Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Oct. 5th, 2006

[Prof. Henry Milner]

No, I can't imagine. For example, the United States has fixed election dates and their voting turnout records are fairly low, but there are a whole bunch of reasons for that. Frankly, I think if they didn't have fixed election dates in the U.S., they'd have at least as low, if not lower, turnout. Note that American turnout rates are now the same as Canadian, at least in the last presidential and federal election. Even there, the American case doesn't work. And you can never generalized from single cases.

So no, there is no data to prove that.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you.

For the record, our colleagues from the Bloc, do you have any questions? No.

I will then turn the microphone to Mr. Dewar, please, for five minutes.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I want to return to the question that we were examining before, starting maybe with a statement and then a question.

If we're looking at the democratic deficit, one of the concerns people have had over the last number of years has been the concentration of power within the executive branch. As I said before, it's not a panacea, but my hope is to at least spread that power a bit more. One way you can do that is to not give all the cards, if you will, to one person's hand, but to share them.

One of the aspects of this is the issue of confidence. I don't want to beat this to death, which means I'm going to subtly beat it to death, but when we're talking about issues of confidence—and I was interested in the comments that were made—we're under the understanding that, yes, it's up to Parliament to decide. But I was referencing something in committee before, when the Prime Minister said the vote on Afghanistan was going to be a vote in Parliament and then it turned it into a confidence vote. The notice for that was problematic, and I'm simply suggesting that ultimately we should have some boundaries around what is confidence, understanding that we're in an organic system, if you will, and if I can use that term, that is based on convention.

I would agree with the idea that it is a complex system, but in the nature of something that's organic and flows, you can influence it and have confluence. I was simply suggesting that. Are there not some criteria that could be set, if not in this bill then in some other manner, to talk about issues of confidence? Quite frankly, as Mr. Milner has said, this is about the participation of citizens, not for Parliament to play parlour tricks. If we're talking about the executive branch having that ability, in and of itself, and not about Parliament having the same ability, then we don't have an even keel.

I was just curious. Is it not important to at least acknowledge the issue of confidence when you're talking about a law like this, whereby you're hopefully setting the parameters around saying that if Parliament is to fall and there's lack of confidence, then it had better be for a darned good reason, and not just when you're trying to whip your own backbench? Quite frankly, that is what happened with other prime ministers, right? It was a threat to keep your folks in line. Clearly, that's not to the benefit of Canadians, it's to the benefit of the ruling party.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Mr. Dewar, are you directing that question to any specific listener?

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I'll start here and then--

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

We have two minutes left.

Professor Massicotte, please.

[Prof. Louis Massicotte]

The point is whether we can come up with a list of items that would be matters of confidence. We have such a list at present, informally. It's pretty clear that we are not in complete ambiguity. A government is defeated if a motion of no confidence is passed. The motion must say that the government is blamed or that the government does not enjoy the confidence. This is clear. If the House wants to get rid of the government, it can do so.

Secondly, it can do so by rejecting supply—not by voting against any financial measure, as some people say, because this is not correct. You can reject the whole taxation bill and the country can work nevertheless, because there is already a taxation bill in force. The state can work. If you reject supply, this is another issue, because you deprive the government of the money it needs to pay its civil servants.

And there is a third area. If a Prime Minister has said that something is a matter of confidence, that he leaves if he loses, then if he loses he will have to leave.

So these are clear, but if you try to specify which ones are matters of confidence, I'm struck by one thing. Is it the wisdom of nations? I don't know, but I know pretty much the practice in other parliamentary systems, and I still have yet to see the country where everything has been specified, that this is a vote of confidence and this is not. They all say that if the house passes a motion of censure against the government, then they are out, but they don't go further.

Try to imagine all the kinds of circumstances that can arise. In some contexts one issue is absolutely basic in the minds of some people, and in other circumstances it is not. For some members of this House, I suppose the definition of marriage is something that absolutely strikes at the heart of the human condition. Other people say that's an issue on which we may disagree, that it's not as basic as you say.

I would come back to that theme. Plenty of constitutional lawyers have tried before us to regulate the political dynamics in detail, as much as possible. The outcome has not been very satisfying. It's probably better to keep the flexibility.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you. I appreciate the comment.

I don't want to forget our guests who are in Sweden and Vancouver, so I'm going to allow a little bit more time for final comments on this question, if that's okay with colleagues around the table.

Professor Heard, how about going first? Very briefly, please.

[Prof. Andrew Heard]

I think it's really important to maintain the flexibility, and it is extremely difficult to be precise about what constitutes confidence. As an example, a motion was proposed in 2002, I believe, by Elsie Wayne that this House condemn the government for continuing to overstretch military personnel and so on. Right immediately after her, Joe Clark said that this was not a motion of confidence. But the government had to stand up and treat it as a motion of confidence, because the motion contained the words “that this House condemn the government”.

There was a misunderstanding on the part of the opposition members proposing this motion. They believed it wasn't a confidence motion, but by all other accounts, it was, and I think they were quite right to do that.

This underlines the problem of trying to be precise.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you.

Professor Milner.

[Prof. Henry Milner]

I think that to some extent this is an unreal question. I don't see why we have to be so precise that every possible situation is somehow made explicit. If we say that no election will be called unless the government loses the confidence of the House, if we find the appropriate parliamentary language for saying that, then I think that would be sufficient. Where there might be doubt, you'd simply call for a vote of the House and ask it to express either its confidence or its non-confidence. In other words, if a particular bill is defeated, and it's uncertain and there's nothing explicit in the law that says, “Is this confidence or not confidence?”, then it's very easy to ask the House if this was something it meant to be an act of confidence or non-confidence. That is a normal way to act, and I don't think other parliaments have a problem with this.

It's understood, say, in Sweden or Germany that a government remains in power.... It's only if it's unable to maintain the confidence of the House, in the case of Germany--or no other government either--that there has to be a premature election. This is understood. I doubt if in these countries they specify every possible way in which lack of confidence could be expressed. But the meaning of the existing law is absolutely clear in all of those countries, and I don't see why we shouldn't make an effort to do the same.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much, Professor.

We are well over time on that answer, but I think we've gotten great responses from our witnesses.

I no longer have names on my list here for colleagues to ask questions, except for Mr. Reid. We do have time for one more round, but I would like to remind colleagues that we have a motion on the table that we have to deal with, plus we have future business to deal with. I'm not restricting the questions by any means, especially since we've gone to such trouble to have communications from around the world.

Are there questions?

We'll go to Ms. Jennings first, and then Mr. Reid.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

I have a very short question. It's primarily for you, Professor Milner, regarding voter turnout. If you do have any studies--I'm assuming that any study of the issue would have looked at fixed election dates in municipalities--I would simply ask that you forward that information to the committee through our chair.

Thank you, all witnesses, for your presentations.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you, Madam Jennings.

Are the witnesses clear on that request? I'll bet you didn't think you were going to get homework today, did you?

Mr. Reid, please.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you.

We've talked about something on the theoretical level that those of us who were elected in the 38th Parliament got to experience in reality, which is the question of what constitutes a confidence vote and what happens when there is a difference of opinion as to what constitutes a confidence vote.

I recall quite distinctly that in the spring of 2005 the government was defeated on something that we in opposition regarded as a confidence matter. They chose to regard it not as a confidence matter, and ultimately, after much delay on the part of the then government House leader, there was a confidence vote on a very clear question, which the government won. Subsequently, about 11 months ago, there was a further confidence vote, and a very clear confidence vote, which they lost. And that was the end of that.

To me, these things are not necessarily all that difficult to resolve, given that we've all lived through something within the past 18 months—and have gotten to live through it, actually, over and over again over a period of some time.

I want to come back to a question. This relates to Professor Heard's presentation at the very beginning of his testimony.

It struck me, Professor Heard, as you were talking—and you can correct me if I've misunderstood this—that what you were saying in so many words was that while this is a law, what it's doing in practice is moving toward the establishment of a new convention, and that as with all conventions, this will be regulated ultimately by public opinion. If the public is prepared to accept that an action has been taken by a government that causes an election to occur prior to the expiration of four years, and public opinion judges it to be legitimate, then effectively the convention is established that this is within the bounds of a reasonable early election call. If the public rejects that essentially, by punishing the government and replacing it with a new government, effectively that is a demonstration that a new line in the sand has been established by convention.

I'm not sure I've captured what you said correctly, but I am interested to know if you agree with the way I've just characterized it.

[Prof. Andrew Heard]

Yes, I do. I believe that bringing forward the bill and having public discussion of it does highlight for the public the desire to keep majority governments to a normal four-year span. That is certainly what we've seen out here in B.C.

I think it is also important to maintain some degree of flexibility to meet unforeseen circumstances that could come up. The generation of a public expectation is very strong in the current political culture.

It's also important to underline that a government going early to the polls doesn't necessarily have the advantage. It does in one sense, but we have a number of provincial governments that were defeated after calling a three-year election. The New Brunswick government is the most recent example; the Parti Québécois came to power in 1976 because the Liberal government went to the polls after three years; Ontario's NDP government was defeated in 1990—and so on.

So the people are willing to make a judgment. I don't see a great harm in relying on the people to pass judgment on whether an early election was or was not needed.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you very much.

I don't know whether any of the other witnesses want to comment on that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

There is one minute left for comments.

Professor Milner, have you any comment?

[Prof. Henry Milner]

No, not on that particular matter.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you.

Professor Massicotte, have you any comment?

[Prof. Louis Massicotte]

I have not on that issue.

Maybe I would like to answer later the point raised twice by Ms. Jennings, but that's all I have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

I think we should allow that.

Professor Massicotte, you have one minute, please.

[Prof. Louis Massicotte]

Ms. Jennings, you asked whether there is any evidence showing that if elections were held at fixed dates, the voter turnout rate would increase. There is no evidence of that.

Yesterday, I called a colleague and good friend -- they are not mutually exclusive -- who shall remain nameless, since I don't want to bring him into this publicly. He is someone who has thoroughly studied voter turnout rates across the globe, and he has also taken part in comparative studies. When I told him some people thought that holding elections at fixed dates would improve the voter turnout rate, he burst out laughing.

If I had told my American colleagues at the American University that Canadians had found a way to deal with the drop in voter turnout that involved holding elections on fixed dates, imagine what their reaction would have been! They would have said: “We tried that 200 years ago!”

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much, Professor Massicotte.

Mr. Dewar, a last question for the witnesses.