Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 17th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Okay, thank you very much. That is very interesting.

We will start with Mr. Lightbound.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will share my time with Ms. Sahota.

Thank you, Mr. Wilson, for being here.

I am particularly interested in proxy voting. We have discussed it with your counterpart from the U.K., and from Australia as well, in a way, and you touched upon it in your presentation.

In the U.K., they have a system called “nodding through”, which is a very limited form of proxy voting. In Australia, I gather, it is limited to situations where the member is breastfeeding. In Canada, we don't have proxy voting.

You mentioned that 25% of the members can use proxy voting. Is it limited in any way in terms of what circumstances would make it so that a member can avail himself of proxy voting? Does the member have to be ill? Are there reasons why you could avail yourself?

[David Wilson]

Perhaps I should have been a bit clearer. It is possible for one member of a party to cast all of the party votes while he is the only member of that party who is present in the chamber, but 75% of the rest of the members of that party must be within the parliamentary precinct; 25% of the members can be anywhere at all, outside of the precinct. The reasons they are away are a matter between them and their party.

It could be for anything at all. Quite often, it is to attend other business, outside of Wellington, particularly for ministers. It doesn't have to be for illness, child care, or any particular reason that is specified in any rules. It really is up to the party to agree that a member be absent.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Are there procedural safeguards? How concretely does it operate?

[David Wilson]

It is very much operated on a trust basis—the word of a whip that they have all of their members present and are able to pass the full number of votes as available to them. The Parliament is always seen very seriously and it probably would be treated as contempt, if a whip did pass votes they were not entitled to. That has happened only once, in my memory, and the party concerned realized that fact before anybody else did, drew the House's attention to it, and actually changed the vote by one as a result.

[Joël Lightbound, Liberal, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you.

I will give my time to Ms. Sahota.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

I am also going to follow up on my colleague's questions on proxy voting, because I find it quite interesting.

Have there been any problems with proxy voting in the past, and if so, how did you correct those problems? I am still not quite sure about what the procedure is—whether the member has to sign something off or whether it is just a private agreement between them and their party as to which way they are going to vote. Situations of duress have been discussed in our committee, and there other concerns we have been discussing around proxy voting. Have those come up there?

[David Wilson]

They have been discussed, and some concerns have arisen. It's assumed that for party votes, the party whip is entitled to cast all of the votes available to the party. At least they know that some members are absent, so they don't need specific permission from members for every vote to cast their vote. If a member wants to cast a vote differently from rest of their party, they then do give written instruction to the whip to do that on their behalf or they might attend the chamber and do it themselves.

In other situations sometimes there have been errors with proxy votes. Particularly in some instances large parties, if they have a written proxy from another party, will cast the votes for them as well. In New Zealand we have two parties that have only one member each, and another party that has only two members. Those small parties are in coalition with the main governing party. Sometimes they'll give their proxies to the whip of that party if they are absent, and occasionally there's been an error made in the casting of those votes and, when that's been realized, usually by the small party telling the government whip, then they both come to the House and correct their vote.

It's not been tremendously problematic, and I think members have seen that it takes about a minute to cast a vote, and they can spend more time debating and less time voting. When we do have a traditional division, which we do on conscience issues maybe once or twice a year, it seems to take about 10 minutes to call the members to the House and then get them to vote. Members generally prefer this method.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

For the members who are in the House, what is the process of voting? Do they stand and vote or is there technology involved?

[David Wilson]

They stand and vote. The Clerk calls out the name of the party while standing. The whip then stands and casts a number of votes and says whether they're in favour of the question, against it, or abstaining, and the Clerk then records those and hands them to the Speaker to announce.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

That's similar to our system here where we individually stand and vote. Has there been any discussion about any technological updates that could be made to make that process faster?

[David Wilson]

We've thought about it. There are seven parties in the House at the moment. It takes a few seconds for each of them to cast their vote, and it would be possible to use technology for it. At the moment I think the feeling has been that there's a preference for parties to actually stand and give voice to their vote so that anyone who's watching or listening can hear how they voted. There have not been a great number of errors with voting, either casting them or adding them up. There's not a huge number of members to work with, either. I think at the moment, members are—and I certainly am—quite happy with the voice voting that we use.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

You have 30 seconds.

[Ruby Sahota, Liberal, Brampton North, ON]

Okay I'll pass that over.

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I'll just take that 30 seconds because I have a very quick question for you. Can you tell us about the allocated seats for the Maori people?

[David Wilson]

Indigenous Maori in New Zealand have had the option of one of two electoral rolls. There's the general electoral roll and the Maori roll, and there are a number of Maori seats throughout the country. The number will increase or decrease with the movement in that population. It's increasing and it has been for years now because there's a higher birth rate amongst Maori than other New Zealanders. So only people of Maori descent may vote or stand for election for those seats, and they were introduced very early in the New Zealand Parliament's history as a way of ensuring representation from Maori. There have been calls in recent years to abolish them primarily on the basis that there are actually a disproportionate number of Maori MPs in the House. There are more MPs of Maori descent than there are Maori in the general population... No party really seems to be willing to be the one that abolishes them, so I imagine they are here for the time being.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

Mr. Schmale.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Thank you very much for joining us today. We do appreciate your comments.

Just to clarify, I'm having trouble getting my head around this about the proxy voting and having very few people in the chamber at the time of a vote. As a legislator, I can't image anything more important than actually being in the chamber to cast your vote. Can you explain this a bit more? I'm just having trouble with this.

[David Wilson]

Many members of the New Zealand public share your discomfort with that. It's possible for the full Parliament to vote with only one representative of each party in the chamber. There are usually a few more than that at times when votes are conducted, but it's certainly far from full. It was a difficult transition for members to make around the mid-1990s when this change was made. Many of our members now, 20 years on, haven't known any other system.

With the variety of other obligations that they have, and a system with a very strong party discipline as well, which has been one of the results of the move to our proportional representation system, it would be very rare for backbenchers, for example, to vote contrary to their party, what you might see in some larger parliaments, in parliaments where members are all directly elected and therefore perhaps not so dependent on their party to have their seat.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

It boggles my mind that, as you said, you could have just the leaders of the parties in there and nobody else. I find that very interesting and confusing because I think if you're elected to do this job, although travel is involved and you're away from your family and we all kind of deal with it in our own way, that is a big part of the job. That is the job to stand in your place and vote, and if you just mail it in, so to speak, I just can't imagine. Maybe it's just me. I don't know.

In terms of proxy voting—I apologize if you have already done it and I missed it—what would be the reason for casting your proxy vote? Apparently you can do it regardless. Again, I'm just trying to get my head around this.

[David Wilson]

The party whip is considered to have the ability to cast all votes for their party without a specific proxy from individual members, and if a member wants to vote differently from their party then they would instruct that whip that way, although in that instance they'd be quite likely to go to the chamber and cast their own vote.

The reasons for their absence and the 25% allowance of members who are able to be away from the parliamentary precinct is a matter between the whip and the members of their party. There are not specific reasons provided for in Standing Orders for those matters. Really it is whether the whip will permit them to go, and so they do have to convince the whip. When I talked to the government whip he said everybody except the Prime Minister has to give him reasons for being away. Those reasons are really up to him, and I think it's so that he can weigh up competing requests for absence.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

I guess it would be a very civil vote. They just high-five at the end of it and be on their way.

[David Wilson]

But vote.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

What was it like in the previous system before you went to proportional? What was the voting like then? Was it the same stand in your place until everyone gets counted?

[David Wilson]

No, we would ring the division bells, call all members to the chamber, and they had seven minutes to get there and then they would be locked and they would go out in the lobbies to vote as we would have seen at Westminister. That seemed to take about two minutes for the vote.

As I say, the change was made in 1996. With an increase in the number of parties, and an understanding parties may vote different ways on different questions, it's not guaranteed one side will always oppose everything and the other side will always support it.