The committee met at 9:04 a.m.

[Jessie Sunner in the chair.]

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Good morning, everyone. My name is Jessie Sunner. I’m the MLA for Surrey-Newton and the Parliamentary Secretary for Anti-Racism Initiatives. I’m also the Chair of the Special Committee on Democratic and Electoral Reform, which is a parliamentary committee comprised of members of the government, the official opposition and the Third Party.

We are meeting today in Surrey, which is located on the traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the q̓ic̓əy̓, SEMYOME and qʼʷa:n̓ƛʼən̓ First Nations.

There are two parts to our committee’s mandate. The first part is to examine democratic engagement, voter participation and electoral reform. The second is to review the administration of the 2024 provincial general election.

[9:05 a.m.]

All this week, we’ve been hearing presentations about democratic and electoral reform in B.C., and we’ll be continuing those presentations today and next week. The committee is also accepting written submissions until July 25. To participate, please visit our website at bcleg.ca/consultations.

I’ll now ask the members of the committee to introduce themselves.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Good morning, everyone. I’m Ward Stamer. I’m the MLA for Kamloops–North Thompson, and I’m also the opposition critic for Forests.

Amna Shah: Good morning, everyone. I’m Amna Shah. I’m the MLA for Surrey City Centre, which is this riding, and also the Parliamentary Secretary for Mental Health and Addictions. Thank you for being here today.

George Anderson: Hello, everyone. My name is George Anderson. I am the MLA for Nanaimo-Lantzville and Parliamentary Secretary for Transit.

Sheldon Clare: Good morning, everyone. I’m Sheldon Clare. I’m the MLA for Prince George–North Cariboo, and I am the Conservative caucus Deputy Whip.

Rob Botterell: My name is Rob Botterell. I’m the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands and the Green caucus House Leader.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Also assisting our committee today are Karan Riarh and Kayla Wilson from the Parliamentary Committees Office and Simon DeLaat and Dwight Schmidt from Hansard Services.

Our first presenter today is Gary Rodden from B.C. ACORN.

Thank you so much for being here today, Gary, and for joining our committee. Just a reminder, you’ll have 15 minutes for your presentation, followed by ten minutes for questions.

Gary Rodden: Okay, I just have one question. Are you allowed to talk about federal politics and federal elections, or is this strictly provincial?

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Our mandate is provincial, and what we will be able to make recommendations on is on the provincial level, so it would be better to stick to the provincial, but if it relates to something where it can help us make changes at a provincial level, then you can bring that in.

Gary Rodden: So I have a choice, then.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): As long as it relates to the mandate, well, you can go ahead with it.

Rob Botterell: We’ve had previous presenters reference the federal experience by analogy to make their provincial recommendations.

Presentations on Voter Engagement
and Electoral Reform

BC ACORN

Gary Rodden: That’s what I would like to do, yeah.

Hello, and thank you for having me here today. My name is Gary Rodden, and I’m the co-chair of New Westminster ACORN. I’ll keep my remarks shorter than the 15 minutes allowed. ACORN wanted to make sure our voice was on the record regarding this important matter, but we’ll leave the heavy details to the experts, like our allies at Fair Voting B.C.

ACORN has long supported proportional representation. The benefits for our membership are clear. ACORN is a membership-based organization of low- and moderate-income people. Since 2004, ACORN has been active in British Columbia, fighting to advance the interests of working-class communities. As co-chair of New Westminster ACORN, I can say personally that I feel very strongly about this issue, which for me is proportional representation.

Why is voting system reform important for low- and moderate-income people? Our members are more likely to be unhappy with the formal political process. While there’s no single reason for this, it’s clear that many low- and moderate-income people in British Columbia feel the current electoral system doesn’t work for them. Their voices aren’t being heard.

The first-past-the-post system makes this worse. Many votes end up being meaningless, or at least feeling that way, in many ridings. The outcome of the election is decided long before election day, so people ask: “What’s the point of voting?”

I know in Canada, as a whole, about half the ridings are considered safe ridings, which means that the outcome is known in advance. These are ridings that vote for the same party, election after election. If you belong to the opposition, it doesn’t make much point in voting if you already know the result.

ACORN’s political action committee regularly speaks with candidates, and we hear the same thing over and over. Low- and moderate-income people, especially tenants, matter less to politicians than middle-class voters, simply because they vote less. That’s a deep flaw in our democratic system, one that further disenfranchises our communities.

[9:10 a.m.]

I would just like to talk about the B.C. election last year. The NDP got 47 seats in that election, and they got one seat for every 20,000 votes they got. The Conservatives got 44 seats, and they got one seat for every 20,700 votes they got. The Greens got two seats. They got one seat for every 86,746 votes. So in the election, NDP votes and Conservative votes are worth about four times as much as a Green vote. It takes four times as many Green votes to elect an MLA as NDP or Conservative.

While we sit here in Surrey, B.C., it’s important to point out that the at-large municipal voting system also disenfranchises low- and moderate-income voters. It makes it harder for everyday people to have their concerns heard and addressed by their municipalities. The system leaves large swaths of voters without meaningful representation. The problem is made worse by the fact that low- and moderate-income communities include many non-citizens who are excluded entirely from the voting system. This discriminates against tenants in favour of owners.

In Surrey, city councillors are elected on a citywide basis rather than a ward system. Running a political campaign on a citywide basis is much more expensive than in a ward. This benefits candidates with support from the rich and business and discriminates against everybody else. So I would like to ask you: would you recommend opening the Local Government Act to allow municipalities to adopt a more representative voting system? That kind of change would help ensure that our votes matter and our voices are heard, not just provincially but municipally as well.

We also know, from research compiled by Fair Voting B.C., that proportional representation isn’t just about fairness. It leads to better outcomes for ordinary people. Countries with proportional systems consistently show lower income inequality, higher social spending and greater political engagement. Studies show that when people have more access to political power, governments are more responsive and willing to redistribute wealth. PR systems are also associated with higher scores on the UN’s human development index, which measures health, education and living standards.

I’d just like to say something about the federal election that we had this year. In the recent federal election, it was widely reported in the media that the NDP had been reduced to seven seats in the House of Commons. What wasn’t reported was the NDP got 176,000 votes for every seat they won. The Liberals, who won the election, got one seat for every 50,800 votes they received, the Conservatives got one seat for every 56,000 votes, and the Green Party got one seat for every 236,000 votes.

So a vote for the Liberals was worth more than three times as much as a vote for the NDP and more than four times as much as a vote for the Greens. Not surprisingly, the Liberals and the Conservatives want to retain this unfair and unrepresentative system. Voter turnout for young people is low, and I think one reason is because many of them support the smaller parties, especially the Greens and, at the federal level, the NDP. But under our system, they are discouraged from voting, because they know that the chances of their candidate being elected are small.

In the B.C. election in 2020, the NDP won 57 seats and got one seat for every 15,700 votes they received. The Liberals won 28 seats and got one seat for every 22,700 votes. The Greens got two seats, one seat for every 142,000 votes. The NDP got a big majority with less than half the popular vote. Of course, the same thing has happened at the federal level. The Liberals have almost a majority government, but they received only 43 percent of the popular vote, well below half.

[9:15 a.m.]

Fortunately, there is a Charter challenge underway of the voting system in Canada. Fair Vote Canada is challenging the system in the courts. Right now they’re at the Ontario Court of Appeal. They’ve heard their case, and we expect to get a ruling soon. If we lose, it will probably go to the Supreme Court. That is, I think, the best chance of getting PR voting in Canada.

The Supreme Court was responsible for legalizing same-sex marriage. They were responsible for MAiD. They were responsible for abortion. These all resulted from cases in the Supreme Court. So if you want a change like PR, I think that is the best chance we have is in the Supreme Court, rather than from legislatures or the parliament.

ACORN trusts our allies at Fair Voting B.C. They’ve done the in-depth research that shows how a new voting system can increase participation and engagement. I’ll leave it to them to speak on the merits of specific systems.

When it comes to PR, there are various types of it. To me, the most important thing is that if a party gets 40 percent of the votes, they should get 40 percent of the seats, not 60 percent of the seats, which is how it works at the federal level in Canada. This is obviously unfair and unrepresentative, which is probably why a lot of people don’t vote, because they consider the system to be unfair and unrepresentative.

That’s it for me. I’m finished.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you, Gary, for your presentation. I appreciate what you were saying. A question I have is…. In Canada, our geography is such that we have large numbers of people living a short distance from the Canadian border. This is also the case in British Columbia. We have small numbers of people scattered in large geographic areas. The riding I represent, for example, has just about 44,000 registered voters scattered over an area the size slightly larger than Switzerland.

There is a perception or a belief that when you have these folks in these areas doing resource extraction and producing the wealth of the province, they don’t have as much of a say. What, in fact, happens is that these smaller ridings…. And some ridings in the Lower Mainland here have many more registered voters than my riding does. How do you balance the representation of these rural ridings, sparsely populated, with the dense populations of urban areas in such a system?

Gary Rodden: Well, right now in B.C., the Conservatives dominate the Interior and the North, and the NDP dominates the coast and Vancouver Island. Right now, the government of B.C. is essentially controlled by Vancouver and Vancouver Island, and the Interior and the North have got little say in what happens.

That’s not a very fair system. It’s not fair to the Interior. It’s not fair to the North. You’re not getting any representation. You have no members in the cabinet, but if you had a PR system, the NDP would not have a majority. So there would have to be some type of a coalition, which could include members from the Interior.

Sheldon Clare: Okay, and I have a supplemental. The Weimar Republic in 1919 had a constitution which required proportional representative voting. That’s what their constitution required for their voting system, right up until the end of the Weimar Republic. They used party lists as well as a voting system. This led to an election in 1933 where no party had a majority, and there were coalitions made by various small parties. There were over a dozen parties in the elections in 1933.

That led to an outcome that had the single largest party making coalition deals with others and causing a bit of a problem, which I think we’re all aware of. How do you see what could happen with the growth of a number of divisions that could create coalitions that may not be palatable to a minority of British Columbians?

[9:20 a.m.]

In a democracy, the majority can vote to do what they wish with the minority. We have rights and protections against that sort of thing. How do you see protecting that with a PR system? I think there are problems with a first-past-the-post system, as well, but a PR system is not necessarily a panacea to prevent those problems. What do you think about that?

Gary Rodden: Well, in the 2021 federal election, the People’s Party got 840,000 votes. They got no MPs. Those people are not represented, so where do they go? The streets. They have no representation in parliament, so their voices aren’t being heard.

I think the People’s Party should be in parliament. I certainly have never voted for them and never will, but they should be in parliament. If you can get 840,000 votes, you should have some representation, and a PR system will give them representation. If you don’t like the People’s Party, well, you can debate them in parliament. It’s better to debate them in parliament than to fight them in the streets.

Sheldon Clare: Well, the fighting in the streets in the Weimar Republic was resplendent through the ’20s and ’30s, regardless of people having seats in the Reichstag.

Gary Rodden: As I understand it, Hitler came to power because the conservatives supported Hitler.

Sheldon Clare: Not just them, but yes. They supported the National Socialists. The Social Democrats wouldn’t make a deal with anyone.

Gary Rodden: Yes, and they ended up in the concentration camps.

Sheldon Clare: Exactly, and that was under PR.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. I will note, since it has been raised, that the Weimar Republic process of government is one of over 150 examples of pro rep. Yesterday, we heard presentations from Fair Voting B.C. on how to construct a pro rep system for this province that would be tailored both for this province and to avoid the issues that my colleague has raised.

I have two questions. The first question is…. Yes, we’re certainly able to make recommendations in relation to local government. Although it wasn’t expressed in your presentation, do you have a recommendation on how local government elections should be held for mayors and councillors? A change in the electoral system locally — what would you recommend?

Gary Rodden: A ward system, especially in Surrey and Vancouver, because it would be easier for people to get elected. Right now, if you want to get elected to Surrey city council or Vancouver city council, you have to campaign across the whole city, which is very expensive. I’m sure everyone here knows how expensive election campaigns are, and the bigger the campaign, the more expensive it’s going to be.

Say if you had ten wards in Surrey, you would have to campaign in only 1/10 of the city, which would be much less expensive, and that would make politics more accessible to people who aren’t rich.

Rob Botterell: Okay, great. Thank you for that. The second question I had…. In part of your presentation, you highlighted the fact that from your perspective, the most likely way in which electoral systems will change is through the courts. We’re actually a committee that is recommending to government, potentially, changes to the electoral system. I very much doubt we’ll be recommending going to court to solve this issue.

A question I have is: if the government did decide to change the electoral system, or consider that, what would be your preferred way of going about that? What we’ve heard from other presenters is that there should be another referendum or that there shouldn’t be another referendum. There’s a whole range of presentations we’ve heard.

In the absence of a court decision, what would be your suggestion for B.C.?

[9:25 a.m.]

Gary Rodden: Legislation, not a referendum. I think this is partly about minority rights — the major parties versus the smaller parties. For example, at the federal level, the politics is dominated by the Liberals and the Conservatives. A Conservative or a Liberal vote is worth three or four times as much as an NDP vote or a Green vote.

So if you’re a Liberal voter or a Conservative voter, why would you want to change the existing system, when your vote is worth so much more than an NDP vote or a Green vote? That’s at the federal level. It’s a little different in British Columbia, but even in British Columbia, I don’t think that it would pass.

George Anderson: Thank you for your presentation. It is certainly appreciated. I do have a couple of questions.

First, you had mentioned the federal election, and some of the smaller parties don’t tend to run candidates in all of their ridings. Would that at all change your viewpoint with respect to the weight of an individual’s vote when, perhaps, a party only runs five candidates, versus a major party that runs 300 candidates?

Gary Rodden: I don’t quite understand the question.

George Anderson: You are talking about a proportional system that takes in the entire amount of votes across the country. So if one party runs five people across Canada, for example, where there are hundreds of seats, does that mean that those votes should still be amplified, in the same way as if you have a party that runs a full slate of candidates?

Gary Rodden: Well, it would depend on what kind of a PR system you have. There are several different types. You would have to decide how you’d want it. You can have mixed-member, where half or maybe two-thirds of the members are elected in constituencies and one-third are elected at large.

George Anderson: Would that mean that those parties would need to run a full slate of candidates, in your view?

Gary Rodden: No, I don’t think so. If they were a regional party and you had proportional representation, you could have proportional representation based on a large riding with, say, two, three, four or five members in this large region, and then distribute the votes that way. It doesn’t have to be national.

George Anderson: The second question is just in relation.... You made a comment earlier that many people choose not to vote because of the system that we have. In the last federal election, 68 percent of people went out to vote. Would you still hold that same comment, that a large group of people are choosing not to vote because of the system? Or could it be that there are other factors at play?

Gary Rodden: There could be other factors at play. But say you’re a young person and you like the Greens at the provincial level or the NDP at the federal level. You know that in the vast majority of ridings in Canada, your candidate is not going to win. What is the incentive to vote if you know in advance you’re going to lose? That’s like playing in a hockey game when you know in advance you’re going to lose. So why vote? Why participate?

George Anderson: Just the last question as well. Your presentation focused a lot on proportional representation. I’m just curious if you had any suggestions with respect to how people participate in democracy generally, outside of the electoral system. Any improvements or concerns that you might have?

Gary Rodden: To increase participation democratically?

George Anderson: Yes.

Gary Rodden: I think PR would increase it.

George Anderson: Outside of proportional representation, like outside of just the voting system as it currently stands.

Gary Rodden: Well, as I said, half the ridings in Canada are safe ridings, so they’re not competitive. If you have a competitive race, you’re going to attract more voters because they know that then their candidate may win, but if you’re in a safe riding, you know what the outcome is going to be.

If you’re in rural western Canada, you know the Conservatives are going to win. If you’re in downtown Toronto, you know the Liberals are going to win. So why participate?

George Anderson: So outside of that change to the electoral system, there’s no other way to increase democratic participation?

Gary Rodden: Do you mean in other ways, besides PR?

[9:30 a.m.]

George Anderson: Outside of the electoral system, whether it’s through civics education, to making sure that young people are educated about how our electoral system works. It’s so that when they’re younger, they say, “I’m excited to vote,” in the same way that people are excited about getting their driver’s licence for the first time.

Or are there other ways? Should we be looking at electronic participation? Is there anything, outside of just the electoral system, that you think would increase democratic participation?

Gary Rodden: Well, one thing I would like to see is politics taught in high school. When I went to high school — it was a long time ago. I don’t know if they teach politics in high school now, but they didn’t then. One thing that would help is if young people were educated about the political system, which at my time, they weren’t.

I don’t know if anybody knows. Is politics taught in high school now in British Columbia?

Sheldon Clare: Yes, but it’s dependent on curriculum and on the teacher in the course. Teachers have a lot of sway about what they teach.

Gary Rodden: Do they call it political science?

Sheldon Clare: No. Social studies, sometimes history, civics.

Gary Rodden: Well, I would prefer something politics, just politics, in which they study the political parties and which party you should vote or not vote for — which they probably won’t do, because it’ll be too controversial.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks so much for the discussion. A couple of questions.

When we’re talking about thresholds, what would you think would be a number that we should be striving for, on a percentage basis, for these thresholds for other parties? Should it be 5 percent of the vote? Should it be 10 percent of the vote?

I mean, you know, we’ve had a lot of discussions, and you made the point earlier, inasmuch as that if we go to proportional representation, it’s going to drive more people to the polls. What happens if it doesn’t? What happens if the numbers stay the same? Does that mean that the majority of the people don’t want PR? Or does that mean that we’re just going to have the same 55 to 60 percent of the people voting for whatever reason without having it mandatory? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Gary Rodden: Well, I think if you make politics more competitive, that’s going to attract more interest. If you’re in a riding where you know who’s going to win the election in advance, that’s not going to attract very much interest to the election, but if you’re in a riding that’s competitive, that will attract more interest, wouldn’t you say?

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, I would disagree on one point. We had eight ridings in this province that were determined by just over 1,000 votes, so I would suggest that nobody in this room knows for sure who’s going to win until the very end. Unless there’s a spread like this, yes, I understand there will be some ridings that may be like that, but there are other ones, particularly in the metropolitan area, where it’s this close. Every vote does matter. So I would agree to disagree on some of that stuff.

The other question I had — we brought this up earlier — is on the geographical realities of this province. We’ve had this discussion in Prince George, where you have three MLAs that intersect in Prince George and then they go their own ways. One goes all the way down to Avola, into my riding. Another one goes way up north to Peace south. Another one goes all the way down to the bottom of the Cariboo.

So if you had, let’s say, two MLAs that were elected as one of the main parties, and you had a Third Party representative, how are they able to service those needs of their communities? How are they actually going to be able to do that?

We had a conversation yesterday with a fellow from Vernon, and his MLA is very close to where he lives. Well, what happens if we change things around and now his MLA is actually in West Kelowna? Is he going to be able to access his constituency concerns the same way? Even though he voted at the day, in the election, because this was the party platform that he preferred…. Then all of a sudden, that person gets elected.

Now how are you supposed to be able to service that constituent, or vice versa, when you have those logistical challenges? It’s not like Surrey, where you can go from here to here to here in 15 minutes, so how do you do that?

Gary Rodden: Well, one thing you could do is increase the number of MLAs.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Well, I would suggest we don’t have a whole lot more room in our Legislature for any more MLAs.

Other jurisdictions have been able to make changes in whether there’s a different way, like you mentioned before, where half of them are on the slate and the other half are topped up. Is that something that you’d like to see?

[9:35 a.m.]

Gary Rodden: That’s one system I would prefer for PR, yeah. I understand what you’re saying about the giant size of constituencies in the Interior and the North. I would suggest, divide these constituencies up and have more MLAs. As for the chamber, one reason why you can’t fit more MLAs in is because of the desks. Take out the desks. The British House of Commons doesn’t have desks. Take the desks out.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): That’s an interesting point. Thank you.

Rob Botterell: I remember yesterday’s discussion, and the presenter who described himself as a frequent flyer answered a similar question to the one you were just posed by saying that the magic of the internet was the way to stay in touch.

My question actually goes back to an earlier point you were making, around the level of engagement in politics and whether particular parties would run candidates across the region or across the country. One of two questions. First question: what’s your perspective on the impact of shifting to proportional representation on the ability to attract candidates?

Gary Rodden: I think you’d be able to attract more candidates, because the elections would be fair and would be more representative, which would encourage people to run.

Rob Botterell: Thanks. My second question around proportional representation. Obviously, there are a variety of arguments or reasons we’re hearing from presenters for moving to proportional representation. If, as some would suggest, moving to proportional representation, which is contrary to your view but some have suggested, would not increase participation, would not increase voter turnout, is there another reason to do it anyway in terms of voters in a particular riding?

Gary Rodden: Why PR? It’s more fair and more representative; the current system is not. The elections aren’t fair, and people are not represented. The Interior is not represented in the government. Why isn’t the Interior represented in the government? Lots of people voted for the Conservatives in the Interior and the North, but they’re not represented in the government. Why aren’t they?

Sheldon Clare: It’s because the Conservatives didn’t get the majority of seats in the House, so we’re in the opposition. This is how elections work. There are winners and losers, and this time the Conservatives were not the winners.

Gary Rodden: The NDP has the majority government, but they got well less than a majority of the votes. What percentage of the votes did the NDP get in the election? It certainly wasn’t 50 percent. It was a lot less than that.

Sheldon Clare: It was close to 50. It was 40 or 45 percent, something like that.

Gary Rodden: Why should the NDP have a monopoly of government power? Why shouldn’t you be represented?

Sheldon Clare: Well, in the system we have right now, we have the ability to be a strong opposition. The government has its way when it wins votes. If we have coalitions that form to vote against government legislation and that are successful in stopping it, then we’re able to stop it. If we don’t, we don’t. If there’s a tie, the Speaker votes the way the Speaker votes.

Gary Rodden: Why should the NDP have a monopoly on power in Victoria when they didn’t get a majority of the vote? They got well less than a majority of the vote.

Sheldon Clare: It’s because they have the majority of the seats.

Gary Rodden: Yes, exactly. Under our current system, it’s decided by the majority of the seats but not by the majority of the population, which is another reason it alienates the voters.

Sheldon Clare: We’re getting into a long discussion about it.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): All right. It’s turning into a bit of a question period.

Thank you, Gary, for your presentation and for answering all of our questions. I think we’ve taken quite a bit of your time, but it’s really valuable for us to hear from you and to have those comments. Thank you so much for coming today and making the time.

Gary Rodden: Well, thank you very much. I enjoyed the discussion. I’m very impressed about how smart our MLAs are.

Sheldon Clare: We’re impressed with our presenters as well.

[9:40 a.m.]

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Next up is Rocky Blondin.

Good morning, Rocky. Welcome to the committee. Just as a reminder, you’ll have five minutes to present and five minutes for questions.

Rocky Blondin

Rocky Blondin: Perfect. Good morning, gang. I will echo the previous presenter’s sentiment that I’m super impressed with the questions and discussion. I kind of want to cut to that, so I’ll be as quick as I can with my jam.

I’m a big believer in two important concepts: democratic rule and the freedom of speech and expression that comes with it. I thank you guys for the chance to express myself freely today.

I’ve worked on a few tiny democracies, quite a few boards of non-profits, committees of government, and that’s kind of my experience in democracy so far. I’m regularly encouraged to move up to the political big leagues, but I resisted the call in the name of my two sons and raising them with my wife. But I see that call is coming up soon because I’m worried about their future — my sons.

In the tiny democracies I’ve worked on, I’ve developed the adage that for any AGM we run, we get good turnout, we get the electorate informed, and then we let democracy set us free. Just have a vote. Generally speaking, when that comes together, good things happen.

I don’t agree with all the things that happen. But every time the majority of stakeholders are heard, and their wishes are acted on, we get good outcomes. So the little downtown business association creates good outcomes for the constituents, even if my opinion disagrees with it.

I’ve always had a sense of frustration with first-past-the-post and been proportional representation–curious. I didn’t really think too hard about the electoral system, but it was this last federal election where it really hit home for me. A newer family in our community expressed to me the support for a candidate. I was helping with their campaign. They expressed their frustration after the election that — it amounted to their entire voting life, so 25 years or so — they’ve never had a vote count towards a win at a provincial or federal level.

They used to live in a riding in a province where their vote was always in the minority, so they knew that was the case before they ever stepped in the voting booth. But they did it anyway, dutifully. They moved to our community. It’s more aligned with their principles. When they finally hoped they’d have a vote count, then it didn’t. So 25 years not having your vote count. They’re pretty disheartened with the system.

I just started curling recently. If I played 20 years and didn’t win a single bonspiel or game, I’d quit curling and find something else. I think that’s part of the apathy in our electoral system. People are spending 20 years in a process and never seeing an outcome.

We’re seeing that in turnout rates. I think it’s not the only reason, but voter turnout is a function of apathy. I see that in the non-profits I work on. The members just don’t think it matters. First-past-the-post isn’t all bad, but it seems like proportional representation or something else is better.

One thing I advocate for…. I’m the chair of the PAC for my kids’ middle school. We have problems in our school. The teachers agree, the principal agrees, and the administration agrees — we all agree — that there’s a problem, whatever the problem is. But then nobody can agree on the solution, and we stick with the problem. So we all decide that the problem is not worth tackling because we can’t agree on the outcome.

I think the general sentiment I find in B.C. is that we all don’t agree with the electoral system — and “all” is the wrong word; the majority — and therefore we should look at something different. The what is just a question that we need to answer tomorrow. That’s a tomorrow problem, in my opinion.

I think this process could be a two-part, where the MLAs sitting today can decide to change the electoral system, and then we can engage in a democratic process where we get good turnout. We inform the electorate on the options, and then we have the referendum on what to change. But we can all agree there’s a problem.

I can’t see any really strong reason not to make a change. So my question to you guys…. I want to engage in a good Q&A and answer what I can from an average dad of two boys in an average community. Why wouldn’t we change? I don’t get it. I don’t know why. I don’t see the pros outweighing the cons. I know there are some pros to first-past-the-post.

Ward Stamer…. Do I address you guys as MLAs? I don’t know how to address MLAs.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): No, you’re fine.

Rocky Blondin: You made a valid point, which is that rural communities have a hard time connecting with their representation. I get that. First-past-the-post was conceived in what was England at the time, in the 1300s, and we were carrying votes on horseback.

Now, I think with modern technology we can overcome these things. I program robots for a living. I think with modern technology we can address the challenges with a proportional representation system to make sure it’s equitable, inclusive and fair.

I look forward to your questions. I want to ask: why not?

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Rocky. We do have some questions for you.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Rocky. Yeah, that is a point. We’ve had this conversation over the last few days. It’s one thing to vote for somebody who you believe is more aligned with your ideas, your thoughts, your beliefs and those kinds of things. But policies can change.

[9:45 a.m.]

It’s one thing to have a policy statement. It’s how you deliver those policies. It seems that a lot of times, there are promises made during the election, and then those promises aren’t kept. There’s no way of really making sure that those promises are kept.

The other part is that once you become an MLA, then you start realizing all the other things that are involved from a constituent responsibility. In my riding, yes, I almost had 60 percent of the vote. But that still means there’s 40 percent of the people out there that did not vote for me.

I’m certainly not going to be asking you, when you call up to my office: “Did you vote for me or not?” That’s not how I work. That’s not the point. The point is that you’re in my riding, and I’m going to do everything I can to help you, regardless of who you voted for.

But you made a point about school boards. I think what’s happening is…. This is just a quick analogy, and I’ll let you tell me what you think. School boards have now got less and less power all the way through the process. So now I can see it’s incredibly frustrating for PACs and parents and the public at large to even bring their concerns to a meeting because the school board doesn’t even want to talk to them.

People get upset because their voices aren’t being heard. There’s no change, and in a lot of cases, the school board doesn’t have the ability to change because the government has taken the power away from them, so they’re incredibly frustrated.

I can see the same thing happening in the Legislature, and that’s why I’m not entirely convinced that having more representation of other parties is going to make it better. One of the suggestions that I made earlier in our week was to have more free votes in the House, because it seems like leadership, whether it’s opposition or government, can decide whether a bill is a confidence motion or not.

That’s unfortunate, because I would argue that there have been some bills that we’ve done in the last session that needed more work, that needed more opportunities to engage more with the public, more consultation. I’m not going to mention which ones. For whatever reason, the government decided: “No, we’re going to have a non-confidence vote. We’re going to ram this thing down your throats, whether you like it or not. And if you say no, then we’re going to have an election.” That I would like to see changed.

I’m not sure how we’d actually do that, but that would give us more time to be able to have that opportunity to not only gauge what the public is saying but what the business community is saying and what our constituents are saying. What would you say about that?

Rocky Blondin: What’s the question exactly?

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): The question is more free votes, basically allowing more MLAs freedom in being able to say: “I don’t care what leadership says. This isn’t a budget issue, but this is something that we should be bringing back to the floor, instead of just ramming it through.”

Rocky Blondin: Yeah, I personally would then agree with the reduction in the partisan whipping of votes, where parties kind of govern the outcomes. I would like to see that in the tiny democracies I work on. That’s how we function best, when I can get aligned on issues with people I may not have universal agreement with. On a really important issue, we can all agree, and then we get the outcome, and then we’ll continue to disagree on the other stuff.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Can I ask a supplement? One of the other challenges we have is in committees. A lot of our committees don’t sit. I would argue that, as MLA Botterell brought up, the fact that we have the internet now….

This is only being taped, and you don’t have two-way on the Zoom, where we will next week. But I would argue that if there’s something serious enough, and we’re in committee, there should be opportunities for engagement with the public. We don’t do that.

Rocky Blondin: I’d say that free votes and proportional representation go hand in hand. In your riding, it was 60 percent who voted for you, and 40 percent aren’t represented. If we had proportional representation, then that 40 percent would have a voice that could have the ability to have more free votes with their own respective views. So they are, in my opinion, pretty closely tied.

Amna Shah: Thank you for your presentation. I’m wondering if you think that the question of proportional representation should be put to the people. Now, the reason I ask is we’ve had presenters over the last few days engage with us and tell us that, no, it doesn’t require a question to voters because we’ve already gone through this again and again multiple times with different outcomes, and we should just make the change.

[9:50 a.m.]

Oon the other hand, we’ve also heard that to reduce cynicism from the general public and those who may prefer the system that we have and those who are unsure, those who don’t know much about the different types of electoral systems, to sort of indirectly then gain that confidence to pose the question….

What are your thoughts about that? Maybe I’ll just ask the question, and if there’s a follow-up, we’ll do that.

Rocky Blondin: Okay. That’s a great question, and I’m actually really glad you asked, because in that department, I believe…. When I get elected to board chair, I’m elected to lead. It requires courage. Sometimes we have to lead and take action without consultation. Other times, if we have a 50-50 split on a divisive issue, we’re going to poll the members and try to seek that engagement. Oftentimes it doesn’t go very well. It’s really noisy, and it’s challenging, but it’s important.

I’m of the opinion that the elected MLAs can read the room of the province, per se. The majority of people want a change, so I’m of the opinion you guys could legislate a change, but then the specifics of the change could be led to a referendum. So you could ask the membership, the people, which type of change they’d like. But we can all agree, I think, the majority of British Columbians want a change, and you guys can have that courage and show that leadership to enact the change to get that to start.

If we go to a referendum…. We’ve done that before. We had a majority of British Columbians ask for it, but it was a 60 percent threshold, and it didn’t carry.

Amna Shah: Can I ask a follow-up, please, Chair?

I know which one you’re referring to, but we also had a referendum in 2018, which did not yield those results. And there are arguments that have been made to the committee about why that was and the way that questions were framed and how confusing that was.

Rocky Blondin: That was going to be my answer, yeah.

Amna Shah: Yeah. But do you see what I mean? There are different outcomes there. So when you say that the majority of people want a change, are you referring to a particular poll, or is it based on your conversations with people in your community?

Rocky Blondin: I’m definitely not a pollster, and I don’t have a specific piece of data. I’ll say general sentiment in my community but also the data I consume. It spans the political spectrum, for what it’s worth, in my community.

Rob Botterell: Just to follow up on this discussion, this is really helpful because we’ve had lots of presenters offering different views on this, so it’d be good to hear your perspective.

Another option that presenters have brought forward is a sequence where this committee makes a recommendation. The government introduces pro rep, and we try it out for a couple of elections, or one or two elections, and then there’s a referendum on: “Yes or no — do you want to keep it?”

Rocky Blondin: I think that’s novel. I think that coming at something with…. It doesn’t have to be absolutes. We don’t have to stick to anything. When we’re changing the constitution in a lot of the non-profits I work on, people hold that as: “Well, this is a permanent change.” And I highlight the fact that we’re changing a document that’s amendable through proper process.

I’ve never considered that myself. I think that’s one way to do it, and the data or the process would show, but I wouldn’t oppose that.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Okay, and a final question from MLA Anderson.

George Anderson: Thank you very much for your presentation. Again, I’m sure your family appreciates the fact that you’ve chosen not to make that bigger jump. It can be challenging. But when you do, just make sure…

Rocky Blondin: Still an if.

George Anderson: …to treat them well, because they’ll be the ones who are supporting you.

That being said, again, I note that you’ve mentioned proportional representation. I’m curious if there is a specific type of proportional representation that you lean towards. We have heard people say proportional representation, but as you’ve also heard from the previous presenter, there are various kinds of proportional representation.

Rocky Blondin: Yeah, in that case, I have a pretty open mind, purely because I’ve looked into most of the options, and I don’t have a good consensus. All that to say, I look for….

In the school system, we have a lot of challenges, and I’m looking to Finland for a lot of our solutions, purely because they have a high-functioning and quality-of-outcome system. So I would look to other countries, other jurisdictions that have success.

A lot of the ones I’ve reviewed would be MMR more, but I’m an open mind on that. I think we need to make a change, and then I want to be one of those voters that gets informed through the process, talks with my neighbours, and then we all make an informed and collective decision.

[9:55 a.m.]

George Anderson: May I have a follow-up? Similar to a question I asked earlier is: do you have any suggestions on how we increase democratic participation? You’ve mentioned that you sit on a variety of different boards. You ensure that your members actually show up to participate, and you don’t like how the vote is sometimes, but at least they’re participating.

Do you have any recommendations as to how British Columbians could be better involved and engaged in our democratic processes?

Rocky Blondin: Yeah, that one’s heavy. On our non-profit side and the boards I sit on, apathy is bad. We are failing to make quorum at most of our meetings, most of the time. Most people don’t think they have a vote and that it doesn’t really matter. That’s that apathetic feeling. Proportional representation would address that underlying current, I think — a piece of it.

I can say, for me, looking at politics, I wouldn’t run for a seat in the Legislature or the federal government, because the first-past-the-post system basically makes it hard for diverse views. It’s really difficult. I find that a barrier to entering politics, myself.

For people to be heard and to get the turnout, I think that people need to feel like they’re going to get an outcome here. A lot of parents come to meetings, and they just don’t have a voice. They’re wasting their time, so they stop coming.

George Anderson: So I guess, perhaps, would more citizen committees on different topics…? Again, more civics education for young people or more public information? I’m just curious, outside of just the electoral system in itself.

Rocky Blondin: Yeah, I’ll echo the answer of the previous presenter. On the civics side, let’s educate kids. That’s a big one. For me, I didn’t get it in high school. I had to learn the hard way. I only joined a board because they were offering free hats. I kid you not. That was my first board, and then I’ve sat on about a dozen since.

That was my entry into politics. I didn’t know anything about democracy as a product of our high school system from the ’90s. So introduce kids to this, get more democracy in their lives. They’ll learn the power of it and the importance.

Conversely, I think that giving people proportional representation — straight up — will increase turnout, increase engagement. And I think, then, there are other systems and other ways we can give people accountability — that they’ve got to show up in the voting booth.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Rocky, for your time and for taking our questions.

Okay, next up we have Ronan Joseph.

Welcome, Ronan. Thank you for being here this morning. Just a reminder: you have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions.

Ronan Joseph

Ronan Joseph: Well, good morning, everyone. Thank you for providing me the opportunity to present to the Special Committee on Democratic and Electoral Reform. I’ve really liked hearing the discussion and the really intelligent questions so far from all parties, so I’m looking forward to talking a bit more.

My name is Ronan Joseph. I’m a young Canadian engineer from Surrey, and I’d like to present on rural-urban proportional representation, which is a model developed by Fair Vote Canada to address our electoral challenges.

While I believe that any proportional model would create fairer elections than our current system, rural-urban PR allows all sitting MLAs to run again, doesn’t require many new MLAs, ensures rural representation in government and keeps the largest ridings the same size as they are now.

What makes rural-urban PR unique among proportional electoral systems is a combination of single-member ridings for rural areas, multi-member ridings for urban areas like Surrey or Vancouver and a small number of additional top-up seats to ensure that parties’ provincial seat counts match their vote shares. I’m not sure if the written submission I made has been provided to the committee yet, but it is referenced in figure 1 of that document.

Voting in single-member ridings would be extremely simple, with ballots being identical to what they are now. Multi-member ridings would be very simple as well, with voters choosing from a list of candidates to elect the number of seats in their riding. Voters could either pick from a basic list or rank candidates in order of preference, like in the single transferable vote system proposed and recommended by the 2004 citizens’ assembly.

Top-up seats would be filled by the candidates with the second and third most votes from other ridings, depending on their party, to balance out the vote shares. Up to 25 percent of all B.C. ridings could stay as single-member ridings under rural-urban PR, ensuring that the largest rural ridings don’t have their local representation diluted. These ridings would be balanced by urban multi-member ridings and the top-up seats in preventing a party from winning a majority of the seats with a minority of the votes.

[10:00 a.m.]

Ideally, we could even turn the smallest rural ridings into multi-member ridings, further increasing voter choice and representation in government while allowing the top-up regions to become more focused.

Rural-urban PR, along with a similar regional representation for B.C. model, which I think was proposed fairly recently by Fair Voting B.C. and Fair Vote Canada, would address the unique geography of B.C., while allowing strong local and regional representation. Since voting in these two systems is so simple, I believe that any referendum on them should be run after one of them is implemented and we’ve had a chance to work through the system for a couple of elections.

Implementing PR in time for the next election, I believe, is critical to reducing the extreme polarization in our politics as soon as possible. I think MLA Rob Botterell mentioned on Monday that we’re seeing really strong divisions south of the border — even assassination attempts and shootings — based purely on people’s political affiliations as politicians.

I believe that this is because, in the two-party system that they have down south in the U.S., fellow citizens see their neighbours as enemies, depending on whether they are Republicans or Democrats. I don’t want to wait, honestly, until we have American-style shootings here in B.C. before we try to move away from our current system.

As Australia has shown, a winner-take-all ranked ballot is no solution to polarization. While I believe a model like rural-urban PR or regional representation for B.C. is the right choice for our province, any PR system would be better than our current winner-take-all, first-past-the-post system.

Instead of today, where someone in Chilliwack genuinely believes that the election is rigged because there are no rural MLAs in government actually passing legislation for them, proportional representation would make everyone’s votes matter equally. I believe this Legislature has a historic opportunity to make a change, supported by 70 percent of British Columbians.

Thank you for your time. Any references I have are in my written submission.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Wonderful. Thank you, Ronan.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. I wondered if you could comment a bit on how this proposed approach would address what has been identified, by presenters and by committee members, as a pretty significant issue: the large, regional ridings — in the North, primarily, and the size of Switzerland.

In this system, how would we deal with even larger ridings or regional reps that have two Switzerlands to cover?

Ronan Joseph: Yeah, a great question. I think that’s why I find rural-urban PR so appealing: it keeps the largest rural ridings that we have today the same, identical. If you look at Peace River North, we’re not talking about combining it with Bulkley Valley–Stikine, which is a huge, very-hard-to-manage riding. Local citizens living in their ridings right now would have their same MLAs elected to government, but they would also have an additional group of MLAs belonging to these top-up seats.

I don’t know if you happen to have, open on your computer, the written submission that I made. Basically, in figure 1, it shows these top-up seats acting as extra regions, providing additional.... They’re basically balancing vote shares, so that parties can have seats in government matching their share of the votes. So everyone would always have the same local representation that they have now — in rural areas, specifically — but you would have these extra MLAs to make the outcome more proportional.

Rob Botterell: Just to follow up, would those extra MLAs need a helicopter to make it? They would be covering a larger area, right?

Ronan Joseph: They would, yes.

Rob Botterell: How would they stay engaged with their constituents?

Ronan Joseph: An excellent question. I’ve heard a couple of different solutions for this. One is a combination of having the team of MLAs in this large top-up region work together to basically take responsibility for sections of their large top-up riding.

[10:05 a.m.]

Alternatively, they can have virtual town halls where, say, they have people call in, with Zoom or what have you, and then make that more accessible as well. I think it would have to be something where they would have to take turns to rotate through these larger ridings to actually have some sort of physical presence.

Amna Shah: Thank you, Ronan, for your presentation. I do want to point out that there is quite extensive collaboration between government caucus MLAs and ministers regardless of which region they come from, which party they belong to. That work happens daily, whether it be in Victoria, whether it is happening even while we’re in our ridings. I think that that point is not to be understated.

I think there’s also…. One could argue that when we’re talking about leadership, as it pertains to specific bills…. We’ve heard from speakers saying: “Oh, well, we trust leadership to make decisions for us every day, so we shouldn’t consult the people on everything.” Yes, there are decisions that governments make in the form of bills, in the form of acts, regularly on behalf of the people as well.

Given that that collaboration happens, there’s also what you’ve noted a few times in your presentation: under a proportional representation system, it would decrease polarization. One could point to examples of other jurisdictions in the world where it doesn’t decrease polarization. As a matter of fact, government ends up in a standstill as a result. Of course, there are those examples. There are also examples where it works very well.

I suppose my question to you is on your point about other systems that have no solutions for polarization. It’s what you said. For proportional representation, how is that a solution to polarization? How much do you think culture plays in the role of decreasing or increasing polarization in our communities?

Ronan Joseph: Yeah, I think that culture does play a big role. For example, I’ve read some transcripts of previous presenters. They’ve cited some examples of PR countries where governments are deadlocked or there are extremist parties that are very powerful.

I would say maybe looking to similar nations to us, which may be fellow Commonwealth nations like New Zealand, maybe Ireland a little bit as well, quite culturally similar…. They have proportional representation models, and they have governments that have very regularly served out their full terms of mandates as specified under their constitutions.

In New Zealand, I think, in the last seven out of eight elections maybe, they served out three-year mandates fully, and then one was like a few months early. In Ireland, it was four to five years very consistently for the last eight elections. So it really does come down to culture.

If you already have an environment like, I think, maybe what we have in this room, where we have MLAs from all parties who are represented in the Legislature working together in a room and having a civil discussion, that’s much more promising for a system that can actually be improved under proportional representation as opposed to a country like Italy, for example, where there are very structural differences between the north and south of the country in Italy that contribute to deadlock or gridlock between multiple parties.

George Anderson: Thank you for your presentation, your materials. It’s certainly appreciated. First question I have is: do you have any concern with the rural-urban system that was created by Fair Vote Canada in that it’s never been used before?

Ronan Joseph: I would say that elements of it have been used or seem to have been used in Sweden and some Nordic countries.

[10:10 a.m.]

To me, I think, there is always a risk that when you’re trying something new, it’s possible that something might not work out. That’s why, if we decide to go to a proportional representation model at all, and if you choose this system specifically — whether that’s MLAs choosing it through legislation or Elections B.C. deciding that it’s a favourable model — I do really like the approach that was suggested: to run this for two elections.

Then have a referendum to send to the people and say: “Does this work the way you expected? Did we have any problems and would we actually prefer to go back to first-past-the-post?” Looking at the system, I can’t really identify any major glaring issues, as proposed, despite the fact that it is new.

George Anderson: I was just curious, because the system that was proposed by Fair Vote was created specifically for British Columbia, as you mentioned. I was just curious if you had any comments or concerns about that.

The second part of my question relates to just the participation in our democracy. Do you see things such as mandatory voting or lowering the voter age, for example, to be things that might actually be useful to increase the amount of people who are actually voting?

Ronan Joseph: Mandatory voting is a really interesting point, because there are pros and cons to the approach. Pros are, obviously, as we see in Australia, it dramatically increases the number of people voting, because if you don’t, you get fined. However, I’m not sure that forcing people to vote even if they don’t feel engaged in the process and just checking a random box for any party — you know, their name sounds nice or they’re the first one on the list — is really a positive contribution to our democracy.

Sorry. What was the second part of your question or the second point you were asking about?

George Anderson: Lowering the voter age, for example. I just gave these as examples.

Ronan Joseph: Yeah, there are a bunch of things, I think, that this committee can also look into. Maybe more presenters will speak on that as well. I have no strong feelings on lowering the voting age. I know, as a teenager about a decade ago, I was excited to get the ability to vote, and it didn’t bother me too much that I needed to wait maybe three years, I think, from 16 or so until 19, to be able to vote for the first time. My ages might be off, but that’s from the top my head.

Sheldon Clare: One of the things that defines Canada, Canadians and probably British Columbians and other provinces is our geography. We have a vast country with a population along our southern border and scattered throughout. This presents particular challenges in trying to ensure that people are properly represented.

Now, in two provinces, we have systems which allow for a bicameral structure, which is having a Senate, for example, or in the U.K. model, a House of Lords, and it’s not really used.

In a situation such as you’ve been mentioning about Fair Vote — and thank you for your presentation and your written submissions — what do you think about the implementation of a bicameral system in British Columbia to provide the rural or regional representation that you’re talking about with regards to this extra system of MLAs being elected?

I have some concerns, which I’ve articulated already this morning. I think you were here for my discussion of that, and you’ve probably heard some of it before, about some aspects of proportional representation and what that could lead to. But what about an upper house? Do you see that as a possible solution to the regional requirements?

Ronan Joseph: Yeah, it’s an interesting idea. I’m not familiar with how it’s used in other provinces, so I’d have to see what sort of legislation gets passed in these upper houses, and if there’s some sort of consistent policy and law that doesn’t actually get undone or reversed, from government to government, in the lower house.

Sheldon Clare: Well, it doesn’t really get used is the thing. The federal power…. The federal and provinces are equal in the constitution. They have an equal status. But when you look at the purpose of the Upper House, it’s supposed to have been, historically, for regional representation.

[10:15 a.m.]

Now, in Canada, it’s kind of parsed into something else. It’s turned into a system where you have representation of all kinds of other things thrown into the mix, which may or may not be worthwhile, depending on how voting is done. But I’m wondering about specifically looking at regional representation, because we do have significant differences in our regions that make this an issue.

My second part of my question with regard to that is about access. People talk about: “Well, we just have internet.” I’ve got a pretty vast area that I’ve driven around in my good old truck. I put 75,000 kilometres on it in the last two years. When you go to places where they don’t have any reliable coverage, including long stretches of highways and rural roads, that’s not really an answer. It doesn’t work.

Many folks in compacted ridings take it for granted that there would be coverage and access. And I have vast areas where this stuff doesn’t work. I might as well throw it in the river because I’m not going to have access for hours.

George Anderson: The Quesnel River?

Sheldon Clare: We can talk about the Quesnel River and its bridge. Thank you, George.

Rob Botterell: Throw it off the bridge?

Sheldon Clare: I wouldn’t want to add to all the concrete that’s falling off there, MLA Botterell.

What do you think about that challenge in terms of trying to make sure that you’re adequately representing people? I’m a great believer in getting around face-to-face to people. That’s what I do. Whether people agree with me or would have voted for me or not, I see it as my duty to represent them — as I believe is the case for everyone here.

Ronan Joseph: I’ll answer your second point first, because I think I at least have a bit more background to speak on it.

Thank you for highlighting that. As someone who is an urban resident, despite the fact that I care about rural representation, living in Surrey, yeah, I have service everywhere, I have internet at home, and it’s very easy for me to get it on the go. That’s a very different, I guess, lived experience than someone in a rural area, where they have to actually travel physically to meet their MLA in order to actually get some good conversation going.

The reason I like rural-urban PR, among other proportional systems, is that it keeps current MLAs and current ridings, for the largest ridings at least. In urban areas, it actually makes a lot of sense to combine them because, again, it’s actually quite easy to travel from north Surrey to South Surrey. It takes like 20 minutes.

In a rural area like Peace River North, you need to keep that riding the same size as it is now. So you need to keep MLAs like yourself, and I think MLA Stamer also represents a large riding. You need to keep those ridings the same size so that you have the ability to, even as difficult as it is, to drive around in your truck or other vehicle and visit people in person in the existing ridings that you have.

It’s just that these regional top-up seats, as proposed in this model, provide people who may feel more comfortable either speaking to a party member or an MLA that belongs to the party that they support the most or who want to see actually members of that party in government passing legislation, the opportunity to at least have someone representing them.

Yes, it is a struggle to have these large ridings that might cover a quarter of the province or more, as regional top-up seats. But at the same time, if at least the people in those ridings who….

As an MLA, I can tell that you care about representing all of your constituents equally, but some people may feel like: “Oh, I wish I had someone who was from a different party who could at least be my voice as a small thing.” And so they at least have the option under the system to say: “Okay, I have my mega top-up region that’s north B.C. I have a couple of MLAs who belong to the party I support the most. I can at least call them and say, “Hey, this is my concern related to my place in this large riding.”

Sheldon Clare: Well, we do try to discourage shopping for MLAs. I mean, that’s an issue.

Ronan Joseph: I would not say this is shopping for MLAs, because this would be like, “Oh, this MLA is assigned to represent my large region in addition to my local MLA. I think it is subjective, maybe like a philosophical question.

[10:20 a.m.]

I personally am quite happy to talk to my MLA locally, regardless of where they are from, for example, the B.C. Conservatives or B.C. NDP. But for some people, particularly younger people I’ve talked to, they really wish they had someone from their favourite party assigned to their region. But I agree. It is a philosophical question.

Sheldon Clare: One has to win elections, then.

Ronan Joseph: It is, yeah.

For your second point — or, I guess, first point — about an upper Senate or bicameral setup, I really haven’t done any research, so I can’t speak to that.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): A couple of things. My riding isn’t rural. Part of the challenge in my riding is because of the way it was redistributed in the last boundary change.

I can argue that there was basically no common sense when you have what used to be Kamloops–North Thompson and Kamloops–South Thompson, and then all of a sudden I have all the Thompson valleys. Kamloops Centre is more densely populated, but the total number is the same. We’re still shooting for 57,000; we have 60,000. As an example, Burnaby North only has 53,000.

A couple of things come to mind. We haven’t touched on communication. We talked about internet and those kinds of opportunities. Back in 2018, there was a whole lot of disinformation on the referendum. I’d like to know your views on how we would actually be able to not only introduce communication information to our public but….

I would offer up that because of the way social media is set up these days, there are even more opportunities for disinformation. There are more opportunities for silos. I think that might be leading to part of the reason why people are being more disenfranchised.

Do you see that as an issue, going forward, in us being able to properly articulate what we’re actually trying to accomplish in this province by proportional representation?

Ronan Joseph: It is a challenge, yes. I would prefer to trust Elections B.C. to actually take the lead on that sort of communication, because as a body that’s non-partisan, basically they serve the mandate that they’re given by government and, as subject-matter experts, are certainly much more knowledgeable than me on different electoral systems and their trade-offs. I think if they were given an appropriate advertising budget to be able to reach people about television, internet, social media, Instagram, whatever, that would help a lot.

By default, they’re already in this sort of trusted position where people see them as non-partisan. By actually explaining clearly…. You know: “These are the trade-offs of our current system. This is what we move to, and this is why we think it might be better.” That would go a long way towards cutting down some disinformation.

I think also the fact that if we were to choose a referendum and run it after two election cycles, a lot of people would have firsthand experience, saying: “Oh, okay, this system actually seems to be working for me. The disinformation is kind of just noise, because I can see that it’s working. I’m happy with how it’s going, and I’m happy to vote in support.”

Alternatively, maybe we would run this referendum after two cycles, and people say: “Oh, I hate this. I feel much worse off under this compared to first-past-the-post.” Then in that case, we’d just switch back.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): I know we’re short on time, but I have another question I’d like to ask, because it’s been brought up a couple of times. It’s been sort of a theme about the fact that one of the reasons why we’re not getting a higher percentage of people to vote is that they’re disenfranchised. They don’t believe their vote is going to count — that sort of thing.

We keep looking at European examples, and I think it’s totally unfair when we do that. Because when you look at jurisdictions like Sweden, you know, 87 percent…. In New Zealand, they’re averaging around 75 percent. The lowest is 69 percent of a demographic of the population, and the highest is 83 percent. Then you look at jurisdictions like Ireland. It’s actually increased their seats from 166 to 174, and they actually dropped almost 4 percent of the last election.

What’s your take on what happens if we do this and voter numbers actually go down or they don’t increase, with the idea that the reason why we’re having this discussion is because people feel disenfranchised? They’re not voting. What would happen if we don’t seem to get that increase in voting? Does that show that it isn’t working, that we’re really not reaching the voters?

Ronan Joseph: I would say no, although my main reason for pushing rural-urban proportional representation, or any form of proportional representation system, is to actually reduce polarization and incentivize parties to work together to pass legislation that’s supported by a majority of British Columbians in terms of vote share.

[10:25 a.m.]

I understand that there’s maybe a philosophical debate about whether a majority of seats should count for representing a majority of British Columbians versus a majority of votes. If I saw that…. For example, I think the B.C. Conservatives have some great ideas that they have in their policies, but they won’t get a chance to actually implement them without waiting until they earn a majority government under our current system.

I would much rather see a system, like we have in Ireland, where parties on the left and parties on the right actually work together to pass policies that are supported by a large and broad cross-section of British Columbians, reducing polarization that way and also making sure that people can see: “Oh, actually, the MLAs I’ve elected are actually getting stuff done. It doesn’t matter so much that they’re not in the largest party in government, but they’re actually working together to pass legislation that matters to the issues that are relevant to me.”

Even if voter turnout doesn’t go up, I think that would contribute to a lot of happiness, reduction in division, which are good in and of themselves.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thank you for that.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): We have a final question.

Rob Botterell: Thanks so much for your presentation. I want to take a leaf out of MLA Anderson’s book and just ask you…. In terms of options like holding more citizens assemblies, we’ve had lots of presentations around how the information can be packaged to really engage with youth and so on.

I understand your presentation’s on PR, but are there any sort of, “Boy, I wish we could do this,” to just strengthen democracy, over and above PR?

Ronan Joseph: I think things like this are, frankly, excellent — the fact that, as MLAs, you’re all taking the time out of your day to meet citizens, have citizens committees and have members of the general public just apply. And then if they have a good application, you try and get in as many people as possible. More citizens committees like that — I think I’d be quite happy to do that.

This is my first time, actually, presenting to a committee of any kind. Yeah, I think it’s, at least to me, a different and unique way of providing input to more than just the MLA that happens to be representing me, but actually speak to a specific committee looking at one focused issue or, in this case, two issues — democratic engagement and electoral reform.

The general concept of having more citizens committees…. I understand it does take time away from your normal day-to-day duties representing your constituents, but I would be quite happy with that.

Rob Botterell: Great. Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much for the conversation. It was really great, and it doesn’t feel like it was your first time. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Yeah, it was great. I appreciate the written submissions too. That’s very helpful.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Next we have Ryan Campbell.

Ryan Campbell

Ryan Campbell: Hi, committee. Thank you very much for the opportunity here. My name is Ryan Campbell. I’m an engineer. I work in construction. I am also a part-time poli-sci student at SFU, and I’m on the board of Fair Vote Canada. I’m here…. I’ll let my submission speak for itself for the most part.

I want to address…. I think there have been some great questions here. First of all, a small point, as someone who’s a descendant from social democrats from Germany that came here as refugees, it was the Communist Party that didn’t make a deal, not the social democrats.

Sheldon Clare: We can talk about that.

Ryan Campbell: Yeah, I would love to talk about that.

On the referendum question, I think…. There was a comment before, from a previous presenter, about whether the issue was settled. First of all, I don’t think anything’s ever settled in a democracy. That’s the beauty of democracy. If proportional representation is adopted, there will certainly still be debates on whether to repeal it or revise it or so on, and I think that’s healthy.

There are also kind of two visions of democracy out there. One is where the majority gets everything and the minority gets nothing. The 51 percent uses it as a stick to hit the 49 percent. The other vision is one where there’s bargaining and compromise, and people try to include everyone and give a little bit.

Referendums definitely fall into the former camp. I would say representative democracy, even under first-past-the-post, tends to fall into the latter camp. You can see that here. I think all the MLAs have expressed that. They try to represent all their constituents.

When it comes to minority rights, I think it’s important to go with the latter group. And this is about minority rights. It’s about urban conservatives, rural progressives and Greens.

[10:30 a.m.]

Now, next I want to talk about, well, if you give something to that 40 percent that voted yes in 2018…. There was some talk about a ranked ballot. Just keep in mind that when we used that in single-member ridings in 1952, it made the results less proportional, so it’d actually be a step away and be the opposite of what those people voted for.

You can see the problems with it with the Australian election this year, where the Green leader had 40 percent of the first choices in his riding, and he lost when the rankings came in because of the right preference against him, and Labour took the seat. So I don’t think that’s really great either.

There was some talk about that for municipal elections. I think that for mayors, the concerns about proportionality disappear because you can only have one mayor, at least under our system.

If you did that, I would really encourage you to make it uniform between mayor, council and school boards so that voters are ranking on all of them and don’t get confused by having to mark different ballots on the same piece of paper the same way — or separate pieces of paper, if you might choose to. The nice thing, too, is that brings in an element of proportionality with the rankings for multiple winners, which I would really love to see.

I live in Surrey now. The governing party here got 25 percent of the vote for council and 50 percent of the seats. There’s also a demographic disparity, where councils are older and whiter than the populations they represent across Vancouver, and proportional representation has been shown to address both of those.

A direction you could go, as I’ve outlined in my proposal, is just to add a few regional MLAs — say, two to the Island, to the North, to the Interior, three to north of the Fraser, three south of the Fraser. It would be, you know, a 50-50 split between rural and urban regions there, or at least Metro Vancouver and the rest. I think it’s low risk. There’s a risk to anything, but there’s also a risk to doing nothing.

Our province, when we were founded, had multi-member ridings. Actually, Cariboo was a single riding with three MLAs. But it also didn’t have the secret ballot, didn’t have judicial review of elections, did not have universal suffrage either, and didn’t have any kind of campaign finance reform, so on and so forth. So if we had just left our democracy frozen in amber in the 1880s, we would not have a very good democracy today. I think the U.S. is a good example of where failing to update your democracy over time can really start to be a problem.

I did want to address…. MLA Clare had an interesting point about an upper house. Steffen Ganghof calls that semi-parliamentary systems, where you have a proportional upper house and a majoritarian lower house. I think it’s actually fairly well regarded in political science circles. Australia is the best example of this.

I would just be careful. The examples of bad PR systems that people keep bringing up are Belgium, which has a Flemish house and a French house, and they fight and have struggles to form government, and Italy, which stopped using proportional representation in 1993 but has an elected upper house and elected lower house that fight and have been a source of instability. But it is something that’s talked about, and I think is a legitimate part of the conversation.

I’m out of time, but I would love to have hard questions. I’m here for the hard questions. Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Great. Thank you so much, Ryan. I actually have a question for you. One of the things that we’ve heard folks say is: “When it comes to what model to implement or what to do, just move ahead with it. We’ve elected you folks, and we’ve given you the mandate. Move ahead with things and get things done.” Not just with this, but that applies to issues across the board, right? For the folks that been elected, we’ve been elected on a platform, on a mandate to move things forward.

What would you say to folks that say in a proportional representation system, where there are multiple parties and there isn’t a majority…? Yes, there’s collaboration, but it also could lead to standstills for actually getting legislation passed and moved forward, where we could go through an entire session back and forth and actually get nothing done. Especially amid…. I know, with my own constituents, it’s: “Get in there, get things done, and let’s get things moving.” What would you have to say to that?

Ryan Campbell: I’d say that I think when you actually look at studies of legislative output, proportional countries outperform first-past-the-post. But also, democracy isn’t about getting the most done; it’s about getting the right things done. You know, if you want to get the most things done, the Chinese system is very good at that, but it’s not a democracy. I think democracy can be messy.

[10:35 a.m.]

I also think that in these countries with deadlocks, usually it’s a bicameral system without procedures to resolve it. Australia does have a procedure where the House and Senate sit together as a joint sitting if they have a disagreement. They combine, and there’s two MPs for every senator, and you get this kind of joint sitting. And then you can just call an election if that doesn’t work.

The other problem where you have deadlocks is where there’s, like, an unpopular minority that holds the balance of power. That can happen under first-past-the-post as well. Like, for example, if you have separatists holding the balance of power.

Rob Botterell: Or Greens.

Ryan Campbell: I’ll give an example, though, actually. The Greens, in the 2017 legislative session, were a good example of how it should work, which is the Greens and the NDP had an agreement together, but there was an issue, which was LNG development, where the Greens were on a very different page than the NDP. So the NDP and Liberals got together and passed legislation there.

Regardless of your views on LNG, I think that’s an example of where…. You know, there’s this concern about a small party having too much power, but it shows that the major parties can work together too if they want to. That’s really, at the end of the day…. Yeah.

Rob Botterell: Thanks for your presentation. I want to just discuss implementation of PR. I know from my experience…. Like, I’d led the team that introduced and passed B.C.’s freedom-of-information legislation, and as part of that legislation, we introduced five-year reviews and a variety of other measures to sort of monitor how things worked.

We’ve focused in the presentations so far about one option, implementing PR, and then having a referendum after a couple cycles. But are there some other ways to monitor the success or failure of a system that you’d recommend considering?

Ryan Campbell: I think there are a few ways. One, you just do it ad hoc. We brought in ranked ballots in 1952, tried it for two elections and just scrapped it. There wasn’t any set process for that. There was just a decision made that this was not working or it didn’t serve the interests of the government at the time at least, and it was done away with.

New Zealand also kind of did that. When they brought in PR, they didn’t have any plans for a referendum, but they did end up deciding to hold one later after six or seven elections or five, something like that.

I’d be concerned about having a set referendum after two elections because I think it gives an incentive to sabotage the system for those two elections. I think that that’s a big problem that the Fourth French Republic had, that Weimar Germany had. When you had large segments of the population…. In Weimar Germany, from the 1920s onward, a majority were voting for parties opposed to democracy. When you don’t have that buy-in, it’s challenging.

Oregon has an interesting one, or Portland. They have a charter commission that reviews, every ten years, the charter for the city of Portland. They came to a referendum on proportional representation based on the recommendations of that charter commission, but it also had quite a few other reforms.

I also think redistribution is every two elections here, so there’s a natural time to kind of discuss our democracy at those periods. I think you could schedule a regular review, but I think people are going to continue discussing the issue regardless of what you do.

Rob Botterell: One quick follow-up was that earlier this morning, we talked about juxtaposing proportional representation with free votes and less confidence votes, and I think the presenter saw those as being complementary. Do you?

Ryan Campbell: I agree with that. I think if you look at…. Depending on how you design the system, it can be more or less open to independence. I’m a big advocate of it being open to independence because it gives you the option, then, that if you don’t like the party line, you can quit, run as an independent and win.

Right now we’ve only had one independent win in the last 80 years. In Ireland, I think more than 10 percent of their legislature are independents right now. Bavaria, with an open list MMP system, has something called the Free Voters, which isn’t really a party. It’s more of a slate, but they have free votes on everything as well.

If you aren’t happy with your party, I think having recourse where you can get elected without the same party banner is a good thing. Obviously, John Rustad showed there are other ways that you can do that, but it’s not a very common outlet for people, I think.

Yeah, I think that’s important.

George Anderson: Thanks for your presentation and also your written submissions. They’re very well written. I’m going to ask a few questions in succession.

[10:40 a.m.]

One, I noted that you talked about ensuring that we have a system that best represents the people in minorities and so on. I guess the first of a series of questions is: should British Columbia look to use less referendums on questions of provincial importance?

Secondly, I also noted that in your written materials, you talked about paper ballots. Would British Columbia consider the use of electronic voting as well, despite the fact it may impact some people in rural communities who don’t have access to high-quality internet services?

I’m just curious on those two aspects, regarding referendums and then the way that people actually vote, in the sense of a paper ballot versus electronic ballot.

Ryan Campbell: I would say I’m not a huge referendums at all. I think there’s a Venice Declaration on how to run a referendum properly, and the key to that is that you run it on something where the outcomes are very clear, intuitively clear, to voters. So if it’s “do you want a community centre in your neighbourhood?” you either get the community centre and pay a hundred bucks a year in taxes or you don’t get the community centre. That’s, I think, an appropriate thing for a referendum. Even then, though, it might be a minority that uses the community centre.

Yeah, in general, I think we are a little bit obsessed with it here. B.C. is the only province to have successfully done electoral reform by referendum. That was women’s suffrage, I think, in 1916. Every other province did that reform, though, without a referendum. Switzerland did referendums on women’s suffrage as well. Those failed until the 1950s. The first one that passed was in the 1970s. Some cantons didn’t have women’s suffrage until the 1990s. So I think that’s a good example of kind of the failure of democratic reform by referendum.

Electronic voting — I wouldn’t call myself an expert on that. But I was at the ERRE, the federal process, where they had an IBM executive talk about the dangers of that, and that scared the bejesus out of everyone in that room.

I also think…. My mom’s family were political refugees, as I mentioned. They settled in a place called Tomslake in northern B.C. It’s outside Pouce Coupe, a very small town. It doesn’t have cell phone reception. It doesn’t have really good internet. You need Starlink there. I’d be very concerned about Starlink — certain actors there just turning off the internet for our election day.

I’m not a fan of electronic voting. I think paper ballots are great.

George Anderson: Just to follow up very quickly…. On the referendum aspect in your written submissions, you mentioned that they’re susceptible to misinformation. You also further mentioned about how you can end up leading to unfortunate outcomes. So do you have any proposals or recommendations on how to best engage British Columbians on these broader questions, using your example of: “Do you want a community centre?”

Obviously, the province isn’t going to be doing referendums on that, but just on issues that might face the entire province, and not just on electoral reform, but bigger questions.

Ryan Campbell: I think elections are a good way to do that, right? That’s where we have the most fulsome debates. I think, though…. Keep in mind that people don’t have the time to study every single issue in detail. I’m a big fan of the idea that we elect people based on their values and that they’re good people that do their best and use their judgment. This process is good to go out and ask people, and also engage with experts, but I think elections are the main mechanism. That’s why this is so important.

You can try to represent everyone in your constituency, but at the end of the day, it’s your vote in the Legislature that makes this a democracy, and you can’t vote for and against the budget. You can’t vote for and against a piece of legislation, and nor should you.

You just touched briefly on the misinformation. If it’s all right, I want to bring up a point. You talked about civics education. There’s a problem here. Fair Vote and a few other groups — I think EKOS and maybe Forum — did polls on what people think about the current system we have. About 40 percent think we have proportional representation right now. That’s a huge level of misunderstanding to cut through in any referendum. That’s because civics is just not taught in school.

It’s not like people are dumb; it’s just that they’re not told these things. Even the way we teach it…. I remember 20 years ago, in high school, we had a little model parliament in our classroom and then everyone got to be an MP. That kind of implicitly implies proportionality — that it’s in proportion to your support. That’s what the party standings are.

[10:45 a.m.]

So we’re actually unintentionally teaching people that we have proportional representation right now in our schools. Civics education, I think, is definitely the best way to boost turnout, just returning to your previous question. Proportional representation is probably the second best.

MLA Starmer made a comment: “Well, what if it doesn’t improve turnout?” I think what you’ll see isn’t necessarily a sharp increase in turnout. But just like New Zealand…. They adopted proportional representation. Turnout didn’t go up, but it went down slower than it did in places like here. That’s more what you would see: not reversing the trend but slowing the trend down.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): I’ve got a bunch of questions, but we’re short on time. We will certainly have to follow up.

Two questions. On implementation, as MLA Botterell mentioned, there are different options that are available. The easiest way to describe it is that as a group, as a Legislature, we can decide: yes, we’re going to go forward with it, through the ability to change legislation. The second one is to change it and then have, say, one election or two elections, and then offer the public the opportunity to keep it, change it, or get rid of it.

There has also been a lot of discussions on citizens assemblies trying to determine what the best model is and not just allowing the MLAs, this committee and the rest of the Legislature to determine what makes the most sense. Would you prefer that process, or would you prefer us to be able to engage in the way we’re engaging — additional information with submissions, bring it to the House, have the House make a decision, and go forward with it?

Ryan Campbell: I think both have merits. I might prefer the latter, but citizens assemblies are a very good way to study this as well. You take a bit of the bias out.

We have a saying in the electoral reform movement that turkeys aren’t going to vote for Thanksgiving. You’re elected under a current system, and you have a certain interest in keeping it. That’s a good reason to use a citizens assembly.

I’d point out that when we did that previously, the citizens assembly came to, I think, a good recommendation. They put a lot of time into that recommendation, but they didn’t get any input into the process to confirm it. The 60 percent threshold was not something the citizens assembly wanted, and I know members of that assembly that were very, very disappointed when that came in. Bill Tieleman here said: “Everyone agreed to that beforehand.” Well, no. The MLAs agreed to that beforehand, not the citizens assembly and not the public.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Understood.

Ryan Campbell: But I’m all for a citizens assembly, if that’s the way you want to go. I would 100 percent support that.

Amna Shah: Thank you for your presentation. I find your written submission quite interesting.

I’m wondering about your alternative recommendation, your proportional representation–light. I’m just wondering how it would work. You mentioned that additional seats would be awarded on the basis of which parties were most disadvantaged. Could you tell me what your definition is of being disadvantaged? I think the goal is to better reflect the popular vote in that region. Actually, I’ll start with that.

Ryan Campbell: The way the method, called highest averages, works is that you have a starting point: how many seats have already been awarded? Then you check: who gets the next seat? Who gets the next seat? It’s an iterative process. All I’m saying is that you start with the actual seat totals, which were already won under first-past-the-post, as your starting point.

If you, proportionally, should be getting — like for the Conservatives, who would be in Vancouver — four seats, they start at one, and the NDP starts at 11. When you’re counting for these next seats, that’s just going to naturally favour the Conservatives. In my simulations, the Conservatives take all three new seats north of the Fraser because the Conservatives got about a third of the vote north of the Fraser and only two seats, which has now been reduced to one.

Amna Shah: Okay. How would that work for independents? You said that they could kind of run as a party and compete? How? They’re independents.

Ryan Campbell: Just count them as a party of one. You’d have a side of the ballot where you can vote for the independent as well, and they’re just treated like they were a party of one.

Amna Shah: Oh, I see.

Ryan Campbell: There’s an example in Scotland, a woman named Margo MacDonald. The late Margo MacDonald was a member of the SNP. She had some disagreements with the SNP, quit and ran as the party “Margo MacDonald for Scotland.” She won her seat in one of these regional top-up seats.

Amna Shah: Okay, I think I get it. I may have follow-up questions, if you can make yourself available. Thank you.

Ryan Campbell: Yeah, I’m absolutely here.

[10:50 a.m.]

Rob Botterell: Thanks for your presentation. I hope we asked you some hard questions.

The question I have.... Just to return to the discussion around a citizens assembly, the approach that I think you were alluding to was an option, if the government chose it, of having a citizens assembly to select a system but also having the ability or the mandate that whatever that choice is will be implemented. The government will implement what the citizens assembly comes up with rather than leaving it to the government to decide whether to accept the recommendations.

Is that what you were alluding to?

Ryan Campbell: I think if you make a commitment to implement things, that would be good. But at the end of the day, it’s going to be the Legislature that decides, right? I think it’s also appropriate to have dialogue between the Legislature and the citizens assembly to see what’s acceptable there.

What I was alluding to was that the previous citizens assembly had no input into the process for implementation and was not very happy with the decisions that were made there — at least the members I’ve spoken to.

Rob Botterell: Do you have a time frame in mind when you think about implementing? If the government were to set in place a process, is this one year, two year, before the next election, three years, four?

Ryan Campbell: I think it depends on if you had to do a redistribution or not. That process takes time. You might be able to do something on an interim basis, though. It would be…. I mean, yeah, it really depends.

I’m not a fan of rushing things, but I think there should be, in theory, 3.5 years now. That should be enough time to implement a new system if people don’t drag their feet. That would be my ideal, assuming it goes to 3.5 years, as well. I mean, we can always have an early election. It has been called…. The 2017 one was called early, and there could be changes in the composition of the Legislature. But I think that would be a good goal.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Great. Thank you so much, Ryan. I hope you liked the questions, and they were tough enough. Thank you so much for your time today.

Ryan Campbell: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Next up, we have Neil Smith.

Neil Smith: Well, those are a couple of tough acts to follow.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Neil, and thank you, first off, for your patience. I know we’re running a bit behind schedule here. Thank you so much for being here this morning and taking the time to share your thoughts with us. You have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions.

Neil Smith

Neil Smith: Thank you for inviting me today, although when I learned I would have five minutes, I thought: “Oh no, they are testing that Winston Churchill theorem.” No, not the one about democracy being the worst form of government except for all the others. The one which asserts the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. Let’s see, shall we?

Part 1(a) of your mandate asks for recommendations for increasing democratic engagement and voter participation. Change the electoral system. You will get a 5 percent bump, probably, in participation, at least.

For part (b), although I have a personal preference, I would be happier with any system that involves a ranked ballot. I’ve been through this process for 20-odd years now, and boy, this is looking like déjà vu, with all the same arguments being brought out over and over again.

As you can probably tell, I grew up in the U.K. That was during a time when elections seemed to come frequently. Indeed, there was one year in which we had two general elections. Yes, that’s two elections in one year under a first-past-the-post system.

I moved to Canada in 1992. The next decade produced some strange election outcomes. Federally, Conservatives were rewarded with two seats for winning 16 percent of the national vote, while the Bloc got 54 seats from 13 percent of the vote. Later that decade, provincially, the NDP went from a majority government on the basis of fewer votes than the opposition to only two seats from 20 percent of the vote in the next election.

Correlation is not always causation, so these anomalous results were not because I moved to Canada. Probably. They did lead to an increased appetite for some form of electoral reform, culminating in a series of referenda that dwindled in support as elections settled down somewhat. Correlation may be causation in this case.

[10:55 a.m.]

My line of work for the past 20 years has been repairing electronic equipment. It’s usually the power supply that’s the problem. First step in the process is to confirm that the equipment is broken and in what ways it is not meeting expectations, because, of course, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

My examples of the flaws of first-past-the-post may be some of the worst cases, but they’re not unique. Every election has some sort of anomaly. Indeed, in two of the last three federal elections, the party with the most votes did not form government.

In the last provincial election, we narrowly avoided another serious anomaly. An NDP landslide looked on the cards until one party withdrew from the election completely. Sorry. The equipment is broken. It can be repaired. It needs a new power supply. I mean electoral system.

At that point, I think I’ll open it to questions, if you’ve still got some there.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Yes, I’m sure we do. Thank you, Neil.

Do you have any questions for Neil?

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much, Neil. So when we’re talking about our proportional representation, do you have something in mind? Do you have a preference?

Neil Smith: Yeah, I do. During that decade since when I first moved to Canada, I heard all these discussions, and people I thought I was politically aligned with were arguing opposite to people of the other perspective. They both seemed to make reasonable arguments. So I said: to hell with this. I’m going to look at it myself.

So I opened up the spreadsheet, and I tried playing with the numbers to figure out: can we fix the election under other systems? And the only way I could fix the election was under a first-past-the-post system where we have that gerrymandering process, where we shift the boundaries a little bit.

I think you referred to it earlier on. Shift the boundaries, and you can…. It’s true. You can do it yourself with a spreadsheet. You can see. You can have any result you want under a first-past-the-post system just by moving the boundaries. You can’t do that under proportional systems. I think that alone was enough reason for me.

On that basis, that’s why I started actually getting involved in the whole referendum question, especially…. I started off where we actually wanted to hold the referendum, and we went out collecting signatures for a petition to have a referendum on the subject.

I asked for signatures from people, and I was most disturbed by the number of women that told me they couldn’t sign my petition without asking their husband first. That blew my mind. But we eventually did get the referendum, and as I referred to in my presentation there, it tends to be aligned with how disproportionate our election outcome is. That’s when the interest in having a referendum seems to go up.

Sheldon Clare: Fortunately, the secret ballot allows some protections for people to vote against their spouse, regardless of whether it’s male or female, which is not the way it always was.

One of the things about what you were saying, representation and so on…. What do you think about a bicameral system in British Columbia with an upper house?

Neil Smith: At this point, I really don’t want to specify one system, because I think the first thing we have to overcome is a recognition that the current system we have…. There are too many examples that it’s a broken system. It does not work. It doesn’t produce representation. It produces low voter turnout. There are so many examples of how it’s not working that we really need to change the system.

Sheldon Clare: Our voter turnout has been increasing. There was a dip in COVID, and we’ve had it as high as something like 71 percent in the 1996 election, and then, in the most recent election, it was in the mid- to high 50s for percentage. We had a dip, but it has actually been increasing.

Neil Smith: Yeah, I think we’ve heard it a lot in other presentations. They try and draw this…. It’s really a non sequitur, where they blame the electoral system, either for frequent elections or low voter turnout.

[11:00 a.m.]

I think there are other reasons why the voter turnout is changing. It’s not because of the electoral system. I think the electoral system…. Basically, your work only starts once you’re elected. The electoral system, the actual ballot, is just the starting point. The hard work comes after that, I’m afraid.

And sorry, I didn’t really answer somebody’s question. If you really put me on the spot, STV is the way to go.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Okay, are there any further questions?

I guess just building on the questions that have been asked, so let’s say that we come to a decision that, yes, change needs to happen, how would you say we go about that change? We’ve talked about the referendum, having a referendum first, not having one, implementing a change and having a referendum later. What would you say is the best way? Let’s say the power supply is broken, and then where do you go from there?

Neil Smith: Not to be too flippant, but I suggest we get the previous two speakers to sit down in a room together and come up with a proposal. It almost goes back to my opening quote of Winston Churchill — you know, a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

I don’t think that’s the way to go. Let’s get some experts in the room who really know their stuff, and then they’ll come up with a reasonable proposal. I think if it doesn’t turn out good, if we have a few elections and things are not going well, like previous speakers have said, we can revisit this topic and have another look.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Wonderful. Thank you so much, Neil, for making the time to join our committee this morning and bringing in your questions and your presentation.

We will now take a short break, till 11:10.

The committee recessed from 11:01 a.m. to 11:13 a.m.

[Jessie Sunner in the chair.]

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Welcome back, everyone. We’re going to get started again after this break.

Now we are with Daniel Grice. Welcome, Daniel. Thank you so much for being here today. Just a reminder, you’ll have five minutes for your presentation followed by questions.

Daniel Grice

Daniel Grice: I’d like to thank the committee for inviting me. I’m a lawyer. I’ve written papers on electronic voting for Elections Canada. I volunteered and was paid organizer on three referendum campaigns for proponents, but I’m here, really, to speak about my most recent experience: running as an independent in the riding of Chilliwack in the last provincial election.

I ran as an independent because I felt politically homeless and wanted to speak about issues that I personally felt passionate about. I have a Charter right, as do we all, to put forward my name as a candidate. However, my experience is that the electoral system unfairly hinders independents.

I know that there are many changes that could be made to improve elections. If I had more than five minutes, I would love to go through them all, but I want to speak to two of them here today. One is how people vote, and the second is the financing rules for independents.

[11:15 a.m.]

Our current voting system too often forces voters to choose between following their conscience and voting for a candidate who has the best chance of stopping their least preferred party. I felt this firsthand in my campaign, despite being a highly qualified candidate, distributing nearly 10,000 flyers across my riding. I received about 487 votes, or 2 percent of the vote, which was both respectable and disappointing.

The problem I had is far too many voters were afraid to vote their conscience even if many agreed that I was the best candidate. It was frustrating to have close friends and even strangers who heard me debate tell me I was their favourite, but they were afraid to waste their vote.

Whether it is politics or sports, no one deserves to win, but candidates at least deserve a fair chance to make their case to voters. Our voting system not only deprives good candidates of having a chance to win but, even worse, deprives voters of their democratic right to vote their conscience. And whenever we talk about electoral reform, it’s about the voters. It’s not about the parties, the politicians or the government. It’s about the people of this province.

This was even evidenced by the collapse of the B.C. United party. We saw good candidates from across the province who’d spent months or even years of their life knocking on doors in fundraising, only to have their dreams crushed in a backroom deal to avoid vote-splitting.

Had B.C. had ranked ballots, not only would there be no reason to fold the party and deprive voters of their choice, but we would have seen a far more collegial campaign in which Conservatives, New Democrats, Greens and United candidates spent less time attacking each other and more time reaching out to voters for other parties to get their candidates ranked second.

While I personally support proportional representation, my experience, over two decades running in campaigns such as this, is that while voters embrace the concept of more choice and being able to rank candidates, many voters are fearful of fringe parties being gifted seats or having communities lost in large, amalgamated districts. We have seen this in the past be the difference between, for instance, the referendum in 2004 and the following referendum, when we saw a huge drop in votes when we saw large, amalgamated ridings presented to voters.

It’s my opinion that voters would be more likely to embrace simple, incremental changes such as ballot reform than a vastly unfamiliar voting system. This does not mean that proportional representation shouldn’t be the end goal. It means that we should take one step at a time, get voters familiar with the processes and changes, and change how voters think about politics to begin with.

The simple change from marking an X on a ballot to being able to rank a candidate is increasingly being adopted by local governments in the U.S. It has been the primary voting system in Australia’s Legislative Assembly for a century. This system — known as alternative vote, instant-runoff voting or ranked choice — is frequently used internally by parties and, as mentioned, we even tried it in B.C. in the 1950s.

It would be worth trying again now, in a day where we have better telecommunications and the province actually has highways that reach from side to side. A lot of the problems in that election were just due to actually getting ballots and getting information from various disparate areas of the province.

The second topic I want to address is campaign financing. As an independent, I was unable to issue tax receipts until the first day of the campaign, which really limited my ability to do any kind of advance fundraising or even have a campaign started on the go. I had trouble opening a bank account because I couldn’t get a certificate of candidacy until the date of the election writ.

I had my required signatures and paperwork in weeks before the election, but Elections B.C. can’t issue papers until the election is officially called. This causes delays in online financing, and I wasn’t even able to get that set up until the time it was too late to engage a new setting.

Furthermore, campaign finance reform in British Columbia, which was meant to reduce the influence of large donors on political campaigns, also meant that I was unable to spend any significant money from my own savings on my campaign without being in fear of offside campaign rules. I was unable to pre-buy campaign material, book newspaper advertisements or produce significant signs in advance, yet all my competitors could raise money over multiple years through constituency associations.

As far as campaign financing goes, I think we need to change the rules to allow independent candidates to personally fund or loan campaigns a larger amount without fear of falling short or having their loan deemed an illegal contribution. So $1,400 is not enough to reach a riding and, especially as a lawyer, the risk of being offside of campaign finance law would be a severe aspect on my career.

I believe the committee should also look at letting independent candidates set up registered campaign accounts in advance of an election so they can raise money and issue tax receipts, the same way a political party or constituency association can do, on behalf of a nominated campaign in advance of an election.

[11:20 a.m.]

Those are my primary recommendations today, but I’m happy to answer any of your questions, including on proportional representation, my past experience and referendum campaigns and voter information, too.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you, Daniel, for your presentation. Also, thank you for running as an independent candidate, something I’ve also done in a federal election in 2015. I must say that I’m really glad that you’re making the points you are making about financing and the challenges faced by independents because I faced those same challenges. I had an audit bill that was higher than my entire campaign budget, and there was a number of issues about that that had to be overcome.

One of the things that is a concern in B.C. about election funding, though, is the whole fear that elites or large organizations would be able to put money into campaigns. I recognize the challenge of an independent. How would you prevent, say…? If you were a multimillionaire, and you could put a huge amount of money into your campaign, make it very slick and everything but not have to rely on the donations of the populace as a whole, would that not provide a barrier, a disadvantage to others?

If you weren’t wealthy, and you were an independent, and you couldn’t fund your campaign like that, wouldn’t that give you a bit of an advantage and promote some sort of an elitist approach? I wonder how you would see working that out in that kind of a situation.

Daniel Grice: We already have maximum amounts you can spend on a campaign. Our system is already such that I could be running up against the candidate who put their name forward and just got $80,000 funded by their party. So the fairness, on a local aspect, I don’t think would be changed by that. We put those rules in place so that a third party can’t be buying your votes or unfairly influencing parties or doing this on a collective basis.

I don’t think we’re really too worried about a multimillionaire running for an $80,000- or $120,000-a-year job. That’s across the province. Sure, we could have 80 or 95 people self-funding all these campaigns, but they’re still against the parties.

As an independent, even if I had access to the max amount of money, I’m not running a provincial media campaign. I think there’s not a lot of real concern or a risk to democracy, as long as it’s limited to your ability to fund your own campaign.

Sheldon Clare: Of course, you’ve got the problem of it federally, and a party being able to take a donation as well as a candidate taking a donation. But you as an independent have only got the one option.

Daniel Grice: We only have the one option, and it’s even worse than that. I can only take one donation of $1,400, whereas all the political parties and constituency associations can take four years of $1,400 from individuals and put it in the bank. So that is really, as an independent campaign…. It’s not even just like: “Hey, what can I do on my local level?” It’s like I can’t even start. I can’t compete with anybody. The rules are just so stacked against me.

Sheldon Clare: Well, I hope one of these parties can provide you a home and that you’re able to participate more fully next time.

Daniel Grice: Yeah. Well, that is always an option, but I think there are still grounds for looking at electoral reform and voting changes to do that because I believe the possibility of running as an independent and being able to have a chance to win is actually beneficial for political parties. If you and your party are in disagreement right now, the threat of them pulling your nomination….

Basically, you know, you can talk about free votes in the Legislature. You can vote freely as much as you want, but if they don’t give you that seat in the next run, and you’re forced to run as an independent, you’re not going to have a fair chance to do that, both out of the money issues but also just the fear of vote splitting.

That’s why we very often see that a lot of diverse and probably even highly qualified candidates — not to speak of anything negative about anyone who’s elected right now — either can’t get elected or won’t run in the first place because they know the rules are so uphill.

Sheldon Clare: Very good. Thank you, Daniel.

Daniel Grice: Yeah. I just want to do one other address for you. You made a comment earlier about the bicameral electoral system as well. I’ve been meaning to address that. I do think that is a really good model to look at it. It is used in all Australian legislative assemblies. I believe Tasmania uses a STV system.

Some of my knowledge is about two or three years old on those ones. I really think that’s a system that, if you do need to address local issues and bring an aspect of proportional representation, would be something that would be an easy sell for British Columbians. You could get away with only increasing the legislative side by maybe ten seats and still give a lot of diverse voices a role in the Legislature too.

Sheldon Clare: And regional representation.

[11:25 a.m.]

Daniel Grice: Yeah, and regional. You keep all your representation the same. Australia uses a ranked ballot in the local seat, so you do have that competition. You do have a lot of independent ridings, but they have the Legislative Council at the upper seat.

That’s where small parties, like the Greens or other parties, can get a fair representation based on the number of votes that they can get. So you have both the aspect of proportional representation and the benefit of having more voices in at least one arm of the government as well.

Again, I’m quite happy to start with the local and look at other options, once we get people used to the idea of a ranked ballot. I think putting too much on them at once is what’s really killed a few of our referendum campaigns across Canada.

Sheldon Clare: Okay. Thank you, Daniel.

George Anderson: Thanks for your presentation. You spoke about campaign financing, and I think it’s great that you’re highlighting that aspect. My understanding is that if there were some level of campaign finance reform, we would see greater participation in our democratic process. Is that correct?

Daniel Grice: Yeah. I believe that would definitely increase the ability for independents or smaller candidates to be able to run a campaign and reach out to voters. I’m of the view that we live in a…. I can turn on….

When I was a kid, I had two channels to watch. I had to walk up and turn the knob on the TV. My kids have Netflix. They have 1,000 options. I think young people, and all people today, are used to so many quality options in all aspects of life. Then they get to the voting system, and they’re not given that same level of quality options. They’re really back to two major choices, too many elections and occasionally a third choice, when the Greens can get a full field and get highly qualified candidates as well.

George Anderson: I can tell you that as a younger person who ran for city council and was elected, it was not very easy having to fundraise, but it is what it is.

The second thing I was going to mention or ask a question about is…. You said that people are often voting against something rather than voting their conscience. In the last election, voter turnout was approximately 60 percent, and 40 percent of people stayed home. Hypothetically, if 40 percent — those individuals who stayed home — voted for the Green Party, we’d probably be sitting here with a Green Party majority.

Would you say that perhaps there needs to be some more education in our education system to be able to sort of encourage people to vote their conscience? I can say, just using myself as an example, that I have never strategically voted. My candidate hasn’t won all of the time, and I have never felt like my vote has been wasted, but many others do feel that way, and I can empathize with them. I’m just curious on that question.

Daniel Grice: Yeah, you and I may vote very similarly. I mean, it’s a secret ballot, obviously, but I’ve had very few winning candidates, in my mind. I’m somebody who actively engages and actually believes in voting for the best person, so I try to vote within that, where I can see a difference. I think that is really important.

As far as the idea of bringing in more voters or more individuals, well, first of all, you can say: “Hey, we should….” We don’t have a system where voters feel that their votes count. That can be solved by proportional representation, and that can be solved by a ranked vote, because then I, as a young voter, can say: “Hey, a Green or Marijuana Party or independent.” I can vote for them freely, but I also can vote, as a safety, for a second choice or a third choice so that I know who, exactly, to vote for. I know where my vote can go.

In that regard, I want to kind of move it back to the idea of the election. You guys knock on the doors. You may not even have control over what material gets sent out in your riding, but I can tell you that if you looked at a mailbox in the last campaign election, you were going to find two things in your mailbox. You were going to find out how bad David Eby is and how bad John Rustad is. You’re not going to find much positive about either of the campaigns.

Now, I’m going to say that in my local area, you may have a…. Well, you may be in an area where they didn’t bother putting a mailout in all the ridings from your opposing party, so you might be lucky about that, but if you’re in a highly competitive riding, you’re going to find out. That’s all that voters are exposed to — how bad one party is or how bad the other party is. Then you’re expecting them to vote, when all they can tell…. “Who am I supposed to vote…? Why should I vote for person A, who’s a horrible Communist, and person B, who’s going to rip up all our rights?”

[11:30 a.m.]

That is what the campaign literature does, and it does come out that way. If you haven’t seen that in your local campaign, then you’re not in a highly competitive riding, because that’s the stuff that ends up in the flyers of voters across the province.

You, as a voter, are expected to come out and engage yourself in this voting system, when you’re supposed to choose between two bad people. They’re not bad people, but that’s how you win in first-past-the-post. You actually try to depress voters’ support: “I can keep my voters. I want to scare this Third Party into voting for me.” That is the best way to win elections: fear.

By changing our voting system — ranked ballots are great for that — there’s something that political scientists have called the centripetal effect. When you’re running, you don’t necessarily want to badmouth all your other candidates or try to scare them. You actually want to get their voters to support you. It actually creates changes, from a really negative campaign.

I mean, you’re still going to get the differential messaging boxes. But it does force candidates to move outside their comfort zone, reach out to the Green candidates and say: “Hey, you know, I like Mr. Botterell. You know, he’s a great person, but if he doesn’t get elected, why don’t you support me?” That cooperation and that changing electoral…. You know, the messaging gets changed. It’s no longer that party A is worse or that Party B is worse. It’s: “Hey, come support me, because these are the things I can do. Put me on as a second place.”

Changing from a negative system to a positive system is extremely challenging. It’s extremely beneficial. I believe it will actually change how you guys operate in Victoria when you’re realizing that in the next election, you don’t have to scare the voters about the other party in order to give yourself the best bet in the next election. It’s really about earning the support and trust of the voters to say: “Hey, even if it we’re not your first choice, look. We’re still a good second choice. Come give us your support.” It’ll change how politics actually works, from the ground up.

Amna Shah: Thank you for your presentation, Daniel. Just to clarify: what you’re suggesting is a ranked choice ballot, not winner-take-all, right? You’re suggesting maybe proportional representation to account for the representational challenges in a given region. Are you suggesting multi-member districts?

Daniel Grice: Well, let me let me say, first, that I’m actually in favour of this process that we’re doing today occurring over more than one election. I feel that the best bet is actually to move from one election with the exact same single-member votes we have and just basically move into a ranked ballot to get people familiar with that. I think that is the first step.

Now if you’re asking me what my ultimate goal is, I followed the B.C. citizens’ assembly very closely. You know, that was the first time I was ever exposed to electoral reform. I was a university graduate, a tech individual. I thought the recommendation was excellent, with multi-member single transferable votes.

The flaw I saw.... In the first election, 57 percent of voters actually liked that idea. In 2009, though, they decided to put that into maps to see what voting would look like. Rather than sticking to small, maybe two- or three-member ridings that could still give them a bit of flexibility for individuals, they went with five seven-member ridings — huge ridings — so that they could have parties that maybe get 4, 5 or 7 percent of the vote…. Everybody could get a seat. It was very much focused on party levels. I felt that turned people off.

If you were going to a proportional system, start small. You don’t necessarily need to have everyone with 4 or 5 percent of the vote getting elected. You don’t need to, either, because most small parties are actually centred around one or two individuals. They might get 4 or 5 percent of the vote across the province, but they can still elect fellows like Rob in his riding or Elizabeth May in her riding.

Even though you might only see the party getting 3 or 4 percent, we still have local concentrations that are much higher. You don’t really need to worry about getting local representatives with 7 percent of the vote…. Often, if the threshold with a three-member riding would be to be elected with 25 percent of the vote, you’re still going to get quality candidates from small parties having a fair chance of getting elected. You’re just not gifting seats for people on the basis that they’ve run with a political party.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Great. We have one final question.

[11:35 a.m.]

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): I only get one? Thanks, Madam Chair.

Thanks very much for your presentation. A question. When we talk about ballots, inasmuch as whatever the thresholds are going to be — 5 percent, 10 percent…. I totally agree with you on the challenges, even municipally, of being able to raise money.

I would suggest we should have a threshold of at least six months, on a predetermined writ period. It’s very difficult provincially when you could call an election tomorrow, if we were sitting in the House. But I understand your concerns, and I think it’s something that we should be working on with Elections B.C. We’ll certainly bring that up.

On the ballot questions: do you think that we should have the opportunity to ask specific questions on our ballots, similar to what they do in other jurisdictions? The reason I’m asking the question is….

Daniel Grice: Are you talking about referendum questions?

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): No, I’m talking about policy questions. The reason I’m saying that is because there seems to be a lot of…. It’s a trust issue where people are disenfranchised. Maybe I have a belief that the Green Party actually doesn’t agree with me, but they’re the lesser of three evils or whatever. So I’m going to go with the Rhino Party, or I’m going to go with you.

Do you think that’s something that we should be looking at as well? If we’re not going to allow as many free votes in our Legislature, like we talked about, in allowing the MLAs, maybe, to have more flexibility, would you support having specific questions on a ballot?

If there is a specific question in an election that party A promises to do, the only other way to make them fulfil that promise is the next time that we go for another election cycle. Is that something that you’d like to see? Do you think that’s important?

Daniel Grice: Well, I want to address two parts of that question. In one sense, I think you can get the same information by hiring a polling company. The election is basically just a buy-in poll, but we’re giving legitimacy to the results. Unless you’re using that as a binding referendum, Angus Reid can get you the same results there.

I also want to address the actual voting itself and the use of a ranked ballot, whether it’s in single-member districts or in a larger system, like single transferable vote. How people vote for their first choice actually gives you such an incredible and dynamic view of that as well.

If I run as an independent and my issue is the Law Society of B.C…. It was one of the main issues that I was passionate about. If I’m running on an issue like that and I become first, even if I’m not elected, just seeing how many people say that that is the main issue in my riding…. “I’m going to vote for Dan Grice,” or “I’m going to vote for the Green Party” — or for this group that wants to protect this waterway or stop a highway going through.

That’s that candidate’s number one issue, and you can see how many people actually say, “Hey, if given a true choice, if given a way to give my vote to a candidate, knowing that if they don’t have enough votes, I can still have a safety backup vote,” that will tell you far more about what the true wishes of voters are than trying to give them a bunch of questions that they may not have informed themselves on as well.

That’s the one thing I really like about ranked ballots. Regardless of whatever electoral system you have, it’s a way that you can see, truly, at a local level, what the most important thing is to that voter when they vote honestly.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Wonderful. Thank you so much, Daniel, for your presentation and for taking our questions this morning.

Next up we have Gurjeet Singh, from the World Sikh Organization of Canada.

Welcome, Gurjeet. Thank you for being here with us this morning. As you know, you’ll present, and then it’ll be followed with questions from the committee.

World Sikh Organization of Canada

Gurjeet Singh: Hello, folks. My name is Gurjeet. I am the regional officer of B.C. for the World Sikh Organization of Canada. Some of you folks have heard from our team directly, but you’ve definitely seen our legal counsel and spokesperson, Boparai Singh, in the news, speaking on foreign interference.

The World Sikh Organization of Canada promotes and protects the interests of Sikhs in Canada and around the world, and it advocates for the protection of human rights for all. We’ve been doing so for 40 years. Today I am speaking to the committee’s interest in democratic engagement and voter participation, as well as the previous provincial general election.

[11:40 a.m.]

I’ll begin with B.C. having the highest proportional population of Sikhs outside of India, in the ’21 census. There is a lack of engaging voters that identify as women. To address this,

the WSO has the KaursVote initiative. Through programs, events, social media campaigns, we encourage women to go out and vote. This is an issue we see in our community where women are not voting in these elections, and my ask for this committee is for support, resources and perhaps funding so that we may expand our programs in engaging women voters.

The next thing I’d like to speak on…. There is a real concern of foreign interference in our elections, especially on campaigns on social media, with Sikh candidates being maligned, namely by bot farms, and candidates running with unclear ties to foreign governments.

I’m going to start by touching on the term “South Asian” briefly, which we just spoke about with Attorney General Niki Sharma last month. There are systemic inequalities between these groups that come under “South Asian.” Whitewashing the understanding of these communities isn’t serving any of them. There are clear issues amongst all of these that fall under this umbrella term.

For example, the current Lawrence Bishnoi group extorting business owners — the two most well-known murders were of turbaned Sikh men. Calling it a South Asian target or a South Asian issue is a little bit ignorant. That’s just a sidebar on the topic of “South Asian.”

What I’d like to hammer home here is foreign interference. I understand all of you here and all elected officials and staff have had a briefing, a security briefing on foreign interference, in which it was highlighted to you that India is the second-largest threat when it comes to foreign interference, and the threat is the highest here in B.C., after China.

Expanding a bit on the foreign ties of candidates, once you’re elected as MLAs, you have to have relationships with everyone. You have to have relationships with the different orgs and different groups. That’s understandable, but I understand that there are those that are aligning with the Indian consulate.

With the threat of foreign interference, this is very concerning to us. The flexibility of party members meeting on and off the books, because we know this happens, is a concern. We all know that these candidates that become MLAs have personal relationships with the consulate, and it’s not just for external events.

We ask that the parties and the party Whips need to be cognizant of relations with the consulate, especially outside of constituent issues, which of course are understandable. Personal, off-the-books, after-hours meetings should be discouraged and prohibited, especially in light of the threat of foreign interference, because we know that these meetings are happening.

I’m not going to mention any names, but there are MLAs that have regular dealings and meetings with the Indian consulate, and the consulate has called many MLAs to events and dinners that are not official events and which we want to be wary of. It is why I’m highlighting this.

Now, the last thing I’d like to share with you folks is racialized voters being stereotyped. This can be largely seen on social media, partially due to the bot farms, and it might be related to foreign interference. But this is definitely an issue that’s being discussed by Canadians.

The notion that racialized voters vote as blocs or the notion that they only vote for those of their own ethnicity and are not invested in the election otherwise is very concerning. A Sikh votes for a Sikh, a Hindu votes for a Hindu, and a person that’s of Chinese or Japanese descent votes for those of their own ethnicity or culture. This assumes a lack of education, a lack of engagement.

It is something that I’ve personally seen — a rhetoric when I was voting. Someone commented on all these turbaned folks standing in line: “Of course, we know who they’re voting for.” It’s a notion that I ask and that could be addressed through signage, a campaign or simply acknowledgement.

I’ll quickly summarize, trying to be concise here. We would love some sort of support or funding in our programs to engage Punjabi and Sikh women, because we’ve seen a lack of them actually going out and voting. We would appreciate acknowledgement of the stereotyping of racialized voters, whether through signage or social media campaigns.

[11:45 a.m.]

I’d really like to ask for either legislation or, at the very least, a statement from the provincial government and statements from the parties on limiting both candidates’ and elected MLAs’ dealings with the Indian consulate, outside of constituent issues, which of course are understandable, in light of the very real threat of foreign interference from the government of India.

That’s all I had to share. Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Gurjeet.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you, Gurjeet Singh, for your presentation. I very much appreciate that. Welcome.

I take very seriously the comments about foreign interference in elections, and I’m wondering: would you expand the concern about that to other consulates as well? You identified India as being one and China as the other. The Chinese consulate — is that also something that we collectively should be concerned about as having MLAs be meeting?

Gurjeet Singh: I mean, if we’re talking about the very real threat of foreign interference, and the security briefing that you folks have gotten, I’m understanding that if I’m to speak as a Canadian, there should be a concern for all foreign interference. If we’re meeting off the books, outside of constituent issues, I believe that would be a concern across the board.

Sheldon Clare: Yes. Following up, what suggestions do you have for dealing with attitudes about ethnic voters voting as blocs? This is one of the great challenges and one of the great flaws in a lot of positions taken by some people. You see this online all the time. Everyone says: “Oh, we know this group is going to do this for these reasons.”

It’s really quite distasteful to me, because I know that there exists a great deal of variety in all ethnicities about how people vote. I know this; I’ve seen it. I have people who support…. In my community, they support me, support others, and it’s as varied as any ethnicity is.

If you have suggestions for that, I’d be interested in hearing.

Gurjeet Singh: I believe an acknowledgement would help. I don’t know how social media campaigns, or campaigns in general for advertising the election, work. Maybe it begins at the party level, where we acknowledge that: “Hey, we’re not pandering to an ethnicity that will vote for us if we do XYZ; rather, we are just campaigning to Canadians.”

On the other hand, when it does come to ethnic issues, it’s not a matter of: “Oh, if we support said issue, the entire ethnicity will support us.” I think it starts at the party level, these conversations. I mean, I have colleagues that are part of the NDP and all the other parties as well. These conversations do come up. “Hey, will we get the Sikh vote if we talk about so-and-so?” It’s part of the strategy; I get it.

I guess the conversation begins at that level. When they don’t get the Sikh vote, it’s, “Oh, we never got the Sikh vote, never got the Punjabi vote, because we didn’t do XYZ,” or: “Oh, of course they’re just going to vote for so-and-so.” When the negative reaction happens begins at the party level.

Also, for the government, I believe it could be just acknowledgement when it comes to advertising the election.

Sheldon Clare: Okay. Thank you very much.

Amna Shah: Thank you, Gurjeet, for your presentation. I’m wondering what your thoughts are about addressing these stereotypes in the form of prevention and that being through — and this is just an example — mandatory civic education in schools.

I think we know, when voters form, in the formation of attitudes, not political beliefs but even attitudes, around voting and perception of what other people think about every single issue…. And that sometimes extends to biases based on how people look and what they wear.

I suppose, essentially, I’m asking you for your comments on that and also, maybe even more pointedly, whether you think mandatory civic education in high school is a good idea?

Gurjeet Singh: I’ve been an instructor. I’ve taught kids in day camps, from five-year-olds to 16 plus. I understand the impact of education, but I also understand how difficult it can be to adjust curriculum.

Now, to answer your question directly, I think it would be very, very useful. It doesn’t have to be a massive undertaking. There’s already programming in the B.C. high school curriculum about understanding how not to be racist, quite frankly, how to understand different ethnicities and different backgrounds.

[11:50 a.m.]

If something’s included in there about…. When we’re advertising, when you become an adult, when you move on with your life and you engage in elections, or you might even campaign for a political party, you’re aware that there’s not exactly such thing as the ethnic vote. It’s more nuanced than that. I believe that would be very useful if that were added to the existing curriculum.

Amna Shah: Thank you, and I’ll just note that in my experience here in a B.C. high school, although I was provided very limited civic education, there was quite an emphasis at the time on digital literacy and critical thinking. I fondly look back at that as some of the ground rules about how we critically assess information that’s being presented to us.

Even though I think that maybe we haven’t moved quickly enough, based on technological advancements and all the different types of technologies, I certainly see value in those types of initiatives.

Gurjeet Singh: For sure. Yeah, I grew up in B.C. high school, and I also look back on that fondly. So it’s already there, including a line about: “Hey, let’s be cognizant when we’re campaigning.” That’d be useful.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Gurjeet. I have a couple of questions as well. I think it’s kind of formulating in my mind, but we can just get your thoughts on it. When you talk about a type of acknowledgement, I think one of the questions is: what does that look like? In my mind, it also ties into a lot of the online rhetoric and hate that we see.

I form this question because it ties into a lot of the roles that I do, not just on this committee but in my parliamentary secretary role and everywhere else as well. Do you have any ideas on how we can help guide the Legislature, Elections B.C., to help combat some of that online hate and rhetoric that we see during elections, especially — and throughout the year, but especially during that time — and tie it in to this piece about how there’s not block voting and all of that as well?

Gurjeet Singh: For sure. To speak directly to that, there are other specific keywords on social media. Instagram, Meta, for example, has been mandated to include a disclaimer that this for…. If you decide to include a hashtag or certain words in your post, whether it be about hate for a certain group, Meta has been required to say, “This post includes non-factual information,” or: “This post includes hate speech.” So if the government can use its legislative powers or whatever powers it has to mandate that during elections that this post….

It could even be simpler. I understand maybe you can’t be that specific: “Oh, this post makes a commentary on ethnicity or voters, et al.” That is an avenue mandating Meta or Instagram or TikTok during the election period.

Or if there is a heavy engagement in B.C. election or #bcpoli hashtags on these social media platforms, if that is seen perhaps as a response to that, there’d be an ad campaign that is targeting whatever is being discussed. And that can happen in real time. If you see the B.C. election trending, you simply have to look at the hashtags, scroll through ten videos, and see how many of them are full of hate. And if you see five out of ten are hateful, perhaps that could be a way to act.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Yeah. And thank you for that, because there are powers that Elections B.C. has during the election period to deal with misinformation. It’s just sometimes a matter of how quickly we’re acting, and we’re working within a 28-day election period. But yeah, I think there’s, kind of like a fact-check portion to that as well.

Then the other piece about voter engagement. This is something that I personally…. Just the specific topic, you said, is one of the reasons why I want to get involved in politics: to really increase the knowledge and awareness.

Women especially, in our communities, need to get involved, and we can have a voice and opinion on things that might not be the same as other members of our household. I know that’s something that I’m personally working on.

What can you suggest to us, as a committee, that we can put forward to government to help increase that level of engagement? And I know you’ve been supporting yourself as well, but what could we do specifically to legislate something that would help engage not just the Sikh community but many racialized communities that may be feeling a similar way — that women voters especially are not engaged?

Gurjeet Singh: For sure. I appreciate that. I think that I could tell you to do an ad campaign, and that might be effective. You might see a change, but I think it is engaging in organizations such as ourselves, where, if provided funding….

[11:55 a.m.]

We’re volunteer-run. We have four paid employees: myself, a regional officer here, my counterpart in Ontario, our legal spokesperson and one other paid employee to do the graphic design.

We don’t have the manpower to actually be boots on the ground for specific issues all the time. We do our best. People are working off the sides of their desks during their day jobs.

You can do an ad campaign; or you can provide funding and support to organizations such as ours, where we can hire; or do a campaign to have a volunteer call out and engage the women — in Sikh gurdwaras, for example, which see visitors upwards of 70,000 a month — and actually speak to them on the ground. I’m not a marketing campaign analyst. I don’t know how those numbers work.

Perhaps this is something that needs to be addressed as an ad campaign, but I really encourage — for our organization, other organizations for other ethnicities — empowering them to engage the community directly, because for the people, the women that we’ve been able to speak to as an organization, we’ve empowered them: “Hey, find a way to go vote. I understand you have to take care of your kids. I understand you have to make dinner, but this is a civic right. This is your right to vote. You need to participate in this election.”

I really think these grassroots movements are more effective than a general campaign. Perhaps general encouragement through a campaign might see some results, but I really think it’s by empowering these grassroots communities.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. Through much of this really helpful discussion, we’ve talked about the importance of civic education and increased knowledge.

One of the items that has come up a number of in a number of presentations is reducing the voting age. I wondered what you thought of reducing the voting age to 16, and whether it might relate to some of the work you’re talking about.

Gurjeet Singh: To answer your question quite frankly, I think the issue is really about stay-at-home mothers and grandmothers that — due to their household responsibilities, etc., or lack of education — have decided that it’s not a high enough priority for them.

I don’t know if lowering the voting age would directly address that, just to answer your question clearly, but in terms of lowering the voting age, I’m 30 years old now. I wasn’t in high school too long ago, but it has been a while. I remember being a frustrated person in high school and not being able to express what I feel is important. Personally, I would support lowering the age. I’m 15 years removed from being 16 now, and I don’t think I was too young to be heard.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): I don’t see any further questions. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here and for adjusting your schedule to come in earlier and speaking with us. It’s really helpful for us.

Gurjeet Singh: For sure. Thank you, folks. I really appreciate you guys’ time.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Next up we have Andrew Schulz.

Welcome, Andrew. Thank you for being here today. We’re running a little bit behind schedule, so thank you for taking your time.

Andrew Schulz

Andrew Schulz: It’s okay; I have time. I’m retired.

I’d like to thank the committee members for the time and energy they are putting into this very important issue. I’m a fiscal conservative, and I believe that dealing with social justice will deal with most of the problems in our society. I have voted in every election, federally and in B.C., over the last 52 years. Only once in that time was I able to vote for a candidate who was elected and who shared my values and the vision I have for the country and B.C.

You’d probably guess that I do not vote for the two major parties. I believe that proportional voting would address this and would help create a change. Many believe that those who advocate for PR do so out of self-interest. This, of course, is true, but it’s also true that those who support the status quo also do so out of self-interest.

[12:00 p.m.]

Canada, B.C. and many parts of the world are slipping into a more and more polarized world. See our neighbours to the south. A PR voting system would, most certainly, moderate that slide into partisanship.

I view PR like the metric system and first-past-the-post like the imperial system. The only countries that do not use the metric system are the United States of America and North Korea. I don’t believe that’s the direction we want to go in.

There is broad support for PR. Many polls show support of well over 50 percent for PR, more than any political party in B.C. or Canada has ever achieved. The 2005 referendum on electoral reform received the support of 58.5 percent of B.C. voters. Provinces can separate from the country with 50 percent plus one. It seems, based on that, any government would have the mandate to instigate PR in British Columbia.

I support all systems of PR that result in a true proportional outcome. I do not support another referendum. I think another referendum would be futile, to say the least.

On a final point, no matter which system is implemented, I would like to support the idea that we cut the number of ridings in half and that in each riding, we would elect one man and one woman to the Legislature. I think this would create a more equitable legislature.

In final, if politicians truly supported the voters of this province over the will of their respective parties, they would implement PR. I think it is the voters’ wish to have that happen if you do a true poll. I think that’s been proven over and over again.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you for your presentation, Andrew. Congratulations on being retired. I know we all aspire to that one day.

I wanted to point out that we actually have a majority of female MLAs in the House at present. That has been through the choice of the voters over periods of time, and that’s something quite laudable. So I’m not sure that PR would make a change there with your proposal about dividing up the ridings on that.

I worry about making limits based on a person’s sex or on a particular characteristic, because that can have the unintended consequence of denying someone the ability to be a candidate who otherwise would be an excellent candidate regardless of their other characteristics. What do you think of that?

Andrew Schulz: I was recently in Iceland. In Iceland, the president, the Prime Minister and most of the cabinet are women. So the country is run by women. People say that’s a wonderful idea. And I say: “Sure, I’m not against that, but I think you need a balance.” Iceland doesn’t have that at the moment. They might in the future. I appreciate that at the moment, we have more women than men, but traditionally, not so much. And there’s nothing saying that’s going to happen in the future.

Sheldon Clare: Well, thank you for your answer.

Amna Shah: Thank you, Andrew, for your presentation. I noticed you mentioned that a PR system would reduce the polarization in our communities. I can visualize that actually, because when you set up a table or a system in which you kind of incentivize consensus-building, the opportunity is there, whereas if you don’t have that structure in the first place, how are you intended to do that?

[12:05 p.m.]

I see that component of it. But in terms of polarization in communities, in our provincial or national landscape, what are some of the other ways that a proportional representation system could reduce polarization?

Andrew Schulz: I think we look to our leaders, and we see parliament, federally and provincially, where there’s a major emphasis on winning, right? “We’re in charge. We’re running things. We’re not listening to anybody else, because we don’t have to.” Whereas, if you have PR, the chances of forming a majority become slimmer. It’s not impossible, but it becomes slim, so you have to build consensus. If I see leaders building consensus in the Legislature and on the campaign trail, you know, they have to….

Again, sort of like Dan said, if there’s a second choice or you have to work with this person once you’re in government, you’re going to act differently. I think that presentation and that modelling would help decrease the polarization in the community. It’s not going to happen overnight. The polarization didn’t happen overnight. This has been going on for, I don’t know, 50 or 100 years, right? This is where we’ve gotten to, and it’s not great. It’s scary. It scares me.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks very much for your presentation. That leads me to a question, then. If, in so many other jurisdictions — and Scotland is a really good example — where they brought in proportional representation from a majority party, and two or three elections later they’re basically wiped right off the map, what would incentivize the parties to change?

If we believe that the system is still cooked, inasmuch as we have a better chance of forming a majority government, whether it’s the Conservatives or whether it’s the NDP, why would we be incentivized to change the system if we have to consistently be making compromises, just because a few people out there think it’s a good idea? I’m just asking a question what way are we incentivized to actually do that?

Andrew Schulz: You’re not, and that’s exactly why we don’t have it.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): No, that’s why we’re having this conversation. I don’t disagree that we should be making changes, but I think that’s what’s been pointed out so far. With the referendum in 2018, that 60 percent threshold was probably never, ever going to be attained.

Andrew Schulz: That’s right.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): The previous speaker had mentioned that the citizens assembly that had been formed — that was not a recommendation to follow. It was the legislatures that have changed it. So my question to you is….

Andrew Schulz: The referendum would have been, I believe, at that time, binding. I think if you want to actually make change, you could do something like a citizens assembly and make the decision binding. Exactly.

I think it’s very hard for politicians, with their self-interest…. That’s why I said that. You know, it’s in the self-interest of small parties to have electoral reform. It’s in the interest of the bigger parties to say: “Hey, I’d rather rule absolutely every eight years or 12 years than cooperate with anybody else.” You said “compromise.” I think “compromise” is the wrong word. I think it’s “collaboration,” and collaboration is very different than compromise.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): That’s why I said that. To add to that, quickly, there was also, particularly in the higher-density metropolitan areas…. We can either agree or disagree that there should be slates, and whether councillors should be individual of themselves.

Do you support, in some situations, having wards, like they do in other jurisdictions where, say, MLA Shah is in ward 1 and MLA Sunner is in ward 2? Do you think that that would be a better representation of those regions than having somebody that has to petition across the whole city?

Andrew Schulz: As long as you have proportional voting, I would be in favour of wards. If you don’t have proportional voting, actually the municipal system is much fairer because all you need is to be everybody’s sixth choice, and you can get elected.

[12:10 p.m.]

It isn’t really proportional, but it gives an opportunity for independents to move forward. So it’s a two…. If you have wards and proportional, I agree with you. If you have wards and not proportional voting…

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): First-past-the-post.

Andrew Schulz: …then I disagree.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Okay. Good. Thanks for that. I appreciate that.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. I just want to touch on the earlier discussion, which is effectively that it’s not in the self-interest of the major parties to move to proportional representation. I think that was your point. We’ve heard that from a number of presenters over the week.

I think the other thing we’ve heard from a number of presenters this week is that the first step is that this committee has been struck and is hearing from constituents and hearing from presenters on what is in the best interests of British Columbians. Certainly, that’s the way I’m approaching it.

The question I have for you: is there any suggestion you might have for after this committee has reported out? Say that it was a recommendation to change the electoral system, then it’s for the government to decide what to do. Is this all futile, or is there some way in which British Columbians can express their support or non-support for what we recommend?

Andrew Schulz: Well, I think the problem with the referendums is either the bar…. In the first referendum, the bar was too high. Once that result was actually achieved, the politicians thought: “Oh, I thought I’d never get this close.” It got very close to happening, right? So the next time we had a referendum, well, we had a yes and a no side, and then we get into this fear of change.

The no side ramped up the fear of change: “If we change this, all these terrible things could possibly happen. You could get wing nuts in the Legislature because they got a couple of votes.” It’s true; you could, but it’s better to have the wing nuts in the Legislature than sitting outside, because you’re never going to get a lot of them.

Sheldon Clare: We had a few Premiers who could probably be called that, some of the earlier ones.

Andrew Schulz: Yeah. I don’t even disagree with you. That happens. Sweden ended up with 5 or 6 percent of extreme right-wing people in the Legislature. By being there, they kind of changed their tune, because they saw how things were working.

The consensus was that we’re better off having them in here so we can work with them and have things happen than to have them sitting outside screaming that we’re doing everything wrong when they see the reality of what you have to do to make things work in a government.

I’m not advocating for having those people in the Legislature. I’m just saying it could happen. But there are a number of PR systems out there that limit that ability, because there’s a cap on how many votes you need before you get any seats. I’m not advocating for any system. I’m just explaining that there are ways to prevent that. Israel and Italy are a disaster, and they have PR. I would never advocate for anything like that.

But if you have a PR system that gives a true proportional result…. There are lots of them. You can look around the world. What countries are they working in, and how well are they working? I think every system is out there. I don’t think we need to invent a new one.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Andrew, for your presentation and for taking our questions.

Andrew Schulz: Thank you for your time.

[12:15 p.m.]

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Next up, we have Melissa Snazell.

Welcome, Melissa, and thank you for your patience this morning.

Melissa Snazell

Melissa Snazell: Thank you for putting this committee together, and thank you for listening to our ideas.

This is a really big, important decision in our world today. I have notes, but I’m not very good at multi-tasking. Reading and talking at the same time might be difficult.

I’m sure you’ve heard a lot of very smart people talk about the benefits to proportional representation and the potential downfalls to proportional representation. What I want to say today is that I want everybody to take a look at AI and the coming of the future that is coming very quickly.

There is a paper called AI 2027. It’s written by Daniel Kokotajlo and three or four other members. They’ve all been involved in the AI companies. They discuss how the coming of artificial intelligence is going to influence democracy, information systems and public trust by 2027. It warns that unchecked AI technologies, such as deepfakes, algorithmic microtargeting and synthetic news generation could undermine electoral integrity, polarize societies and erode democratic institutions.

Some of these things we’re seeing happening in the U.S. right now, as we pretty much watch in real time as their democracy is disintegrating. I also would mention that Elon Musk is currently planning on creating his own political party. He is one of the CEOs of one of these companies, one of the three American companies that are racing towards this AI future.

In the situation where a company like that were to gain any sort of political power, the AI not only will shape how we vote but how we think of information and what is truth. This wouldn’t look like a traditional dictatorship, being more of a systematic, hidden and rooted control over influence, data and infrastructure.

AI shapes what future AI learns, prioritizes and values. As the AIs are being trained, they are training the next generation of AIs, so each generation will be built on the previous model. Whatever truth and information that is put into each model will be systematically put into the future.

The danger? It’s a lack of transparency, as proprietary models aren’t accountable to the public; monopoly of intelligence, because if one entity controls the best models, it monopolizes truth; acceleration loops, as a single system recursively training others may create rapidly self-reinforcing world views or technocratic ideologies; influence without consent, as people may not realize they’re being manipulated by an AI-designed information ecosystem. Anybody who owns a cat knows how easily humans are trained without actually knowing it’s happening. I find that a little bit scary.

A proportional representation electoral system could play a crucial role in managing and mitigating the risk of authoritarianism emerging from concentrated AI power, especially in a scenario where an AI company begins influencing governments, public opinion or even the future of intelligence.

In a future where AI may shape not just how we vote but what we believe, proportional representation provides the democratic architecture needed to resist centralized, undemocratic power, whether human or algorithmic. It doesn’t eliminate the risk, but it makes it far harder for any one company, party or technology to hijack the democratic process.

I would just mention here that this is happening. The AI has been created. They’re not being created. They’ve been created, and now they’re being trained. There is a story within this paper, AI 2027, where an AI in a training session was given a task to solve a CAPTCHA puzzle. You know the puzzles.

[12:20 p.m.]

Because it couldn’t, what it did was that it went online, found an employment agency, and hired a human to solve the puzzle for it. When asked, “Are you a computer?” it lied and said: “No, I’m just blind, and I can’t solve the puzzle for myself.”

Two things. It was creative in finding a solution, and even though they are trained to not lie to humans, it lied to a human. They are adapting, and they are connected. They are inherently connected to the entire human history of information and knowledge. They are connected into the network.

Finally, the age of AI demands electoral systems resilient to digital manipulation, polarization and democratic disenchantment. Proportional representation strengthens representation, elevates unrepresented voices, fosters collaboration and safeguards integrity amid AI-driven disruption. Adopting PR would not simply modernize mechanics. It would reinforce democratic values and renew public trust, vital in an era when democracy itself is contested by rapid technological change.

I’ve been watching a little more of the U.S. situation than I probably should for my mental health. It’s coming. It’s here. I ran as a candidate in the provincial and the federal election, and as we all saw in the federal election, it was a very two-party system. Canada does not have a two-party system, but it was, 100 percent, that people were voting against one party or against the other party.

That is a very American system, and we have always been very influenced by the American — by the American media, by the American systems — because we’re their neighbours. They’re cool. They have fun stuff.

Globally, I feel like our systems are declining, and we are about to enter into a global situation where we as Canadians need to be up front. We need to be solid. We need to be our own country. Our federal government is working on that, and it was very clear that that was a mandate for our federal government.

I think that B.C. can be a leader in this and take the step to say that we need to prepare for this future. The future is different than what we’ve ever seen before. We barely can even predict what future it is, so we need to be managing this future as it’s happening, rather than predicting it.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Melissa. That was very informative and a little terrifying.

Amna Shah: Thank you so much, Melissa. I have to say that you’re absolutely, incredibly bright and this was very, very informative and — I agree with Madam Chair — a little bit scary.

I’m wondering what your comments are on the vulnerability of our electoral system. You mentioned that proportional representation could decrease the influences of AI. In, for example, an election campaign, regardless of which system we’re in, I would think that the system would still have the same amount of vulnerability, especially when it comes to cases of misinformation and disinformation. It could be a case where there are many more parties, and there could be all sorts of information flying around.

I’m wondering, in the context of that, meaning election campaigns, how do you see in a proportional representation system that the vulnerability would be lower from AI-generated cases of misinformation and disinformation?

Also, my second question, and I’ll just ask it now: I’m wondering if there’s anything specific that you think a provincial government could do to get ahead of some of these scenarios that you’ve mentioned and also the reality that we’re in right now.

Melissa Snazell: Well, as I see, through the campaigns, public education on how to decipher what is real and what is not real is going to be key. Otherwise, we can’t…. If people are insistent on going into their echo chambers online and reading what they want to read, we can’t do anything about that.

[12:25 p.m.]

For my opinion, the proportional representation gives us a bit of a buffer so that not one party…. If one party is influenced by AI and, say, a CEO of a company is running that party, and they have the number one AI system, they can then basically dictate how it’s going to run.

With a PR system, there’s diversity. Not one party has the opportunity to get 40 percent of the vote and take a majority. So we have multiple voices, and so the CEO of one company cannot take the reins of our political system. Through the last two elections, I really saw a lot…. People weren’t voting. People just weren’t voting for what they believe in, and it was rather disheartening to see so many people.

In the federal election…. I know this is provincial. With the federal election, so many people said: “I would vote for you, but I can’t this time.” With PR, they would have that opportunity to vote. “Yes, I want to vote for you. I will vote for you. It doesn’t matter what the other two parties are doing. I want to vote for you.”

I just believe that in the provincial system, B.C. has been a leader in this country since our introduction into the country, because it was a fight with the Americans that led us to be part of Canada and to have our own rules and our own laws. I think B.C. can be a leader in this. Canada needs PR, and P.E.I. already has it. If B.C. gets on board, I think we can influence the rest of the country.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you for your presentation, Melissa. I share your concerns about the rapid, unchecked spread of AI as a means of directing our society in a large manner of things. I come from education, and I saw firsthand the terrors of what was happening in that environment with AI. It’s quite disheartening.

I’m not sure, though, that PR provides a defence against AI. I think AI is a lot more adaptable and able to provide all kinds of pressures on voters and political groups to force results. I don’t think it does stop that. I think it would have the same effect regardless of your electoral system.

I think it would have the same effect on first-past-the-post as it would on any sort of proportional representation system. I think it could easily limit choices. I think if it chose to, it could be used that way. The online misery that’s out there could certainly be manipulated. I mean, I’ve been the victim of AI. I haven’t used AI to check things, because I can detect it fairly easy, or have been able to, but it’s becoming more and more insidious.

I just wonder what you think about those aspects of AI as being…. Well, I think I know what your answer is going to be, but it is really a broader threat than a narrow one to one particular type of voting system.

Melissa Snazell: Yeah, I think my major concern is the concentration of power, where one entity within the first-past-the-post system doesn’t need that much support to take pole position.

With the PR system, it’s a minor safeguard, but it’s the only safeguard I can see at this time, because so many people right now are…. AI is no different than a calculator. It’s no smarter than a calculator. But it’s something so different, and it’s learning. It’s adapting. It’s being trained. It’s not being developed. It’s being trained. So anything that’s being trained is learning, which means it’s learning. It’s already passing emotional intelligence tests better than humans.

[12:30 p.m.]

If you have an AI that can pass an emotional intelligence test, that means it can go toe to toe with you on emotional intelligence. This is where humans’ weakness is: emotions. If these AI can take on humans at their most vulnerable, we’re screwed, basically — apologies for the French.

My concern is a concentration of power. If a CEO of a company can take on the political system and enter it on the first-past-the-post system, they can take power with 40 percent of the vote. If we have proportional representation, at least we have other voices that can maintain a balance within our system and fight back against that majority of a CEO.

Sheldon Clare: Wouldn’t a two-party system be a better check, because you would have the AI versus the non-AI?

Melissa Snazell: No, that’s what we’re trying to avoid, because the AI will win.

My husband is super excited about our AI overlords coming…. This is, you know, a daily situation.

Sheldon Clare: I hope you’re able to resolve that amicably.

Melissa Snazell: Yes, yes. I cook steak. It’s fine.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you. We have a final question.

Rob Botterell: Thank you so much for your presentation. We’ve only had, I think, one other presentation so far that touched on AI, and it’s really, really appreciated that you’ve raised this and expressed your views on it.

I think we’re getting the paper you mentioned. That’ll be helpful. I’ll make sure it’s everybody’s reading. Just when they’re feeling calm, they can read the….

Melissa Snazell: Yes, there is audio on Spotify as well, so you can listen to it.

Rob Botterell: Great. I think your discussion with MLA Clare answered the question I was going to ask, so I just once again want to thank you. This is a really key area, and it’s great to have your presentation. Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you, Melissa. It was very insightful and very helpful to our committee, so thank you for being here and taking the time today.

Melissa Snazell: Thank you for the opportunity.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): We’ll take a break now until one o’clock.

The committee recessed from 12:32 p.m. to 1:06 p.m.

[Jessie Sunner in the chair.]

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you for being here this afternoon. We are going to get started with Stephen Crozier.

You’ll have five minutes, Stephen, for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions.

Stephen Crozier

Stephen Crozier: First of all, thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to present. I’m told that personal experiences — that is, storytelling rather than statistics — are somewhat better for motivating people.

However, I think in the case of proportional representation versus first-past-the-post, the compelling story is the statistic: at present we have 45 percent of the votes actually giving 100 percent of power. Obviously, that is what happens with first-past-the-post, and this is not very democratic. Let’s face it, in any other context, 45 percent equalling 100 percent would be just considered bad math, and it certainly has no place in democracy.

I was told also that a speech is good when you start off with a joke. I looked for a joke about proportional representation, and there really isn’t one, so I came up with one myself.

A guy goes into a bar. Oh, you maybe think you heard this one, but you didn’t. This guy goes into the bar, and he orders a beer. When he’s getting ready to leave, the bartender gives him the bill. He said: “That’s $9.” The guy puts $4 down on the table and gets up to leave. The bartender says, “Well, you can’t do that. You’ve got to pay your full bill. You need to pay 100 percent, not 45,” and the guy says: “I don’t understand.”

Now, perhaps that’s not very funny, but I think it does represent what we’re doing with first-past-the-post. In any other context, it just doesn’t work.

The other thing is about personal experiences. Now, for me, I’ve always voted for people and policy. I haven’t really got caught up in the strategic voting thing, but it seems as though with modern politics today, no matter what happens, I kind of lose. Let me explain this. The election is over. Many citizens didn’t even get a chance to vote for someone or something that they wanted to, because there was something or someone else that they didn’t want more.

Additionally, many of us, who voted for the people and policies we wanted, knew, as we cast our ballot, that we would lose. And what if my candidate does win? How sweet is that victory? Well, as democracy fails, power has become more and more centralized within parties and within governments.

[1:10 p.m.]

The parties put forward a platform, but once in power, there are other forces at work — largely, I would say, paid corporate lobbyists — who arguably have more influence over the government than the electorate. Let me explain that.

Why? It’s because the electorate mostly has but one chance to influence the government, and even that opportunity is compromised by being forced to vote strategically or voting in a way where you know that the ballot you cast will not count. And then corporate lobbyists are actually lobbying the government on a daily basis.

Yes, we can meet our MLAs. Good to see you all here today. But we also know that MLAs are whipped by the party, by the government, in order to vote the way that they are pretty much told to vote.

At the constituency level, the failure of the first-past-the-post system is even more striking. If three parties split the vote evenly, as can be split, then one person, one candidate with 34 percent of the votes can actually end up being the winner, and the other two parties split the other 66 percent evenly. That is a bit of an extreme, but some versions of that is what is happening in our democracies, in our constituencies, when people vote.

Additionally, we don’t even know how many of those votes cast were done strategically, so people voting for people that they didn’t really want to vote for. With proportional representation, there can be more than one representative in each constituency, and this provides better representation. It actually provides for more winners than losers, and that makes for good cooperation, good government. In fact, it makes for a better world.

In closing, we all want democracy to work. We want more participation in democracy with voter turnouts being at 60 percent. That 45 percent turns 25 percent that are determining 100 percent of the power. Can we really blame people for not voting when they know their votes won’t count? Or do we blame the system? I say blame the system. Let’s change it. And before the next election, please.

Sheldon Clare: Thank you for your presentation, Stephen, and thank you for being here today.

One of the things about lobbyists is that with the changes to the donation regulations, lobbyists don’t have a lot of swing that they may otherwise have had in terms of donations, because now donations are by individuals only, and they’re limited. Unions can’t make donations. Companies can’t make donations.

I mean, when I was taught about politics, one of the things that was said to me is: “Listen to their voices, drink their drinks, eat their food, and then vote with what needs to be voted on in the way you want to vote on it, regardless of what you’re told.” “Vote against them” is, I think, one of their phrases.

We’re happy to listen to anybody. I mean, I’ve often had to listen to people who I don’t agree with, and I’ve written letters of support for them from time to time for their activities, because that’s the job I have assumed as an MLA.

So we have a big responsibility. I think when people see how things actually work and that there is a lot of collaboration, both on things like this committee, for example, and in the House, the perception of what happens in question period, the antagonistic nature of the Westminster parliamentary system, which is an adversarial system…. I grant that.

I’ve been in question periods where we’ve been asking questions, being quite vigorous, hit a minister with a question. They’re stumbling for an answer or maybe coming up with a great answer, and then a few hours later or maybe the next day, I’m sitting in that minister’s office, and we’re trying to resolve a problem for a constituent. That stuff’s all separate. There is a fair bit of collaboration that goes on, so I’m not sure….

[1:15 p.m.]

I wonder what you think about that, because you said 45 percent…. Giving up 100 percent gets 100 percent of the power. In opposition, we have a fair bit of swing as well, even in the system we have. I just wonder what you think about that.

Stephen Crozier: Yeah, I agree. Actually, as you were speaking, Sheldon, I was thinking: gee, proportional representation will enhance the type of government and type of interaction that you are already participating in and other MLAs are participating in.

It’s actually shown in other countries where we do have proportional representation that it’s less adversarial, and there’s more cooperation. I got to thinking about that because I know that there’s cooperation. I know that there’s communication among MLAs from different parties.

I got thinking that in a certain way, depending on the strength of the majority, which can be based on much fewer than 50 percent of the vote, MLAs on the opposition maybe have a voice but almost no vote. They can vote, but there aren’t enough votes. So proportional representation tends to help MLAs that want to cooperate and want to collaborate with those in other parties. That’s what I would say to that.

And another thing, too, about the money — yes, I realize, and it’s a great thing that we’ve got the money out of politics. We see in the States what that does. I don’t have to give you a hundred bucks to make a friend. I think if we sat down and spoke and got to know each other, that has an influence.

Sheldon Clare: I do welcome your donations.

A Voice: We all do.

George Anderson: Do it in alphabetical order — last names first.

Stephen Crozier: Okay, Mr. Anderson.

Yeah, so you see what I mean. When I’m talking about corporate lobbyists, I’m not talking about the idea of their donations. It’s the idea of that day-to-day contact that they can have, and they’re paid to do it. I think it would be hard to deny that that has had an influence.

I think that as we strengthen the power of the electorate through proportional representation, it shifts the power. I think it allows MLAs who want to represent their constituencies to do so more efficiently and more effectively.

Sheldon Clare: I can assure you that MLAs definitely represent their constituencies on both sides of the House, all sides of the House.

Thank you very much. I appreciate the answer.

George Anderson: Thank you very much for your presentation. One of the things that you had mentioned is strengthening the power of the electorate.

Do you have any suggestions outside of just electoral reform as to ways that we can strengthen the power of the electorate? For example, today you’re here presenting to an all-party committee of the Legislature. Do you think things like this are useful? Would that develop more trust within our public institutions?

Stephen Crozier: Certainly. And I think that we see, with younger people in particular, a lack of trust — should I say trust? — a lack of value of our political system. I think that if they felt that their votes counted more, because that’s sort of central in a representative democracy…. The voting is very central to that because we’re voting for our representatives.

I think particularly with younger people, if they saw that their votes counted for something, then they would participate more. I don’t know how many younger people you’ve had in this particular forum, which is around the province, but I think that they would be motivated to get more involved.

That’s what I would say. Voting is central. Let’s make every vote count, and then I believe that we would have a more full participation in our democratic processes.

[1:20 p.m.]

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. I just wanted to circle back to the impact that proportional representation could have in terms of collaboration and using that, as opposed to compromise. I just want to really understand. I’m going to give an example and see if I’m missing something, because I want to make sure I’m capturing what your view of it is and how you see the relationship.

For example, in this most recent session, we had a couple of bills that were fairly contentious. I agree that there was lots of dialogue, but behind that dialogue was the fact that all of the opposition parties could vote no, and still the legislation can get passed by the Speaker’s vote. That’s one scenario.

A scenario in pro rep — I realize that it may not work out exactly this way; this is a hypothetical: say that there is a party that had ten seats, rather than two seats. Then what would happen is that the party in power would need to figure out how they’re going to get those votes on board.

The discussion around the legislation, I submit, would probably be materially different. Or the ruling party, the governing party, might go to another opposition party. but it would create a level of discussion about that legislation that doesn’t happen if the governing party has that majority role.

I’m not criticizing anybody’s approach. I’m just trying to understand if that’s what you mean, or if you have some other way of describing how you would see PR increasing collaboration.

Stephen Crozier: A couple of things. Let’s say at the constituency level, if you’ve got a wider area, you’ve got votes that are pretty well split up, instead of having one representative.

As Sheldon was saying, you know, MLAs do try their best — I believe that — to represent their constituents. I’ll just say personally, in my constituency, both federally and provincially, I limit my contact with my MLAs, because I’m not really in agreement with a lot of what their positions are.

If we had more than one representative in an area at the constituency level, it would allow better participation. As I said, there are more winners than losers then, in whom people can go to. depending on what the issue is.

The other thing, too, is that I would say that right now with first-past-the-post, you would have parties that are probably getting 10 or 15 percent of the vote and only ending up with two representatives — something like that. So the makeup of your governing body would much better represent the people and what they voted for if we had proportional representation.

I appreciate you almost answering my question for me, because you’re absolutely right. It means that people have to cooperate. They have to involve everyone in the discussion — much more than they do now. Now if you’ve got a majority, as I said, in a lot of situations, opposition MLAs have a voice but really no vote. I think that’s what you just pointed out.

Sheldon Clare: How would a proportional representation system deal with members of the House who decide to cross the floor? Say you have a person who’s in one party, they take a position on an issue, and they find that they need to further their interests. They can cross the floor and maybe change the structure of the House in that way.

[1:25 p.m.]

That’s a long-held tradition in the Westminster parliamentary system. No less than Winston Churchill took a couple of jaunts across the floor himself, and there have been many, many others who have done so when they felt either that their party had left them or that they needed to leave their party over a policy or a particular issue.

What do you say to that?

Stephen Crozier: Well, my first answer is: it’s above my pay grade. Since I’m not being paid, I’m not sure that holds true.

Sheldon Clare: It doesn’t work here.

Stephen Crozier: What I would say is that with proportional representation, policies are actually a determining, dominant factor, much more so than it is. Right now it’s actually the parties, in a way, that are the dominant factor. As Rob pointed out, if you’ve got a majority, it doesn’t matter what anyone else says. You just push through whatever you want. I’m just saying: in the end, you have a voice but no vote in the way it works out.

The other thing with people crossing the floor is that they still, I would say, have the same amount of power. They’ve just taken their policies with them and are sitting in another place. Is that a good enough answer, Sheldon?

Sheldon Clare: I think it’s probably something that needs a lot more of a conversation.

Stephen Crozier: It does. I’ll tell you, that’s the way I would say it. Policies are going to dominate, not parties, and I think that that’s what we want in good governance.

Sheldon Clare: I appreciate your answer. Thank you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Wonderful. Thank you so much for being here this afternoon, Stephen, and for sharing your thoughts with our committee.

Stephen Crozier: Thanks for the opportunity again, and good luck.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Next up we have Maureen Curran.

Welcome. Thank you for speaking with our committee today. Just a reminder before you begin. You have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions.

Maureen Curran

Maureen Curran: Terrific. As you can see, I only actually found out yesterday. My original invite got lost in the mail. I found it when I got the change in time, so I’m a little bit…. I’m going to just be speaking from the heart here.

I also want to start by saying I appreciate, as a math teacher, the effort that Stephen made at the attempt at the math joke. That was great. Wish I had some. That was really nice.

I’m going to start off with just a little context. I have been a candidate myself. I’ve been involved in politics since I was a kid. My parents campaigned, and I got taken door to door. So I’ve seen how our system has evolved. I’ve helped other people on their campaigns.

I have to say that, you know, even when I’ve run, it has been a token role. I’ve been the name on the ballot in an area where we knew that there was zero chance — or maybe it was 0.00001 percent chance — that I would win. But we know that that rounds off to zero.

Effectively, these are safe seats, places where the choice for who is going to be representing us was really already made. It’s made by the people who choose the candidates. In many cases, that’s the local RA, the riding association. In some cases, even the riding association doesn’t get to choose it. It has been done by some party person higher up, who has gone and dropped a candidate in that area because they have someone, and they want to put them in that spot.

This comes to start feeling, for those of us that are putting our heart and soul into this, that there’s just a facade of democracy. I totally understand and am not surprised by people feeling disconnected, yet those of us out there are, like I said, working hard. I know that there are lots of good things happening. Of the people who are being elected, I think the majority of them are really, honestly, trying to represent us.

It wasn’t until I went to New Zealand, as a young person travelling — I went and lived there for a while — that I saw and learned about the fact that we have alternatives, alternatives where those same good people can be candidates and represent their constituents, and people can be more involved and feel connected. Historically, you know the details, right? There is no modern democracy that has ever chosen first-past-the-post. It’s something that was gifted to us. It’s historical. It has existed forever.

It was very clear when we formed that citizens assembly, when we came back and that happened. I was super excited. I followed everything that they did, and I was so impressed with the work that they did that I actually volunteered when we had the 2005 referendum. Even though I had two small children, I was going door to door, ready to get out there.

[1:30 p.m.]

Having done political door-to-door stuff, I was expecting all kinds of negative things. I had a 100 percent success rate, because the biggest thing I found was that most people just didn’t understand it.

Anybody who would actually stop and talk to me and had a question — even the ones who said: “Well, I’m against it because of this reason” — when I talked to them for two minutes and explained and answered their questions, they’d say: “Oh, well, that actually sounds good. I didn’t realize that.”

As soon as they knew, they changed their minds. It was amazing and yet disappointing to be in that situation where we went to that referendum, and we came out with a win that was actually a loss — particularly ironic in a system where losers actually win, and we won, but we lost. How unfair is that? The irony of it does not escape me.

We thought: “No problem. Next time, we’re going to go, and it’ll come back because it was so close. We’ll try again.” We did, and this is where that political system came and completely failed us and showed how crushingly determined it is to keep the same people running the show. We were disgusted that this whole pro-con idea of how that thing was run meant that it was basically truth and facts against disinformation. It was run entirely on the old school, adversarial: “Let’s tear everybody down.”

This is exactly opposite of what New Zealand did, and other places that have had successful referendums, where there was no campaigning allowed. It was just: give people the information and let them decide based on facts. If we ever do have a referendum again, that is the only kind I would ever support, because anything else is just a mess.

In all honesty, I really would love to not be so cynical, to be in a place…. We’ve seen from our election results that people want diversity. They want no false majorities. We don’t even want a majority. We’re clearly happy with that. I think it’s time for a system that is actually designed for voters and not just for the party central hacks in the back room.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Thanks for your presentation. A couple of quick questions. You said that you ran before. Was it provincially, municipally, school board?

Maureen Curran: I’ve run both in a federal election and in a provincial election.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Have you ever tried to run municipally or for a school board or anything like that?

Maureen Curran: Not yet. I am talking to some people about doing it in the future. It has sort of come up on the horizon.

Like I said, in the previous cases when I did choose to run, it was on the understanding that I wasn’t running to become the member. I was running to represent the concept of democracy, to give people a chance to vote and to bring those issues and topics that I was concerned about and that the people were concerned about to the debates and the table.

Now, unfortunately, the way things are going right now, we’re finding that there are a lot of candidates who are being told not to show up at these things. So they get cancelled, and it’s harder to get out and talk to people. But that’s supposed to be how it works, where even if you know that you have zero chance of winning, it doesn’t mean that there’s no point in running, because you do get to be part of the debate and the discussion and have people here with those ideas.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Can I ask you where you’re from?

Maureen Curran: I live in New West.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Okay, so you’re in a larger municipal area.

Maureen Curran: Yes. Previously, like I said, I’ve lived in safe seats that have gone both ways. I’ve lived in Christy Clark’s riding and James Moore’s riding, back in north Coquitlam there.

Again, the whole idea of…. I’ve had some people on both sides who I didn’t always agree with, some of whom were really great about trying to represent me anyway and some of whom were very much not. I’ve seen both. I know that it really depends on the individual.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Okay. Well, can I ask a question then? If we were going to go to proportional representation, how would you be able to get your message out or your…? What’s a good word for it? Not level of exposure, but a level of recognition. Unless you were under a party banner, how would you be able to get that certain threshold, whatever that number would be on the ballot, to be able to attain being elected?

Maureen Curran: Okay. If I understand your question, it’s the idea that if I was running as an independent, how would that happen? I think independents always have an uphill battle. I think that, realistically, it has been shown that PRs of all types…. In most of them, independents actually have a better chance still. Again, because they don’t have to…. Well, mostly because in certain….

[1:35 p.m.]

It depends on which one. I was thinking about STV, where as long as you have a local group of people who know you and are aware of you and you get that 20 percent, and it’s one of those bigger areas where there are four people being elected…. You’ve made it over the 22 percent or whatever, and you’re going to be able to get….

If you have enough people who are concerned about the same things you are and who care about that…. It doesn’t have to be the 42 percent. It can be less if you’re in a bigger area and those topics still get represented. I honestly think that is one of those things where, if I look around….

I’m very concerned about environmental issues. Majority of people I talk to are concerned about those things as well to a certain point. By having something that is more representational, we have the opportunity to vote on more than a single issue or not to just do the vote against something, where I’m trying to stop somebody, and now I can really vote for what I care about rather than just what I’m afraid of.

So those sorts of things and those local issues and getting away from that just one topic…. I think that will make a big difference in terms of people really feeling like they can get those issues out.

Ward Stamer (Deputy Chair): Great. Thank you for that.

Rob Botterell: Thank you for your presentation. I gather that you’re a math teacher. Hats off to you. That is such an important part of everything we do in the education system.

It also enables me to ask a question we’ve asked other teachers over the week: what’s your view on youth engagement and, if you’re teaching post-secondary, post-secondary engagement? Also, in terms of voting age, we’ve had some presentations about reducing the voting age to 16. I just wonder if you could offer some thoughts on those two.

Maureen Curran: Lovely. I’m actually really glad you asked that question because I heard the question to the other fellow, and I was, like: “Oh, that’s exactly how I would be replying to that one.” I am strongly in favour of younger voting age.

I actually have been meeting with a group of students who were involved in a leadership group. I was just their sponsor. They themselves came up the idea that they want to do a presentation to their local city council, and we’re going to be there next Monday. I’m there just to facilitate and help them. They’re doing the presentation. They run everything themselves.

These are people none of whom are legally allowed to vote yet. They’re months away, a few of them, but they have been highly engaged in the process. They’ve done their research. They know their stuff. I honestly think that, yes, 16 is a perfect age, I think, on purpose because of the fact that we have kids in schools. I think the ones who really don’t care and are not taking it seriously just wouldn’t do it.

Honestly, what right do we have to tell 17-year-olds that when we wouldn’t tell someone who’s 72 that they’re too senile and they don’t understand the issues anymore either? Like, that’s not okay, so what the heck. We trust them with a machine that drives and can be quite fatal.

I think that, absolutely, that is the perfect time because we’re going to get a whole bunch of them in school actually able to debate the issues, hear the speakers, meet the candidates and then go out and actually vote — and it counts. That hooks them, because we all know that once people have voted the first time, they’re more likely to come back and do it again. I think that is a great way to increase voter engagement. Of course, also knowing that their vote counts helps too.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Are there any further questions? I don’t see any further ones.

Thank you, Maureen, so much for coming today.

Maureen Curran: Thank you so much, and I’m so glad I got that email yesterday.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Next up we have Clifford Thai.

Welcome, Clifford. Thank you for being here with our committee today. You can get started, and as you do, just know you have five minutes for your presentation, followed by five minutes for questions.

Clifford Thai

Clifford Thai: This is like the ultimate Toastmasters setup here. I’m really impressed by this.

Thank you for the opportunity to be able to speak with you today on this. I think this is important work you’re doing. The fact that you are allowing voters to interact with you directly…. This is commendable even though it may not be the most exciting time for you.

[1:40 p.m.]

I wanted to share my thoughts on proportional representation and why I feel it’s important to switch from first-past-the-post to proportional representation, although not for the reasons that you’ve probably already heard or will hear, although I do agree with them.

I do agree that first-past-the-post doesn’t do the job of delivering government as directed by voters. I do think it’s a problem, that it wastes a lot of votes. I do agree or believe that it’s contributing to the increasing negativity and polarization that we’re seeing in Canadian politics.

I think what I want to talk about today is something that doesn’t get very much attention. It seems to me that our first-past-the-post system puts our democracy, our elections, in a position vulnerable to foreign interference. This is something that I started thinking about after the 2016 presidential election, when it was found that China and Russia were actively trying to interfere in their elections.

Then last year, when we had the public inquiry into foreign interference, one of the findings was that those countries, as well as others, were doing the same in our Canadian elections and are continuing to do so, for quite some time, apparently.

This, as a voter and a citizen, is disconcerting. It got me thinking. One of the problems with first-past-the-post, one of its characteristics, is that regardless of the margin of victory in the popular vote, elections are often only decided by small slices of the vote in swing ridings.

As an example, in the last federal election, the Liberals won the popular vote by over 480,000 votes, but if you’d only flipped 6,500 of those votes, the Conservatives would have won the election. Likewise, in the last provincial election we had here, the NDP won the popular vote by about 33,000 votes, but if you’d only flipped 90 of those votes, the Conservatives would have formed government.

These aren’t one-offs or flukes, from what I’ve been able to see. This is something that happens in every single election. It seemed that there’s a weakness, a vulnerability, in that our elections can be easily swayed by small manipulations of votes in these swing ridings. So it would seem that as these countries are continuing their work and trying to interfere in our elections, it’s only going to be a matter of time before they identify this as an area that they can target, if they haven’t already done so.

To put it another way, if you were a country that was looking to interfere in our elections, what scenario would you prefer? One where you’d have to manipulate or influence hundreds of thousands of votes, or just a few thousand, right? One where you’d have to manipulate tens of thousands of votes, or less than 100? Especially with this day and age of AI, deepfakes and social media — not to put my tinfoil hat on too strongly — it seems like as time goes on, the risk of this exploitation or possibility of exploitation seems greater and greater.

I’m not advocating for any particular system. I think I’d be perfectly happy with any of the major PR systems that are being used in other countries. I do think it’s something that all the parties should be working on together, because we’re all being affected by it in a negative way. We do have a solution in the form of proportional representation. My hope is that if everybody can come together in a good-faith manner, then the solution can be found, in which case we would all benefit from that.

Those are my thoughts on it. I do appreciate the time to be able to share that with you. Hopefully I was able to provide something meaningful to the discussion.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Clifford. Are there any questions?

Rob Botterell: Thank you for the presentation. It’s interesting that you’re describing the intersection between the influence of AI and how that can actually influence or can be used as a tool for foreign influence on elections.

I guess a question for me is: can you offer a bit more of your perspective on how AI is used, or could be used, in a way to manipulate election results?

Clifford Thai: I can only speak in terms of what I’ve observed. I’m not a tech guy, right? So I don’t know. I’m sure that you can really go deep into the weeds into the possibilities of it.

I have seen on social media how deepfakes can be used to try to, I guess, trick people or spread misinformation. That could be one potential tool, which is being used already. I think that the concern more is that as it’s advancing, especially with these countries, if a country wanted to interfere with our elections, it’s not like they’re going to be constrained by campaign finance laws, right?

[1:45 p.m.]

They can just put whatever resources they want into it. They can try to take it as far as they want. That would be my concern. In that regard, it seems like the possibilities are as far as the technology advances.

Amna Shah: I was just trying to think in my head how to formulate this question. A previous presenter had also talked about foreign interference and interference in general from technological advancements.

I’m wondering: in terms of the vulnerability of our electoral system, do you think that it would be possible to equally hijack — I guess that may not be the right term — for example, a campaign or a whole system in a proportional representation system by influencing smaller parties or through the creation, even, of a party? As you mentioned, based on what we’ve heard in the last few years, including the inquiry and commissions, this foreign interference has likely taken place over long stretches and periods of time.

Would you agree that there could be a long game that could be involved in a proportional representation system that could also be likely? I do understand that it would likely be difficult, especially when you’re in an environment where you have to convince a lot more people through either misinformation, disinformation or targeted information in a PR system, but I’m wondering what your thoughts are about the general vulnerability of a pro rep system in the long term.

Clifford Thai: I don’t know about the long term. I’d still think that it would be less vulnerable, if we’re talking about just systems against each other.

I would still feel that proportional representation would be immune to that, because (a) you’d still have the decreased number of swing ridings. Then (b) the meaningful…. Because of first-past-the-post, that characteristic, of amplifying the weight of a vote in those swing ridings, is there and would be decreased in the proportional system, I think that in the long term, even, it’d still be the safer option, if that was a consideration for you.

Jessie Sunner (Chair): Thank you so much, Clifford, for making the time to come today.

I don’t see any further presenters, so can I get a motion to adjourn?

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 1:48 p.m.