Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the New Democrats for graciously agreeing to split his time with me. His reason for doing so, as I understand it, is that we do not know what the Liberals are going to do. Are they simply going to force this debate to adjourn before others have had the chance to speak? It is something they can do if they move a motion to that effect. Of course, they have the majority in the House. Therefore, I am grateful for the time, even though it means that both his time and mine are somewhat foreshortened.
I will not be addressing today the security issues, except in passing, simply because they are not the subject of Report 2: Electoral Reform, of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. I will simply observe that my colleague is quite right.
One can fill this in from any place in the world. Of course, it can be filled in by a non-citizen of Canada, if one is willing to pretend to be a citizen. A person can do numerous other things that are problematic, such as filling it in multiple times, and so on. I simply observe that these are problems if this is an exercise that will have its results publicized, and we understand that is what the government intends to do. At least the general results will be publicized if not the actual data, and then we can say that we have discovered the following things. However, we will have discovered nothing, because of the security issues.
Yesterday we heard the minister offer the number of people who filled it out, and I think she said 80,000. However, the impression I get is that at least half of those must be people in this very House who have been experimenting to find out what the flaws with the system are.
Clifton van der Linden, who runs the Vox Pop Labs, who actually organized this, has a system for weeding out these kinds of responses, and members can read his literature on how they do it. However, that becomes a problem too, as we are going to weed out some valid responses, because they looked, according to the algorithm that was designed, the metric that was designed, as if they were non-valid responses. Therefore, from a systems point of view, it is a complete shemozzle. Nothing that comes out of this will be useful data from the point of view of figuring out what Canadians want.
Now, some would say that this is what the government's objective was to start with. Of course, I would never be so cynical about the Liberal Party of Canada, and they are free to quote this in their literature from now on. It is motivated exclusively by a unique advocacy and care for the good will of the people of Canada, which is unmatched by any party in this country or indeed by any other party in any country in the history of the world, possibly the galaxy.
Nonetheless, we have reason to be suspicious of this instrument. There are some problems with this. My colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley and I have been on a number of panel shows with the parliamentary secretary, who is defending the kinds of questions that we have, the either/or questions that have been the subject of so much ridicule. Also, he has talked about why there are no specific questions. He says we have to have values-based questions. This is not the time for specific questions, he explains, with regard to electoral reform.
However, as my colleague noted, there are numerous specific policy questions, not values questions, on other aspects of the electoral reform committee's mandate; for example, eligible voters who do not vote in elections should be fined; or the day of a federal election should be a statutory holiday. One has to agree or disagree with these things. Another is that the voting age for federal elections should be lowered, and one is asked to agree or disagree with that, although the government seems to have decided unilaterally on this exercise that it is now 16. Another is that there should be a limit to the length of the time of campaign election periods, and one must agree or disagree.
So here we have specific questions. However, when it gets to asking which kind of system one would prefer, even in the general category system, that is excluded. The argument is that these were just too complicated. Canadians cannot handle these questions. At any rate, they are unlike values questions. Also, we have to ask questions in this either/or fashion to determine what people think at this stage of the process. It is just not the right time to get into determining priorities in some sort of other manner.
I just want to go through and explain how the ERRE committee handled this, because what this motion is saying is, in addition to the questions being asked, to include the questions that were designed and approved unanimously by all the members of the special committee on electoral reform. We had to deal with the problem that there are trade-offs. There is no such thing as a perfect electoral system, one that would give maximum local representation, proportionality, choice of one's own MP, and minimum party discipline, all together in one package. There are trade-offs.
Here is how we did it. We would have questions grouped together. We would have four or five of them in a row, and on each one people would be asked if they agree or disagree on a scale of one to five, the exact same scale that is used in the MyDemocracy.ca survey; so there is no incompatibility there, but as they go through, they may agree with multiple statements but at different levels and intensity.
Here is an example:
Please indicate whether you agree or disagree with each of the following statements:
Canada's electoral system should favour the following outcome: one political party holds a majority of seats in Parliament and is able to implement its campaign platform.
And people rate that one to five.
Canada's electoral system should favour the following outcome: no single political party holds the majority of seats in Parliament, thereby increasing the likelihood that all political parties will work together to pass legislation.
Canada's electoral system should ensure that voters elect local candidates to represent them in Parliament.
Canada's electoral system should ensure that the number of seats held by a party in Parliament reflects the portion of votes it received across the country.
Independent candidates (not part of a political party) should be able to be elected to Parliament.
What we can see with that series of questions is the problem of not having a really clear mandate when multiple parties forming the government together have to negotiate. Both its good and bad sides are presented, but not presented as a false dichotomy. They are presented as two different options. People can indicate they favour both, but then the strength of their preference is also captured, and that will hint at where their values lie. This is a much more robust, much more useful device for actually determining how people feel about these issues. There are no false choices. There is nothing they can poke fun at here, and at the same time we are getting both the values and the policy preferences.
The government could have done that, but it chose not to do it.
Here is another example:
Please indicate whether you agree or disagree with any of the following statements.
The current electoral system adequately reflects voters' intentions.
If I vote for a candidate in my riding who does not win, my vote is wasted.
The current electoral system should be maintained.
The current electoral system should be changed.
There are four different ways of asking the fundamental issue, which is whether we should replace first past the post with something else, and if so, with what. The former questionnaire was about whether people are in favour of proportionate versus majoritarian systems, the series of questions.
This series of questions is about whether or not people are generally satisfied or dissatisfied with the status quo. There are two very robust, helpful, values-based, but also policy-based ways of determining how people feel. Because there is more than one question, we do not have the problem of false dichotomies, the plague of locusts questions, and that sort of thing: would they vote for proportional representation, which is covered with rabid fire ants, and questions like that.
The argument has also been presented that this is all too complicated, and the parliamentary secretary has been saying this over and over again. This is a completely disingenuous argument. Canadians do not understand first past the post, single transferable vote, and multiple member proportionality. They especially do not understand the acronyms—MMP versus STV versus DMP—in the same way that we often find it hard to attach the right label to the right thing. However, when we set the labels aside and actually move to the substance of the issues, people have a very keen understanding. This was demonstrated quite well both by the large number of responses we received—22,000—to the committee's questionnaire and also by the intelligence of the comments people provided. The reason we were able to do this was that helpful and intelligent information was provided, as it was at the town hall meetings we held, about the different kinds of systems.
There were demonstrations easily transferrable onto a computer screen explaining how each of these systems work, both for our consultation and, of course, the government's consultation as well. This includes all the systems, including the ranked ballot system that is the Prime Minister's favourite. Had it included those—and the government can still do this and then ask questions about each of these systems—we would get meaningful responses that would allow the Government of Canada to move forward, as the committee has requested, with a referendum. It could pit the first-past-the-post system against the proportional system that seems to be the one that is favoured by the largest number of respondents to the survey—or even preferential, if that is what comes out. That could be done in time for election 2019.
I encourage the government to reconsider what it has done and to actually follow the committee's recommendation and add these questions to its survey.