Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this bill.
There are a couple of problems with the bill, although the intent is good. Overall there are people all of us are trying to target in the election who do not vote, people who have never voted, or for one reason or another find it difficult or complicated to vote. I personally feel that by introducing more constraints we may lose these people. Somehow we have to find a compromise between what is proposed and people who are cheating the system.
This bill will result in thousands of individuals who lack proper identification, maybe due to poverty, illness, disability or having no stable address, not being able to exercise their right to vote because of the identification requirements in the bill. People who are homeless or who are temporarily housed often do not have identification that reflects their address or their stay in a shelter. How would we get them out to exercise their democratic right?
We put forward recommendations at committee that would have addressed these concerns. These include the use of statutory declarations as an alternate means of identification for an elector to prove his or her identity. We also proposed an amendment to allow for a representative of a recognized agency to be authorized to vouch for the agency's clientele as authorized by the local returning officer and that someone, not necessarily residing in the same poll, be allowed to vouch for more than one elector at a time.
These are amendments that can be looked at and tightened up, but the idea is that we have to somehow allow people who often do not vote, or who may not have a home at some point in time, to exercise their democratic right. These amendments unfortunately were defeated by members of each of the other parties.
We will want to propose amendments at report stage to address the concerns of the Public Service Alliance of Canada and the Professional Institute of the Public Service dealing with provisions in the bill for casual employment. As the Professional Institute of the Public Service pointed out, these two amendments are more or less buried in a bill devoted mainly to the Canada Elections Act. They may seem innocuous but they could potentially have a significant impact on employment patterns in the federal public service, particularly at a time when government has called for more flexibility in departmental hiring.
Having said that, I would like to take a few minutes to address the whole question of electoral reform, not only reforming the Canada Elections Act but electoral reform in general. As members of the House know, a former member of the House, Ed Broadbent, unveiled his ethics package. Part of one point in his ethics package called for serious electoral reform.
Most of us probably would agree that we have an antiquated first past the post system which requires major democratic reform. To achieve a degree of fairness for all people in our society, we need a mixed system of past the post plus proportional representation which would be necessary to erase the imbalance in the House of Commons.
The member for Vancouver Island North has tabled a motion which will be debated very soon. It offers public input on serious electoral reform relating to how members of Parliament are chosen. The motion calls for a special committee to be created to make further recommendations on strengthening and modernizing our democratic and electoral systems.
There already have been recommendations that were agreed to by all parties, including the Conservative Party. This all-party approach of working together would ultimately result in an electoral system where every vote cast by Canadians was reflected in the House of Commons.
It is interesting to look at the imbalance under our current system and what we call a broken voting system. In 2006 in Alberta there was a Conservative sweep of 100% of the Alberta seats with only 65% of the vote; 665,940 Green voters elected no MPs; while 475,114 Liberal voters in Atlantic Canada alone elected 22 Liberal MPs. It took 89,296 votes to elect each NDP member of Parliament, but just 43,339 votes for each Conservative, 43,490 for each Liberal, and 30,455 for each Bloc MP. Some would say it is a good thing; some would say it is not a good thing.
Let us look at some other low points in Canadian elections. In the 1990s Canada ranked 109th among 163 nations in voter turnout, slightly behind Lebanon, in a dead heat with Benin and just ahead of Fiji. In 1984 the Progressive Conservatives won 50% of the votes but gained nearly 75% of the seats, close to an all-time record for the largest percentage of unearned seats in any federal election.
Obviously we need some kind of a system of reform to reflect how people vote in Canada. In 2004 more than 500,000 Green voters failed to elect a single MP anywhere, while fewer than 500,000 Liberal voters in Atlantic Canada alone elected 22 Liberal MPs. In 2000, 22 candidates became MPs despite winning less than 40% of the votes in their ridings. In 2004, the election produced a House with only 21% of women MPs, with Canada ranking 36th among nations in percentage of women MPs, well behind most western European counties.
In 1993 the newly formed Bloc Québécois came in fourth in the popular vote but formed the official opposition by gaining more seats than the second place Reform Party and the third place Tories. In 2000, 2.3 million Liberal voters in Ontario elected 100 Liberal MPs while the other 2.2 million Ontario voters elected only three MPs from other parties. In 1993 more than two million votes for Kim Campbell's Progressive Conservatives translated into two seats, or one seat for every one million voters. Meanwhile the voting system gave the Liberal Party one seat for every 32,000 votes.
Finally, in 1984, when competing for the Liberal leadership Jean Chrétien told reporters in Brandon, Manitoba that he would introduce proportional representation right after the next election if he became Prime Minister. In 1993 Jean Chrétien won the election and began his 10 year reign as Prime Minister. In three elections he never won more than 42% of the popular vote but still formed majority governments, thanks to the current voting system. And of course, he never got around to introducing proportional representation.
It is important at this point in our history, and I think we have the will to do it here in Parliament, to bring something forward that eventually and hopefully soon will reflect the voting patterns of all the voters in Canada.
I hope that we will be able to work together to develop a voting system that represents all Canadians proportionally. That way, we will bring a fairer system to Canada's Parliament.
