Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the constituents of Surrey Central to participate supply day motion put forward by the NDP.
The motion under consideration today calls upon the government to hold a referendum within one year to determine whether Canadians wish to replace the current electoral system with a system of proportional representation, and if so, to appoint a commission to consult Canadians on the preferred model of proportional representation, with an implementation date no later than July 1, 2006.
The motion deals with two things: the electoral reform process and whether to replace the current system.
I agree that there is something fundamentally wrong with our current electoral system. As a result of our current first past the post system of electing representatives, both in provincial and federal elections, millions of votes do not count.
Let us look at the 1997 election results. With only 38% of the popular vote, the smallest mandate in Canadian history for a majority government, the Liberals clung to government and the power to rule. In the last election in 2000, with a minority of popular vote, that is 40.8%, the Liberals won 172 out of 301 seats in the House of Commons. With just 40.8% of the votes, they won 57% of the seats.
During the last election, the Canadian Alliance received more than one million votes in Ontario. That is 24% of the total votes. One out of four people in Ontario voted for the Canadian Alliance. What did we get? We got 2 seats out of 103 total seats in Ontario. Something is fundamentally wrong.
Meanwhile, the Liberals got 2.3 million votes, about twice as many as Canadian Alliance votes in Ontario but 50 times as many seats as the Canadian Alliance. Based upon the total vote, there should be about 25% Alliance MPs from Ontario.
In a fair voting system, no one could credibly say that the Alliance is merely a western party. In our system, some votes count more than others. The Liberals received 5.2 million votes to win 172 seats in Parliament. That is an average of 30,000 votes per MP for the Liberals. The Alliance on the other hand needed an average of 49,000 votes to get one MP elected.
The cost of seats was even higher for the NDP and the Conservatives, the smaller parties in the House. They needed on average about 84,000 votes for an NDP MP and 130,000 votes for a Conservative MP to win their 13 and 12 seats in the House respectively.
If seats from the 2000 election were allocated based upon a pure proportional model that we are debating today, the Commons seat tally today would be: Liberals, 123 seats instead of 172; Alliance, 77 seats instead of 66, we would gain 11 and they would lose many; Conservatives, 37 seats instead of 12; Bloc, 32 instead of the 38 they have now; and the NDP, 26 instead of 13. Other smaller parties would have won some seats in the House. The composition of this House would certainly change if we had a modern proportional representative system in place.
Since World War I or, let us say, out of the 16 majority governments in Canada, only four of them were legitimate majority governments. The remaining received a minority of votes but a majority of members in the House. As a result, they have held unchallenged and unaccountable power even though the majority of Canadians voted against them. The last election again represented a dramatic distortion of what voters said at the ballot box and created yet another phony majority government for Canadians.
In the single member plurality system, also called the SMP system, parliamentary seats go to the party that receives the most votes in a riding. Votes cast for losing candidates become completely irrelevant, no matter that they expressed the democratic wishes of, very likely, the majority of voters in that riding. They will not be represented. In effect, some people win the right to have their voices represented and everybody else loses.
It is the same story in the provinces. In British Columbia, the previous NDP government had a majority even though it received fewer votes than the opposition Liberals. Similarly, Mr. Lucien Bouchard became Premier of Quebec in 1998 with an overwhelming majority of seats although the Parti Québécois got fewer votes than Jean Charest's Liberals.
Internationally, 33 of the world's 36 major democracies use forms of proportional representation for national elections. Only Canada, the United States and India do not use such systems. Proportional elections have taken place in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In fact, Canada, the United States and India right now are the only holdouts in the move to have some form of proportional representation.
Suddenly, proportional representation has become all the rage. B.C. is in the process of appointing a citizens committee to examine ways to better translate votes into seats in the legislature. Similarly, the new Quebec provincial government has announced plans to introduce proportional representation legislation next year. The front-runner in the current Ontario provincial election is promising a referendum on proportional representation. We also know that the idea is being considered by the newly re-elected Premiers of New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. It is the federal government that does not have the will to reform the current electoral system because that will not favour it anymore.
The worst aspect of our electoral system is that it exacerbates regional differences. If we look at an electoral map, we will see that everybody in the west seems to be Alliance supporters, which I am proud of. Everybody in Ontario is perceived to be Liberal. Everybody in Quebec is perceived to support the Bloc, but that of course is not true.
As I said earlier, Canada is one of few modern industrial democracies, so-called democracies, that still uses this outdated system. This system was invented even before the telephone was invented. We can imagine how much we are lagging behind. Even Great Britain has started to abandon the old system, which we have been following.
Under proportional representation, the distribution of seats and power is a function of the popular vote cast for respective candidates and/or their political parties. Different versions of proportional representation systems are employed in more than 90 jurisdictions and can be tailored to reflect the needs of different countries. There should be no hesitation in having an electoral system that will work for Canadians and will work for Canada.
The most common suggestion is that proportional representation would be a mix of the existing and new systems where members of Parliament elected in ridings across the country would be joined by a number of “at large” MPs, or “top-up seats”, chosen on the basis of the number of votes parties received and nominated by their parties.
A party that wins far less than its fair proportion of seats through the first past the post system would be entitled to extra compensatory seats. This is the type of system being considered for British Columbia and Quebec, which I mentioned earlier and which looks to a smaller model that has worked well in the Greater London Assembly in Britain, where 11 of the 25 members are elected at large.
We call Great Britain's parliamentary system the mother of parliaments. If Great Britain has adopted that system, what is the problem with adopting a similar system in Canada?
The principle of allocating proportional representative seats on a compensatory basis is also already in use in New Zealand, Germany and many other countries. It allows parties to flourish that have a national appeal but suffer from being too regionally dispersed.
Proportional systems are employed around the world. With the possible exceptions of Israel and Italy, they produce governments that are no less stable than our own. We have had elections after three and a half years for the last three elections. We know that the government is using political opportunity to call elections rather than have a fixed election date. There is the argument that proportional representation does not produce a stable government as good as the system we currently have; parties have to combine forces in order to rule, some people say, but it yields governments that are both more representative and more accountable. Moreover, there would be more representation from women and minorities depending on the percentage and population.
In proportional representation, there is no such thing as a wasted vote since even small parties can make their presence felt. Strategic voting is of much less interest. There is more opportunity to vote for a political party rather than against a political party.
Perhaps the greatest proof of the success of proportional representation is in voter turnout. Voter turnout is very important. It is a significant problem, a major problem, of our electoral system. Canada has seen a disturbing decline in voter turnout over at least the past four elections.
Canada's voter turnout in federal elections is among the lowest in all western democracies. In 1984 and 1988, about 75% of eligible voters cast ballots. In 1993, the number dropped to 69.6% and, in 1997, it fell again to 67%. In the 2000 election, it fell further to 61%. It is very discouraging.
Even the 61% figure is an inflated figure. I will explain how. In Canada we count those who vote as a share of people on the voting list. The list misses a fair number of Canadians, perhaps about 10% to 15% of eligible voters. If we counted those who vote as a share of all those eligible to vote, turnout would be around 53%. It is shameful that in a democracy the turnout is something like 50% to 60%. The biggest drop has been among the youngest voters.
While more than 3 million Canadian voters, mostly young, clogged the telephone lines to vote for our new Canadian idol, few seem to place the same importance on selecting our prime minister. Only 25% of people between the ages of 18 to 24 voted in the last federal election.
The chief electoral officer, Mr. Jean-Pierre Kingsley, is so concerned about low voter turnout among young Canadians that his office has commissioned a number of studies and has begun holding forums to examine the problem. If political scientists are right, a new electoral system such as proportional representation may not entice completely uninterested young people into voting. However, it will certainly help, judging from international experience, where countries using variations on proportional representation have slightly higher voter turnouts than those using Canadian style, first past the post systems.
Opponents of proportional representation argue that it encourages the creation of small parties and makes it very hard to elect a majority government. They say that politicians end up deciding after the voting is over which parties should combine to form a coalition government.
After 20 years of arrogant majority rule by Liberal and PC governments, we think a little uncertainty in those holding the reins would be a good thing. Canada desperately needs a new voting system. In proportional systems, coalition governments are more common. Successful coalitions respect the diversity of opinion articulated by voters on election day. Once the Liberals, the governing party in this case, win by the first past the post system, they are loath to change it.
The Canadian Alliance and the NDP are two different parties from opposite ends of the political spectrum. They disagree on most issues but they agree on one thing: that changing our electoral system to better represent the wishes of voters is an urgent necessity.
With this motion, the NDP has almost taken a page out of the Canadian Alliance policy manual. Canadian Alliance policy number 85 states that “to improve the representative nature of our electoral system, we will consider electoral reforms, including proportional representation, the single transferable ballot, electronic voting and fixed election dates”, where each Parliament is elected four years from the previous federal election, except when it is defeated by a confidence motion. We will submit such options to voters in a nationwide referendum.
To conclude, the principle of proportional voting is simple: that like-minded voters should be able to win seats in proportion to their share of votes they get. Its mechanisms range from party based systems, which allow small parties to win seats, to candidate based systems such as cumulative voting, which would simply widen the big tent of the major parties.
Either way, proportional voting would help to reinvigorate Canadian politics, encouraging more policy making and giving voters a greater range of choice and of course more accountability and transparency in the way we govern ourselves.
Therefore, I would like to state that I support electoral reform. As to whether it should be proportional representation or some other form of reform such as the single transferable ballot, we need to debate that.
Of course we know that the electoral system is not fair now, as we see in the redistribution of ridings across Canada. I made a presentation before the procedure and House affairs committee. In its report it had the strongest recommendation for the proposal I made to the committee and it sent that recommendation to the B.C. elections commission. But that commission ignored the recommendation, the strongest recommendation from the procedure and House affairs committee. Therefore, we know that the system is not working perfectly.
There are 190,000 people living in my riding whereas the average riding in Canada has 95,000 electors. I know, Mr. Speaker, that you will not allow me to, but I should have two votes in the House based on the number of people I represent. If we compare it to Prince Edward Island, maybe I should have five votes in the House.
I know the system is not working. The voice of my constituents is not represented as much as the voice of the constituents of a member of Parliament who is representing 40,000 people. Therefore, I am the right person to state here in the House that we need electoral reform to completely reform the system that exists. Therefore, this evening I will be voting in support of this motion.