BRIAN DOODY, MA, LLB

Barrister & Solicitor | Avocat

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May 11, 2021

Ms. Ruby Sahota, MP

Chair, Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (#PROC)
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6

Dear Ms Sahota:

Subject: Steps toward more equitable regional proportional representation in Canada

There is a tendency to examine the question of electoral (or voting-system) reform in the abstract,
rather than in the context of incremental changes made to the federal electoral process over time.

The 2016 Report of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform is an example of the dilemma of
substance-versus-process facing advocates of voting-system reform in Canada. The enactment of
voting-system reform is proposed as an alternative to the status quo first-past-the-post system, yet
the reforms cannot state clearly, from the start, how electoral reform will affect the status quo.

Since the 1960s, the first-past-the-post voting system used in federal elections in Canada has been
reformed several times, notably by the creation, in 1964, of independent commissions to redraw
the boundaries of federal electoral districts in each province after every decennial census, and the
legal obligation, first passed in 1970, for political parties to become “registered political parties,”
making it possible after that to regulate some electoral expenses, with varying degrees of success.

If the electoral reforms of the 1960s and 1970s that created the independent electoral-boundaries
commissions and registered political parties of today can be considered to have been a success, it
is worth noting that every major federal or provincial proposal to add proportional representation
to the first-past-the-post voting system has, since the 1960s, proposed at the same time to make
major changes to electoral boundaries and to the representation of political parties in Parliament.

The ultimate problem, at least from the perspective of advocates of some form of proportionality
being added to the current “winner-take-all” first-past-the-post voting system, is that there is no
consensus on a model that changes electoral boundaries and the representation of political parties.

There is a strong consensus, however, that the sine qua non of any “meaningful” electoral reform
must include a second vote for a party, in addition to the status quo vote for the party’s candidate
in a constituency. In my opinion, where two votes are available in elections in federations such as
Germany, political parties adapt their get-out-the-vote campaigns to the two-vote system. As a
consequence, accepting the second vote as a core element of voting-system reform should not be
controversial. For its advocates, however, there can be no electoral reform without a second vote.
 2

Following closely on the need for two votes is the requirement, for advocates of electoral reform,
for all of the first-past-the-post ridings to be grouped into regional districts. All of the seats in the
regional districts would be filled by proportional representation, the purpose being to compensate
parties that won more votes, but fewer seats in the first-past-the-post ridings, within each district.

Some kind of minimum vote or seat thresholds for a registered political party to meet, within the
regional district or in the national vote, is a realistic way to encourage broad and inclusive parties.

Lastly, for advocates of voting-system reform, the regional districts have to be large enough, and
enough seats have to be allocated within each district, in order to have truly proportionate results.

In my opinion, an incremental and purposive next step for electoral reform in Canada would be to
build on the reforms of the 1960s and 1970s, to allocate seats in four (or five) regional districts by
proportional representation, fixing the number of seats to add at a percentage of the current seats
set by existing, independent electoral commissions, with parties regulated under the current laws.

The strongest equitable argument in favor of adding a modest percentage of seats to the House of
Commons is that Canada’s population has more than doubled since 1961, from 18.3 million to an
estimated 38 million in 2021. At the same time, the number of House of Commons seats is up by
only 27.6 per cent, from 265 seats in 1961 to 338 seats in 2021. In my view, the addition of seats
by 20 per cent can be done without increasing the budget, if MPs and Senators share office space.

As a way to build support for the measure on all sides of the House, besides requiring no budget,
the addition of 20 per cent or 69 seats is large enough for regionally-proportioned representation
across five districts: Atlantic Canada and Nunavut (33 + 7 seats), Quebec (78 + 16 seats), Ontario
(121 + 24 seats), Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Northwest Territories (63 + 13 seats), and
British Columbia and Yukon (43 + 9 seats), rounding district seats to the nearest whole number.

In my view, it should be up to each registered federal party to prepare a list of party candidates to
run in each district, using the second party vote and the seats won in each district to allocate seats
to parties based on the “largest remainder” method. This would allow the larger parties to elect
more MPs in the regional districts where they are under-represented based on first-past-the-post,
and for smaller parties to elect more candidates, provided the party wins more than a reasonable
threshold (say, 5 per cent) of the party vote in a regional district, before being allocated any seats.
This would arguably facilitate the election to Parliament of more women and minorities who are
currently under-represented under first-past-the-post. As with the 1970 reforms, it would create a
legal obligation for parties to report but should not tell the parties how to run their party business.

Lastly, there should be a “sunset clause” law for the proposed 69 additional seats to expire in five
years unless Parliament agrees to reenact the law, with 20 per cent more MPs shaping the debate.

Yours sincerely,

(S) B. DOODY (COUNSEL)

Brian Doody (Counsel) (Version française disponible sur demande)