Electoral Reform committee  Thank you. Thank you for coming to Iqaluit. Thank you for having me on this panel. It's an honour to be here. I submitted a brief on electoral reform and I will speak quickly about what I propose. I will, for the most part, skip over the analysis of the various options that are typically discussed, except to say the obvious, which is that there are trade-offs and drawbacks to all of them, and you have the challenging task of not only picking one proposal out of the noise, but then trying to rally everyone to it.

Electoral Reform committee  That riding would stay as a single-seat riding. It could be a Switzerland in the middle of a multi-member riding around it. I don't see any particular problems with that. The complication is each riding has to know what's on the table. There does have to be some coordination. If riding A wants to merge with riding B, and riding B is more interested in merging with riding C, there does need to be some coordination there.

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, I have.

Electoral Reform committee  The initial election would obviously be different. That first election would be when the riding-by-riding, initial yes-or-no question on merger proposals would be voted on. They would be implemented for the next election. That's part of the reason I like it, as a matter of fact.

Electoral Reform committee  I don't really know what options are realistic. I had assumed that anything across provincial boundaries would not fly, would not be possible. If it was possible, though, that opens up a lot more opportunities for a place like Nunavut. Assuming that's not true, I'd say our only options for merging would be across to the other territories.

Electoral Reform committee  Thank you. Should the Senate be elected or not is one of those questions that when asked in isolation has an obvious answer: yes, it should be elected. My fear is that there are constitutional and regional balance issues. It's messy and complicated. My fear is that I don't want to see that sabotage other reform measures.

Electoral Reform committee  At its heart, it is a hybrid system. The only country I know of that uses it is Panama. I don't really understand why, because it's such a small country. I know that a hybrid system has been posed by Mr. Kingsley, formerly of Elections Canada. I know that Fair Vote Canada has put forward a similar model, as have others.

Electoral Reform committee  No, but you mentioned it earlier.

Electoral Reform committee  Yes, I do have thoughts on that. I know that it's a pretty hard sell to much of Canada to say that Nunavut should get an extra MP when we already have one MP for 32,000, rather than the average of 125,000 or whatever it is. I think it's Sweden—and I'm sure you know better than I—that has an area calculation that goes into developing ridings.

Electoral Reform committee  It's two steps. There's some sort of petition process, for lack of a better term, that would determine which of the non-current options is the leading option that you could then put in front of voters in a yes/no question on election day. It could be yes, our riding is going to stay as a single riding, or no, we're going to join this multi-seat group.

Electoral Reform committee  Initially I think you're going to end up with a few oddities, but over time things would settle in. The obvious situation is that urban areas will form multi-seat ridings and a lot of rural and remote areas will stay single, but as I said in my notes, I don't think that's necessarily going to be universal.

Electoral Reform committee  In terms of online voting, as I mentioned earlier, I can't imagine that 60 years from now we won't have some form of online voting. It just seems inevitable. The question is, how do we get there, and when? I think it's all about comfort. As I was saying earlier, I think we need to take measures, but I don't think we're ready to just drop that into federal elections.

Electoral Reform committee  First of all, what I'm proposing really could kick in right away. It's just that the first election under what I'm proposing would more or less be the same, and then people would make a choice about how things would go forward, and they would continue to have the power to make additional choices.

Electoral Reform committee  At some point at least, you would have to switch from a candidate preferential ballot to a party preferential ballot. There are complications, but again let voters decide. If they don't like the size of their multi-riding unit, then they can change it.

Electoral Reform committee  I think we would end up with a mixed bag. I think we'd have some single ridings. We'd have some ridings in pairs. In the middle of Toronto and Montreal, perhaps we'd have 10 or 15 ridings that could conceivably merge together if they wanted. I don't think we need to cap that or set criteria for it.