Evidence of meeting #7 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 ireland.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Okay. So in Wicklow, this would be the exhaustive number of people running, I assume.
You may not know the answer to a Wicklow-specific question, so rather than asking how many members get elected from Wicklow, I'll ask about the range within Ireland. What are the smallest and largest seats that are either permitted by your law or have been adopted in practice?
Michael Gallagher
These days the minimum is three, as set by the constitution, and the maximum these days is five, though in the past we've had constituencies up to nine seats.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
So three is legally the minimum. You can't go below that. In theory, could you drift upwards? You've obviously drifted downwards to a maximum of five, for some reason, so maybe I should ask that question. What made you go down from nine, as your maximum end, to five? Obviously you become less proportional as you get smaller numbers.
Michael Gallagher
That's right, you do. That seems to have been a factor in that in the past, government parties' redistricting and redrawing of boundaries was done by the government of the day, in effect. Back in the 1940s the government of the day brought in a new system under which five seats was the largest constituency size. That seems to have been accepted as the norm, even though these days redistricting is done by an independent commission, and it's always given terms of reference under which five seats is the largest used.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
In Canada when we redistrict, and I've been around here long enough to have gone through two redistrictings, or what we call redistributions, the adjustment is made entirely by shifting boundaries in a search for populations that are as close to the median population for the province as possible. In Ireland would you find yourself in a situation where you would want to preserve the constituency boundaries in order to preserve whatever community of interest exists, and do that by adjusting the number of TDs up or down for that district, as opposed to adjusting the boundaries of the district?
Michael Gallagher
No, it's the latter, because the constitution specifies that the ratio of population to TDs must be the same, as far as is practicable, across the country. It is more or less the same in every constituency, which necessitates redrawing the boundaries after every census.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
All right. I had made the assumption that there was an effort to preserve existing boundaries as much as possible. I must be getting confused about that.
Michael Marsh
There is, inasmuch as efforts are made to base constituencies on counties, because counties are quite important to people. But it's usually necessary to tinker around at the edges of counties. It always causes upset when people find themselves put in a different county. But by and large, the constituencies outside the Dublin area have boundaries that are not dissimilar to the county boundaries.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON
Right. I can relate to that problem, having dealt with my district that includes three counties. It is a constant source of upset for people when they learn they will be excluded from the district in which the rest of the county is included.
Is there a preference built into the system for causing the more rural, more lightly populated areas to have a smaller number of TDs in order to keep the districts within a reasonable geographic size, and then do the opposite when it comes to the urban districts? That tends to have been the discussion in Canada, when we've debated this kind of system, that we would have larger numbers of members per district in the urban areas and fewer in the rural areas. Is it the same thing there, or is there a different logic?
Michael Gallagher
No, not really. In a word, there isn't. That would create a potential unfairness. The parties that were stronger in the cities would kind of lose out because they might not get their fair share of seats in the smaller rural constituencies, whereas the big parties would do better in the rural ones and only get their fair share in the urban ones.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you very much to you both for presenting today. I find this very interesting on a number of different levels.
One thing that was discussed—and I'm not sure how we get at this in terms of voter satisfaction—is that we're designing this system not for parties but for the constituents we serve, the citizens that we serve. How is it that you measure voter satisfaction?
Then I'll get on to some other questions about how governments form and the process of government-making after an election.
Michael Marsh
On voter satisfaction I think we've had two referendums to replace the current system with other systems. In both cases those referendums were lost. The voters said they wanted to keep the current system. There have been various opinion polls and research exercises carried out in which you question people about various reforms that might be made. Particularly in 2011, when we had a polling economic crisis and for the most part voters thought everything about the political system needed change and reform, the one thing they certainly did not want to change was the electoral system. I think that—
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Those referenda were taken after the fact. The system had been in place and the Irish—
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Before I get to coalition governments and how governments form, there's some concern raised about that if there's a system in which it's difficult to have an outright majority. The size of constituencies, as you've heard, is a concern. The riding I represent in British Columbia is four times the size of the entire country of Ireland. My people come from Longford and I looked it up and my riding is 330 times the size of Longford. The notion we're looking at is to create even larger constituencies in the rural communities. You're designated by the constitution in Ireland. We're not limited that way here in Canada, I don't believe. The notion of having even larger rural constituencies, as you can imagine, gives some pause. There's been a notion to have a hybrid in which we had an STV or some sort of proportionality within the more dense urban populations, yet leave the rural constituencies as they are. Has anyone mused about that in Ireland, or are you simply constrained by your constitutional requirements to keep it as is?
Michael Gallagher
We are constrained by the constitutional requirements. In fact, there was a referendum back in the 1960s on allowing for a higher level of representation in rural areas, thinly populated areas, than in urban ones. But that was politically motivated because, for the reason I mentioned before, the parties who do best in the rural areas know they would then be over-represented in the rural areas but still get their fair share in the urban areas, whereas the parties strongest in the urban areas would probably lose out in the rural areas.
I must say, from a European perspective, it seems to us that your ridings in Canada are already so huge that if you can cope with them as they are you could probably cope with them three or five times bigger.
NDP
Nathan Cullen NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Thank you for that encouragement. It's something to look forward to.
Turning to the question about stability, this is important—not certainty about outcome, but predictability that a government can form and then be stable. What's been the experience in Ireland—I don't think any party in quite some time has been able to have an outright majority of seats—in terms of that predictability of forming something that is stable and able to govern? This would be obviously a concern to Canadians if we adopt a new system.
Michael Marsh
Majorities were never all that common, I suppose, but we've had plenty of majority governments, and then we've had plenty of governments that have had almost a majority, but not quite, but it didn't seem to matter because the opposition was sufficiently fragmented that the government could pick off a few more. Even in recent years, the main party has been extraordinarily close to a majority, so it was fairly easy to bring in another party, and we've got an extraordinarily stable government through that. The exception was the last election, where no party came remotely close to a majority. Of course had we had an electoral system that manufactured a majority for a party I don't know if that would have been satisfactory—a party only getting 26% of the vote having a majority of seats. I don't think it's a great idea.
Liberal
Bloc
Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC
Thank you very much for your presentation, gentlemen.
Political life in Canada is pretty complex. I myself am a separatist MP, but I am a member of the Canadian Parliament. In some Quebec ridings, we need three or four days to reach all the constituents. I am wondering how this kind of a system could also take into consideration the political reality. A voting process is not just a quantitative system; it must also take into account political components and issues.
For instance, how do you explain Ireland's current difficulties with establishing a government? Is that just a vote-related coincidence, or is the situation rather desired by the people?
In Canada's current system, the electorate can throw a government out. That's referred to as the alternance phenomenon. It's not written anywhere, but it is done. In other words, the government is thrown out naturally after eight years. In that case, the vote implies a change of government.
As things currently stand in Ireland, what is the people's will in terms of changing the government?
Michael Gallagher
The voters certainly do sometimes reject the government. The best example was the 2011 election, when the outgoing government dropped from 40% of the votes to 17% of the votes. The voters made their feelings very clear on that occasion. Now it is true that, with coalition governments, sometimes a government might not be thrown out in its entirety. Sometimes one bit of the government changes and another party stays in government but with a new partner. So it's not quite as clear cut as in Canada or the United Kingdom, for example, that one party is in and the other party is out. However, in practice Irish government, Irish politics, has seen a degree of alternation because we have two large parties traditionally that have alternated in government. Certainly it's true that, with proportional representation, coalition government almost certainly is the norm, and that does make a big difference—maybe for better, or maybe for worse—but it does change the rules of the game.
Bloc
Luc Thériault Bloc Montcalm, QC
What is the value of electoral platforms in a context where that system dictates the implementation of a coalition government?
Michael Gallagher
Yes, it changes things a bit. Parties in their manifestos say what they would like to do, but after the election, if there is a coalition government, that's just their initial bargaining position. No party can expect to get everything of what it promised. In a way, that's part of the idea of proportional representation, that if a party gets only 20% of the votes, they can't really expect to implement their entire policy. They're going to have to make compromises with other parties and they put together something that every party in the government is compatible with.
