Electoral Reform committee  I can say it quicker than that: that is the essence of responsible government, and you tinker at the essence of a regime at your peril.

Electoral Reform committee  Personally I don't, but more to the point, doing so with these tight timelines.... Let me say also that what I teach is Plato and Aristotle. They talk about prudence and moderation, and pushing for the 2019 deadline, or Christmas, or whatever it happens to be, I think is both imp

Electoral Reform committee  Whatever Leslie Seidle said was probably correct, since he's the pro in this sort of thing, but it seems to me it's really pushing the envelope to get it done in time without sufficient reflection on what are foreseeable implications.

Electoral Reform committee  I think local representation works reasonably well now. I would agree with Professor Macfarlane that the implications have to be thought through pretty carefully, because you're making things much more complex. For instance, who's got responsibility for riding interests in a mult

Electoral Reform committee  Well, Bismarck's answer is still valid: if you see how laws and sausages are made, you won't want to see it.

Electoral Reform committee  It seems to me that's a way of tinkering with the basic premises of responsible government, which doesn't require supermajorities. That might do the trick, but it also alters what we expect from responsible government.

Electoral Reform committee  I'd say two things. As Professor Macfarlane said, the present electoral system is not designed to simply reflect in Parliament the popular vote. The second thing, as someone mentioned over here, is that you're going to go and ask people about wasted votes. I would suggest you

Electoral Reform committee  The short answer is yes. B.C. is the only one I knew about. I didn't know about Manitoba and Alberta. B.C. was very interesting because it was clearly designed by opponents of the CCF to prevent them from gaining office in the 1950 or 1951 election. Social Credit came out of no

Electoral Reform committee  The thing about a referendum is that it is either a yes or no, and the majority is unquestionable. The voters' paradox doesn't come into play. It would be very interesting, I think, if a referendum were coupled to the 2019 election. I think if the government went ahead—and it's p

Electoral Reform committee  This is the problem. When this proposal was brought before this committee and eventually, I guess, before the House, I'm not sure that it was thought through sufficiently that it will involve the provinces. It's not just a change of the electoral system that elects the members of

Electoral Reform committee  I think what would happen is that the Solicitor General of, say, Saskatchewan would appear before the Supreme Court of Canada and say that it is a fundamental alteration of the nature of the federation. Whether that's going to be a success or not is a separate issue, but I've hea

Electoral Reform committee  Well, I guess if we are given a new electoral system that deals with PR, we'll find out, but it seems to me that there's at least as great a danger of an incredible deadlock.

Electoral Reform committee  The main difference between interest groups operating within a party and interest groups negotiating in Parliament is party discipline. Interest groups negotiating within a party to form an intra-party coalition generally do things in private. When you have parties that owe the

Electoral Reform committee  That's an excellent question. I don't think there's a clear answer to it. I think that when the government opened this question, they hadn't considered the consequences seriously. Certainly this committee has heard from a lot of witnesses that there are a lot of implications tha

Electoral Reform committee  “Who knows?” is, I suppose, the simplest answer, but assuming that political parties are rational actors, they set the procedure up in that way because they thought it would benefit their own agenda. I don't know why else they would do it, but the fact that it's inconsistent does