, returning to a comment you made earlier, and following on Professor Carty's remarks, you said that in 2007 one of the lessons of the referendum in Ontario was that the people tend to reject party-controlled lists. Is it the case, then, that some people were voting no in 2007 because they felt that the list side of the MMP system that was being proposed in Ontario was going to be too party controlled? Please elaborate on that, if you could.