Electoral Reform Committee on July 26th, 2016

[Michael Marsh]

I suppose it would be efficient if one person produced a satisfactory conclusion and the other one didn't. From the point of view of the voter, it's efficient if you get the best outcome. Maybe if all MPs were as efficient as the best one, then the voter wouldn't have needed to go to all of them.

Many, of course, still just go to their local person, the one they might have known, the one they vote for, the one in their area, but certainly there is duplication of effort.

I would say that judged against the general inefficiencies in our political, economic, and social system, those are pretty minor.

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

Okay.

In terms of coalition governments, Ireland is used to having minority governments that have to work closely together, and MP-shopping or TD-shopping for votes in each district adds to the tension. I'm trying to figure out how this could work in Canada, in terms of the transition from working on a majority government versus minority government versus coalition government. How would this impact the stability of Canada and our political system? It is a huge culture change to go fundamentally from a majority government or minority government to having coalition governments all the time.

[Michael Marsh]

I think that's true, and it's only since the 1990s that we've had coalitions involving Fianna Fáil, our largest party. It used to say it didn't do coalitions, but at a certain point, it started to do coalitions, and then they were perfectly normal. We've had a lot of governments that weren't coalition, but everybody expects them to be now.

I have to say that in most of the world, coalition governments are normal, and in those areas of the world where they weren't normal, they're becoming more normal. Britain is a good case in point. I think it doesn't have a coalition government at the moment, but only by the skin of its teeth does it not have a coalition government.

As parties get further away from winning somewhere around 40-plus per cent of the vote, they don't win majorities anymore, and it's probably right that they don't get overall majorities, because not a lot of people support them.

Therefore in Canada, if people move away from the two largest parties, you ought to have coalition government. It would seem to me that rather than being concerned about it, you should be quite pleased.

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

Okay.

I just want to make sure I understand. From 1922 until about the 1990s, your largest party wasn't really looking to work on coalition governments and so on, so it took quite a few years to get there.

[Michael Marsh]

That's right.

[Michael Gallagher]

Yes, that's right, and they made an electoral virtue of it. They said they were a single-party government and if the others got in, there would be a coalition, and that would be bad. However, in 1989 they did so poorly that they could only stay in government by forming a coalition, so they had to adopt that approach, and now they're as open to coalition as anyone else.

Coalition governments typically have more votes behind them, more public votes, in that a government can't just have 40% of the votes. You need something like a majority of votes behind the parties that are in the government. There is a bit of a learning process, so if Canada shifted to that system, the first few coalitions might be a bit awkward as people learned the new rules, but the evidence is that most countries in the world have coalition governments and they can be just as stable as single-party governments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Blaikie.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

One of the questions that interests me, or that I'm trying to wrap my head around, is the question of the surplus votes for candidates who have already met the threshold for being elected and how those are distributed.

Am I right that.... It may be that the second choices of people who voted for candidate X, who has met that threshold, are all very different, and it just so happens that whoever was counted first up to that threshold, their second choice won't be passed on, and then it's only the second choices of the ballots that happen to be counted after candidate X has met that threshold that then get moved to other candidates. Is that an accurate understanding of how that works?

[Michael Gallagher]

Not quite. If the quota is 10,000 and one candidate gets 12,000 first preferences, what happens is that all of those 12,000 votes are looked at, and if 50% of them have a second preference for candidate X, then half of the surplus—that's 1,000 votes—would go to candidate X. It's not only the last 2,000 that are seen as a surplus; every single vote is looked at.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Okay, and hence why it can take so long to complete the counting process.

[Michael Gallagher]

Exactly.

[Michael Marsh]

It can and is done electronically in other jurisdictions, so it doesn't have to take very long. When it's done electronically, it can typically be done in a rather more sophisticated way than when it's done by hand.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

On the question of electronic counting, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on one of my questions around that.

We often talk about how quickly things get counted. It seems to me that one of the advantages of counting paper ballots has to do with the legitimacy of the outcome. By that I don't mean only problems with the software that you use to count, but I mean having people there from the various parties who sign off on the outcome. One of the things that you have in that kind of physical process is that at the end of it you actually have people from different parties who have said they've looked at the ballots together and accept the count. It's my belief that this contributes to the legitimacy of a changing government because those who are on their way out have been part of that process and acknowledge what that count was. It helps with any transition that might occur following an election.

I'm wondering if you can speak to that aspect of counting, the legitimacy of personal—

[Michael Marsh]

Transparency is very important. One of the wonderful things about the by-hand counting in this country is that it's the one day of the year when everybody is interested in politics. They turn on their televisions because there is a live game show going on all day, if not two days, to find out who will win and who will lose. It's prime-time major television for 24 to 36 hours. Counting them electronically doesn't necessarily mean you can't validate the ballots by eyesight. As I understand the way it's done in Scotland, the ballot papers are scanned, and the scanned ballot papers can then be counted. If you think the result is dodgy, they can be counted by hand because you still have a ballot paper.

We had a brief experience with electronic voting machines, which were later abandoned because there was no paper ballot. There was no final place you could go to to make sure that what the voter thought they'd done they had actually done. I think that mixture—and I think New Zealand does the same—of the paper ballot and electronic counting is quite a good one if you want your count done quickly. There are reasons, maybe, to have the count done slowly.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

I'm wondering if your colleague would like to weigh in on that issue.

[Michael Gallagher]

Yes, our experience with electronic voting was a very ill-fated one. It's seen as one of the great policy blunders in Ireland that these out-of-date machines were bought. They had out-of-date software and there was no paper validation, and electronic voting is always coupled with the word “fiasco” now. That really set back any possibility of any electronic involvement, so we are firmly wedded to paper ballots. When the votes are counted, it's open to the public, as is probably the case in Canada. Everyone can look over the railings to see the individual ballot papers go through, and it does really reassure people that the whole thing is being done in a very honest and legitimate way.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Monsieur Deltell is next.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Gentlemen, it is a great honour for us to be hearing from you in our committee. Welcoming high quality individuals like you helps us delve deeper into this important issue and benefit from your international experience. We can do that from here, in Ottawa, with you in Dublin, at little cost, and that is very good news for public administrators.

The quality of your testimony is important to us as members of Parliament. We are disappointed to learn that, unfortunately, a renowned academic will not be able to participate in this morning's debate on this critical issue. We would have liked to have Stéphane Dion with us, but he will unfortunately be unable to attend.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I believe that Mr. Dion is in Sri Lanka right now.

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

Is this the only day our committee is meeting?

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I understand, but he could not have been here this morning anyway. I just wanted to clarify.

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

Okay.

They are in Dublin and could not be in Ottawa, but they are participating anyway. To my knowledge, this is not the only day our committee will be meeting.

Therefore, gentlemen, let's talk about the issue you're here today to discuss. I want to talk to you about proportional representation by single transferrable vote, or PR-STV. It is quite special for me to explain that.

I want to talk to you because this is the experience of Ireland and we wish to understand your experience in Ireland with it.

There are two issues, and the first is participation. I think we want to have the most people participating, most people voting, most people attending to the ballot, but in your documents I've learned that only 65% of people vote in that system. How come?

[Michael Marsh]

I think more people used to vote. Fewer people vote now. That's not because of the system, but because politics used to mobilize people and doesn't anymore. The same system in Malta gets something like 95% of voters to the ballot. They go because they think it makes a difference. Supporters of party A think that party B will destroy the country, whichever it is, so they go out and vote because it matters. Who got into government used to matter to Irish people, but it matters less now. I think they feel it doesn't make as much difference as it did, so fewer go out to vote. That has nothing to do with the electoral system at all; it's all to do with the nature of the parties and how different they are from one another and the way in which they mobilize votes.

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

If I understand correctly, you're saying that whatever the system, it will not change the participation of the people. Is that what you're saying?

[Michael Marsh]

Yes.