HANSARD
NOVA SCOTIA HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
PARTICIPATION IN THE
DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services
SELECT COMMITTEE ON PARTICIPATION
IN THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
Committee Membership
Mr. Michel Samson (Chairman)
Hon. Mark Parent (Vice-Chairman)
Mr. Patrick Dunn
Mr. Keith Bain
Ms. Maureen MacDonald (Vice-Chairman)
Mr. Graham Steele
Mr. Charles Parker
Mr. David Wilson (Glace Bay)
Mr. Harold Theriault
In Attendance
Ms. Laura Lee Langley, Assistant Deputy Minister
Communications Nova Scotia
Mr. David Whynacht, Communications Officer
Communications Nova Scotia
Ms. Christine McCulloch, Chief Electoral Officer
Elections Nova Scotia
Mr. Gordon Hebb, Chief Legislative Counsel
Ms. Kim Leadley - Select Committee Clerk
Mrs. Sherri Mitchell, Select Committee Clerk
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HALIFAX, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2007
SELECT COMMITTEE ON
PARTICIPATION IN THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
1:00 P.M.
CHAIRMAN
Mr. Michel Samson
MR. CHAIRMAN: We're ready to begin, it's five minutes past one o'clock. David Wilson from our caucus sends his regrets in this matter. Minister Parent will be arriving a little bit later but will be here.
As per our last meeting, we requested that Laura Lee Langley, Assistant Deputy Minister of Communications Nova Scotia, along with Dave Whynacht from Communications Nova Scotia, make a presentation to us as to what services Communications Nova Scotia could provide to our committee, in light of some of these suggestions that had been made and especially in the lines of research, polling, advertising - a whole host of issues. So we were looking to get more information directly from the department and possibly have a better sense of where we wished to go from here.
So I will ask the members to introduce themselves, in case Ms. Langley isn't familiar with any of our colleagues here.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm pleased to say that Ms. Langley was my first Director of Communications when I was Minister of Environment. She took great care of me back then, in my very short and brief stint as a Minister of the Crown.
Ms. Langley, it's great to see you here and you have the floor.
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MS. LAURA LEE LANGLEY: It is a pleasure to be here, Mr. Chairman, and to all the members, good afternoon. I am Laura Lee Langley, the Assistant Deputy Minister for Communications Nova Scotia. I am pleased to be here to make a brief presentation and then answer your questions around what I believe is your desire to get the best possible support and look at the most cost-effective way to obtain that support to your committee.
What I've put together, based on my discussions with Dave Whynacht from Communications Nova Scotia and then from going through the Hansard of the last meeting, is just a brief presentation around how Communications Nova Scotia would approach tackling this issue. That might not be the most appropriate way to tackle some of the questions that are raised. At the end of the presentation, I've addressed some of the resource
questions that I saw in the Hansard.
So with your indulgence, I will quickly go through some of the first few pages of this presentation and then get to the resource issues, which I think is what you are most interested in.
First of all, we would look at the objectives and put together what would be a communications plan. That has really already been done in a draft form with an eye to serving this committee. We would recommend, I think, some social marketing approaches to this kind of problem or to finding a solution to this issue, and then look at some of the other supports that we could put behind getting to the bottom of why the voter participation is declining and how we can get people more interested.
So the objectives, as I understand them, are to get people out to vote, to assess and research what some of the attitudes and behaviours around voting might be and the democratic process itself. What we want to do as a body, I think, is to influence those attitudes and behaviours in a way that would compel Nova Scotians to participate in the democratic process and do so more frequently.
What we would like to do and what we can do for you is to use the best tools we have to deliver the message of this committee and to ask the questions that the committee would like to pose; looking at the best ways to partner with media; look at advertising and the best ways that we can get to people; and to look even at public education and methods that we can use through our schools, the universities, through magazines and other interactive technologies that we know we can use better through the Internet.
We know you want engagement on why voter turnout has been declining and how it can be improved and we know, I believe, that you're looking really to target younger Nova Scotians. So what we're saying and what the message would be - I think you're familiar with this and I don't really have to go through it, but just for my own clarity - that we want to hear from Nova Scotians of all ages, communities and diverse backgrounds; that we really want to increase Nova Scotians' participation in the democratic process; that we want Nova
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Scotians to have a voice in how our province is run and in the public debate around really important issues; and how can we encourage that?
So how would we engage people? Well, I would agree with some of the discussion that took place here at the last meeting, that we really do have to look at doing some research - some existing research. We can do a lit review, gather some research from other jurisdictions, look at how other provinces and territories have approached this issue because I think it's across the board. We would suggest that focus groups in some manner, is this something that would be important to undertake whether they're at the community level, at universities and in schools.
We would suggest that we engage champions, which generally doesn't cost us anything to get people who feel as strongly about this as we do. They can be academics, they can be community and citizen leaders, and they should be from all walks of life and in every community in the province. We really do need to raise awareness of what the privilege of having a say means and I think you start that at the youngest age possible. There used to be Civics classes when I went school and I don't think they have that anymore.
We would also suggest using the Internet: viral campaigns, which are quite effective we have found with the younger demographic; and Facebook, which we have also found to be a very effective tool in reaching some younger people and not only in reaching younger people, but in engaging them, to have them talk back. Interactive engagement opportunities we have tried: Web casts; chat rooms; some interactive consultation practices, which we're trying to use more and more; blogs; and even YouTube can be used creatively to reach people on issues such as this. Also, to engage partners, student unions, various student groups and social groups at universities and across the province. These are things we can do at very little cost that can be very effective.
I have mentioned advertising - Facebook - but some of the places that we might consider looking at in terms of reaching out would be venues like MuchMusic and places where we know young people go. But again, research would have to inform these decisions so that we know we're spending the dollars as wisely as we can. There are LCD screens at universities that are constantly flashing new messages and they can be used, again, at very little cost. High school publications; Empire Theatres is another place where young people go and now they've been used quite effectively, depending on the campaign, prior to the movies, where you can just direct people to a Web site, hit them quickly with some messaging and get them to think about it. So these are some very creative ways that we can reach people. Even the Metro Transit buses.
I know that some of the costs that were given to the committee, or some of the projected costs were handed out last week and there are costs involved in some of these, but if we minimize our costs and investment on some end by using some in-kind supports, then we can maximize the benefit on the other end.
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Polling is suggested and we have found that with the youngest demographic it's not as effective because they don't respond well, even in surveys, unless there's some carrot that you're dangling at the end of it. We have found that focus groups do engage younger audiences. That having been said, I'm sure there are ways that polling or surveys can be designed to engage the younger demographic, but it would take a little bit of work.
Social marketing is designed to change attitudes and behaviors through public engagement and education. We found that it takes a little bit of time to get responses or to see results, but that it really does work. We've seen it with how we approach waste management here in Nova Scotia; we've seen it with approaches to health care, preventative health care management, even getting the flu shot over time through public education and social marketing campaigns. We've seen a greater engagement at some of these practices, so that can be a useful tool, particularly where we may have some time before the next time people have to get out and vote. Regular communication with the public through various avenues that will reach all demographics and interests, is just a constant commitment to communicate over time, a constant exposure to the issue.
Accountability is a big issue and we've known this just from some of the trend analyses around young people. Why they don't engage in even a public consultation process is because they need to feel that their voice is heard and that their vote actually counts and stands for something. We have to do a better job of making people understand that, as part of the democratic process, that's their way of being involved.
At Communications Nova Scotia, the various communications professionals that we employ are strategists, they are writers, they do research, some of them are expert at consultation best practice, social marketing and general communication. We have people who generally run the gamut in terms of their level of expertise, so finding the combinations of people that you're concerned about - a writer who can also do the research and synthesize the information in a way that is understood - is quite plausible. We do have those people on our staff.
I do want to let the committee know though that our staff salaries are recovered from departments, so I don't have a budget with staff salaries in it. I generally send people out, they service a department and I recover the salary. So with proper approvals, staff can be assigned. We would need to have a full-time equivalency number from the Public Service Commission or Human Resource folks and the budget recovery, but we certainly would have a mechanism for providing a staff member to the committee if those proper approvals are obtained.
Some of the in-kind support that's easiest for us to provide would be in advertising recommendations and design. Certainly an advertising buy would cost money, so we'd have to have a budget for that. Some of the Internet set-up, we can provide that kind of in-kind support and are happy to do so. A managing director or a senior level person to coordinate some of the various things, or a project manager - we can provide that sort of service in-kind
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as a matter of course. To coordinate and liaise with vendors from the standing offer - we have project managers who can do that, if you should choose to look at a standing offer list. Print - it's easy for us to help with any kind of printing costs that would help the committee, unless an external vendor was involved. Then, of course, we'd have to cover the costs, but in terms of what we could do in-house, it's much easier for us to provide in-kind support from the production side of our agency.
So that is the basis of the presentation, but I'm sure that you have questions and I'm happy to answer them to the best of my ability. If I can't answer or I need somebody to help me, I'd be happy to get the information for you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. Langley, for your presentation. Mr. Steele.
MR. GRAHAM STEELE: Thanks, Laura Lee, that's very helpful. There is one thing though that I think needs to be clarified and that is - at least as far as I can see - it is not the role of this committee to persuade people to vote. We are not going out to try to change people's attitudes about anything. Our job, as I understand it, is to look into the question of why people aren't voting and what it will take to get the percentage of Nova Scotians voting up. But the actual campaign to get them to vote, as I can see, would be done by Elections Nova Scotia. Just like at the federal level, that work is done by Elections Canada. It's not done by Parliament or the political Parties or Committees of Parliament, it's done by Elections Canada.
MS. LANGLEY: I appreciate the clarity.
MR. STEELE: Sometimes your presentation sort of wavered between what we need in order to gather information and what we need to change attitudes. We couldn't possibly, for example, go out and change attitudes until we know or have a better handle on what the reasons are why people aren't voting. We might reach out to a group and sort of hit the wrong group for the wrong reasons. That comes much later.
MS. LANGLEY: You're absolutely right, Mr. Steele. I would agree with you that you would have to have the research, you would have to know where you're starting and know where you want to go before you can approach it in any strategic way. Thank you for the clarity. My understanding is similar to yours, but I think I thought a little beyond that so my apologies to the committee.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Thank you as well. It gives us more to think about, for sure. Have you had a chance to look at the budget that we have started looking at?
MS. LANGLEY: No, I don't have that information. That would probably help.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: I was wondering what you thought of our budget but since you haven't seen it, it's something we'll have to talk about.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: Following your presentation, we are trying to establish a budget and we are trying to - one of our main questions was, do we have anyone in-house that could serve the committee for the needs that we have both in research and in writing a report, or would we have to look outside to get this done? That's why we were hoping to learn more as to what services can be offered through Communications Nova Scotia. Mr. Steele.
MR. STEELE: So the obvious question then is that if we were to take from your group a researcher/writer from now until next September 1st, how much would that cost us, the grand total that you would bill to this committee? What would it be?
MS. LANGLEY: I would suggest you would need somebody at an adviser level to have the experience and the combination of skills. As a ballpark, I would say that the salary for that person would be about $50,000.
MR. STEELE: Between now and . . .
MS. LANGLEY: For a year. Well, it would be a little under a year, so slightly less than that. Probably about $45,000.
MR. CHAIRMAN: That's simply the cost of that individual, not the other support services we would be calling upon?
MS. LANGLEY: That's right. That would be that person's salary based on the MCP.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Just for my own information, as far as the other services that you said, I guess, when you referred to in-kind support - so those are services that we would get without actually having to incur the cost to our budget, is it?
MS. LANGLEY: Right, yes. What we would do, Mr. Chairman, is try to work with the individual who would be supporting the committee to use the other services in such a way as it wouldn't cost the committee. What would cost would be hard costs like advertising buys. If we had to use anybody externally we would have to just cover those costs. In our experience, it's much more expensive sometimes to use somebody externally for a project like this one, than it would be to staff from our current complement.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Parker.
MR. CHARLES PARKER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just had a couple of short snappers here, I guess. You mentioned the literature that might be available from other jurisdictions. Do you know if there's much out there that would be important or relevant to our study of this issue? Is there much material available?
MS. LANGLEY: I haven't pursued this particular issue in terms of doing any real research but I do know, just from the last week, that this is an issue in other provinces in the
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nation. It is an issue from the federal government's perspective as well. So I might suggest that, without looking, I'm sure there's something there that we could at least look at and compare to see what other jurisdictions might be doing. I say that. It's just my instinct.
MR. CHAIRMAN: If I could help there, Mr. Parker, the Legislative Library has been doing quite a bit of research for us already, and Ms. McCulloch from Elections Nova Scotia has also indicated that they have a significant amount of research that they would like to present to our committee for consideration.
MR. PARKER: Another question is around the focus groups. The individual who might come from your department, he or she would be able to help us set that type of a mechanism up?
MS. LANGLEY: Yes, we do have people who have facilitation experience and can run focus groups. So that would be something else that - it may not necessarily be a person who was assigned to the committee, but we would draw on those resources from Communications Nova Scotia because we do have facilitators who could do that for us.
MR. PARKER: Okay, one final question just around the champions, I guess you mentioned. Do you have anybody in particular in mind, or are you thinking of past Premiers or retired MPs or MLAs, or is there anybody specific who you think might be good individuals for that position?
MS. LANGLEY: I didn't have anybody specific in mind. However, I know that there are some very esteemed individuals in our communities across this province that I'm sure would welcome the idea of helping. We have done it on other things, we have used people or asked people if they were comfortable to help us champion specific ideas and it works really well. So I would think with something like getting young people out to vote or getting your flu shot or any of those other things, that it would be something that would work for us.
MR. PARKER: Just a final supplementary there. Do you think then maybe a young person or somebody who young people can relate to might be better, perhaps, than some long-retired politician?
MS. LANGLEY: I would think that somebody who is esteemed in the community, like a young athlete - like a Karen Furneaux-type or that kind of person - yes, they would.
MR. PARKER: Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Any other questions for Ms. Langley? Well, thank you for your presentation. We may call upon you again, following our discussions, to get some more specific information, should it be required. We certainly appreciate your providing us with the information so that we have a better understanding of what services are available through
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Communications Nova Scotia. I certainly want to thank Dave for his contributions to our committee to date, in preparing as to how we're going to move forward.
So there being no other questions, I want to thank you again for coming and we are going to move on to our next presenter today for the hot seat - our Chief Electoral Officer, Ms. Christine McCulloch, who is going to face Mr. Steele's thousands of questions.
MR. STEELE: No, I said a thousand questions. (Laughter)
MR. CHAIRMAN: Oh, sorry, one thousand, I remove the "s" from thousands. (Laughter)
MS. LANGLEY: Mr. Chairman, also just before I leave I would like to offer any member of the committee, if they have questions afterwards, I did leave my business card and I am happy to talk or answer questions that they might have subsequent to today.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, again.
MS. CHRISTINE MCCULLOCH: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I hope I'm ready for this.
My understanding of what I was to do for this committee was to attempt to pull together some initial information that you might find of relevance in trying to formulate how you would approach meeting your mandate. I have that information. I brought information in hard copy to give you. I'm going to go through the pieces that I've brought and then perhaps you can give me some feedback on which pieces you'd like to walk through or you'd like to have me walk through with you, to get at the number of questions that Mr. Steele has for me.
[1:30 p.m.]
In any case, what I have is a number of things, and we'll go through them. I wanted to make a couple of remarks about how I view what's going on - what the committee is faced with. In most of the modernized electoral jurisdictions in this country, this issue of voter participation and accessibility to voting opportunities is clearly within the mandate of the Chief Electoral Officer and there are very good reasons for that. One of the primary ones is that this is not an issue that you can fix and it stays fixed; it's one that needs to be tended on an ongoing basis, as populations change and as people's ideas change and the world changes.
This is a very complex subject to deal with and I think that one of the answers to this is that this issue be squarely on someone's plate and my proposal is that it be on mine. Now, I'm in the process of restructuring Elections Nova Scotia to modernize it, to bring it forward and to take on the role that I see it being appropriate to. So that's going on right now. The restructuring plan is underway. The positions are being taken through the process, the new
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work chart is ready, and right square in the middle of all this is work that would assist this issue, like people who will be trained to work in encouraging voter participation on a regular basis - not just on the technical voting side, but on the engagement side.
Another thing that I'm hoping this will do is I welcome the committee's referral of this issue into my organization, recognizing that that is the direction this organization is going. It's not there yet, but that's where it's going.
Before you are a number of handouts. Do you have them?
MR. CHAIRMAN: I have one, there's more coming.
MS. MCCULLOCH: Okay, there are a few - you asked for statistics and I'll talk about statistics for a minute. I spent quite a bit of time looking at statistics that have been collected over the last number of years and there are lots of issues with statistics, because underneath the statistics are things like changes in the electoral law that would have affected the meaning of the statistics. The context of statistics varies, so you have to be very careful with statistics.
This last election was the first time we collected information on voter turnout. We collected gender and we collected age of the voting population to see if we could make anything of it. But remember, it has only been done this one time, in 2006. So what we have are statistics that are brand new, so they are of interest only insofar as they are one election.
There is a piece that you will be getting on voting by age range and it's kind of interesting just in and of itself, even though statistically it's probably not meaningful. Another handout I have is just historically where we go back. We've been collecting voter turnout statistics since 1960, but through that range of time we've had a number of changes in the environment. For instance, up until 1981 there were only 43 electoral districts in the province; now there are 52. We've had differences in voting opportunities. Today we have voting opportunities that start once the returning office opens, right up until the day before election day.
In elections in the past, you could vote only on election day at first, and then you could vote at the advance poll, if you signed in blood that you were unable to come and vote on election day. Then we added the special poll and those were really originally intended for people who were disabled because originally, polling locations weren't required to be accessible. Then we introduced - we lengthened the special polls and then we introduced the write-in ballot and then we got rid of all the rationale behind restricting use of any of those voting opportunities, so now you can vote for any reason at any time.
What we don't have is electronic or Internet voting or pin voting. So we have voting opportunities, and they go through the whole period, but adding the statistics suggests that
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adding all of those opportunities to vote haven't had a dramatic impact on turnout, which is just kind of interesting.
When you get this one - this long piece - this page behind it describes some of the reasons why the statistics may not be as accurate as the numbers would suggest they are. Mr. Steele made the suggestion the other day that when we look at the statement about some statistics, there are some funny things in these statistics. One of the things that you would see if you looked at the poll-by-poll results, which are actually a new statistic that we're collecting, turnout poll-by-poll, is that there are some very high turnouts and there are some dismally low turnouts. If you took the high and the low off, the turnout overall wouldn't be as bad as it appears to be. So it's interesting, it's a matter of how you look at statistics, how you analyze what they mean and that can impact the information you have.
You have a particular interest in youth voting, our youth participation. One of the little handouts in this section is a number of resources specifically on youth participation. One of the things that I would recommend highly to you, which is sort of a synthesis report, is the first one in the list, which is "Lost in Translation: (Mis)Understanding Youth Engagement". It is a very good report, it is October 2007. It is available on the Web site identified on that resource summary, if, in fact, youth engagement is something you want to look at particularly.
There's one entitled "Thoughts on Voter Engagement", which is actually my musings over things that I have seen in the short while that I've held this position, that I think are potential areas where effort can be put to change the way people view this subject. Now I can go through that.
Another one that I thought you might find of interest, and I apologize for all this paper but this is a paper subject - another one is a summary of some things I pulled off the Elections New Brunswick Web site because New Brunswick, a year ago - no, just this past June - did a report. They had a Commission on Legislative Democracy and they spent a good deal of time, over a year, developing the fairly major report and they have a report on their Web site, as well as recommendations. It is interesting to look at these recommendations because some of them we've already implemented in Nova Scotia. Some of them fall into the realm of accessibility, participation kinds of accessibility, and some fall into the range of actually encouraging people to become involved in the process, which is more of a political issue.
Anyway, that's in here and the recommendations. I've tried to reduce this so you didn't have to see the entire thing - it is very big. These are just selected recommendations so we can certainly go through that in more detail.
I brought this because you may have some questions on the stats in here that perhaps I can respond to. There are some peculiarities in here that I don't understand but, nonetheless, we're learning from statistics and the care that has to be given to gathering them.
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I also brought a map, which I can leave with you, which is created for the committee and it shows the districts - the Province of Nova Scotia with the electoral districts and the reserves shown, so you can see where they fall across the district across the province.
I have an election calendar which describes the voting opportunities, which go from the issuance of the writ to the election, if you care to have that. It just shows you how much opportunity people do have here. So if the committee would like to give me some guidance on what you would like to talk about amongst all of these things that I brought, perhaps that would help us focus.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. McCulloch. I have no doubt that all of us have all sorts of questions - I'm not quite sure where we should begin. Let me start it off, I guess. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on what the impact has been on the decision a number of years ago - I think the last election was our first election with the permanent voters list, as compared to our traditional means of doing enumeration once a writ is dropped. I'm wondering if you could share with us your thoughts on what impact that has had, if any, in your view, on voter participation in Nova Scotia?
MS. MCCULLOCH: In 2003, that was the first time that we had a permanent list and it's not a surprise to anyone that it didn't go particularly well. There are a lot of complex reasons for that.
One of them was that the list was essentially a federal list and it was layered on top of Nova Scotia and it meant that the layering didn't quite match the electoral districts right down to the polling division level, which meant that many people who were on the list didn't end up in the right polling division. So even though they were on the list, they were in the wrong place, so it appeared that they weren't on the list. That impacted people's response to - we had a lot of anecdotal things like a husband was on the list but his wife was not, they voted for 40 years, what was that about? It happened, I think, as a result of when the layering was done, it was out of sync with the actual polling division map of the province.
The other thing that happened in 2003 was Elections Nova Scotia wasn't ready for that election. It had inadequate resources, it had inadequate understanding of the complexity of using a permanent list. We have a much better understanding today. We've done a great deal of work with the statutory mandate that we now have, which is to maintain and update the list.
It's a very complex subject because one of the things that happens with lists is they don't stay current and you need a lot of sources of quality information to update what you have and to keep it updated. We have thousands of records every month that change inside the list, so we have a voters list piece and we have a civic address registry and you have to combine the person with the address and put them in a polling division, so they end up on the right list. It is complex.
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We have thousands of changes in addresses on an ongoing basis. Municipalities change their addressing. HRM did a major thing just recently, which is going to probably cause them some difficulty when they come to their municipal elections in Fall 2008 because it is a very complex thing to roll your address changes into your list and combine people with the right address and the right place.
I do believe that having a permanent list makes ultimate sense. I think the growing pains to get to it are fairly serious. It has to be resourced carefully because it's an expensive undertaking to have a permanent list. However, I don't think personally that enumeration works very well. I think that there was a time when it worked very well, when we had a different social fabric and we had usually the female in the household, living at home and raising children and often did the enumeration function because it was part of her culture at the time.
[1:45 p.m.]
We now are faced with a very high percentage of families where the parents work, they both work, they are both away. We have issues like people concerned about their privacy, they don't want to tell people who live in their neighbourhood that they are so and so and they were born on such and such and this is who lives in their house, so there are privacy issues that are new. There is a concern just in general about confidentiality. We can't find people at home. We can't find people to enumerate. There are some areas where it's not difficult and there are areas where it is impossible. Having people enumerate, going back two and three times to get names just doesn't work any longer. So that has been our experience with enumeration.
We did a full province enumeration in 2005, we worked very hard at it. We spent one month doing it and the results were not bad, but it was a huge undertaking, it cost several million dollars just to do it and its currency has gone, so it's a big expenditure every time it happens.
The other thing about enumeration is, in the way the Elections Act in structured now, enumeration has to occur in the first week of the writ period, which is simply an impossibility. To enumerate the entire province in one week, it couldn't happen. We use enumeration in a very limited basis now and it works quite well when it's targeted at areas that need special attention. Smaller focused areas, we have revising agents going out to those kinds of places. We target enumerate institutional areas like long-term care facilities, so we use the tool but we direct it very specifically and it seems to be fairly successful in that context.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Steele.
MR. STEELE: I do have a thousand questions, but most of them can be subsumed under one broad question which is simply, what do we already know about why people aren't
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voting who used to vote? What do we know about methods of trying to reverse that trend? What has worked and what has not worked in other jurisdictions?
MS. MCCULLOCH: I can only answer that to a certain extent because that's a research subject, because there has been a great deal of work done on this, probably in all of the major jurisdictions across Canada. What we do know is that young people in the age range of 18 to 24 and probably 24 to 35 aren't voting as much as people who are 45 and up. We still see fairly significant turnouts in many of the electoral districts and polling divisions where the average age is over 45. Those people are voting, older people are voting still - as long as they are able to vote, they vote.
The districts like Clare or Argyle or Richmond, they are interesting because their populations are rural for the most part, their populations are older, they don't have mobility like we have in metro or transient activity amongst the younger section of the population and people take their voting very seriously. They turn out because it's a function, it's cultural, it's a social function. They enjoy it, the politics are all exciting and they enjoy the physical activity of actually going to the polls and voting.
Younger people don't seem to have that, that's gone. Younger people in general don't seem to see the connection between their lives and voting and government. So what do we know? We know that younger people are not voting. We know that if you want to get at younger people you have to speak to them, you have to speak through their peers, that you have to focus on them through their peers.
MR. STEELE: Let me pursue that line then about young people voting because we've all taken it for granted that young people vote less than older people. I just wonder, do we know that that is different than it used to be? When I was 18, which is now 25 years ago, I don't think that the people my age, my peers, were any more engaged than today's young people. I don't think that the voter turnout among my peer groups was any different than it is now. I was one of the few people in my peer group who voted in every single election. I understand young people don't vote, but do we really know that that is different than it used to be?
MS. MCCULLOCH: No, I think your point is well taken, but what we do know is if young people are not voting now, there's a possibility that they won't be voting when they get older.
MR. STEELE: But that has always been a possibility.
MS. MCCULLOCH: But it wasn't the case though factually, statistically because we've had a fairly solid turnout. The turnout is falling, so somebody is not voting who used to vote. Some age group isn't voting that used to vote.
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MR. STEELE: And what do we know about that as opposed to what we speculate? What do we know about who used to vote that's . . .
MR. MCCULLOCH: We know very little because there are very few statistics, we have none in this jurisdiction. My guess is that most jurisdictions don't have statistics on age of voting because voting wasn't an issue back many years ago, they didn't collect that kind of information.
MR. STEELE: You see, I worry about us pursuing a line that implies that the real problem here is young people not voting when, so far, I haven't seen one shred of evidence that it's any different than it used to be and that falling rates of voting among young people are an important factor in the overall falling rate. So, can you remind me how we know the age of voters?
MS. MCCULLOCH: It's described in one of these documents. What we did was, first of all the permanent list of electors includes a field on date of birth. The reason it is in there is because you can only vote when you are 18, so you have to track that they're qualified to vote, so we track that information. When we collected stats this last time in 2006 on voter gender and age, what we did was we created a bar code that was attached to the elector so that when the scanning of the records were done after the election, you scanned across the line, the bar code identified with the person and correlated the information connected with the bar code.
MR. STEELE: But where do you get the date of birth? I remember being enumerated once and I don't remember giving it. Do you get it from the income tax records? Where do you get it from?
MS. MCCULLOCH: It's requested on the application to be added to the list. It's in data, like Elections Canada has it, they have it from income tax records, we have it from driver change of address extracts because you have to have an age qualification in all of the data that is collected on people.
MR. STEELE: Just to be clear, in how many elections in Nova Scotia have we known the age of the voters - the precise age of the voters?
MS. MCCULLOCH: Probably not before 1998 or 1999.
MR. STEELE: If I said to you, for example, what proportion of young people voted in the 1981 provincial election, your answer would have to be that you have no idea?
MS. MCCULLOCH: I can't tell you that because that information has not been collected until this last general election.
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MR. STEELE: One of my other questions has to do with the statistics and I'm glad you talked about that - we have to be really careful not to make assumptions about what the statistics tell us. We have to look at them carefully and make sure that we don't over interpret them. One of the things I wonder about, for example, is that the percentage of people voting kind of disguises the fact that it is really two numbers: it's the number of people voting, divided by the number of people on the voters list. One of the things I wondered about is, does the drop in voting in Nova Scotia have to do with the fact that the voters list is now compiled differently than it used to be and that there's a lot of people on the voters list who never used to be on there because they wouldn't have been enumerated . . .
MS. MCCULLOCH: I think that's one of the differences between the value of the statistics up until 2006.
MR. STEELE: Of course, as I pointed out last week, I was really struck by the fact that it's not a gradual decline in Nova Scotia. It's a very sudden drop in voter turnout after the 1993 provincial election. I'm just wondering if a good part of it can be explained by the fact that the voters list now includes people who in previous years would have been left off because of the way it was compiled?
MS. MCCULLOCH: I think there's no doubt about it.
MR. STEELE: What do we know about how big a factor that might be?
MR. MCCULLOCH: It's very difficult to say because what we did in 2006 was we based - it's like a baseline; I'm trying to establish a baseline. In 2003, the stats were based on people on the official list of electors which is the list, not including the people who were added to the list on election day, so it's a pre-ordinary polling day list. In 2006, the stats were based on the people who actually voted, compared to those on the list, so there's a big discrepancy between the 2003 stats and the 2006 stats. I think that everything prior to 2006 is not comparable, fairly and accurately, to post-2006.
MR. STEELE: How do we know the gender of voters? Can you remind me how we know that?
MS. MCCULLOCH: The gender is another field that we collect.
MR. STEELE: How long have you collected it?
MS. MCCULLOCH: I think since the same time frame as the date of birth.
MR. STEELE: So if I asked you, for example, what percentage of eligible female voters voted in the 1981 provincial election, you would say . . .
MS. MCCULLOCH: I couldn't tell you that.
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MR. STEELE: You don't know?
MS. MCCULLOCH: I can tell you what happened in 2006.
MR. STEELE: Of course, all this leads to the fact that what this committee is looking at is not exactly the question of who is not voting, although that's part of it. It's trends over time. What demographic used to vote that is voting a lot less than they used to, and what do we know about that as opposed to what we might speculate. What do we actually know, as a fact?
MS. MCCULLOCH: Well probably what I would have to say is we don't know much and that's the reason I qualified all the stats because there weren't stats collected in this province on those issues prior to 2006.
MR. STEELE: So given this lack of information, what suggestions do you have for this committee about how we go about figuring out what the problem is?
MS. MCCULLOCH: One of the things I would do is check the other electoral jurisdictions to find out how far back they have that kind of data that might be relevant, although I think the statistics are unique in some respect to the jurisdiction from which they're derived, so I'm not sure how comparable.
I believe that in other jurisdictions, they're focusing on groups like the young sector. Some of them are focused on Aboriginal people, some are on people below the poverty line - those kinds of things. They focus on groups because they know now that they don't vote but they don't know that they never did vote. They started from a point in time and made an assumption that now they know they don't vote - what happened in the past? So there's no trend. They're not responding to a trend, they're responding to what's going on right now.
MR. STEELE: For example, I assume that if I asked you the percentage of turnout of Aboriginal voters over time, the answer would be that you don't know except that you could approximate it by talking about voting on reserves, which is not exactly the same thing, of course. Am I right about that - that's really the only statistic you could give, about a poll located on a reserve?
MS. MCCULLOCH: I could tell you where the reserves are, I could tell you which ones are completely Aboriginal polling divisions, I could tell you which are partial, I could tell you the turnout in a poll but I couldn't isolate the statistics to Aboriginal people's voting.
MR. STEELE: Over time.
MS. MCCULLOCH: No, I couldn't do that.
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MR. STEELE: Okay. Now you said the last time we met, that there's regular communication and interchange of information among the Chief Electoral Officers across the country. Everybody is looking at this; what do we know about what studies have been done in other provinces?
MS. MCCULLOCH: What do we know?
MR. STEELE: What have those other studies revealed about voting patterns over time?
MS. MCCULLOCH: I would have to do the research to answer the question, I haven't done the research.
MR. STEELE: And in terms of methods that have been tried in other jurisdictions to increase voting, what do we know about what works and what hasn't worked?
[2:00 p.m.]
MS. MCCULLOCH: We know that many jurisdictions believe that voter engagement starts when people are young, that's what people believe. They believe that it starts when they are young, when they are exposed with their parents, they get education not only on democracy but on citizenship and actually how you vote. People believe that.
There are several jurisdictions that have developed educational materials that are actually part of their formal curriculum in schools - we know that people believe that. We know that in general, people believe that young people don't vote for a number of reasons. The anecdotal information from young people suggests that they believe they are disconnected.
MR. STEELE: I'm going to bring you back to the theme that I've been pursuing, which is not why people aren't voting today - because that's a question - but why people who used to vote are no longer voting.
MS. MCCULLOCH: Honestly, I think that would have to be a specific direction that you took in analyzing the research that has been done and I honestly can't tell you the answer to that.
MR. STEELE: You're not aware of any study of that question anywhere else in Canada?
MS. MCCULLOCH: I'm not aware, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. It's probably a matter of doing some searching across the jurisdictions, using the contacts that I have.
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MR. STEELE: Do you have some means in your office or network in your office where you could help us do that kind of research?
MS. MCCULLOCH: Yes.
MR. STEELE: What is it reasonable for this committee to expect you to do or ask you to do?
MS. MCCULLOCH: It depends on what day it is. (Laughter)
MR. STEELE: I'll leave it there.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Steele. Are there any other questions for Ms. McCulloch from the committee? Mr. Parker.
MR. PARKER: I have just one or two here. You mentioned Internet voting - are there jurisdictions in Canada that are using that? How complicated or how useful would it be to try to get more people to vote here in Nova Scotia, if we were to go to that system?
MS. MCCULLOCH: There are no provincial or territorial jurisdictions in the country that use Internet voting or telephone pin voting, provincially or territorially. There are a number of municipalities that use some form of electronic voting.
In general, the issues surrounding Internet voting have to do with security of the vote. If the vote is cast away from the polling station, how do you know that that vote gets from the home to the ballot box effectively, identifying that the people who vote are who they say they are. Identity and security are the main things.
Aside from that, we are actually having discussions with Intellivote, more out of interest in trying to understand if there is a limited role for Internet or telephone voting, where the security issues aren't as difficult to address. One of the problems with this is that it is expensive. Internet voting, for example, requires that you have technology in every single polling station in the province; we have 2,200 to 2,500 polling stations. We don't have equipment that would be able to meet - that would be a new cost.
Another issue is you couldn't simply go to Internet or telephone voting - you would have to maintain hard copy voting because a great percentage of the population likes that. That's how they want to vote so you couldn't simply go to - I mean, over time it would probably be cheaper if everyone voted by Internet or telephone but we aren't there yet so we'd have a transitional period - if, in fact, we could even do it - where we had both systems operating.
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MR. PARKER: So you say there are some municipalities that are experimenting with it or perhaps they are actually using it. Do you know if there are any provinces or territories that are actually considering it or looking at it at this point?
MS. MCCULLOCH: Actually I know that Ontario and B.C. are meeting with Intellivote as well, so they are looking at it. There have been, to this point in time, I think that the companies that have this software and this service that they can provide, have matured dramatically too, because they now realize it's not just an electronic system. It's a voting process that has much rigour around it about security, privacy, secrecy of the ballot and that kind of thing. They didn't understand that; they thought it was just software.
MR. PARKER: So it's not for the next election, that's for sure.
MS. MCCULLOCH: No, sir.
MR. PARKER: I had a second question, Mr. Chairman, around write-in ballots, it seemed to be a really cumbersome system last time for somebody who is disabled in their home. They couldn't go to the polling station, they had to get their son or daughter or somebody to go for them, get the form, bring it back, get it signed and the son or daughter would take it back to the returning office, get the ballot, come back to the home, get the voter to mark their x and then take it back to the returning office. If they live 30 miles or somewhere from the returning office, it was a lot of running back and forth. Is there some way to get around that and make it simpler for the voter?
MS. MCCULLOCH: First of all, I agree completely with you that it's outrageously complex. I think the take-up on the write-in ballot is poor to some extent, perhaps to a large extent because it's so complex. I don't know what was going on in people's minds when they designed something like that because it is - it's outrageous. It doesn't speak to the average Nova Scotian, it's just difficult.
The problem that I have with it is that it's in the Statute. It's how it is done and the rules around it are right in the Elections Act, so it's very difficult to manipulate it without changing the Act.
MR. PARKER: It's very complicated and some people were just turned off by it. I can't get somebody to run back all of that length of time and they just didn't vote in the end. The other thing that worked quite well in the federal elections was a roving elections clerk, you called them and said, could you come to my home, I'm disabled, I can't get out to vote and she went right to their home with the ballot, did it right then and there, and it was done.
MS. MCCULLOCH: Special balloting.
MR. PARKER: Is that a possibility?
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MS. MCCULLOCH: It's a very interesting possibility. What it is is complex, you have to design it, you have to figure out how it is going work, you have to amend the Statute, you have to bump up the cost of delivering elections service because it's not a simple thing, it's a very costly thing to have someone going all over the province. It is usually in pairs because you have to maintain objectivity and impartiality. So it's not that it can't be done, it's that it's something that needs to be done.
MR. PARKER: The feds did it in the last federal election. I think they just had one person if I recall correctly and she went to the home, on appointment and looked after it right on the spot.
MS. MCCULLOCH: New Brunswick did it this last election, too, with fairly high success I think .
MR. PARKER: It's a lot simpler than the write-in ballot. Okay, thank you.
MS. MCCULLOCH: I was going to say that one of the things that we're trying to do here is to increase the number of polling stations so that there are more polling stations in buildings where there are elderly people or people who happen to live there. They were more inclined to vote if it is simple. The returning officers talk frequently anecdotally about where they may have a poll where the turnout is very high and their strong belief is, it's on the way home and there's great parking. When you have those kinds of circumstances on the main route and there's lots of parking and it's very visible, people roll in, go in and vote, there are a lot of stations, no lineups and away you go.
MR. PARKER: Keep it simple. Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: If I could follow up on that. I'm wondering, have there been statistics that have been kept on the write-in ballot as compared to the old proxy ballot that we used to use in the past?
MS. MCCULLOCH: There were never any stats on proxies kept. All I know now is what percentage, or the population who votes, votes by write in ballot and it's very low.
MR. CHAIRMAN: It's very low, but you have nothing to compare it to when it comes to the proxy?
MS. MCCULLOCH: No, I don't.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Just for my own curiosity, you've indicated it would actually take a change in Statute to change the rules around the write-in ballots. Is there any effort underway to have that reviewed or is that not taking place?
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MS. MCCULLOCH: I've pushed the envelope as far as I can in terms of what's in the Statute and what we can manipulate. The difficulty with the write-in ballot is the difficulty that is experienced with the entire Elections Act, it's very antiquated in many respects. It's a question of where you start first.
One of the things that should happen is the entire Elections Act, the electoral financing, everything should be reviewed and rewritten top to bottom. My view of this is we try to fix things that are fixable that don't have too extensive an implementation issue associated with them, because every time you change something in the Elections Act, if there's a piece of it that's the responsibility of the returning officer or the people who work in polling locations, there's a whole ripple effect - new materials, new training, new everything, so it's not a simple thing to change something. That's more an explanation of why it hasn't happened. It would be high on my list, because I don't think it works.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Do you see us being able to properly fulfill our mandate without recommending changes to the Elections Act?
MS. MCCULLOCH: No, I don't.
MR. CHAIRMAN: So is it fair to say that your desire for change and our mission to find out what can be done to get more people voting and why they are not voting go hand in hand?
MS. MCCULLOCH: Yes, I believe so.
MR. CHAIRMAN: What work has been done to date to change the Act? Have there been any proposals put forward? Is it just a matter of your own view at this point? Where are we on that issue of looking at changes to the Act itself?
MS. MCCULLOCH: We have amended the Elections Act every session since I've been here and it's not a good way to do this, because it's piecemeal and piecemeal changes can get mixed up. We targeted areas where we knew we had a problem and thought we could fix it without isolating, we could isolate it and fix it, so we've done quite a bit of that piecemeal approach. We do have a process in place in this province that involves the Election Commission in reviewing proposals that - they generally come out of my organization, because we've run into issues with whatever it might be. The Election Commission has its input into whether they think it should be done, how they think it should be done, so there's a process behind that.
There has been a lot of amending, but what I'd really like is to stand back and look at the whole thing all together so that we can have some modernized election administration legislation, as well as electoral finance legislation. What I'd like to do, for example, this last election we had a problem with managing and assessing election expenses, the filing, and it wasn't working well out in the field with the returning officers, so we are proposing an
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amendment that brings it all back into my office, for instance. So we have a problem, we respond - it's not the recommended way to deal with legislation.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Let me just finish my little round here. I believe the write-in ballot as a concept is a great concept. As you've heard from some of my other colleagues, the way it's working is dysfunctional. In a riding such as Richmond, where the returning officer is located, from one end to the other end of my county is almost an hour's drive. It's just not practical to ask voters to get in a vehicle, drive to the returning offices, pick up the kit, bring it back, get it signed and go back and deliver it. I commend our returning officer who is trying to bend over backward to accommodate people, but at the end of the day as you've said, you can only go so far with the way the Act is, and unfortunately it's not working.
If I recall correctly when I was attending university, for the federal election it was just a phone call to say here is where I am, I live in this district, but I'm not in that district right now, I'm at university and I'd like a ballot, and the ballot shows up in the mail. You fill it in, you send it back and that's it. Why we don't have that kind of system is a mystery to me, because I think that would work. It would especially be more practical in rural areas, because you'd never have to leave your home. You could actually vote from home under the circumstances and have the ballot sent to you and you would have the obligation of mailing it back. Why we go through the system we go through - I can understand that there would be a system of checks and balances, but in this case it's just discouraging people from voting and not meeting its objective.
[2:15 p.m.]
I commend you for seeking changes in that process. I think our numbers for write-in ballots were quite high because of the hard-working team we had, but it wasn't nearly as good as what it should have been because of the headaches involved. Mr Steele, you have some more questions?
MR. STEELE: One of the stories you told reminded me of a very large apartment building in my constituency where it's fairly low income, fairly high turnover and the turnout from that building has always been quite low. So in the last election, for the first time that I remember anyway, the polling place was in the building itself. They used to have to walk down the street a bit and into another building and when the polling booth was actually in their own building, well, guess what happened? The voter turnout was as bad as it ever was. (Laughter) So somebody thought they put their finger on the problem, but they missed it. It's not the location of the poll necessarily that's keeping people from voting, so there's something else going on.
One of the things that occurs to me as we look at statistics here in Nova Scotia, across Canada and really all over the western democracies, is urbanization and voting turnouts, that there may be a direct connection between the rate at which people move to cities and their
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tendency not to vote. Who knows why? Maybe it's because they feel like they're from somewhere else or because they don't feel a close connection to the neighbourhood they move to. Are you aware of any studies of that aspect of any connection between urbanization and voting patterns?
MS. MCCULLOCH: I'm not aware of any, no. I'm sure they exist though, we see it right here.
MR. STEELE: One of the other things that I wondered about is whether there might be a connection between the aging population and a downward voting trend. Now that sounds a bit counterintuitive to what most people think, but what I'm thinking is that the older people get and the more infirm they feel or the less willing they are to leave their house, the less willing they are to go out and vote. If that's the case, then the older our population gets then the fewer older people will vote. Do we have any information on the older demographic? If there's any connection there then we may be aiming at the wrong group. We say, oh it's mostly young people, although you've told us today you really have no idea about trends over time among young people. My own personal view is that young people are voting as much today as they ever did, which is to say not very much, but maybe it's the older people who are voting less than they used to. Do we have any hard information on that?
MS. MCCULLOCH: Because we haven't kept information stats on age over time, we don't have it. What I do see in the poll-by-poll results is there are a number of especially long-term care facilities that are low turnout, very low and they've got a captive audience, so to speak, and the administrators of those organizations are usually very receptive to making sure the people come down and vote, if they're able, and still the turnout is poor. That could be because they're not able to, it could be because they're not inclined, I don't know, but we do know that many of the long-term care facilities have low turnouts.
MR. STEELE: That certainly is true for the two I have in my constituency and Maureen here, of course, has much larger ones in her constituency. In my constituency the voter turnout in the nursing homes is abysmal because honestly, most of them are on the voters list, but they're not really capable of exercising their choice. There was one election where I think seven ballots were cast in one of my nursing homes and five were cast for the candidate of the Nova Scotia Party - of course, they got a grand total of like 14 votes in the whole constituency. The only explanation that I could think of for that was simply that alphabetically the Nova Scotia Party candidate was first on the ballot and the people in the nursing home, when they voted, simply marked their X by the first name, because there's no other logical explanation for why the Nova Scotia Party should have crushed the other Parties in that particular poll other than that.
I'm interested in hearing you say that, because we've all been assuming that we should be targeting young people. I'm still not convinced that's the answer because when I think about trends over time, I think of people who voted throughout their 40s, 50s, 60s, they get into their 70s and they're not just quite so keen on getting out - it depends on the weather
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and a lot of other things. They get into their 80s and suddenly there are a lot of reasons why they just want to stay home.
MS. MCCULLOCH: The theory is that making the polling station more accessible, like in the building, should help that if, in fact, they are able to vote, if they're so inclined. If it's there, that's about as good as it gets, right in the building.
MR. STEELE: I think we have to bear in mind that when you talk about making it easier for people to vote, for example for the physically disabled, that what we're talking about is giving people an opportunity to vote, but those people never would have voted before. So that can't be the explanation for why voting patterns are going down, but there may be a connection between age and people's physical health which, of course, deteriorates in the long run, and making it easier, especially for older people, to get out and vote. I don't think we should assume that if we just make it easier for everybody to vote, it's going to reverse the trends.
MS. MCCULLOCH: Well, I wouldn't challenge you on that. All I see is people - I get a lot of complaints about how come we can't have a polling station in our building? That's a fairly frequent one. The problem I have is right now the legislation allows you to have polling stations in long-term care facilities. Usually you have a polling station per polling division, overall, and you can't isolate a building; it isn't a polling division, it's a building in a polling division. So it's harder to have - you can't give people service by putting polling stations in every building. The Act recognizes when there's a long-term care issue, you can create a polling division for that building.
MR. STEELE: When I talk about older people, I'm thinking more of the 80-year-old widow living alone in her home, which she's lived in for 40 or 50 years, and it's really hard to get her to leave her house to go out and do anything, including voting.
MS. MCCULLOCH: But one of the kudos for Internet voting is a lot of elderly people have access to the Internet, assuming that they're capable of going through the process, and they can get the help they need to vote in their homes by a son or a daughter or somebody dropping by and showing them how to go through the process. There are lots of downsides on that, because it's hard to know whether they're voting their own wishes or whether they're voting someone else's wishes.
The problem is that they can do it at home, they can do it right from at home, and a lot of people do have access to computers now, so that's one of the upsides. Whether, in fact, that's safe from a security point of view is quite another.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Bain.
MR. KEITH BAIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have just a couple of items. I want to follow up on your remarks about the write-in ballot and the success, or the lack thereof I
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guess. My riding is one that if you live in Bay St. Lawrence, for instance, it's going to take you two hours to drive to Baddeck to the returning office and by the time you do that, up there and back, up there and back, you've taken up eight hours to cast your vote. So therefore, a lot of people are going to say, I'm not wasting my time or my family's time to do this running around for me, so it certainly contributes to a loss of votes on that one.
I want to go back to the number of polling stations as well. Graham made mention that moving the polling station or putting in another one didn't help with voter turnout. I think there is a difference between rural areas and urban areas, because we've seen - I know again in Victoria-The Lakes, prior to the 2006 election, a polling station was taken away from a community and the residents had to go to another community to vote. The older people in that particular community said, I am not going outside my community to cast a vote.
Fortunately, there was a polling station put back in the community again and the voter turnout increased again. So I think there are so many different variables out there - rural, urban. We all know that over time every community had a polling station and that's not happening anymore. Every single little pocket that was out there had a polling station and I think as those polling stations diminished, so did the voter turnout in some communities, especially in rural areas like the one that I represent.
MR. STEELE: If I may, Mr. Chairman, that's a very interesting point. Actually, I'm wondering if Elections Nova Scotia would have any way of analyzing that, even if we picked one constituency and analyzed the number of polling stations over a period of time, to see if there was any noticeable correlation between the number of polling stations and voter turnout.
MS. MCCULLOCH: Probably we could, because we know the polling stations and we know the voter turnout back to 1960. So what are we trying to determine?
MR. STEELE: Well, for example, in Mr. Bain's constituency now, one complicating factor would be that the boundaries have changed over time. But allowing for that, if you looked at the number of polling stations over a lengthy period . . .
MR. BAIN: Say from 1981 . . .
MR. STEELE: From 1981 forward, and see whether there is actually a noticeable reduction in the number of polling stations. I'm interested in the idea that in rural areas if you take away a district polling station, you will get a lower voter turnout, which sounds like it's probably true, but I'm just wondering if we can put some hard numbers on it.
MS. MCCULLOCH: I will certainly look into it.
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MR. STEELE: If that's the answer, then the answer in Mr. Bain's constituency would be to increase the number of voting stations and you're going to get a higher turnout. But I think we need to check our facts first, to make sure that is actually what has happened over time, a reduction in the number of polling stations. Could we do that, specifically, on Mr. Bain's constituency?
MS. MCCULLOCH: I can certainly look into that and see what we can do. If we can analyze change in the number of polling stations over time.
MR. STEELE: Just in that one constituency, it might be a good start.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Dunn.
MR. PATRICK DUNN: Mr. Chairman, just a comment, actually. In listening to questions that Mr. Steele is throwing out and some of the ensuing dialogue and so on, I'm not sure where or what the target group is now but if the target group is youth, perhaps one thing to consider would be perhaps educating the youth with a heavier emphasis within the school curriculum, where you're hitting all of them. Perhaps that would have to be through the Department of Education, a little change in the curriculum. It may mean professional development days for instructors who are involved in that.
I'm not sure right at the moment if that's an objective of Democracy 250. I know they're involved in the history aspect of it, that particular historical perspective, but I'm not sure that they're directly involved with voter turnout, increasing voters and so on. Perhaps that could possibly be another channel for their Web site which may, in fact, help us in pursuit of this particular solution.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Those are discussions that, as I mentioned before, I already did meet with the co-chairs and they are more than interested in working with us, as they are very concerned as well about the low voter turnout, especially amongst the younger generation, and are more than happy to work in concert with us in trying to promote that and trying to find solutions to that as well. As we move along, I'm sure we'll continue our discussions with them to try to see how we can find some mutual ways of being able to address the concerns from each of our perspectives. So I certainly appreciate your comments. Mr. Theriault.
MR. HAROLD THERIAULT: Thank you, Ms. McCulloch. I believe you're probably doing a good job and you'll even continue to try to do better, to try to get people out to the polls. I believe if you put a ballot box in every house you wouldn't raise the percentage 5 per cent. All we have to do is go home and ask people who we represent, you'll get all the answers you want.
Four years ago, when I started this job, I came off the ocean and I went door-to-door. I had never done that in my life and I talked to the people and I listened to the people. I said,
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would you vote for me, and 50 per cent of the people said back to me, why would I vote for an MLA and what does an MLA do? These were the questions I was getting back from the people.
[2:30 p.m.]
I think we, as politicians, should be taking some responsibility here in going around this table brainstorming, and maybe get back to our people first and go ask some of them why they don't go vote. You can put a ballot box in every house, I'm telling you, Ms. McCulloch, I don't think you would raise it a bit.
My children - I've got five children - they have no interest in politics. I got nominated here a week ago and one of my sons wouldn't come because he felt bad. He felt bad that I'm in the situation I'm in. He's 19 years old, just starting college. That's the way it is, that's the way I see it and that's the way I feel. If we want to know how to get people to the voting box, we had better make it interesting for them. That's what we've got to do as politicians. That's all I've got to say. They've completely lost interest, especially our young people.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I think that's why we're all here, Mr. Theriault, to try to find ways to correct that, if that's possible. Maybe at the end of the day we'll determine that it was an impossible task, but I think we at least have to go down that road first and see what innovative ways we can try to get people interested again. I think, looking around this table, the fact that some of us have won three and four elections, I would like to think it's based on the fact that we've proven to our electors that we went there and that we went there to do our best. Fortunately, they've rewarded us by sending some of us back.
Are there any other questions for Ms. McCulloch while we have her here? Ms. MacDonald.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: I don't really have a question, but I do have a comment. Just following up on what Mr. Theriault has said, I think it would be a mistake for us to look for one - you know, that there's one reason why people aren't voting. I mean, I think it's obvious that there are multiple - you know, it's complex. Certainly, I think, a number of the issues have been identified. Urbanization - I'm very interested in having the Library or your office help us look at that issue and any research that you can find.
I think the age stuff isn't only about young people at all, whatsoever, just in my own experience. Not only have I run in, God knows how many elections in the last 10 years, but going back to the 1980s, I ran in elections and worked on many elections. You know, I see a significant difference in older people no longer being prepared to vote for a variety of reasons, not only because they don't want to leave their houses when they're very old but also because they are disenchanted too. It's not just young people who are sort of alienated or not connected. There are many older people who find now that they feel quite
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disenchanted by the political system. I think Mr. Theriault has put his finger on something in terms of the problems of people having an interest and a belief.
We haven't talked about that aspect. We're sort of thinking about, you know, it's all kind of rational if we have the right tools in the right places at the right time. People make the system easier but, also, do people believe in our electoral system anymore? It's the whole kind of hard-to-get-at, non-tangible kinds of things that are also a feature, I believe, of what's going on. I don't know to what extent there's any research that will help us quantify that or even establish that, but it would be interesting to look at that kind of more qualitative research, rather than the quantitative kind of thing. That's my intervention.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. MacDonald. There are a lot of thoughts that come to mind with your comments. I would be confident in saying, if you were to approach someone in Richmond County, the vast majority of them would be able to tell you who their member is. Whereas, when you go into many of the metro ridings, some people have only lived in a riding for a few months or they've been there for a year.
Many of my friends and colleagues, when I ask them come election time, whose riding are you in, they don't know. These are intelligent people, they're teachers, they're professors, they're lawyers - these are people of significant intelligence and they have no idea. They've bought a beautiful home and they're very proud of it and they have no idea what electoral district they find themselves in provincially or federally and I find that very disappointing each time, but it's a reality.
I think it goes to your comments, Ms. MacDonald, that we're not going to find one single reason for this. But it goes a bit to the daunting task we have, but a task that I think just the same we need to at least do our best to strengthen that.
I had the opportunity to speak at two Remembrance Day functions and I strongly believe, and I would encourage Ms. McCulloch through Elections Nova Scotia, I really think we need to give the message of our veterans when it comes to elections. These people went and gave their lives for us, to protect democracy, that right now our biggest threat is complacency. The message I gave them was I felt it was a dishonour to our veterans not to vote and I think we need to find a way of linking that message to Nova Scotians and to Canadians if, for nothing else, to show respect to those who have given so much for us to enjoy our freedom, the least they could do is go out and vote.
I see ads during election periods from your office using veterans being very effective. If nothing else, we should shame people into voting. It's unfortunate it would take that because in a well functioning democracy, one should not have to take such steps, but that's the reality we face. I think that message needs to go there and people just don't seem to appreciate the dangers of complacency in our system.
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Are there any other questions for Ms. McCulloch? Ms. McCulloch, I want to thank you for coming here today and I feel confident in saying we'll be working very closely with your office in the weeks and months ahead. We certainly appreciate the significant amount of information that you've provided us with and should we require any further information, hopefully you'll be able to continue to attend our meetings. But certainly we'll find means of communicating any inquiries that we might have directly to your office for any specific information we might be looking for.
Again, thank you very much to you and to your hard-working staff who we don't often see, but find a way to make our elections run as smoothly as possible under very challenging circumstances and very challenging time frames. So please extend our thanks to your entire staff for the hard work that they do as well.
MS. MCCULLOCH: I certainly will, thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Committee members, where do we go from here? We've heard from Communications Nova Scotia, we've heard from Ms. McCulloch, we're still trying to establish a budget. The House is going into session next week, we're all going to have very busy schedules. One of the thoughts that I did have is many committees operate with a subcommittee and because it's so difficult to get nine people around the table and all of our support staff as well, whether we should look at possibly using a subcommittee for this committee as well, especially for budget preparation and some of those discussions where it might be easier to bring together three individuals, rather than trying to bring together nine individuals. That is just a thought and I look forward to committee members' comments on that. Ms. MacDonald.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: I think it's a great idea. I nominate Graham from the NDP caucus.
MR. STEELE: I was actually saying to Maureen that you took the words out of my mouth and she's our subcommittee expert, so I nominate her, since she serves so well as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee and Subcommittee.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Parker, I wasn't sure if you wanted to break the tie vote for your caucus or if you wish to abstain.
MR. STEELE: We'll sort it out, but yes, Mr. Chairman, we agree that's the right way to do it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: And from the Progressive Conservative caucus, you're in agreement with that? Mr. Parent is just arriving. What I've suggested is that following our presentations today to try to establish a budget and a bit of some of the weightier discussions we need to have as to how we're moving forward, I'm making the suggestion that we form
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a subcommittee to be able to hold some of the meetings that need to take place and then report back to the overall committee.
Now if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Parent, you the - what's it called, what did you say the title was that Maureen has? - vice-chairman. I believe you are the vice-chairman, but in light of your schedule and the fact that we're trying to make the subcommittee easier to bring people together, I'm concerned that you being a Minister of the Crown doesn't make you an easy candidate to bring together the subcommittee. I'm curious whether you wish to remain as vice-chairman or whether one of your colleagues might be more practical.
HON. MARK PARENT: Would it be possible for myself if one of my colleagues could substitute or would you prefer a constant presence?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Without wanting to be difficult, I believe to get this moving along, I would suggest a constant presence would be more practical on that. Again, my concern is only with your busy schedule and your responsibilities as a minister. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to lose the title of vice-chairman, you may instead wish to remain with that title, but ask one of your colleagues to sit on the subcommittee so that we can schedule a meeting and start dealing with some of the matters at hand.
MR. PARENT: Sure, I agree. Can we get back to just who that would be?
MR. CHAIRMAN: I have no problem with that at all. What I would recommend, if we can get agreement today, is that the subcommittee would meet on November 29th, which is a Thursday, and that we would meet in the morning - it's my understanding there are no committee meetings that day - hopefully for no more than an hour. If I could suggest the time of 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., would that be agreeable? (Interruptions)
Let's just say this, I'm going to leave it with the government caucus to get back to the Chair as to who their nominee shall be and I will also leave it to the NDP caucus to get back to the Chair as to who their nominee will be to sit on the subcommittee.
MR. PARENT: We have come to an executive decision here, our nominee will be Keith Bain.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Very good. Mr. Bain, in light of the discussions from the NDP caucus let me ask, do you accept the nomination from your colleagues?
MR. BAIN: I'm privileged.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Very good, thank you, Mr. Bain.
MR. PARKER: We've made an executive decision as well.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Parker, could you advise us of that decision?
MR. PARKER: The executive decision of the NDP caucus is Graham Steele.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Parker. Mr. Steele, I'm assuming you accept that nomination from your esteemed colleagues?
MR. STEELE: Yes, thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Very good. Therefore, on November 29th, myself, as chairman, Mr. Bain and Mr. Steele will reconvene to start looking at the issue of budget and the issue of a game plan as to how we're going to move forward, and then we will report those findings to the committee and hopefully then call a full committee meeting for final decisions and our full mandate as to how we move forward. Are there any other questions before we adjourn? Mr. Parent.
MR. PARENT: I just do want to apologize for being late. I was hosting a dinner for the ambassadors on the environmental economy, which would be near and dear to your heart, Mr. Chairman, as a former Minister of Environment. I'm sure that your forgiveness will be coming.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I have no problem providing that forgiveness. I believe you did miss some interesting discussion though with Ms. McCulloch on elections, voting, write-in ballots and all sorts of good stuff. It was very informative, but we certainly appreciate your busy schedule and the demands on it.
If there is no further discussion, thank you to everyone for coming, thank you to all of our support staff for all of your hard work. We stand adjourned until the subcommittee meets again on Thursday, November 29th at 9:00 a.m. Thank you.
[The committee adjourned at 2:44 p.m.]
