Thank you very much to the committee for this invitation. I've appeared before this committee half a dozen times now, I believe, over a 20-year period. It has always been an honour to do so.
I am pleased today to share with you my thoughts on the question of long ballots. I understand the issue in the following way. It’s relatively easy to get one’s name on the ballot in Canada. Because of this, a group of Canadians who object to our electoral system decided they would demonstrate their dissatisfaction with our form of electoral democracy by adding as many people as possible to ballots in high-profile races.
In the submission by that group today, they appeal to a slightly more general and unobjectionable point—that MPs should not write their own rules of election. That point has merits, and I will return to it. But their larger point is that Canada’s electoral system should be reformed, and they’ll keep making ballots longer until Canadians get the message.
Our electoral system has not changed, but voters in a small number of constituencies have been forced to search for competitive, sincere candidates among dozens or hundreds of names of insincere candidates.
Should members of Parliament be changing the Canada Elections Act to respond to this? Let me make two arguments on why you should and two on why you should not, and then say something quickly about the history of monkey business on our ballots.
Why should you make it harder for names to enter our ballot? First, these long ballot efforts clearly, in practice, violate the spirit of our competitive elections. Elections should be contested between people with real intentions of entering Parliament, who have mustered some minimum level of local support through signatures—unique signatures—and who are ready to actively compete against others. The ballot is much more than a petition, so it should require more than shenanigans to get on it.
Second, the management of our elections is highly localized. It depends on volunteers and minimally paid part-time workers to carry out manning polling stations, assisting voters in understanding the ballot and then counting votes. The smooth conduct of elections and the rapid counting of constituency races is what Canadians expect. Excessively long ballots, however funny they might be, make it harder for voters to cast a vote and harder for local servants of our democracy to count ballots. Canada's reputation of well-run elections is hard-earned and well deserved. It’s not funny to monkey with this. For these reasons, making it harder for unserious candidates to get on a ballot is a good idea.
What are the arguments against changing these rules? First, you are in an interesting conflict of interest, in that you can all benefit as incumbents from certain rule changes. Thus, changes to electoral rules should be done carefully and transparently, and with as much consensus and outside validation as possible. Second, the effects of these long ballots are probably quite small, so this may not be a high-priority issue. If you have chosen to deal with it, so be it. Just do so transparently, respecting the public’s concerns about a conflict of interest.
One final point is that Canada has a history of monkey business on ballots—some funny, some not. In its heyday, the Rhinoceros Party, you might recall, used to field a lot of candidates and do funny things. They had a platform plank of an angled bike path across the country so that one could coast from coast to coast—very good. It was very funny. There are less funny examples. As Louis Massicotte once told me, in Quebec, before the introduction of party names on ballots, troublemakers would occasionally run a candidate who shared a name with a serious candidate. This was meant to confuse voters. That was less funny.
This long ballot business is less funny. It’s the handiwork of self-proclaimed democratic reformers who have lost referendum after referendum, sometimes after citizens' assemblies and sometimes not, and who recently lost another court case affirming the constitutionality of our electoral system. Time and again, Canadians have indicated that they don’t want what they’re selling, so you might find it less than funny that they want free rein to gum up election ballots.
Thank you very much.
