Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by saying to the member for the government side who just said that referenda are divisive, what could be more divisive than a government with 100% of the power with only 38% of the vote ramming its agenda down the throats of the people? Referenda are never divisive because people have the discussion and they all accept the democratic outcome.
That having been said, I would also like to congratulate the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle for bringing this issue before the House. However, I would say to him right at the beginning that it is highly unlikely, as I think he realizes, that the government would do anything with the motion, mainly because the history of changes to electoral systems indicates that the these things happen only during a time of crisis.
He mentioned that Germany, for example, since the war has a different system. He mentioned the Scottish system. Obviously a big change there allowed that new system to be introduced. In New Zealand, an example I know a lot about, it only happened because of the crisis in the financial system there which caused a huge reorganization of government. That was what led to the change to MMP down there.
The only thing I can think of that would happen in Canada which would cause such an upheaval would be a Quebec separation, for example. It would cause such a disruption to our electoral system that it would probably result in some serious looking at some other systems. That would be a terrible way for us to get to that point.
In talking about the motion before us it is flattering in the way that the motion is very similar or very close to Canadian Alliance policy, formerly Reform Party policy. The policy of the Reform Party, as I said, is very similar except that we would put the referendum or the decision-making to the people of Canada. Instead of a committee of the House looking at the alternatives and saying this is the one it favours and then asking the people of Canada in a referendum if this is what they want, we would take the decision-making fully 100% to the people.
The reason we reached that position within the Reform Party and now the Canadian Alliance is that we had many people who brought resolutions to our party conventions promoting one form of proportional representation or another. Whether it be straight proportional or the single transferable ballot, there are many different versions. The people who brought these motions forward were very firmly wedded to their particular form of proportional representation. It was very difficult to have any sort of meaningful debate on the floor of conventions.
We set up a task force to look at the alternatives. We had all the people with the different forms of proportional representation come before the task force to promote their views. We concluded that we would have to adopt a system similar to the one used in New Zealand to reach the consensus there.
Instead of choosing one of the forms of proportional representation being promoted by our members, we would give the job to Elections Canada to conduct an education process for the people of Canada across the country from coast to coast to coast for about a year, informing them how the different forms of proportional representation worked. Then we would have a referendum, first to find out if people wanted to change the system based on the information they had. If they did, we would have a second vote to indicate which form they would choose.
That is exactly what happened in the New Zealand case. I would like to go into a bit more information about the choices given to the people in New Zealand. Incidentally I should mention an interesting spinoff effect of what happened in New Zealand. The voters in New Zealand chose mixed member proportional, a system where the house is divided in two. Half of the members are elected under the first past the post system that we have in Canada. The other half are selected from a list based upon the proportion of vote received by each of the parties.
In New Zealand the parties have to get 5% in order to get any members into the house. In the last two elections in New Zealand there have been 30 or more parties on the ballot, but only four or five have managed to get into that grouping above 5% to actually get members in the house. The interesting side bar spinoff that has occurred is that with mixed member proportional some of the members in the house do not actually represent ridings because they are selected from the list.
How would we address them in the House? We could not say the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle because if he is a list MP he would not necessarily represent a riding. They had to change the standing orders in New Zealand to refer to members by their names. It really begs the question why we have to refer to one another by our ridings in the House? There was no good reason to retain that rule in New Zealand and they scrapped it. Everybody calls one another by their names now.
I have pages in front of me from the documentation that was sent to every voter in New Zealand in order to have the discussion take place over a 12 months period. The booklet described the various forms of proportional representation that could be selected by the voters.
Straight proportional is where everyone is elected on the basis of the proportion of the vote from lists that are provided by the parties. Then we have the supplementary member system under which most of the members, perhaps about four-fifths, are still elected on first past the post and about one-fifth or one-quarter of the total would be elected based on the proportion of the overall share of the votes. It can be a very complicated system in terms of allocating the votes to the parties, because how do they decide who will be on the list of members who get elected under the proportional system.
As mentioned by the government representative there are different ways of doing that. Sometimes it is a party list selected by the party brass, for want of a better word. Sometimes it is more democratically selected, perhaps by members of the party going through some sort of nomination process to get people on the list. A third way would be for people to argue in elections in an open nomination process pretty much like the first past the post system.
Under the supplementary member system usually there is very small representation from the smaller parties so they still tend to get a dominant larger party in the house. That was not the system that the New Zealand people chose.
Then there is the preferential voting system which is not truly proportional but ensures that the winning candidates get more than 50% of the vote. The person marking the ballot would mark their first, second, third and fourth choices. When they count all the first choices on the ballot, if the candidate who is in the lead does not get over 50% then the candidate receiving the bottom number of votes gets knocked off. Then all the second choices from those ballots get added in, counted again, to see whether one of the candidates gets more than 50%.
These are complicated ways of doing things but they are a little more democratic than what we have. I mentioned that was used in Australia. That system is also used in the Canadian Alliance, formerly the Reform Party, to select the national counsellors who run our party between elections.
Another system that is pretty complicated is the single transferable vote system. It is very similar to the preferential voting system but it involves having numbers of members representing one riding. It could be anything from three to seven members in one riding. It is used in Tasmania. Whilst I cannot show the House the examples I have here from the Tasmanian elections, it does allow a variety of smaller parties to get involved in the house itself.
Then we have the mixed member proportional system which I mentioned was finally chosen in New Zealand. The party list system there is actually chosen by the party brass because it really wants the opportunity to ensure that it has skilled people selected to come into the house. For example, my colleague who was here in the last parliament, Herb Grubel, the member for West Vancouver, is a very accomplished economist. He might, for example, be put on a list so that a party would make sure that it had those sorts of skilled people brought into the house.
I guess the bottom line here is whether or not I would recommend to my colleagues that they support the motion presently before us. I pointed out that the one flaw perhaps is that the decision on the type of system would be made by the committee and it would only be the final decision given to the people of Canada.
However, in reading the motion carefully I get the impression that there might be enough flexibility at committee to actually manipulate that a bit and for the committee to recommend what I am talking about, which would be that we cannot quite make up our minds which would be the best, that there are so many good advantages we want to put the whole package to the people.
On that basis I am certainly recommending support of the motion. I will be supporting it myself. In conclusion, once again I say congratulations to the member for Regina—Qu'Appelle for bringing this important subject to the House of Commons.
