Update on the Ontario Citizens' Assembly

Please note that, unless explicitly stated otherwise, all first person accounts are simply that; they do not represent any type of official position. The following first person accounts written specifically for this blog are from: 1) Pat Miller, 2) Arita Droog, and 3) David Proulx

1) From Pat Miller, Member of the Ontario Citizens Assembly

Observations re the progress of the Ontario Citizens Assembly

The Citizens Assembly has been a wonderful experience for me as I had been retired for a number of years. At the age of 72, I wondered if I even had the capacity to take in and understand what I needed to make any useful contribution. Surprise, surprise! I found that, having a fair amount of time available during the week, I have been able to cram many months –(or even years) of study into that time. I was very computer literate to begin with and had an interest in politics from my teens. I am at the stage now when I feel confident in expressing the pros and cons of the various electoral systems.

As for the assembly meetings, the organization has been so well managed by the Secretariat that we have been enabled to learn as fast as we are able. The format of plenary sessions and small group meetings has worked well on the whole.

There are different learning styles apparent that impact on our ability to work as efficiently as possible. While the selection of each candidate was at the final stage literally a name pulled out of a hat, the people who accepted the initial request to be considered had to fit certain demographics. Also it was important they were able to commit to the time necessary.

There are about a third of us that are retired, and are more affected by the long days than others. Another difficulty for the older members is the environment in Osgoode Hall at York University. We have several staircases to go up and down to the washroom facilities and the lunchroom at the lower level. For the small group meetings we retire to individual rooms scattered on 5 or 6 levels. Again that poses some difficulties for older and handicapped members. There is one small elevator but it is away from the central area.

The plenary sessions are in Moot Hall and we are seated in a theatre layout. We look down on a stage where teachers and guest speakers address us from. We see little of our fellow members in this kind of seat arraignment. The BC Citizens Assembly met for their plenary sessions in a hall with a circular layout where the members could face each other. I think we are disadvantaged by not having that ability.

I have some concerns about the composition of the small groups; but would prefer to wait till the end of the meetings in May, 2007 to forward you my impressions.

Now for the relations between a) the Assembly members and b) the members and the secretariat

a): With very few exceptions, we have gelled as a team faster than I would ever have imagined. There is a strong effort on everyone’s part to make this assembly successful. The difficulties that arise occasionally have been handled professionally by the secretariat and particularly by the facilitators of the small group meetings. I would like to commend particularly the younger members, most of who have put out an enormous effort. Since I like to think that older members have been bestowed with some wisdom that life (and living it) teaches you, we tend to allow for youthful impatience and sometimes disrespectful behaviour. There has been so little of that from our youngsters; most of them show a maturity beyond their years.

b): The Administrative support (the secretariat and the facilitators) are all, without exception, so wonderfully supportive and considerate towards us all. It shows that they have been carefully selected for their roles

I must make special mention of our Chair, George Thomson. He has the gift of making us feel comfortable while keeping us on our time-lines. He is a concensus maker; the perfect type to get us to final decision in my opinion. Also, Dr. Jonathan Rose is an excellent teacher; his presentations are clean, clear and delivered with energy and enthusiasm, so important to keeping our attention.

We have met the leaders of the Student Assembly, but not the whole group. This meeting is planned for early next year. We have followed their activities and some of the students have attended the public consultation meetings. .

I have attended the two meetings last week and had good input from the public. It is useful to hear first hand how important most of the presenters feel that there is a need for change. At both meetings, there was only one individual who strongly felt that we should stay with our current system.

The most disappointing aspect of this Citizens Assembly is the apparent indifference of the press. There has been little coverage by the major newspapers, and what there has been is often negative reporting.

2) From Arita Droog, Member of the Ontario Citizens Assembly

I have been sitting here at my desk for several hours now trying to come up with an article that is clear and concise. Something that you folks can sink your teeth into but, the more I try, the more I feel I need to explain. So here goes the final draft.

My experience so far with the Citizens’ Assembly is just what I expected it to be. I expected that it would be difficult to get into an electoral mind set. I expected that it would take me some time to be comfortable with the language. I expected that I would need to do lots of homework. And I expected that people would be interested its future.

So far my expectations were right, all except that people would be interested. Don’t get me wrong, once I explain what I’m doing they are interested and ask questions, but usually more of a political nature than an electoral.

I think we need to get more press out there to explain to people exactly what is going on. We have been promised that if we do decide to make a change to the system there will be an educational program set up to inform the public. But in the meantime, we need the press to come to our sessions to see what we are doing, what we are learning, so that there are no misconceptions about it. We have received some rather unfavorable press from some big city papers, if only these reporters had come to see for themselves, then they could report the facts not their perceptions.

Non-partisan teachers, facilitators, professors and many a political scientist have schooled us. We have been challenged to learn from the best. From my way of thinking these folks cannot even agree on a definitive system, so our task will not be an easy one. I don’t think there has been a weekend where there were less than 100 of the 103 members, that’s what I call dedication.

The only thing that I can see that will improve what we are doing is to have a meeting room at the hotel, where we can openly discuss our thoughts on various topics like: values and principles, representation for women and minorities, voter turnout etc., just so we can hash it out amongst ourselves. I believe come next session such a space will be at our disposal. This should help get things out in the open before final decision time.

In conclusion, I feel that this journey we are on will not end when we hand in our final report. I believe, that should we recommend a change, we will be in the thick of it for years to come. I look forward to the challenge.

--Arita Droog, Representative for the riding of Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound

3) From David Proulx, Member of the Ontario Citizens Assembly

Now that the learning phase is complete I feel a little more comfortable in discussing electoral systems but am still far from being a scholar or political scientist. Professor Jonathan Rose provided us with the adequate amount of information to help us make our final decision.

The help that we received from the secretariat team, from transportation to extra information or anything else that we needed, was excellent. The one area that I was disappointed with, and I don't feel that it was the secretariat team's fault, was the lack of media coverage. Something this important was barely covered in the media.

My public meeting isn't until Jan., 07, and maybe by then the media coverage will be more adequate. I just hope that the posters and word of mouth will provide a good turnout for the meeting. From what I have heard there has been fairly good turnout and response in other meetings.

I hope that I was able to provide you with some useful feedback and will try to keep in touch as I progress through this very important democratic process of getting the citizens involved in the electoral system design.

Thank you,

--David Proulx

Comments

[Mike Cassidy]

I attended the Ottawa meeting of CA last night (Jan. 16). Very well attended, more than 200 there. The scheduled presentations lasted until 9.55, the 10 p.m. shut off was extended to 10.30 to allow about a dozen interventions from the audience (including me).

The evening was well run and polite. Audience (more than 200 so some had to sit on the floor) were generous in applauding many of the presentations. Little support for FPTP, moderate support for a mixed system using list seats for the parties to offset the distortion of single member elections in constituencies and produce a proportional result. Numbers of presenters spoke of expanding the Legislature to make this possible rather than expanding the number of single member seats.

As a veteran of Royal Commission hearings I felt there was a need for more specific proposals than were prsented last night. Some of the proposals that came forward were quite radical if not eccentric. For the most part, presenters sketched the main lines then suggested that the detailled mechanics would best be left to the Assembly and its staff to work out.

Some specific notes: John Trent, a political scientist and member of Fair Vote Canada, spoke to what he called misconceptions re PR. Would PR lead to multiplcation of parties and unstable governments with more frequent elections? The evidence does not support this. He noted that this was also finding of the report on electoral reform by the Law Commission of Canada. Also, noted that PR facilitates legislative politics that are less polarized, more collaborative, allow more long term planning.

He noted criticism of the sometimes lengthy periods required to form a government under PR - recent German election being a particular case. While it took a couple of months for the Socialists and Christian Democrats to work things out, he noted that the result was a hefty policy manual that the partner parties had agreed to implement, and a balanced sharing of offices between the major partner parties. Is this worse than the prospect of back and forth changes we may see in Ottawa under the present circumstance (most recent poll shows the Libs now 4 points up over Conservative, enough to take over under Dion with, guess what, another minority government and all that entails.

One other interesting proposal that I had not encountered before - use of what Chris Bradshaw called 'approval voting'. In single member constituencies, voters could select their first choice as now, but could also mark their ballot with an 'A' for any other candidates they could live with. To be elected, a candidate would have to have the largest vote plus a count of As for approval in excess of 50% of the number of voters who cast votes. I wasn't quite clear what would happen if the top candidates didn't have enough A votes to reflect majority support/tolerance.

There was little interest expressed in the use of multi-member constituencies as a means of implementing PR. I had published research 15 years ago through the Parliamentary Centre in Ottawa on an alternative electoral system, and concluded that the most effective, workable and simple alternative to FPTP was to use constituencies with about 5 seats apiece. Seats would be distributed between the parties based on the share of votes registered, the party candidates would be put forward on lists and voters would select one list to support.

The result in Ottawa would often be a split like 2 PC, 2 Liberal and 1 NDP based on recent elections. My research (on Canadian elections) showed that this moderate PR system wd have a variance of about 2 to 3% from absolutely pure translation of votes to seats that would be achieved by a Netherlands or Israeli system of one electoral list for the whole country. The variance using a mixed system (constituency seats balanced by party lists to be proportional) would be arouond 6% if 20% of the seats were from the party lists, better if the compensatory seats were 35% or 50% of the total. This compares with 12% to 15% on average for the FPTP system, rising as high as 24% variance for the present Ontario Legistlature and 25% for the first Multoney government (75% of the seats with 50% of the vote).

I was surprised last night that a number of those advocating a mixed system proposed that 50% of the seats should come from party lists and only 50% from individual constituencies. My research was quite clear that you could get good results with only 1/5 of the seats coming from the compensatory list.

I intend to review the Internet material of the CA to see whether there are some technical studies that deal with the various alternative systems that are available to choose from.

The CA has added a couple of criteria to 8 elements proposed by the government when it establilshed the CA process. These are that any new system should be simple and practical. as a practicing politician for many years (and as a citizen) I strongly endorse these principles being included. Some of the proposals put forward last night were mind boggling in their complexity, with far too little effort to determine how they might work in practice.

I'll conclude by noting what I believe is one major omission from the list of guiding principles for electoral reform developed by the government and the CA. I'd describe it like this:

Effective Representation

There should continue to be a strong link between citizens and their MPPs to ensure that MPPs reflect the concerns and interests of their community or region and are accessible to people in their community or region.

This statement needs some work, but the risk of a mixed PR system with a high proportion of MPPs from party lists is that the locally elected MPPs will have to handle most of the local meetings and case work while the list mPPs flit around doing policy or hanging out at Queen's Park.

A mixed system with 80% of MPPs elected locally would be OK under this criterion, one with only50% elected locally would not.

In a moderate system as I proposed, with 5 MPPs per district, the local link would be preserved because most electors wouold have at least one mPP of their preferred political party within their district, whereas under FPTP the majority of Ontario citizens did not support the MPP who represents them at Queen's Park. (It's true, check out the number of ridings where the winning candidate got less than a majority of the votes).

I will be presenting a brief to the CA before Jan. 31 that takes these ideas a bit further. Welcome comments at mkcassidy@sympatico.ca

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