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
Staff Attendance
Ms. Margaret Murphy - Legislative Librarian
Mr. Robert Kinsman - Hansard Reporting Services
Mr. David Whynacht - Communications Nova Scotia
Ms. Christine McCulloch - Nova Scotia Chief Electoral Officer
Ms. Kim Leadley - Select Committee Clerk
Mrs. Sherri Mitchell, Select Committee Clerk
Witness
Ms. Paula Romanow - Research & Statistical Officer
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HALIFAX, THURSDAY, MAY 1, 2008
SELECT COMMITTEE ON
PARTICIPATION IN THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
9:00 A.M.
CHAIRMAN
Mr. Michel Samson
MR. CHAIRMAN: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the committee meeting here this morning. This is our first opportunity to meet as a full committee in some time, but I assure you that your subcommittee has been quite active over the last number of months. I'm sure Mr. Bain, Mr. Steele and myself have a much greater appreciation for the procurement procedures of the Province of Nova Scotia and the challenges that come with it. Nonetheless, I believe more importantly the success of our efforts - it was worth it when we see the quality of the individual we have selected to be the researcher and statistical officer for this committee.
This morning I want to take the opportunity to welcome Paula Romanow to our full committee for the first time. Prior to asking Paula to give us a sense of the proposal she has put together for us, I'm wondering if I could get the members to introduce themselves and the ridings they are from.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Paula, you've had the opportunity to meet some of our supporting cast for this committee, who have been with us since day one, and will continue to play a very integral role in the success of this committee. I would invite you to take the opportunity to meet all of them individually following this.
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Paula, I know you've submitted some information to us but I will give the floor to you to go through that for us.
MS. PAULA ROMANOW: Great, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, everyone, for your nice welcome and good morning. As you can see, I've submitted a plan of work. In the last subcommittee meeting we discussed this, and it was felt that probably the best thing to do would be for me to come up with a game plan and submit it to the committee, for some direction from the whole committee, to figure out exactly how it is that we want to look at the question.
The question that we're looking at, as I've said there - the overall objective is to determine whether or not voting patterns in Nova Scotia are, in fact, declining as the evidence appears on the surface to show. To find out if that's the case and then to place that in sort of the larger framework and trends of voting patterns - not just here in Nova Scotia, but in other provinces federally, and to some extent internationally as well. There does seem to be a sense that public participation in the democratic process does seem to be declining, not just here in Nova Scotia but in fact globally in some instances - in those countries where there is democracy. Whether that's an accurate perception or whether it's something that is a perception driven by the media or other means, is something that needs to be determined.
How I'm going to go about doing that is, I've already started doing a fairly thorough - and boy, there's a lot of information out there on this in many venues - looking at doing a literature review, basically, which is a fancy way of saying looking at it from both the media perspective and the academic literature. There's a fair chunk of academic literature on the issue of participation in the democratic process; looking at information and statistics, both from our own province and other provinces in the country, as well as at the federal level. Then in terms of sort of the bigger picture, looking at some of the academic literature and some of the media from other countries - specifically in the western sphere, I suppose. The U.K., Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, of course, are mainly what I'll be focusing on.
The second thing that I'd like to do which I think will be helpful - and really, I'm looking for your direction on (a) whether this is a good idea and a feasible one and (b) how to go about doing it. I'd like to talk to each MLA - the sitting MLAs currently, all 52 of you - because I think the MLAs are probably the experts in their own ridings and the way things work in their own ridings, both in terms of past elections and what they're hearing from members of the public. Are they voting, do they want to vote, what kinds of issues they have surrounding that, etc. I know everybody is very busy and they don't have a lot of time to spend with this, but a short 15- to 20-minute, one-on-one interview. I had thought about doing it while the House is sitting, that was a suggestion and if that's feasible, that's great; if not, perhaps we can look at other ways - as I said, I'm looking for direction from you on that.
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The third thing, of course, is public consultation and one of the things I'm hoping again to get direction from the committee on is how to do that. Typically, if you're trying to find out why people are not engaging - if, in fact, that's what they're not doing - the traditional way of public consultation, having a public meeting, may not be the most effective way of doing it. There may be other ways of doing it with small focus groups or going and talking to high school social studies classes, those kinds of things about youth engagement, going to the universities. Again, that's something I'm looking for some direction from the committee on.
Finally, I'm not sure if there are other stakeholders involved in this that perhaps the committee may have some ideas in there, or whether just doing the public consultation and talking to the MLAs is going to be sufficient to our needs, but if anyone has ideas on that as well, that would be really helpful to me and, of course, the final deliverable will be a very thorough report to the select committee.
The timeline for this - I've actually started the literature review and it's a lot to plow through. My office right now looks as though a nuclear bomb of paper has gone off. So that's sort of an ongoing process and it's something that will take place throughout the summer. With more and more stuff, that's one of the problems - or not a problem, I suppose it's one of the features of doing this kind of thing - that the more you find, the more ideas you get for other stuff to look at. So that's an ongoing thing. I've put March to June, which is when I expect to have the bulk of it completed, but it will be continuing on past that.
As I said, May, while the House is sitting - I suppose that depends on whether we have an election or not - was my idea for interviewing the individual MLAs but, again, that's open to feedback on that. Then through the summer, through July and August, would be pulling everything together from the interviews and from the literature. As I say, to analyse and synthesize those findings and pull it all together.
Then we're looking at the public consultation process in the Fall. I had thought of perhaps doing it in the summer, but it has been suggested that's a bad time to try to get hold of people. Everybody's on vacation, school is out, you know - people just aren't available during the summer so I have moved that to September and October. The hope is that the first two parts of the puzzle will be done and then we'll get the public consultation process, which leaves me not a whole lot of time to pull it together and do the analysis on it, but enough if the other stuff is done in advance of that. In November the draft of the first report will be made available and a final report following the feedback from the draft will be done around the beginning or middle of December. So that's basically the timeline.
As I said, I'm here at your disposal and I'm really looking for direction from the committee on how this is going to work, whether you think this is a good outline or whether you think there are things that need to be changed. I've discussed the literature review, the
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MLAs and the format, so basically that's how I've laid this process out. I look forward to hearing suggestions and comments from the committee. Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Paula. Mr. Bain.
MR. KEITH BAIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Paula. I think what you're presenting is exactly what we spoke about at the subcommittee meetings. One thing you did mention at subcommittee was the involvement of the Democracy 250 committee.
MS. ROMANOW: Yes.
MR. BAIN: I know that over the past while the committee has been going around to the various high schools throughout the province and I was fortunate enough to attend one in Cape Breton, it's not that long ago. There were 100 students, around 100 I guess, at that particular forum. I think a lot of us perceived that the students aren't in touch with what's going on and by going to that session that was there, it was certainly an eye-opener. They know a lot of what's going on and I think you could almost sense their pleasure in being engaged. I guess that's where I'm going. So maybe - and I know you will be doing this with the Democracy 250 committee, the exchange of ideas in that respect. So I was really pleased with what I saw.
[9:15 a.m.]
MS. ROMANOW: Yes, they were happy to be included in the process.
MR. BAIN: Yes, exactly.
MS. ROMANOW: Okay, good.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Theriault.
MR. HAROLD THERIAULT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Paula, you mentioned speaking to the MLAs about what's going on in the ridings. When it comes to elections in my riding for the last couple that I've been through, if it wasn't for my campaign manager, I wouldn't know anything. So probably to know what's going on in a riding, the campaign managers would probably be the best bet, you know, and maybe the MLAs could bring our campaign managers to a meeting here in the city. It's something that I could do, that's for sure. That would probably be the best way to go.
MS. ROMANOW: I don't mind travelling, if it makes it easier for me to go to them, that would be fine by me.
MR. THERIAULT: I'm not speaking for all the MLAs, just myself.
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MS. ROMANOW: Okay, that's very good feedback. Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. MacDonald.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Well, it certainly looks like a very sensible work plan, I have to say. There are a couple of things I'm wondering about. One of the things I think we had talked about initially - this is based on our perceptions, I guess, of particular populations that may not participate at a very high rate - Aboriginal communities and African Nova Scotian communities and people who live in poverty quite often as well. So I'm thinking around the public consultation process, the idea of doing targeted focus groups in particular areas where you might capture populations like First Nations people, or what have you.
The other thing - and this is a question, really - is around reviewing. Are you planning to review or analyze the voting patterns in Nova Scotia over a period of time to give us a good picture of that?
MS. ROMANOW: Yes.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: That will be part of the literature, reviewing the literature and the background?
MS. ROMANOW: Absolutely. In fact, Chris and I have been working on that already.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: The last group - and this is something I perceived through my experience running in multiple elections - is that increasingly in the urban areas in particular, the votes are dropping more dramatically than they are in rural communities. So to be able to capture a more mobile - I think people are more mobile in the urban settings and they're less attached to their community and constituency. To somehow be able to capture their experience as part of what's going on, I think is really important. I don't know if that's clear but . . .
MS. ROMANOW: Yes, and actually Halifax is an interesting city because we have so many universities here. Certainly in the youth vote, because it's so transient, people coming from their own communities, that's certainly one of the things I need to look at.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: If I could just give you an example from the last election, I was knocking on doors in an apartment building and meeting a fair number of people who were very unapologetic, saying no, I won't be voting in this election because I'm not from here. I'd have an opportunity to ask them where they were from and they would tell me they were from Bathurst, New Brunswick or Charlottetown or wherever - generally from the Atlantic Provinces - and they would be here in Halifax. It would often turn out they had
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lived here for 7, 13, 15 years, but they still identified as a resident of another province, another town, another city outside of the area, and took no interest in the local and provincial - felt totally unattached to the province, and were perfectly eligible to vote.
MS. ROMANOW: That's interesting.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: No sense of identity, and you compound that with people in the military. We have a significant number of military personnel in our urban communities quite often and they also identify with the province that they originated - Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec. You see that a lot.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. MacDonald. I think it raises another point, that it may be useful for us, as a committee, to have another discussion with Ms. McCulloch at some point. I think we have a lot of questions around some of the rules that still apply here in Nova Scotia when it comes to voting, and many people are confused as to at what point they can vote in the area where they live. I think as a committee that one of our goals is to find ways to make it as easy as possible for people to vote. I think it's clear that the election laws in Nova Scotia were designed a long time ago to prevent people from voting twice or from cheating in elections. I think it's time we realized that there aren't many people looking to vote twice in Nova Scotia, there are too many people not voting once in Nova Scotia. (Laughter)
Certainly while I know that we do have a committee that's set up to deal with those matters, I'm finding it more and more frustrating that the elected members aren't part of that process, especially since we are the ones who will have to make legislative changes to address many of those problems.
I think at some point we may want to take the opportunity to invite Ms. McCulloch again to share some of the challenges that exist with our current rules. I know I've spoken with her about the mail-in ballot and the old proxy voting system and while we've gone a long way, it's still much too burdensome a process to get people to vote, but certainly your point is well taken. Mr. Parker.
MR. CHARLES PARKER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a couple of questions on your plan. It looks generally good but just a couple of things I'm wondering about. The public consultation process, I'm just not sure - is that something that you are conducting or are the MLAs on the select committee involved in some capacity with that, like in the focus groups or the high school groups - who is involved?
MS. ROMANOW: My understanding from talking to the subcommittee would be that it would be the members of the committee. I'll be there, too, but basically that it would be engagement with the committee members themselves.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: If I could answer that, Mr. Parker, when we first met as a committee I think there was a general consensus that this couldn't be your typical type committee of just going around the province, calling public meetings and waiting for people to show up. I think we've all accepted that, if we're going to be able to figure out why people aren't voting, the chances of them showing up at a public meeting to tell us, well I didn't go vote and here's the reasons why, are probably not going to be overly successful.
Instead, I believe it was the general consensus that we would ask Paula to do the research first, look at the statistics, look at the evidence and at that point we'd be able to sit down, as a committee, and figure out what would be the best way to get feedback on these issues - is it through public meetings, is it through focus groups, is it through sitting in high schools - maybe have one school per school district and invite administrators to send students from the different schools.
There's a whole host of ideas we've talked about but I think it was agreed that let's at least look at the evidence first. I think Mr. Steele on numerous occasions has made the point of while we always say that young people aren't voting anymore, his question has always been, did they ever vote, and is that really a new phenomenon or something that's gone back even to his early days of first voting that he's mentioned before.
I think Paula would not be in a position right now to be able to answer that because those are decisions we are going to have to make. After she has completed her work and started gathering that evidence, we will be in a position at that point to try to determine what is the best way to achieve success in trying to get as many Nova Scotians as possible, of all age groups, to be able to give us input on this matter.
MR. PARKER: Okay, I had a second question here, too. On the overall objective it mentions conducting research and other means to try to find out - you know it mentions determining whether or not voting patterns in Nova Scotia are declining. Well I think that's a given, I think that's obvious. I'm assuming it's implied in the objective that we're looking to see what are the solutions or what are some recommendations on how to get people to vote. That's really what it's all about, isn't it. It doesn't state that specifically, it just mentions to see whether it is declining or not but I guess the implication certainly is that we're going beyond that to some recommendations.
MS. ROMANOW: Yes, there would certainly be recommendations at the end of the report. I think that's perhaps sort of the next stage in the process, to first figure out is there a problem, how big it is and then look at some ways of fixing it.
So the short answer is yes, it's pretty hard to separate the two when you're doing research.
MR. PARKER: It just doesn't mention it specifically, okay.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Parker. Mr. Steele.
MR. GRAHAM STEELE: Let me just say that I agree with Mr. Parker's point. I think it's important for that point to be included in the research plan - that we're trying to figure out what the problem is and Mr. Parker will recall that it's not exactly obvious what's happening to voting patterns. That is one of the things we need to find out but the fundamental thing that we are doing, once we identified the problem is what to do about it. There are a lot of solutions out there, some of which seem to me to have very little to do with encouraging people to vote. They wouldn't have any effect on encouraging people to vote so what we are trying to figure out is what is likely to work and what has been tried elsewhere and has worked and is not working. So I do think it is important for that to be put down as part of the overall objective.
Because the subcommittee has been working with you, Paula, it won't surprise you that I think this is a very good outline and I think it will meet the needs. Just reiterating again what Mr. Parker said - I think we all agree that the public consultation will be done by the MLAs. That is partly why we are here. It's the research being done before that which will help to focus and allow us to plan over the Summer the public consultation process so that when we actually hit the ground in September and October, that's not when we start thinking about public consultation, that's when it all rolls out.
In that vein, I just wanted to mention that we should - when I say we, I actually mean you - be alert to things like annual meetings with certain key groups. For example, one of the groups I keep coming back to is the Acadian group because Acadians have, by far, the highest voter turnout across the province. So things like the annual meeting of the Fédération acadienne de la Nouvelle-Écosse would be a good opportunity for us to say to them, hey, how about having a session with us? At that annual meeting, Acadians from all over the province get together and at no cost to us, we could have a session with them, have a focus group with them. Their last AGM was in October and I expect their next AGM - but that is just one example. We could do the same with Aboriginal groups, groups dealing with poverty because, like Maureen, I absolutely agree - in my riding, the lowest voter turnout is in the areas where people have the lowest incomes. There is a direct connection.
So we should be - when I say we, I mean you - alert to these kind of AGMs or people gathering for other reasons that we can join in and say how about having a session with us on voting.
Finally, I know that this is not strictly speaking a research item, it's more a communications item but I want to make sure the communications part of this doesn't get lost. Throughout the process that Paula is following, we should have an established channel by which people can communicate with us if they want to. I'm thinking of like a page on the government Web site that allows people to make submissions. I don't want, at the end of this process, anybody ever to say, well, they never asked me or never gave me any opportunity
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to have any input. It seems to me the sooner we open that channel to receive information, the better, so that anybody who has something to say to us knows exactly how to do that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We might be about to check with Democracy 250 to see if we can even just build on a link to their site or, if we need a complete site ourselves, I am not sure who in government - if it's Communications Nova Scotia, Dave, or not - who would be responsible for the creation of a Web site but the quicker we can get it up, the better.
MR. DAVID WHYNACHT: I will check it. I know that Communications Nova Scotia does do that but a lot of times the departments themselves do that as well. So I will check in and see.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Because in our case we don't specifically fall under any department, I guess, so that is one of the challenges that we face. It would be great if we could quickly get a site up. Come on up, Margaret.
[9:30 a.m.]
MS. MARGARET MURPHY: We could possibly do it on the Legislature Web site. So we will look into that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Perfect. Thank you, Margaret.
Mr. Wilson.
[9:31 a.m. Ms. Maureen MacDonald took the Chair.]
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Probably, Paula, it looks like you are going to be busy, to say the least. I am wondering what part you see the political Parties playing in all of this and do you intend to contact - and I say that, I certainly don't want any of this to be politicized - I would say contact with the Parties involved here would be vital to doing your research.
Mr. Theriault made an excellent point - I think you give us far too much credit for being experts in politics in Nova Scotia. It's the people behind us usually that drive us. It's the people behind us who know the voting patterns and know what's going on within our riding that do most of the work and it would be important to talk to some of those people. I would suggest that maybe that would be done at a Party level where you would have to start. So I don't know, you probably have already thought of that but just to keep it in mind that at some point I think all Parties in the process in Nova Scotia should be contacted to just get their point of view and hear what they're saying.
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It's important as well, I think - you probably know this but it's important for all of us that in Nova Scotia, just from my personal experience, one size doesn't fit all in terms of voter trends, in terms of what's right for one. You won't attract young people to turn out in some riding by coming up with one, you know - it's a really mixed bag that you're going to find out there. We found that in a lot of cases. Unfortunately right now, in Glace Bay, if you were to hold an election right now, you might have to contact a lot of people in Alberta in order to get them to vote. You've got a lot of work, I sympathize with you because it looks like you've got a lot of work ahead of you.
The timeline may seem like a long time but I can see that you're going to have to cram a lot of work in during the summer months and all that, but just to keep in mind that it's not necessarily us. An interview with us may give you some indication of what we do in individual ridings but I know in my case, if you were to ask me what the voter trends are and tracking people, and what we do and that sort of thing, I would have to refer you to a couple of people who manage the campaigns there because really I wouldn't want to come off looking that dumb.
MS. ROMANOW: No fear, I don't think.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): No comment from the Chair.
MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Dunn.
MR. PATRICK DUNN: Just a couple of comments and I certainly agree with the last comments. They're very accurate. (Interruptions) I've got to switch gears here. I concur with the vice-chair also in regard to meeting people, going door to door. They're people not from your community and not from your province but have been there for 15 months, two and a half years, and are totally unaware of really what's going on, not participating, and no expectation of anticipating.
Something the Chair had mentioned too with regard to - I'll call it confusion with the methods we have to vote. For example, you can talk electronic, you can talk proxy, whatever, but an awareness and education with regard to making it a little easier I guess for people.
MS. ROMANOW: Yes.
MR. DUNN: Perhaps I'll just throw this on the table - the constituency assistant might be someone you may want to perhaps talk to or talk to some of them. They might be of some assistance or help with regard to voter trends.
MADAM CHAIR: I have no further speakers on the list. Mr. Theriault.
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MR. HAROLD THERIAULT: Just one comment, Madam Chair, and I read this somewhere too that people who don't vote sometimes help elect bad representatives. That caught my eye. I read that a long while ago somewhere. So maybe that could be a slogan of some sort.
MADAM CHAIR: Just further to Mr. Theriault's point, I lived in the U.K. for awhile and I remember their electoral office doing a campaign to try to get young people to vote. One of the posters they developed stays in my mind. It was a group of elderly, primarily white men, in suits. They were sitting in rows in like a soccer stadium, I guess, and the caption was that these people vote and make decisions about where our country is going to go - do you? It was really quite stark if you looked at it and you started to think about, you know, who votes and who makes decisions and that kind of stuff.
So there are really interesting campaigns that have been run focussed on getting youth to vote in lots of places. I look forward to your research. I'm sure we all do.
MR. STEELE: Do you think it would be useful to have a motion to endorse the work plan that's been put in front of us?
MADAM CHAIR: Certainly, that makes sense. Seconder? Mr. Dunn. Any further discussion? Mr. Steele.
MR. STEELE: Just that I believe, I'm thinking in particular of Mr. Parker's comment and some of the others, there are some modifications that have been suggested. With the modifications, I think on which we have a consensus here.
MADAM CHAIR: Would all those in favour of the motion please say Aye. Contrary minded, Nay.
The motion is carried.
I think that now concludes the business of the committee. We all look forward to working with you.
MS. ROMANOW: Likewise.
MADAM CHAIR: I know that every member of the committee is available to provide any advice or information, support, as we can.
MS. ROMANOW: Excellent, thank you.
MADAM CHAIR: Thank you very much. We stand adjourned.
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[The committee adjourned at 9:35 a.m.]
