March 24, 2021

MP Elizabeth May (Saanich — Gulf-Islands), Parliamentary Leader of the Green Party of Canada, has introduced a bill to lower Canada’s voting age to 16.

A promise to reduce the federal voting age was one of multiple proposals for electoral reform included in the Green Party of Canada’s platform for the 2019 election.

“We know that people who start voting young tend to become voters for life. By including youth in the democratic process earlier, we can take a giant step towards a healthier democracy,” said Ms. May

“It flies in the face of fairness that 16 and 17-year olds are old enough to work — and pay taxes — while not being allowed to vote for the government those taxes are funding,” said Ms. May.

Ms. May tabled a similar bill in 2018 and joins MP Don Davies (Vancouver – Kingsway) and Senator Marilou McPhedran (Manitoba) in bringing forward bills to reduce the voting age during the current parliament. She looks forward to supporting whichever bill they are able to get to the floor of the House of Commons first.

Ms. May’s current version adds a Coming into Force provision that would give Elections Canada six months to implement the changes.

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For more information or to arrange an interview:
Debra Eindiguer
Chief of Staff
debra@greenparty.ca
613-240-8921

The post Elizabeth May, MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands, tables Private Member’s Bill to Lower Canada’s Voting Age appeared first on Elizabeth May.

A disappointment in Parliament on Wednesday, when the Liberals used their majority to defeat a motion to accept recommendations from the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. It was a slim majority in a vote of 159-146, with two courageous Liberal MPs Nathaniel Eskine-Smith and Sean Casey voting with integrity and expressing the will of their constituents by voting in favour of the motion. All Bloc Quebecois, NDP, and Conservative MPs voted for the ERRE report.

Despite the day’s defeat in Parliament, I am not giving up. I will continue to hold the government to account.  Canadians trusted the Liberal promises made to reform the unfair voting system and make every vote count – that trust is broken.

The cross-partisan recommendations from the Special Committee on Electoral Reform offered the Liberals a roadmap to select a fair and democratic voting system, one that maintained a link between constituents and their local MPs. They now risk squandering a golden opportunity to create better government for all Canadians.

I thank the NDP’s Nathan Cullen (MP, Skeena-Bulkley Valley) for putting forward the day’s motion.

In British Columbia, thanks to the BC Greens now holding the balance of power, they will move to electoral reform. A referendum in fall of 2018 will determine which form of voting system BC will achieve.  I’m confident we will witness in British Columbia how electoral reform can change politics for the better and their success will guarantee the issue stays on the political agenda.

The wind is in our sails and we are going to win! Electoral reform will be a reality for Canadians.

Thank you all for your continued support and engagement on this issue.

Sincerely,

Elizabeth May, OC
Member of Parliament
Saanich-Gulf Islands
Leader of the Green Party of Canada

The post Update on Electoral Reform – Disappointment in Parliament appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Mr. Speaker, to clarify, the committee report on electoral reform did not contain any dissent from the New Democrats or the Greens. We filed a supplemental report in support of the recommendations. In support of those recommendations, within the hour, I am certainly hoping that many MPs, in fact most of us, will vote to support the recommendation of the report so that we can continue to have a conversation. We have never had the conversation to find common ground. Common ground is within our reach if we agree to keep working toward it. Will the minister agree?

Karina Gould – Minister of Democratic Institutions

Mr. Speaker, of course I would like to thank my hon. colleague for the hard work that she put into the report. The report is thorough and extensive. I look forward to working with members in this place on many of the things with regard to making voting more accessible, with regard to getting youth involved in politics, with regard to political financing, with regard to fundraising, and of course, with regard to cybersecurity. There are many things that matter to all of us in this place when it comes to improving, strengthening, and protecting our democracy.

The post Parliament: Asking the Minister of Democratic Institutions to keep the conversation going on electoral reform appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Madam Speaker, I am so proud to participate in today’s very important debate. I am also very proud of our report, the Special Committee on Electoral Reform’s report entitled “Strengthening Democracy in Canada: Principles, Processes and Public Engagement for Electoral Reform”.

We worked very hard on this report. There were 12 of us, and our approach and the spirit our our discussions throughout was very collegial.

We worked really well together, as I have just said, as a committee of 12 members of Parliament from five parties, a uniquely comprised committee. I commend the former minister of democratic institutions, current Minister of Status of Women and hon. member for Peterborough—Kawartha, who made the decision that it would be fair to ensure that the Bloc Québécois and the Green Party each participated as full members of the committee. She went further—and this was a step that I never thought the Liberals would take—and conceded to an NDP request that the Liberals give one seat of theirs on the committee to allow the NDP to have two full members, so that we were a committee of five Liberals, one of whom served as chair. I have to say our chair, the member for Lac-Saint-Louis, did an extraordinary job. There were then four voting Liberals, three voting Conservatives, two New Democrats, one Bloc member, and one Green member.

We heard from witnesses across Canada. We fulfilled our mandate, and I think we fulfilled our mandate admirably. We had, between late June and December 1 when our report was due, more than 60 meetings. We heard from experts. We heard from the leading experts on electoral reform, not only in Canada but from around the world. Many world-leading experts participated by video conference with us. We also heard from hundreds, in fact thousands, and tens of thousands of Canadians. That process led to an overwhelming consensus, which was that it was time for Canada to move away from first past the post.

I want to touch briefly on the substance of the issue before moving to the politics, but the politics are clearly important.

I have worked on electoral reform for a very long time. For much longer than I have been a member of the Green Party, I have been committed to seeing the end of the first-past-the-post voting system because of its perverse results. On the substance of the issue, we learned in this committee process that it is clear it is a voting system that allows the popular vote to diverge from the seat count. That is the easiest way to understand what is wrong with first past the post. The popular vote can say there is a minority Parliament, but the seat count can say there is a majority. Democracy is not well served when the popular vote is not reflected in the seat count.

As I said, I have worked on this issue for years, but there is always a lot to learn and I learned a lot as a member of the parliamentary Special Committee on Electoral Reform. For instance, I never knew how it was that Ireland had single transferrable vote. Ireland got their voting because in 1921 when the British Parliament of Westminster decided that Ireland should be allowed its own parliament, the British were concerned for the minority rights of Protestants so they did not want Ireland to have first past the post. They did not want Ireland to have the same system Westminster had so they gave Ireland single transferrable vote, a system of proportional representation that works well in Ireland to this day.

It had something to do with that decision in Ireland in 1921 that 1921 was the first year in which this Parliament, the Parliament of Canada, struck a committee to study our voting system. That committee in 1921 concluded that first past the post does not work for Canada. That is right. Since 1921, we have known this. That was when a committee said that as long as we have a democracy with more than two parties—and since the 1920s Canada has always historically in this place been a multi-party system—first past the post did not serve Canadian democracy.

We worked hard to then decide what would serve Canadian democracy, and that is why this report is so historic. We worked to deliver on the promise of the Speech from the Throne and of our Prime Minister that 2015 would be the last election held under first past the post. We wanted to provide, as we were mandated to do, the answer of what is next.

We concluded that a system of proportional representation was appropriate for Canada, that it could be tailored specifically to Canada’s needs, and we specifically precluded the kind of PR used in Israel or Italy. We said that we did not recommend a system where we have only lists by party and voters only vote for a party list. We want to maintain that crucial link with the local MP as well as proportionality. At the end of the day, we want the popular vote to be reflected in the seat count and we want to make sure that members of Parliament are elected to represent their constituents and have a local connection. It is important that voters know that. We can have both. That is what our committee recommended. Our committee also recommended that this be tested by a referendum.

Now we are going to have for the first time, and we are having today for the first time, a debate. I wish more MPs were participating in this debate. This is the first chance we have had as a Parliament to really discuss what kind of voting system would work best for Canada. We know that every single Liberal MP in this place was elected on a platform that said we would be moving away from first past the past. My plea to them is, do not let the promise fade away. Too much rides on it.

For a very long time now, Canadians have known that first past the post has this perverse result of separating the seat count from the popular vote. It is possible to have, and in fact two times in Canada we have had, what political scientists call the “wrong winner problem”. The wrong winner problem is when the party that got the most votes loses the election. It has happened twice in Canada. It has not happened recently. However, it can and does happen under first-past-the-post voting systems.

How do we ensure that the way the popular vote is cast is reflected in the Parliament we get and we still have the advantage of MPs being elected after going door to door in their own community where people know them?

There are a number of solutions, and there are a number of compromises. This is the only place where I regret how our committee worked together. It comes to this. We ran out of time. We had a hard deadline of getting the report in by December 1. I believe, and I am firmly committed to this belief because I know every single one of those individual 12 MPs, all of them, are excellent people, if we had more time, if we had been allowed to work to consensus, we would have had that discussion of, “What if we give a little here? Is the problem that by 2019 we have full PR? What if we did it incrementally, a bit more fairness in our voting system by 2019, a bit more the election after that? Would that work for you?” We never got to have that discussion of what could work if we compromised.

However, it is not too late to compromise. In voting for this concurrence motion, I certainly hope that the Liberal benches will be given a free vote so Liberal MPs can go back to their constituents and tell them they actually voted for what their constituents wanted. We know that the four MPs from P.E.I. just had a plebiscite that called for electoral reform in P.E.I. We know that in British Columbia 40% of the voters just voted NDP and 17% just voted Green, and that 57% of voters voted for parties, once again, that called very clearly for getting rid of first past the post.

MPs know what their constituents would want them to do on the motion. What I want to urge people to consider is that in voting for concurrence, we will not be forcing a referendum to happen and we will not be forcing the government to move to PR. We will be keeping the debate alive and creating that opportunity to find the middle ground. There is middle ground here to be found. Whether it is having a referendum in 2019 concurrent with the voting day that we have next, whether it is saying we move to a single transferable vote system as our former chief electoral officer, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, recommended, that we cluster those ridings in the vast areas of Canada where that works and exclude those areas that are remote or where the ridings are too large, or if we move to the Fair Vote Canada approach of one set of voting rules that work for rural Canadians and another set that work for where we are more concentrated in our ridings, there are compromises here that can be found.

What is unacceptable is to break the promise and leave it broken. That will break people’s faith with democracy itself, those young people who voted for the first time and who believed the Prime Minister’s promise. I frankly believe he fully intended to keep it when he made it, and it will be better for the health of democracy if we work to allow that promise to be kept.

It is time to keep that promise. I urge the members to vote in favour of this motion.
Yves Robillard – Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate our colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands.

As she said, she travelled across Canada with the other committee members. I think she made a very positive contribution.

The member mentioned a referendum, and I would like to hear more about that. We are talking about modernizing how we do business here in the House. I did not quite understand the member’s comments about a referendum.
Elizabeth May

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

We know that some referenda work well, and others are total disasters. It depends entirely on how much people know about the issue and how well they understand it prior to the referendum.

We have had very few referenda in Canadian history. Federally, we had one on conscription during the war. We had one on prohibition. We had one on Charlottetown. If we were to hold a referendum we would need to rewrite our Referendum Act. Our current Referendum Act does not allow for the question of electoral reform to be put to a referendum.

It is clear from the British North America Act, as it was written in 1867, 150 years ago, that the question of our voting system is squarely one for Parliament to decide. However, there is a strong view among public opinion and strong views from some of the parties in this place that if we are changing our voting system it should be put to a referendum.

I mentioned that P.E.I. just had one, and the people of P.E.I. voted overwhelmingly for mixed-member proportional voting systems and for getting rid of first past the post. We had a referendum in British Columbia on single transferable vote and 57% of British Columbians voted for that, but they had set the threshold at 60%. A lot depends on the level of public information available before the vote.

Sheila Malcolmson – Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC

Mr. Speaker, I am so glad that the House agreed to the New Democrat motion to formulate the committee on electoral reform so that it would include Bloc and Green members for the first time. I am very grateful also for the continued iteration of what happens when we have many parties represented and have co-operation. The electoral reform committee report is an expression of that, along with yesterday’s news about the agreement in British Columbia around potential co-operation of two parties to work together and hold government in British Columbia.

Looking at all the examples around the world of what happens when many parties co-operate together, we see their parliaments and legislatures develop policies that are more lasting and do not have extreme swings of ideology from one election to the next.

I would like to know about the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands’ degree of optimism. I understand we only need 20 members of Parliament from the Liberal Party to agree to this concurrence motion to keep the discussion around electoral reform alive. It is an opportunity for these MPs to keep their promise, which was broken by their Prime Minister. I would like to hear whether my fellow member of Parliament is hopeful that tomorrow’s vote might result in a keeping of the promise by at least some of the Liberal members of Parliament.

Elizabeth May

Mr. Speaker, as ever, my optimism on any issue of fundamental democratic reform increases in direct proportion to the non-partisan nature of the debate. If we use this as an excuse to beat up on the Prime Minister for breaking a promise, we will not succeed. If we use this as an opportunity to focus the Prime Minister’s attention on the possibilities, they are still there for him to keep his promise. If we urge Liberals to vote for what we think is in the best interests of democracy, I am quite optimistic, particularly if it is not a whipped vote and Liberal MPs are allowed to vote how they believe their constituents would like them to vote. I thank my colleague from Nanaimo—Ladysmith for giving me this chance to reframe my main point, which is that we can still salvage this promise in a way that meets the needs of government and opposition parties. We can do it together if we check our partisanship at the door and think about what is best for Canada.

I would ask members to please consider this. Let us say that 10 or 15 years from now, we do not know when it might be, somebody who represents a Canadian version of Trump—and do not think it cannot happen—seizes 100% of the power over our country with a minority of popular support. There is always the risk of someone extreme seizing power with majority support, which is a democracy, but our system of government is extraordinarily vulnerable because the Prime Minister of Canada has more power, relative to our government, than the president of the United States or the prime minister of the U.K. We must check that exercise of power by assuring it is never vested in any party or individual that does not have the support of the majority of Canadians before getting 100% of the power. It is a matter of protecting our democracy in the future by voting yes tomorrow.

Scott Reid – Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, ON

Mr. Speaker, I have to take exception to one thing my hon. colleague just said. I personally do not believe that any electoral system has the effect of privileging or diminishing extremism. It has been an unfortunate aspect of this debate that the Prime Minister has asserted that proportionality would lead to greater power being exercised by extremists who would hold the balance of power, potentially, in some future government and be able to get disproportionate influence. My colleague from the Green Party is now making the opposite assertion, that first past the post does this.

The fact is that we have seen pure proportionality used to terrible effect in Germany, in the system under which Hitler was elected, and yet it has not discredited proportionality in other countries, including Israel, the Netherlands, and so on. The same thing is true for first past the post and, I suggest, any system. We need to discuss these things with the goal of trying to improve our system as much as we can, but I actually do not think it is helpful to suggest that any system that is going to be seriously considered in this country, including the status quo, actually privileges extremism. We are an inherently moderate country, we have more than a century of inherent moderatism, and I suggest that our future will be moderate and intelligent as well, as long as we are moderate in our rhetoric.

Elizabeth May 

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the chance to respond to my friend from Lanark—Frontenac—Kingston, and I want to thank him once again for his superb contribution to our work on the committee.

He has misunderstood my point. I did not say that first past the post privileged extremism. I am saying that Canada is uniquely vulnerable to an extremist or unpopular leader, so to speak, of a party gaining 100% of the power with a minority of the votes. It is only under first past the post that a party with potentially 25% of the popular vote can get all of the power, because our executive and legislative are not separated, as they are in the U.S., and because, as we know, the Prime Minister of Canada is not subject to caucus confidence, which can remove the leader of the party and, thus, change the prime minister.

We have numerous authorities on this from academics, whether it is Peter Russell or Donald Savoie. A lot of experts have pointed out that the Prime Minister of Canada, relatively speaking, has more power than other leaders of other governments, and the reality is that no one should hold that office with a majority, unless the person is supported by the majority of the voters. That is why we have to get rid of first past the post.

Jenny Kwan – Vancouver East, BC

Mr. Speaker, fundamental to this issue is really the issue of trust in our democratic system.

A lot of young people went into the election believing this was going to materialize: the election would be the last one held under first past the post, and going forward we would have something different.

I am worried that this motion might not pass. I hope it will, as this is an opportunity for all members of the House to reflect on that and to pass this motion, to change course so that we can restore faith and ensure that the young people and Canadians who voted for change will actually have that change.

I wonder if the member could comment on the democratic system and the faith the electorate placed on us, and on restoring the work we need to do to demonstrate that democracy is in fact fundamental to the promises we make.

Elizabeth May

Mr. Speaker, clearly, no one would debate or dispute that our democracy is threatened by cynicism and that those who give up on voting are a tremendous loss to the health of our democracy. In fact, when there is low voter turnout, we increasingly lose the legitimacy of government and we lose the empowerment of a society to actually choose its own course.

We are a democracy, and we should be getting 90%-plus voter turnout. We were pleased to see it go to 68% last time. I believe the reason we saw it go to 68% in 2015 was largely based on young people voting for the first time, young people who believed this promise, young people who will become increasingly cynical and angry, and who may not vote again if we do not work hard in this place to find some common political ground to deliver on that promise, either partially or fully, and with a promise for before the next election. One way or another, this promise for fair democracy and fair voting must be kept alive.

The post Underscoring the importance of electoral reform and significance of the Special Committee’s report appeared first on Elizabeth May.

I t was a massive blow to my faith in Trudeau’s good intentions when he re-wrote the mandate letter to the Minister of Democratic Institutions to remove the responsibility for bringing in a new voting system.

Since then, he has offered up one excuse after another. It has been, as you can imagine, profoundly discouraging to hear Justin Trudeau, having broken faith with his own promise of electoral reform, offer up increasingly desperate excuses.

I have referred to his explanations in townhall meetings as ‘grasping at straws.’ It made me wonder about the origins of the idiom ‘grasping at straws’. Was it like the proverbial ‘straw man’—a rhetorical argument set up to be knocked down? Or like a straw in the wind? The straw poll or straw vote… or in this case, was it really the last straw?

Turns out, the phrase ‘grasping at straws’ comes from a proverb quoted in the 1748 novel, Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson: ‘A drowning man will catch at a straw, the proverb well says.’ So our Prime Minister is a drowning man. No wonder his excuses smack of futile desperation.

At first it was only that he could not see a ‘way forward’. He complained that Canadians had not achieved consensus. Of course, the government had not put in place any mechanism for finding consensus.

The parliamentary committee on which I served was not mandated to test for consensus. We were instructed to look at the evidence and make recommendations for the system to replace First Past the Post. The Liberals ‘mydemocracy.ca’ survey never even asked the key question: ‘Do you want to replace FPTP? If so, what system do you want?’

Even so, 70% of the hundreds of thousands of respondents made it clear they preferred proportional representation. When given a choice between a parliament where many parties have to work together to reach compromise through cooperation, even if it took longer, that approach was preferred over one large party making decisions with accountability.

Since breaking his word with Canadians, the Prime Minister has been increasingly clear that his preferred system was ranked ballots. I was open to ranked ballots. It seemed reasonable that being able to rank your choices on ballots would be an improvement.

But all the evidence before the Parliamentary Committee was that the only system guaranteed to produce more perverse results than our current system was ranked ballots. It would distort the will of the voters even more than First Past the Post.

With no evidence to support this system, and numerous witnesses to the effect that ranked ballots would tend towards giving the Liberals an even greater share of seats without public support, not only did the Conservatives, NDP, Bloc and Greens oppose ranked ballots, so too did the Liberals on the committee.

On his northern swing of townhalls, in Iqaluit and Yellowknife, the prime minister has become even more critical of the recommendation of the vast majority of the witnesses to our committee and to our recommendation for proportional representation.

Here Are His Claims And My Rebuttals:

Trudeau: Proportional representation will increase the risk of extremist parties gaining seats in Parliament:

Rebuttal: The parliamentary committee specifically rejected the system used in Israel and Italy where votes are cast for the party of choice with as little as 2% of the vote. Single Transferable Votes (STV) for local candidates produces proportionality without party lists at all. If Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) is used, the threshold of the vote can be set at 3-5% and exclude extreme parties.

Trudeau claimed that we should fear proportional representation because it would give Kellie Leitch ‘her own party’. But we need no hypotheticals. Kellie Leitch could become leader of the Conservative Party —so too could Kevin O’Leary or libertarian Maxime Bernier. They could lead a mainstream party.

Has Trudeau forgotten that Stephen Harper was an extreme political force—never supported by more than 25% of Canadians—yet prime minister for a decade and leading with a majority for four years of savage destruction of our environmental laws?

FPTP is dangerous. Proportional representation will keep extremism in check.

Trudeau: Proportional representation will be a threat to national unity.

Rebuttal: It is FPTP that gives disproportionate parliamentary power to regional splinter parties. FPTP allows regional parties to gain disproportionate power. The Bloc Quebecois running in only one province gained the seats to form Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition; Reform, outpaced the Progressive Conservative party in seats with only a fraction of the popular vote.

FPTP is a proven threat to national unity.

It is not too late to remind the prime minister of his promise. While he is grasping at straws, let’s throw him a life ring.

Originally published by Island Tides newspaper. See http://www.islandtides.com/ for more breaking West Coast news, views and enterprise.

The post Dissecting the Prime Minister’s excuses for ditching his promise of fair voting appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Elizabeth May, spoke at the Reform the Vote rally in Victoria, B.C., attended by hundreds. Rallies took place in nearly 30 communities including Vancouver, Whitehorse, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Wolfville, Saint John and St. John’s.

“From coast to coast today, Canadians sent a clear message for Justin Trudeau: If you thought you could break your promise to bring in fair voting and no one would care, you were wrong. Canadians won’t stop demanding that you keep your promise,” Ms. May said.

“The Prime Minister is grasping at straws in rejecting what our parliamentary committee recommended. We rejected the kind of proportional representation that could give seats to very poorly supported extremist voices. Moreover, it is under First Past the Post that the Bloc Québecois became the official opposition. Harper’s extreme agenda was never supported by more than a quarter of Canadians. We will hold the Liberals to their promise to end the threat of false majorities, and to make sure every vote counts,” Ms. May concluded.

The National Day of Action on Electoral Reform was organized by Fair Vote Canada and concerned citizens.

The post Media Release: Canadians rally from coast to coast to hold Trudeau to electoral reform promise appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in adjournment proceedings this evening to return to a question I originally asked on February 1. The House will recall, because we have spent today discussing the subject of electoral reform, that it was on February 1 that the Prime Minister changed the mandate letter to the hon. Minister of Democratic Institutions.

I put to the Prime Minister this question.

“Within 18 months of forming government, we will introduce legislation to enact electoral reform”. That is from the Liberal platform. It is very clear, and it was repeated with clarity in the Speech from the Throne, and the mandate to us as members of the special committee said we were replacing first past the post.

I went on to ask the Prime Minister,

If it was an essential precondition to follow on this promise that there be some sort of nationally proven majority, that there be some consensus discerned through vague surveys, why was that never mentioned in any promise or any mandate?

I was honoured that the Prime Minister stood to respond to my question personally. He replied:

anything a prime minister or a government must do must be in the interests of Canada and of all Canadians, particularly when it comes to transforming our electoral system. I understand the passion and intensity with which the member opposite believes in this, and many Canadians mirror that passion and intensity, but there is no consensus.

I could continue with the answer, but as we can see, it missed the fundamental point of my question, which was that if there was going to be a precondition, a condition precedent, before the Liberal government kept its promise, why was that never mentioned?

I contrast that with other promises in the Liberal platform, promises that I am glad were kept, frankly. There was a promise to bring in a national carbon price, and the government is on its way to doing that. It had a long process involving the various provinces. The architecture of it allows every province to have the money come back to it if it does not, in fact, put forward its own carbon pricing mechanism. It allows for cap and trade in Ontario and Quebec and a carbon tax in B.C.

If members catch my drift, I am sure they will see that this was an election promise. There was no attempt to go back and find out if there was a broad consensus within Canada for one particular form of carbon pricing. There are many different kinds. There is cap and trade. There is a straight up carbon tax. There is carbon fee and dividend. There is a revenue-neutral carbon tax. There are adherents to all of those systems, and there are those, as we know, in the House, who do not want any carbon pricing at all. I do not know that one could say there was a clear path forward for a particular form of carbon pricing, but I am very glad the government of the day did what it promised to do in its platform and brought forward some form of carbon pricing.

I suggest that this is exactly what the Liberals should do about their promise on electoral reform. It did betray that promise by withdrawing it on February 1.

It is just a coincidence that my adjournment proceedings question came up on a day that we have been debating this promise all day long. However, I am of the view that the Liberals, in making that promise, intended to keep it. If they were to see a clear path forward, more particularly, if the Prime Minister were to see a clear path forward, through the work of all of us, many of us on that electoral reform committee, in a non-partisan fashion, as well as through the efforts of those on the Liberal backbenches who were lamenting a decision to break a promise, and who no doubt are hearing from their angry constituents, it is not too late.

In the course of this debate over the next remaining six minutes or so that we have, I would like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Democratic Institutions, in response, to help me, with goodwill, and setting aside partisanship, figure out how the promise can still be kept.

Andy Fillmore – Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Democratic Institutions:

Mr. Speaker, our government believes that electoral reform, indeed all democratic reform, should be about pursuing the most broad public interest possible. We believed and we continue to believe that potential reforms must be judged by how they will help Canadians. This is why the Prime Minister said that we are not prepared to move forward with something so fundamental as reforming our electoral system without the broad support of Canadians.

Listening to Canadians is absolutely fundamental to our role as parliamentarians, and this is why the government initiated a national consultation process on electoral reform last spring. First, we asked a special all-party committee of the House of Commons to study the issue. The special committee consulted broadly with relevant experts and organizations and conducted a national engagement process that included travelling to every province and every territory and hearing from 196 experts and 567 open-mike participants, and receiving 574 written submissions and more than 22,000 responses to its e-consultation survey.

We also asked MPs to hold their own town halls to hear the views of their constituents, and MPs held 170 such town halls. The government held public meetings in every province and every territory to hear directly from Canadians, and we sought to ensure that every Canadian could have his or her view heard through an innovative online engagement and educational tool that asked Canadians what values and what principles they wanted to see reflected in their voting system. More than 360,000 people in Canada took the time to participate and have their views heard in this important initiative, and I urge all of my fellow MPs to read the report.

As the Minister of Democratic Institutions has noted, it is clear that despite all of these important efforts to listen to Canadians, the broad consensus needed for change of this magnitude simply does not exist. The government respects and is thankful for all those Canadians who came forward and took the time to share their thoughts about our democracy and have their voices heard. When we hold public consultation we have to be ready to listen to what we hear, and we listened to what we heard.

This of course does not put an end to the important work our government is doing to strengthen our elections and build confidence in our democratic institutions, and I would like to highlight three of the government’s priorities moving ahead. First, we will be continuing to move forward with Bill C-33 to make it easier for eligible voters to participate in elections as well as to improve electoral integrity. Second, the minister will be working with her colleagues, the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to help protect our voting system from the threat of hacking. Third, notwithstanding that Canada already has one of the best-regulated political finance regimes in the world, we will take steps to make fundraising even more open and even more transparent.

These are only a few of the items in the mandate letter of the Minister of Democratic Institutions. Our hard-working colleagues on the procedure and House affairs committee are also doing important work to review the Chief Electoral Officer’s recommendations for improving the electoral process.

Clearly, there is still much work to do to further enhance our electoral process, and I look forward to supporting these efforts to reinforce Canada’s strong democratic foundations.

Elizabeth May:

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my hon. friend and colleague, the parliamentary secretary, that if the government engages in a consultation it should listen to what it heard. What it heard was overwhelming support for proportional representation from more than 80% of the witnesses who testified before the committee and members of the public in the tens of thousands who answered surveys online that our committee put forward.

Bear in mind the mandate of our committee was not to hold a consultation and tell the government there was a consensus, because the promise had been made. The promise was that we were getting rid of first past the post. The committee was asked, “What do you recommend instead?” We also listened to Canadians, and we listened to them by the tens of thousands. Even the MyDemocracy.ca survey overwhelmingly reflected values consistent with proportional representation and not with our current broken, archaic, and perverse first past the post.

It is not too late for the Liberal government to listen to Canadians. Those with an opinion overwhelmingly want to have fair voting.

Andy Fillmore – Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Democratic Institutions:

Mr. Speaker, the platform included many elements of electoral reform, and it certainly also included engaging with Canadians to make such important decisions. Engaging as many Canadians as possible in the conversation around electoral reform is something that we have taken very seriously, as I have just enumerated.

It was what Canadians expected us to do before embarking on fundamental change to our democracy. Listening to Canadians is also something that the government is committed to doing across a range of files and issues. As our government has indicated on numerous occasions, any major change to the way we cast our vote would require the broad support of Canadians.

The government remains committed to strengthening and protecting our democratic institutions. We are moving to accomplish that goal.

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Madam Speaker, I rise today and want to begin by acknowledging that we are on the unceded territory of the Algonquin of Golden Lake. We say meegwetch.

Before I begin my speech, I would like to thank my colleague, the member for Perth—Wellington. I am delighted that he decided to share his speaking time with me. I would also like to thank the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, who was a member of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. We have been working together for several months, and we are working very hard.

Today’s debate is on the following motion:

That, in the opinion of the House, the government misled Canadians on its platform and Throne Speech commitment “that 2015 will be the last federal election conducted under the first-past-the-post voting system”, and that the House call on the government to apologize to Canadians for breaking its promise.

The promise was clearer than that. The Liberals also said they would introduce a bill on electoral reform. However, according to information provided to the Special Committee on Electoral Reform, their promise is no more.

As I look at this, I want to take this House, my colleagues who are here today, through what we heard in the electoral reform committee, and then put that up against the question that is before us today. Do I vote for a resolution that says, “That, in the opinion of the House, the government misled Canadians…”?

Let me start with what I specifically heard in my own riding. I sent out a questionnaire to every household in the riding, and the households of Saanich—Gulf Islands filled out forms and sent them back to me by the hundreds, overwhelmingly favouring proportional representation as a new system of voting.

I also held town halls within my riding, and 400 people showed up in Sidney, British Columbia, where I live. In Saturna, a tiny island, we had 80 people and the honour of the former minister of democratic institutions participating. We had about 150 people out on Salt Spring Island. Those were the town halls within my riding.

I also conducted town halls with the Green Party in many communities across Canada. Overwhelmingly, what we heard in those town halls was that people liked this promise. It influenced them to vote. Many people said they had voted Liberal because of that promise. For me, as an individual, I have to say it influenced my vote. I know I am the only member of the opposition who voted for the Speech from the Throne, because that promise meant so much to me, and it was clear, black and white, that 2015 would be the last election held under first past the post.

As well, I was honoured to be named and voted by this House as a member of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. I want to say that we had great leadership, as my colleague from Louis-Saint-Laurent mentioned just moments ago, from the chair, the member for Lac-Saint-Louis.

We worked together as a team. We worked very hard. We heard from thousands and thousands of Canadians and virtually every expert on electoral reform from within Canada and from around the world.

We discovered, when we dug deep into this issue, that we were not the first parliamentary committee to study whether first past the post was a good voting system for Canada. The first committee was actually in 1921, and it concluded that it did not serve Canada well, that in any democracy that had more than two parties, first past the post would distort the results and result in elections of parties that were not supported by the majority of Canadians but that would enjoy majority power.

Some of the evidence was very compelling, and I could go on at length but I will not have time now. However, I will just say that the evidence was overwhelming that proportional representation would serve Canada better.

We heard from one of the preeminent global experts by video conference from the University of California, Professor Arend Lijphart, who has a seminal work Patterns of Democracy. He studied every single election in 36 democracies from 1945 to virtually now to see if there was a difference between what he described as the majoritarian systems using first past the post or ranked ballots within first past the post. He also studied consensual democracies, which are those with proportional representation. He found on average 7% higher voter turnout in those countries that have proportional representation, a much higher representation of women, marginalized groups, and ethnic minorities in countries with PR, but perhaps surprisingly, stronger environmental regulations and better macroeconomic performance.

The bugaboos about proportional representation that will lead to extremists getting into Parliament and so on have been disproved over and over again, including in the text of our report. We recognize it is a risk but with either a mixed member proportional system with a threshold or with using single transferable vote, the electorate is not going to give a seat to an extremist party. If the government looked at the recommendations of our committee it would see that we clearly said we would specifically not advise using the system used in Israel or any system where people vote purely on a party. We want to make sure that our democracy always has that link between a local MP and ensures proportionality.

With the time I have left I will now turn to the specifics of this resolution, that the government misled Canadians in its platform and in the Speech from the Throne. Every speaker on behalf of the government has today denied that there was any intent to mislead nor that the government actually misled anyone. The words “good faith” have been used. It states it made this promise in good faith.

The only way we are going to get fair voting in Canada is if we can somehow get past partisanship, which we nearly did in our committee. If we would have had more time, if we would have had a consensus-based process within our committee instead of falling to default at the end to voting and so on, we could have arrived at a conclusion with which we could all agree. I cannot reveal what happened in camera.

To suspend partisanship and to suspend disbelief, as a member of Parliament I have two choices here. I can either accept there was a deliberate attempt to mislead Canadians by making a promise with no intention of keeping it, or I can accept the words of all my Liberal colleagues that there was good faith, that there was no intent to mislead. That leaves only one conclusion, and that conclusion is that the Liberals still want to keep this promise but they just cannot figure out how. Those are the two choices we have. We are either facing a government that misled us as Canadian voters and as members of Parliament, or we are dealing with a Prime Minister and ministers and a cabinet who cannot figure out where we go from here.

We heard from the former parliamentary secretary today, the member for Ajax. I am not paraphrasing. I took notes as he was speaking. He said the government did not see a clear path forward. The Prime Minister himself in this place has never once said he was wrong. He never once said that first past the post is a good system, and thank goodness for that. That means we can still infer that the Prime Minister would rather keep his promise than break it.

What can we do now? Can we help the government by putting this promise back in the front window so it will not break faith with the Canadians who believed in the Liberals and believed that promise?

How do we do that? Fortunately, there are numerous ways forward. If the Prime Minister was rash in promising he would get rid of first past the post by 2019, what if we did a path over a period of elections? By 2019 there will be, if we were to take it incrementally, some additional seats under mixed member proportional or if we were to take it under single transferable vote, we would cluster most of the ridings in urban Canada and areas where they would be clusterable for those who understand the system. In other words, there are places for a landing ground where we can make the promise work.

We must not leave the future of Canada’s democracy with a system so perverse that a minority of the voters can give majority power to an extremist, future demagogue/false populist, alt-right, whatever we can imagine, or for my friends in the Conservative Party, extremist left-wing. We need the kind of Parliament that reflects how Canadians actually voted. That is the heart of democracy. That is the heart of the promise, and it must be kept.

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Video of her response can be found on CPAC.ca here

“The Liberal platform, the Speech from the Throne, and the Special Committee on Electoral Reform’s mandate made no mention of a precondition that a majority supporting reform must be found. Despite spending millions of dollars on the issue, the government never actually asked Canadians the direct question. Clearly, the answer from the ERRE committee was not the one the Prime Minister wanted to hear,” Ms. May said.

“In our current global context, it is now deeply dangerous to play cynical politics. Cynicism does not need more cynicism. Cynicism feeds itself. It is work to feed hope. It is work to feed faith. The Prime Minister today not only declined to improve our electoral system, he has fuelled cynicism.

“We call on the Prime minister to reverse this terrible decision, and live up to his promise to Canadians,” Ms. May concluded.

The post CPAC News: Elizabeth May Responds to Government’s Abandonment of Electoral Reform Promise appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Mr. Speaker, “Within 18 months of forming government, we will introduce legislation to enact electoral reform”. That is from the Liberal platform. It is very clear, and it was repeated with clarity in the Speech from the Throne, and the mandate to us as members of the special committee said we were replacing first past the post.

If it was an essential precondition to follow on this promise that there be some sort of nationally proven majority, that there be some consensus discerned through vague surveys, why was that never mentioned in any promise or any mandate?

Justin Trudeau:

Mr. Speaker, anything a prime minister or a government must do must be in the interests of Canada and of all Canadians, particularly when it comes to transforming our electoral system. I understand the passion and intensity with which the member opposite believes in this, and many Canadians mirror that passion and intensity, but there is no consensus. There is no sense of how best to do this and, quite frankly, a divisive referendum at this time, an augmentation of extremist voices in the House, is not what is in the best interests of Canada.

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