Members of PROC, given your mandate of reviewing both election law and conflicts of interest, it is extremely wise of you to take the time to investigate what the longest ballot committee is all about.
If there is one thing I want you to take away from my appearance today, it's that democracy is best managed with strict, non-partisan impartiality.
While you consider that, Mr. Chair, I'd like to give a huge thank you to all the candidates who put their names forward to run in long ballots, and I want to give a huge thank you to all the voters who signed their names hundreds of times in support of those candidates and in support of electoral reform. Because of them, this protest has been successful beyond anything I honestly could ever have imagined. Now clearly we have the attention of politicians. I have been invited to Parliament today because they hear our message, our shared desire for improving democracy.
I want to start with praise for two Canadian institutions. Elections Canada is admired for its professionalism and independence. We voters know that we are able to cast our votes, that everyone running the polling station is impartial and that our votes will be counted fairly. Elections Canada is one of the most trusted government institutions in our nation, and that trust is deserved. Elections Canada is trusted precisely because it is non-partisan and independent.
The same is true of our electoral boundaries commissions. In many places around the world, politicians decide their own districts, and what do they do? They gerrymander maps to try to lock in their own power. Canada, wisely, does not tolerate that. Instead, boundary drawing is the responsibility of independent commissions operating at arm's length from Parliament.
Here is the problem. While ballot counting and boundary drawing are correctly protected from political interference, the rules of our elections are not. The laws that govern how parties are regulated, how ballots are designed, who is even allowed to put their name forward as a candidate and how votes get translated into seats are laws that are still written and modified by you, MPs, with your partisan interests and your careers depending on the outcome of each election. This is a textbook conflict of interest, obviously.
The longest ballot committee advocates that you, MPs, recuse yourselves from writing the rules of your own elections. We already know that the model of non-partisan independence works. Canadians would be well served by a permanent, independent, non-partisan body to oversee the full framework of election law.
This reform would also protect you as MPs. When you propose changes to election law, you are often met with suspicion, and rightly so. Even good reforms can be dismissed as self-serving when they are written by people who are perceived to benefit from the changes. By handing responsibility to an independent, non-partisan body, voters could finally trust that the laws were written to serve the best interests of Canadians, rather than to serve the best interests of the ruling parties.
The longest ballot committee is urging MPs to do the right thing, recuse themselves from this blatant conflict of interest and establish a permanent, independent, non-partisan body to oversee the full framework of election law.
Thanks.