Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Nov. 17th, 2011

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

Obviously I'm speaking beyond the Chief Electoral Officer role, which is why I'm here in part. I don't see how it could be achieved politically. The force of resistance would be too great. Change is more difficult in this country than maintaining the status quo. A negative change is quasi-impossible in our system, unless we really have our backs to the wall.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

I think that's true, but let's just say we could do it. Would you want to do it?

It's very alluring to hear that you could do this. It would save taxpayers the cost of an additional 30 members, but if you could ram it through and do it, would it be good for democracy to have two prairie provinces with 10 seats each and six senators each versus two maritime provinces, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, with 10 each? Their populations are significantly smaller and they also have 10 senators each. Would that even be fair? Would it be the right thing to do if you're looking for representation by population as well?

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

I thought in your example that you were actually reducing the eastern provinces, and I'm saying no, that will not work. Even if you don't reduce them, you're maintaining an inequity in the regime. You're maintaining it and suffering a lot more to maintain the inequity that is still there and not really addressing the issue.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

You're absolutely right. My point is that there's less room to move the Atlantic seats because of constitutional Senate limits, for example, whereas for Saskatchewan and Manitoba, you could actually drain them down to six seats in theory, which strikes me as being not even correct from a rep-by-pop point of view. You would have much more disequilibrium between the smaller provinces. That was my point.

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

The answer to the question is in the question.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Would you conclude that the idea of making 308 seats is folly, that it's not really a solution when we're looking to move toward rep-by-pop?

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

If one puts on the hat of a democrat seeking to see people represented because this is a representative democracy, then the number of seats has to go up in order to achieve this. As I said, from my review of it, and I looked at it before when the two other bills were presented in general terms, not in specific terms, and when I saw this one, I said this is closer, this is going to be hard to beat in terms of approaches.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

So the Liberal proposal is undemocratic. Thank you very much.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

Is there anyone else from the government side? Mr. Albrecht.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you for being here, Mr. Kingsley. I just want to follow up on your comment about the application of a member of Parliament, along with nine others, to this committee.

You clarified that even if I am sitting on this committee I may not access that particular vehicle for consideration. Would the very fact that I'm on this committee give me access to that, or do I still have to have the nine others join me in a written submission?

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

In my view, from my recollection of the statute--and I attended two redistributions, one in 1991 and the other in 2001--if your fellow committee members were doing their jobs, you wouldn't get away with that.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

That goes without saying.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

More importantly, I think we wouldn't let them get away with that.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Seriously, I'm glad you clarified that, because it seemed to me, from the Chief Electoral Officer's remarks, that just by virtue of being on this committee it would stand to reason that we would have input, but if we do follow the letter of the law, it would require nine others to join with us in our submission to consider a reallocation of those boundaries.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Is anyone sharing any of that time?

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Chair, I'm happy to share it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Great. Mr. Dion, for a short question, and we'll be finished.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

I will not ask you to respond to what we have just heard.

However, I would like to come back to the recommendation of having 300 seats that was made to you. It was this committee that requested it and not the government.

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

It was the committee that requested it, if I remember correctly, following representations made by Reform members of the committee.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

It's likely that the leader of the opposition at the time, the leader of the Reform Party, the current Prime Minister of Canada, requested that because he himself came up with a plan to decrease the size of the House to 273 seats.

I understand that nobody at that time called it undemocratic, but that was his view.

So I just wanted to tell you that, Mr. Kingsley.

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

I appreciate it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

As there are no other questions, we thank you for coming today, Mr. Kingsley. We have given you a little bit of homework, I think. You said you would read through it one more time and if you had more thoughts you would share them with us. We ask you to do that, if you could.

My phone is always available to you, and the clerk's too, if you come up with thoughts as we finish our study on this.

Thank you for coming on very short notice. I recognize that we put you under a lot of pressure to get you here today. Thank you very much for being able to do it. You've been more than informative, as usual.