Debates of Sept. 30th, 2003

Supply

[Alex Shepherd, Liberal, Durham, ON]

Madam Speaker, I am very interested in the hon. member's comments. It seems that he basically wants to take the best out of both systems and somehow evolve that. I personally do not think we can do that. The fact of the matter is proportional representation has a lot of distractions from it and we should criticize it.

One thing that has developed in the debate is the theory that if we have proportional representation, we will bring back the voters to the electoral process. I have some statistics that came from the Centre for Voting and Democracy website, the people who are in support of proportional representation. It shows countries like Switzerland with only 38% voter turnout although it has proportional representation. It shows Italy with a high percentage of voter turnout but a very unstable government.

The previous intervenor talked about Germany. When I was in Germany I was amazed that the Green Party actually had captured control of the government to some extent. It was very much a minority party. The net result was that it had actually got that country to shut down all its nuclear reactors. That party did not represent anyone but it controlled the balance of power.

I cannot understand why the member would support something which he himself has admitted is an erroneous evolutionary process for Canada.

[James Moore, Canadian Alliance, Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Madam Speaker, the reason I support this motion while at the same time I oppose proportional representation personally is that, and I suppose this is the difference between being a Canadian Alliance member of Parliament and a Liberal member of Parliament, I entrust Canadians to make some of these decisions. I believe in open dialogue and open conversation.

I do agree frankly with the member's criticisms of proportional representation, particularly as seen in Germany and especially as seen in Italy. As it has been organized in Italy, I think it has caused incredible political problems and organizational problems in terms of governing.

I do agree, as I said in my speech, that when one is setting up a democratic system and setting up a mechanism by which people are electing their government, there is a list of virtues. Among those virtues are voter participation, stability, intellectual identity and so on.

In my view, while it is immensely important, voter participation does not override the need for stability, particularly in the example which the hon. member gave in the case of Germany of smaller political parties, perhaps overly ideological parties, perhaps single issue political parties or as could be the case in Canada, political parties identified by language or by aggressive regional anxieties.

If that were to take place, we would have to have a coalition government, which is almost always the case in a proportional situation. Then we really could have a situation where rather than having high voter participation, people think there is high voter participation and therefore we have the rule of the majority because more people are voting, but the reality is we have more political parties that represent a segmented view of the public.

As a consequence, what would happen is we would actually in an inverse way have a tyranny of the minority. We would have broad political parties, a wide number of political parties in a coalition government but no single political party would have a large enough constituency to be able to speak for the majority.

In an inverse way, and a kind of perverted way, while we would have an elevated number of people participating in a campaign, because we would have more political parties without which a coalition could not survive, we could have a tyranny of the minority through smaller political parties that are driven by regional anxieties, by language, by religion and by all kinds of other things. That is why I am personally opposed to proportional representation particularly as a stand-alone reform.

At the same time, coming back to answer the specific question, the reason I will be voting in favour of the motion is I believe that Canadians are intellectual beings who are fully prepared for the discussion and prepared for the dialogue. I am prepared to put forward my view of proportional representation and a wholesale reform of our electoral system, Senate reform, reform of how we choose the Governor General, holding judges accountable and so on. I am prepared to have that debate. I am not afraid of giving more power, money, control and influence to Canadians, but then again, I am not a Liberal.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like the member's thoughts on the fact that we are moving toward election finance reform based upon proportional representation but at the same time some members on the government side do not want to move toward proportional representation for members in the House.

[James Moore, Canadian Alliance, Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague from the NDP. I am not surprised, nor is he that the government has not had particular forethought in this regard.

That is one more argument that we in the Canadian Alliance have to oppose the government financing bill. But the principal opposition I have with the government's campaign finance bill is less so in terms of the incongruity with regard to financing than it is morally wrong to take money from people to be used against them ideologically and politically. I am sure even the member for Windsor West would be appalled to know that some of his money is going to finance some of the ideas that are being espoused by some of the colleagues who are sitting not too far from where he is.

I am personally appalled that money from my pocket, my tax dollars, would be going to finance a political party, particularly the Bloc Quebecois, that has set forward a single ideology, whose members do not agree on taxes or on health care, they do not agree on anything, except they believe in destroying Canada. I do not like the fact that the government is forcing me to finance those destructive ideas.

[Jay Hill, Canadian Alliance, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise today to join this debate. I offer my appreciation to my colleague from Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam for splitting his time with me.

I would like to read the motion. The motion forward today by the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle of the New Democratic Party states:

That this House call upon the government to hold a referendum within one year--

Were it to pass obviously.

--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 and the process of implementation, with an implementation date no later than July 1, 2006.

During debate in the chamber it is often not possible for the Chair to recognize everyone who would like to rise during questions and comments to question a particular member of Parliament from whichever party on his or her speech or intervention. I want to refer to remarks made by the hon. member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot in reply to my colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca.

My colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca was putting forward some alternatives that he believed in and he commented on the absence of free votes in the House of Commons. Certainly, in his view and I concur with his view, this House of Commons operates very much like a dictatorship. The member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot said that free votes would be anarchy. I was appalled by that.

[An hon. member]

That is what he said.

[Jay Hill, Canadian Alliance, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

That is what he said in this chamber moments ago. He said that free votes would be anarchy. In other words, by extension, democracy would be anarchy because free votes, like a referendum, should be representative of the people.

If I am representing my constituents of Prince George—Peace River on any particular piece of legislation in a free vote and I can throw off the shackles of party discipline, the party policy or the leader's position and vote the wishes of my constituents, I would submit that is democracy. Yet the member for Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Aldershot would state that free votes would be anarchy.

My colleague from Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca put forward the suggestion that the vast majority of votes in this place should not require party discipline. This is something that has always puzzled me. Why do the old parties that have been around this country for so long rely on party discipline? They rely on the whips. They rely on the system of either discipline or reward to ensure that their government members, when they are on the government side of the House, vote for their legislation.

If their legislation were good legislation, if it was in the best interests of not only Canadians at large but in the best interests of the majority of the constituents in the majority of the ridings, then it should pass through this chamber and become good law. Yet we have seen time and time again--certainly I have seen it in the 10 years that I have been a member of Parliament--where laws are passed in this place and we find out in hindsight that some of the opposition members actually knew what they were talking about when they submitted amendments and spoke of concerns they had with the legislation. Indeed, sometimes there is even a free spirit on the government backbenches who also raises concerns about a piece of legislation and occasionally even puts forward an amendment.

Almost invariably all those amendments, despite their worth, are voted down. They are thrown away because they are not the minister's or the cabinet's or the Prime Minister's amendment. Many times, certainly in the 10 years I have been here, that legislation comes back to haunt the government. It is either thrown out in court decisions or overruled. If we had taken a bit more time, if there had not been the party discipline in this chamber, where the government whip cracks the whip and forces government members to support a piece of legislation, we would have had better laws in Canada. Yes, I submit it would take longer to pass laws, but we would have better laws as a result of it.

We are talking about proportional representation as a replacement for our first past the post system in Canada. I will be voting for the motion put by the New Democratic Party. As my colleague from Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam has stated, I will be voting for it even though I personally do not think that proportional representation is the best system for Canada. My preference would be a preferential balloting system where Canadians, at the time of an election, no matter how many candidates they had to select from in their constituency, would mark their selections from number one, being the first choice, to however many there were.

I need to explain how this system would work. When the results are being tabulated by riding, if a candidate did not have more than 50% of the first choice votes when the ballots are counted, then the ballots of the candidates with the least first choices would be recounted based upon the second choices on those ballots and reassigned to the other candidates. If that, in effect, gave one candidate more than 50% of the ballots, then he or she would be declared a victor in the election. That is the system that I personally support. But, as my colleague has said, we need to move this debate along.

Our system is widely viewed as archaic. Indeed, many of the rules that we have in the House of Commons are more archaic than in the mother parliament in Great Britain. We have not evolved even as much as the parliament in Great Britain has evolved over time.

We can further the debate about what type of electoral system Canadians want, and what reforms they want to see, by supporting this motion. It is a step forward.

It is not the ideal system. I was pleased to hear a Liberal backbencher earlier make a similar comment. He will be supporting the motion even though he does not recognize that it is the panacea.

It is not the be all and end all and the ideal, but at least it furthers the debate and debate is healthy. It is a debate that Canadians should have. Canadians want to have a debate about their Parliament because, and I will sum up with this, something is wrong when we see an elected dictatorship put in place to run the business of this country with 38% of the votes in a federal election.

[Wendy Lill, NDP, Dartmouth, NS]

Madam Speaker, it is interesting to hear the comments from my colleagues and from the entire House.

The issue that I hear over and over is that we need to reconnect with people. Surely that is what this exercise is all about. Many people, if they express any interest whatsoever in an election but do not get any kind of payoff at election time because their candidate does not get in, find themselves wondering what it was all about. How are their views to be represented if clearly 30% or 40% of the population does not get its members or its ideas put forward? How will they feel they are being represented?

I am also concerned about the fact that only 20% of the members of the House are women. I would like to ask the member, does he think that under some kind of proportional representation plan we would be able to increase the number of women in the same way that they have in places like Scotland and other countries in Europe? I would think everyone here would agree that is a desirable result.

[Jay Hill, Canadian Alliance, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Madam Speaker, I agree with the hon. member that it would be desirable. It would be a positive step forward to have more representation of women in the House of Commons and indeed at all levels of elected office. I certainly support that. However I do not favour any form of quota system to allow for that.

It would be demeaning to women to suggest that the only way they could get elected to the House of Commons would be for them to be placed by someone or some group on a list and somehow they could be elected that way. It would be demeaning for all of those women over the years who were elected under our present system to the House of Commons.

I believe it is a worthy goal. I would certainly be interested in hearing about ways in which that could be encouraged without actually employing some sort of quota or stipulation where, under a proportional system, a list would have to be made of so many men, so many women, so many visible minorities and so many aboriginals. I do not think that is the way to go and I would not support that.

I agree with the member's initial comments. What we are talking about here and what the motion really drives at is a way to engage the electorate. The hon. member is right on the mark when she states that there are too many Canadians who feel disconnected. They are not engaged because they feel that their vote does not count for anything. Referring to the example I used, there is something seriously wrong with our system when 62% of Canadians in the 1997 election did not vote for the government, did not vote Liberal, yet the Liberals had a massive majority that enabled the Prime Minister to act like a dictator.

[Alex Shepherd, Liberal, Durham, ON]

Madam Speaker, I listened to the member for Prince George—Peace River and it seemed to me the one thing that was missing from his comments was the word compromise.

This is a big country and a big federation. It is the second largest geographical country in the world with a small population. The necessity to run this country as a nation is the word compromise. From our point of view, the Ontario voters must find that they contribute more to this federation than they receive from it, but mainly because they are supporting other parts of this country to bring up their standards to the standards of the rest of the nation.

That is why we have such a thing called party discipline. If people are concerned about their own well-being, they will only vote for their own well-being and the well-being of their constituents. They might be forgetting some of our aboriginal people. They might be forgetting about the health care in some of our Atlantic provinces and other places. That is why we have party discipline. There is no democracy in the world that functions properly that does not have some form of party discipline.

As a member I do not believe that our discipline is overbearing. I would like to hear what the member has to say about that. We cannot have everybody standing up here every day doing their own thing. It will not work.

[Jay Hill, Canadian Alliance, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would argue that it will work and that it should work. Government members can stand up all day long and try to defend party discipline, as the member has just done, and use the word “compromise”. I hear the word compromise and I hear that our big nation has to compromise. I believe in compromise and I think most Canadians are reasonable people, but when I think about compromise I think about the Charlottetown accord, when Canadians had the intelligence to see through that, the ultimate Canadian compromise, and vote it down. Thank goodness they did.

[Joe Jordan, Liberal, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Madam Speaker, I got up earlier and gave the Reader's Digest version of my thoughts but I will take four minutes now.

If we throw out the partisan rhetoric, I think what we are hearing is that debate on the motion has been very interesting. There are people who are going to support this for a variety of different reasons, but I think it is fair to say we do have some issues that need to be addressed.

I will repeat my comments. I am not saying that this is the solution to the problems with democracy. In fact, to paraphrase Churchill, democracy has problems until we consider the alternatives. There are pros and cons to everything. There are no easy answers, but based on my own experience out on the hustings, people are not staying away from the ballot box, as has been suggested, simply because they think the government is doing a good job. I think there really is a disconnect out there. I think there are people who sit there and think, “What does my vote matter?” They think that the person they want to support does not have a hope of winning because that person is not from one of the mainstream parties, so they just disconnect themselves from the process.

Believe me, democracy does not work if people are not engaged in it. There has been talk of the government getting whatever the percentage was, being the government. Do not blame us. We still got more votes than the opposition parties. We are all in this together. We all have to figure out how to put in place a process that can take the needs and aspirations of Canadians and reflect them in public policy.

As I said in my earlier comments, I look at the issue of the environment. In our current system of first past the post, winner take all, 31% or less, or 39% in my case, I win the prize. That is characteristic of the fact that there were eight or nine parties running.

When the member talks about the way we run the House, I agree. The Standing Orders for the way we run the House, the lion's share of them, were put in place when we had two parties. When we get to three, four or five parties, that is where we start to run into problems in terms of representation on committees and allocation of time on various topics. I think we need to look at those sorts of things.

But what I like about this motion, and it may be a proportional ballot or preferential ballot, as they are not defining what we do in terms of proportional representation, I do not see the flaw, the problem, with putting some value on a vote that does not necessarily carry the day in first past the post but is certainly a ballot that has been sincerely put in that ballot box by a Canadian.

We could do it in a way which says that the candidates selected under proportional representation would start with the candidate of the defeated party that got the most votes. We do not need to have the person hand picked. Again, that has not been defined in the motion.

We heard a lot of talk about Italy. I think we have to be very careful that we make a distinction between correlation and causation. Italy's democracy is rather cumbersome. Whether that is because they have proportional representation or not, I do not know. I think it is a dangerous leap of faith to blame it on PR. The same logic would suggest that we should never go to bed because the lion's share of people die in bed. I think we have to have a bit of an open mind.

This particular motion, by simply keeping the issue alive, puts it on the radar screen. I harbour no illusions as to its fate, but again I think it is worth supporting in the sense that it is not a perfect system now and we should take a serious look at anything that could potentially improve it.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

It being 5.15 p.m., it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the business of supply.

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Some hon. members]

No.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And more than five members having risen:

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was negatived on the following division:)

[The Deputy Speaker]

I declare the motion lost.

The House resumed from September 25 consideration of the motion that Bill C-34, an act to amend the Parliament of Canada Act (Ethics Commissioner and Senate Ethics Officer) and other Acts in consequence, be read the third time and passed, and of the amendment.