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
Mr. Michel Samson (Chairman)
Hon. Mark Parent (Vice-Chairman)
Mr. Patrick Dunn
Mr. Keith Bain
Ms. Maureen MacDonald (Vice-Chair)
Mr. Graham Steele
Mr. Charles Parker
Mr. David Wilson (Glace Bay)
Mr. Harold Theriault
[Hon. Mark Parent was replaced by Hon. James Muir.]
In Attendance:
Ms. Kim Leadley
Select Committee Clerk
Ms. Sherri Mitchell
Select Committee Clerk
Witnesses
Mr. Raymond Tynes
Councillor, Ward 1
Ms. Marilyn Parker
[Page 1]
TRURO, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2008
SELECT COMMITTEE ON
PARTICIPATION IN THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
7:00 P.M.
CHAIRMAN
Mr. Michel Samson
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD (Chair): Good evening, everyone, I think we'll call the meeting to order. Mr. Samson, who is the chairman of this committee, can't be with us this evening because he is being recognized, I understand, at the House of Assembly tonight.
So we don't have a large audience but it's not the quantity that counts, perhaps it's the quality that will matter. We've been meeting - this is our third meeting. We started in Sydney on Monday night and last evening the committee was in Antigonish County, in St. Andrews, and tomorrow we go to Amherst.
We have no persons scheduled to speak here this evening but that does not prohibit any members of the audience from coming forward to speak, if they so wish. So at this time, I think what I will do is ask if there are any members of the audience who wish to come forward and speak. If so, we will convene and members will then introduce themselves, if that is agreeable to the members.
At this point I will ask if there is - I see Mr. Tynes, please join us, thank you. It's nice to see you again. Before we begin and we have introductions, I've been asked to relay that this meeting, as a public meeting, is being recorded and there may be members of the media in attendance, although I don't think that's the case at the moment.
We have members of the staff to the committee and Legislative Televison here. So with that, I would ask that the members of the committee just introduce themselves and then, Mr. Tynes, if you would indicate your full name and where you live and the floor will be yours.
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[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. RAYMOND TYNES: I'm Raymond Tynes, Councillor for Ward 1 here in the Town of Truro. I came here because I thought there was going to be a lot of people here and I could just listen. Actually I forget who it was who said maybe I should say a few words, based on my experience in getting involved with politics.
Where I grew up, it became more of a social activist starting off raising concerns of the African Nova Scotian community, especially where I live, and the issues around here. As I got older - and I had the good fortune to travel all over the United States and Canada because I drive a tractor-trailer for a living, but I don't just drive when I go to other areas - I want to see how people live. So I've been to the south, the west, and more, and I want to tell you, there's no other place like Nova Scotia - no place I'd rather live than Nova Scotia.
Having said that, we're not perfect, we've still got a lot of work to do. There seems to be a lot of apprehension with regard to why people won't vote. Some will tell you they won't come out and vote because they don't feel they're going to be listened to. They seem to think that when they speak to you the next day or whatever, they should see something in the headlines. I mean let's face it, everybody who comes to you with an issue, their issue is as important as anybody else's, so that turns people off.
The other thing that turns a whole lot of people off is Party politics. I represent people, they like to call me a people person. A good example of Party politics, and I might just as well say it the way it is, what happened to our Member of Parliament, Bill Casey, is Party politics. He didn't follow the rules and that turned a lot of people off. But as you saw in this election, the federal election, the people spoke. I think the turnout was very good for this area.
Another part of the problem is communication. I think if you're going to do anything, you have to continue it at the - start getting it introduced at the high school level and be more involved in community meetings. Another part of discouragement in politics is, I ran three times before I got elected to anything. The reason I ran - because I said I would come before a group like yourself and I would let you know all the problems in the community and then I'd walk away. Then one day somebody challenged me and said, why don't you be part of the solution instead of just telling us what our problems are. I never had that happen before, but what they forgot to tell me was that not everybody was going to just give me a free ride.
So when I started trying to get involved in politics, I was beaten pretty good. There was mistrust not only from, I'll say, the White community but there was also mistrust from the minority community - the Black community where I come from - as to why I was getting into it. It must have been just to feather my own cap or whatever. But when I started dealing with people's issues on a one-to-one basis or in the community and that, and they saw some results, then the trust factor started happening.
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I got involved in committees and I stayed on top of the issues. To give you an example, my first election that I ran - well, not my first election - when I ran for council, the first term that I got elected, the first election had to go to the Supreme Court. I had 612 or 615 votes, two votes separating three candidates. But there were a whole lot more irregularities so the Supreme Court threw it out, but they did a strange thing.
Here in Truro we're in a ward system where there are two members per ward, but they split it. They said the first candidate had won by about 75 votes and the other three of us there were two votes separating. So the Supreme Court said the first candidate can go ahead and keep her seat but there has to be another election for the other seat. My argument was, well, I've got a problem with that because now there are going to be a whole lot of people who are going to be able to vote twice. Then instead of just keeping to the two candidates who had run in the previous election, they opened it up to everybody.
So then a third candidate jumped in. One candidate had dropped out and another one jumped in and, believe it or not, as you know most municipal elections, especially by-elections, you're lucky if there's a 5 per cent turnout. This by-election had just a little over 30 per cent turnout in February. I had 415 votes whereas the other two candidates together only had 405 votes and, yes, I walked the beat pretty good.
The lessons we learned out of that - I mean, I had to knock on every door just to keep reminding people. Even up to the last moment people were saying, I forgot about it. I don't know how we're going to, you know, really communicate to get people out but I believe that we've got to start the process in high school. I got my family totally involved in politics because I eat, sleep and drink it. But there is still a lot of mistrust of Party politics out there and I'm going to give you another area of mistrust is that you may get elected but you don't run things. We may see some things that are done to help us, but you have senior bureaucrats and deputy ministers who really run things. Governments come and go but these things continue.
I guess I'm a person of a different stepping stone. When I got elected, I made sure that the people knew if I said there was change coming that I was fighting for the change. One of the problems I had, and I'll tell you another experience. After I got elected on town council, we went to a meeting in Halifax for new councillors. I had a senior bureaucrat stand up and say, now, this is what council is supposed to do. Anybody who knows me knows the first thing I do is put up my hand and say, excuse me, sir, I was elected by the people. Give me the Municipal Elections Act telling me what my boundaries are but nobody is going to tell me what I can do or not do and how I should present myself. I'm going to give you my beliefs and my ideas and you had better be able to run with them. If you can't, then I want somebody who will support my views because I was elected by the people.
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So anyway, that sort of set the tone and everybody knew who Raymond Tynes was - a straight shooter. But how do you get people out to vote, it's not just an election thing. You've got to be in contact with them all the time and I have people coming to me and talking about Nova Scotia issues, federal issues and municipal issues. As Mr. Muir said, if I have issues which affect the provincial government, I always put them in contact with his office, or whoever, in the provincial government. I always tell people, you know, you don't have to go just to him, you can go to the other Parties and that just keeps us on our toes a little bit. However, I have to say, I have an excellent relationship with Mr. Muir so I don't have a problem making sure people's issues and concerns are heard, and they like that.
Now, mind you, I don't go back and try to find out what he did or didn't do, that's his area, my area is municipal.
There's not a whole lot I can say again except that you have to get out there and somehow or another get to the young people; get them more involved and don't wait until election time. This municipal election that just finished, as you said, in the Black community here in Truro we had - from my count and for what I can see - we had about a 90 per cent turnout rating but that was because it was also school board election too. I didn't even run, I was acclaimed. So you get them involved, you get them excited, they will come out, but you have to involve young people. You just can't have these things and then say when it's over, thank you very much for your support, and walk away. Again it's also, and I don't care what Party you belong to, Minister Muir and I try to chat at least once a month just to keep involved in the issues that are going on in this area. I believe as a municipal councillor I have a duty to make sure my member of the Legislature knows what's going on in the area.
[7:30 p.m.]
I want to talk about the school board legislation that you passed a number of years ago that would allow for an African Nova Scotia school board seat. If I can tell you what's turning some people off there, is there is still a lot of confusion. Why can only Blacks vote for an African Nova Scotia school board member? Somehow or another, you have this whole connection to the Black community, if I can say it that way, and I think you know what the legislation is. The problem with that is, for example, you have First Nations who appoint their member. The African Nova Scotia communities decide to have an election but now in your large concentrated areas like Halifax, Dartmouth and Preston areas you can get results the same day. Here it took two and a half days to get the results of who won the election or a vote count.
There are a whole lot of strange rules. Nobody is allowed to say anything, they're sitting there and I'll give you an example. Here in Truro, the rule was 25 votes or more they counted them here - less than 25 votes, they would put in a sealed envelope and send it to the returning officer assigned to that. Well, it's not fair. You mean to tell me if there are only 10 ballots there, a person can't count and say A got X number of votes, B got X number of votes
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and C got X number of votes? Well, there's nothing complicated about that but no, because it's less than 25 it's sealed. Now, when I ran for the school board it took five days to declare the winner while everybody else knew who was where.
The other confusing part, and again that turned a lot of people off - and then you have people saying, well, why is there special consideration just for the African Nova Scotian community? It's never been put out there as an educational tool to explain the reason why it's done this way. I even have a problem with it. I have a problem with it in the sense that you should be able to vote for one or the other but just not both.
There is a stigma attached to it when you walk up and somebody says, what do you want, the African Nova Scotia school board or the regular school board? Those are the words they use. People were saying, why do I have to go up and why do I have to ask? I should be given one ballot that says, check one box. So those are the kinds of things that really have ticked off the African Nova Scotian community - outside of the metro area. It's so big there, they don't have to worry about it. Anyway, that's the one area where we have an issue and I've got nothing else to say, but if you have any questions you want to ask me . . .
MADAM CHAIR: Thank you very much for your presentation. Mr. Parker.
MR. CHARLES PARKER: Thank you, Madam Chair. Raymond, very interesting history you've had along the road with the school board and on council. You mentioned earlier you have a problem with Party politics and you're not totally happy with the type of system we have. I guess as councillor you're elected to serve your people but you're not representing a Party, but when you get to the provincial or federal level then we have Parties, as you know. Do you feel there's a better alternative to the Party system that we presently have?
MR. TYNES: I suppose I better be clear here. I don't have a problem with Party politics except that when you're elected by the people you may represent a Party, but you go to the people and you say you're going to do this, a, b, or c, then if a, b, or c goes against what your Party is putting out there, you have a decision to make. Do I vote on Party lines or do I vote the way the people asked me to vote? There can be a real conflict there as we have seen in the federal election. I guess I definitely wouldn't want to go to the American system, after awhile it starts to get boring, dragged out. I like our system, you get it over with and you get it over with fast.
I don't have the answer to it except that I think other than you have to make a conviction on whether you're going to somehow try to balance what the people have elected you for and what your Party stands for. If you don't do a very good job of selling to the people that this is our Party's position then, I guess, it's going to reflect the next time there is an election. I don't have a real answer.
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MR. CHARLES PARKER: It is a tough one and I guess you're always caught between Party discipline and voting your conscience. Sometimes there are consequences when you don't follow the Party line, as we saw with your Member of Parliament. On the other hand, you're there to represent your community and your people and the issues they bring to you, so it's a dilemma, really. Do you follow what the Party Leader is saying or do you vote your conscience on what you think your community wants? It's a tough one but is there a better alternative? I don't know what it is either.
I'm just wondering, other than similar to a council, the Government of Nunavut in the Northwest Territories - they don't have the Party system but they elect their people to represent their community and then they choose a Premier and Cabinet after the people are elected. Similarly to selecting a warden in a municipality here in Nova Scotia, but there's no Party caucus involved at all.
MR. TYNES: Just a final thing I'll say on that is I like Party politics, but having said that I would hope that nobody would ever put me in the position to go against my constituents. But then again, you have some tough decisions to make and, again, I can only talk about my own experience, I make decisions at council.
There used to be a whole lot of complaints of discrimination and issues like that, you don't see a whole lot of that now. People don't come crying wolf and I let them know, don't cry it because it isn't there; if it were there I'd be the first. I guess it's a matter of who you are, the integrity and respect that you get from the people. You do have to balance it but then you better be able to sell it to the people why you are doing what you're doing. Let me give you this other example very quickly.
A lot of people say I represent the Black community. I don't, I represent Ward 1, which is made up of people from all walks of life. I'm proud of where I come from and trust me, I think there's an advantage to being a minority on a council because then people get to see our points of view but I just don't - that assumption will always be there. When an issue comes across the table, I have to balance what's fair for everybody but then I don't just vote and leave it like that. I explain to the people why I did what I did, whether it be that I supported the rest of the council on their views or I go against the rest of council.
Very rarely do I vote against the rest of council but I make it very clear to the people why I did what I did. Or I make it very clear to the rest of council why I'm going with the position I'm going. So it is a difficult issue but it's a conscience issue and 99.9 per cent of the time I think everybody probably won't run into these problems, but there's that rare occasion as we have seen.
MR. CHARLES PARKER: Thank you.
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MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Steele and then Mr. Dunn.
MR. GRAHAM STEELE: Mr. Tynes, have you always voted since you turned 18?
MR. TYNES: Yes.
MR. STEELE: And when you were a young man who reached voting age, is it your recollection that the adults around you, in your family and in your neighbourhood, that they voted too?
MR. TYNES: No, not everybody. My father was a very active person and community organizer and activist and always involved uptown. What I found was that there were a whole lot of people who said, I'm not going to waste my time to go and vote, my vote doesn't matter. Those seemed to be the same people who kept coming with the issues, it's just the way I saw it.
MR. STEELE: And that's back when you were a young man?
MR. TYNES: Yes, and I still see it today.
MR. STEELE: Here's what I'm getting at here. Part of what this committee is looking at is not just that the voter turnout is fairly low, because it is - it's that it used to be higher. It wasn't always like this. For example, we've always had Party politics but that didn't used to be a barrier to people. Maybe Party politics turns people off but it didn't used to, so I'm not sure what's different. Here's my question for you now, why do you think that more people used to vote than do now? Back in the 1950s and 1960s, it would be around 80 per cent; through the 1970s and 1980s, it was 70 per cent; and it was only after the 1993 election here in Nova Scotia that we dropped down to 60 per cent and it stayed at 60 per cent but it is now dropping below 60 per cent. What used to be different 20 or 30 years ago that made more people vote, in your opinion?
MR. TYNES: More people were in tune with the issues but we didn't have a lot of the things that we're dealing with today. Again, let me tell you what I'm hearing about why the people don't vote today. It's because they say, what's the sense of voting, they won't listen anyway - that's what a lot of them are saying. Then there are a lot of them - you keep being bombarded with attacks - I can't be bothered with that stuff. I have better things to do, nothing's going to change, the economy's not going to change. But what I do find though, the young people - for example, three out of four of my kids went to university, they got involved with issues and we talked about issues. I'm saying that we have to get that back down to the high school levels of involving young people and talk about the issues.
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For example, like school board councils, more diversity there, talking about why their vote matters. You stop a young person on the street and ask them if they're going to go vote: Are you of age? They say yeah. Are you going to vote? Nah, I have better things to do with my time. Whereas, you take a person coming out of a student council meeting or they're involved in a committee, oh, yes, I'm going to go vote because I have issues and I'm supporting this Party because they reflect my issues. But there aren't enough of these people involved in committees.
We need to get our young people more involved in these kinds of issues than those video games. Or we could do as Barack Obama does with all his money, he now can put those little blurbs on a video game that say "Vote for me."
[7:45 p.m.]
Anyway, that's the way I see it. Today, those people who want to be connected and when you look at why they're connected it's because they're involved in committees and councils and things like that.
MADAM CHAIR: Mr. Dunn.
MR. PATRICK DUNN: We've been receiving a lot of suggestions from people with regard to how to improve and perhaps make the polls more accessible as far as being more convenient to vote. One suggestion was doing it electronically via the Internet. We also realize that more people today have access to the Internet than a few years ago. I'm just looking for your opinion with regard to that. Do you think that would be something worthwhile looking at, examining, analyzing?
MR. TYNES: I'm not a supporter of that. I'm a supporter of getting the people out, somehow getting them to the polling stations. What I see happening in the States right now, they're trying two or three different experiments - in Florida, drive-ups and I think New Brunswick is even looking at something along those lines. But I'm not a fan of that, I'm a fan of good old-fashioned get out there.
Back in the early days - it's no secret, I've always been involved with the PC Party here - call people up: Want a drive? We'll come and get you. A lot of times we'd just knock on doors and get the people out. We still do that in municipal politics, it's more of a personal contact. I realize it's a bigger thing here in your arena, but when I ran for the school board - I don't know if you know this - Chignecto-Central Regional School Board is twice the size of P.E.I., and when I was given a voters' list for the school board, it was like that. It was every voter in East Hants, Cumberland, Pictou and Colchester. I said, how do I find my electorates in here? You're the one who has to figure out who's black and who's not - that's what I was told. I threw the list away and right away, I went to the areas where I knew -
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Springhill, Amherst, Truro and New Glasgow - and then I thought, let me check with the school and they can tell me where the kids are.
To this day, even with this election, that's the package that the candidates got. The first question in the community is, is this the way that we get treated? They just give us this big thing and say you figure out who is who. You don't have to do that. When you get, as in Ward 1 an electoral list, I don't have to say, you know, is so and so the person I need to contact? So I don't know, I don't like electronic voting especially on the Internet.
MADAM CHAIR: Are there any further questions ? Thank you very much. I'm sorry, Mr. Theriault.
MR. HAROLD THERIAULT: Thank you, Raymond. It was me awhile ago who said that you should get up there and tell us your experience because you started to tell me that there and I thought it was very interesting and it was, and I thank you for that.
We talked about Party politics and you mentioned Mr. Casey as an example of how people didn't care about the Party, they cared about the person they thought would truly represent them. Do you know what the turnout was in this riding or have an idea how big it was? I know the percentage that Mr. Casey went in and I'm just wondering about the percentage of people who came out, to the overall percentage of 59 per cent. Do you have any idea?
MR. TYNES: No, I don't, to be honest with you. I was just looking at the majority that he won by, that's what I was looking at percentage-wise. I just figured that anybody who could win by around 21,000 to 22,000 votes, it had to be a pretty good turnout. But having said that, again his experience is, I hope, one of those rarer ones that comes along only once in awhile. People can usually work things out to some kind of compromise that benefits all.
My experience - again, it could have been a real turnoff when you have to go to the Supreme Court to show there were irregularities and the judge rules in their favour. Then you've got to turn around and go out in the middle of February and knock on every door again. The second time people looked at you and said, well, we just saw you a few months ago, you really must want this or you care about this and you have our support. I mean the first time I ever ran for a municipal council seat wasn't even in my own ward, it was in another ward, I got 98 votes. Everybody looked at me and said, man, you were humiliated - 98 votes. I said, yes, but that's 98 more people who know me now, you know, but you've got to keep at it.
Everyone has their own individual story. Mine was that I wasn't giving up because I believe - and I'll say this one last thing. Somebody was talking about Barack Obama and the pressure that must be on that man trying to be the first and I looked at him and I said, well, I may not be Barack Obama but I know what it's like to be a first in my area. I feel the
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same pressure because everybody is watching what you're doing and what you're saying, you know, all the things that go with it.
So without putting anyone down around here, there is a big attachment when you're a visible minority breaking through. People are watching you, you know, watching you to see how you're going to do. And the news media - listen, there is no good news they're going to report. They need to see you make a mistake or be involved in some kind of controversy before they like to really get involved, because if all we talked about were good things here, the media is going to say we met and two or three people showed up.
But if I said something controversial - it doesn't matter whether it's public or private, the media is here or not, I say what I say and I'm meaning what I say. If we said something controversial, that would be what would be played and it's like - I think it's just important that we do whatever we can to get people involved. Not just young people, because we're starting to see older people being turned off of voting too. Get them out, get more community meetings. You don't have to have this kind of a forum or set-up because this can be intimidating to a lot of people, just what you're doing. It doesn't bother me any, but it can be intimidating. Just have a room with a few people, invite them out for a coffee and a chat.
MR. THERIAULT: Never give up, Raymond, never give up.
MR. TYNES: No. Jamie taught me that.
MR. THERIAULT: Speaking of irregularities, did you see any irregularities in the federal election and in the municipal election that just went by?
MR. TYNES: To be honest with you, I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to it, except that I went and exercised my vote.
MR. THERIAULT: Do you know of many people that couldn't vote, especially in the federal election? Was that a problem around here?
MR. TYNES: The biggest problem I heard, the biggest frustration we had was this confusion about IDs and people were saying, this is it, this is the last. I came with a picture ID, or a passport, they said you have to have your address. I said, why do you need a picture ID when they just passed the law that says you don't have to take the veil off your face? Why do you have to show picture ID because if I have a veil over my face and I have my ID, you can't see what's behind the veil. These were the kinds of things people were - that was the biggest complaint, they're starting to get a little bit too heavy with the ID side of things.
I walked in, the lady says, here comes Councillor Tynes, everybody knows Raymond. Doesn't matter, still have to see his ID, still have to see his photo. I say, okay, here's my photo. This is what you run into.
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But irregularities? I can't say, it's too early to say. I mean, we just got over municipal elections and I'd like to wait until we see if there are any recounts or other things to deal with. Again, I explained what I thought was the problem with the school board elections, we have to do something to take some of that stigma that's attached to the African Nova Scotia elections because nobody wants to walk up there and hear somebody say, do you want the African Nova Scotian ballot or the regular ballot? That means we're somehow different and that's turned off quite a few people.
MR. THERIAULT: We spoke about education, we're hearing that a lot - that children need to be educated more about democracy in this country and what it's all about and what it means to them. There's also talk around mandatory voting. Some countries have it. Australia has mandatory voting and I'm not sure how it works or anything, but I keep asking people what they think of it. It's something we could think about and debate down the road, it's not something the government's thinking about yet, it's just talk. What do you think of mandatory voting in this country?
MR. TYNES: I'm against it. I say to people who come to me with issues, sometimes I ask them, did you exercise your right to vote? Nah, couldn't be bothered. You know what? You deserve what you get. That's it, straight up - don't come to me crying about issues. Doesn't matter if you vote for me or who you vote for, if you can't exercise that one fundamental right that you have, then don't come complaining. That's not to say if you have issues, I won't help you. But don't complain about the system that we have or the people who are in there. You exercise your right.
There's an old saying that used to be: A man walked by a house and he heard a dog - some of you might have heard this - moaning and groaning on the porch and he asked the man, why is that dog moaning and groaning, whining? The man says, he's laying on a nail. He said, well, why don't the dog move? He said, I guess it ain't hurtin' bad enough.
So I mean when people, if they're going to whine and moan and do nothing about it, then I guess it isn't hurting bad enough and that needs to be said too. I know it's said, you can't say those kinds of things, we're supposed to be politicians. Well, sometimes people need to hear the truth and sometimes it takes people like me and you and all of us together.
I mean, again, I'm not trying to be cynical or smart but if I walked into one part of my community - which I'll say is West Prince Street or the Ford Street area, predominantly African Nova Scotian - and I say to the people, look, I don't want to hear your foolishness, if you don't want to come out and get involved then you know whatever we do is going to be done, they'll look at me like I'm crazy and say, oh yeah. Now, if you walked in, they'd be calling you all kinds of things.
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[8:00 p.m.]
So we've got to work as a team, which means, whether you like it or not, when we go and do these kinds of things we must reflect the diversity that we have so people will lend some legitimacy to what you're trying to say. They'll see that we're working together and it's not just you against us or us against you. I'm not just saying Black, White or whatever, you put what you want to it - social level or whatever. Those are my comments.
MADAM CHAIR: Thank you very much. I'd like to indicate that there is, at the back table, a sign-up sheet if you're interested in getting a copy of the transcript or a report. At the end of our meetings around the province, they'll be sent out to people. So if you wish, you can sign the sheet. Thank you very much.
MR. TYNES: Thank you, and anytime if I can be of any help or service, in certain areas, you can call on me anytime. Minister Muir knows how to get hold of me and I think most of you will by now.
MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. We should just let you know that we have been meeting with young people around the province, as we go from community to community, as well as having some adult focus groups. So thank you again.
So this, then, concludes the presentation portion of our meeting, although I know we've heard it from one other member of our audience - I don't know if there's anybody else who wants to come forward. Marilyn, can we entice you to come and say a few words?
MS. MARILYN PARKER: Marilyn Parker from Loch Broom, Pictou County. Just to touch base on a few things here, as I was listening to the other gentleman speak - he did talk about why our vote is down and whatnot. There are a few things that I picked up - one is going back on my own experience. We do need to go back to teaching our young people about what's happening in politics and that, and having our politicians come into the schools, talking to us.
I know myself, I had them come in and talk even before I was old enough to vote, but we need to go back to that. We actually need to go back even into the elementary schools, teaching our children, giving them a pride in what's happening. That's part of our problem, there's an apathy out there. I actually do another survey where one of the questions I ask young people is whether they vote, and it's amazing the numbers who don't. But, you know, we need to go to that age, working through, encouraging them to vote - I'm not exactly sure how.
It was asked of us why we felt that voting was dropping. At one time it was certainly higher. Probably one of the reasons that was talked about is at one time back in the 1970s, we were a lot more community-oriented. We've become a lot more transient, especially the
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young people, you know; we've become a lot more moving. We don't know our own neighbours and so it's a little harder when you're going out door to door, you know, to get to know the people because you don't know - especially in bigger areas like Halifax, people aren't known to each other the way they were. So it's going to take a lot more work. But what I'd really like to talk about is the vote, it's hard to get out. We do deal with two major age groups here; we deal with our young people and in Nova Scotia, we also deal with our seniors and it's getting harder and harder to get them out, both ends, I realize that.
From my own experience working in some elections - a few things that I would like to maybe mention that might be looked at to help - and I realize getting the voters out to start with, getting people connected to get the vote out is hard. That I'm not as clear on, but for people who want to vote there's still the problem of getting them out for a number of reasons. One is they decide they want to vote but they're not on the list, they're not on the enumeration list. Right now our voting lists are made up mostly from signing yes on the tax return. That's okay if you file a tax return.
For one thing, a lot of people don't file a tax return for one reason or another and whether they do or not, they don't understand why they're asked the question and people with their privacy issues sign "no" because they don't want their name to be on what they feel is just on everybody's list.
Another option to look at, on that end, is doing mandatory enumeration - you talked about mandatory voting - doing a mandatory enumeration whether there's an election happening or not, whether it be set that it's every two years or whatever, that enumeration is done that can be shared municipally, provincially and federally. When a person lives in a spot, they live there no matter where they're voting. It's just a case of sorting them out through boundaries, and that's not as difficult as it sounds if it's done right. So doing that, preparing the people who are doing the enumerating, training them properly - most of the time if an enumeration is done, people are trained for a few hours, thrown out there to do it and they don't have the idea of how to do it. That's one thing.
Then there are still, you know, some other options. Federally they do a special ballot. We have a lot of seniors in Nova Scotia who are housebound, who cannot get out for one reason or another. It doesn't matter how close the polls are, they cannot get out. That is something to look at provincially, where you have somebody go into their home so they can vote and that could work for different set-ups.
The Internet voting - myself, I'm not as keen on that, but I do know for our young people, if we're going to make contact with our young people, we have to figure out a way to catch them on their computers. They spend a tremendous amount of time on their computers and that's the way they connect with everything else. They do their banking, they do everything. If you talk to most young people, they do everything on the computer.
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So our next step is, we're going to have to look at probably doing voting, working out all the kinks on that - it's still difficult for those who don't have a computer in their home - looking at maybe setting up central spots, whether it be in malls or libraries or wherever, private. A few years ago they used to do it with doing people's taxes - they still do it in some places. So if they can do your tax return, which is a very private matter, they should be able to do it with voting.
We're going to have to look at both our young people and our seniors. The issue of the federal election was brought up about the IDs and that. Our way of voting, when we finally get people to come out and vote, we're making it next to impossible for them to get to the actual point of putting their ballot in that box. Instead of making it easier, we're making it a lot harder.
It goes right from making sure they're on the list to start with and getting through to finding polling stations that work. As our areas are getting less and less with community halls and whatnot, our polling stations are getting further and further apart. Then when they finally do get there, to get through the system - like this last federal election, the issue of the IDs and that is right, it was a very difficult situation.
More than anything, it's going back, working all these steps out. We have to go back to the youth, starting there, way before they're old enough to vote and building in them again, and giving them a reason to want to get out and vote. Until we do that, it's going to keep falling apart.
If you look at the age group where we're losing the vote, it is in the young people. We have to work with the ones who are willing to vote, making it as easy as possible for them to vote, but for the young people coming up that aren't voting, to educate them and give them the interest to want to vote.
I guess that's all I have to say.
MADAM CHAIR: Thank you. Mr. Steele.
MR. STEELE: Thank you very much for coming forward tonight. Did you go to school in Nova Scotia?
MS. MARILYN PARKER: I did, for the latter part of my high school, yes.
MR. STEELE: Here's the reason I ask that. There has been a lot of talk about bringing some kind of civics or government education back to the schools; in fact, you used the words "going back to doing that." But we're also getting mixed messages about whether that was ever part of the curriculum, about whether we're talking about introducing
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something that has never been there before or whether it's truly going back to something that used to be there and wasn't.
We had a teacher last night in Antigonish - he was a history teacher - say no, that was never part of the curriculum. What's your recollection? Did you ever get taught civics in school?
MS. MARILYN PARKER: I said the latter part of high school; I was here for the last half of Grade 11 and Grade 12. Actually, when I referred to that, I got that when I was in Ontario. In Ontario, very much, they did talk about the different levels of government and that was something we were taught through the whole system as part of our curriculum.
When I say going back to that, what I was talking about is also having the politicians coming into the school and speaking. Yes, that was part because I actually invited - I was a member of a group that invited some politicians to come in and talk to us.
MR. STEELE: Your local MLA? (Laughter)The reason I raise this is because if it was the case that we used to teach civics and voting was high and then we stopped and voting dropped, then I can see the argument about bringing it back because the assumption would be that if you brought it back that voting would go up again. But the information, what little we have, is that it never was part of the curriculum and so it's hard to say if we just did that the youth voting would go up - and, by the way, something else you said which interests me is you said that the voters we're losing are the young people, and we don't actually have any evidence of that . . .
MS. MARILYN PARKER: Okay.
MR. STEELE: . . . because Elections Canada hasn't kept track of the age of voters before, I think, the 2000 election - or it might have been the 2004 election. We don't know whether young people used to vote in higher numbers - people have different recollections or opinions of that. My own - I'm in my mid-40s now - when I was 18, my friends weren't voting. They couldn't care less, just like now. And so it's kind of hard to say if we could get young people to vote, it would all be different.
Something else you said which I think is interesting is the group that you're having difficulty getting to vote now are actually the older people, which is my experience as well, because they're less mobile than they used to be, they're less physically well than they used to be and it's easier for them to say to themselves I'm just not going to leave the house today. I actually think that if we looked at it, if we have the evidence for it, we might find that the biggest drop has actually been in older people, not young people. Those are the people who used to vote and don't anymore.
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MS. MARILYN PARKER: Okay, I'm just going by my experience from working different elections and that. I won't say that the older people have given up voting - they're finding it harder to get out and, because of it, because of the lack of mobility in one way or another, whether it be transportation, whether it be that they are not sure where they're voting, they're struggling - they want to vote and can't, from what I dealt with through the years and that.
[8:15 p.m.]
Even with people I talk to - I'm out talking to a lot of people on a different aspect, like when I work in my job - and I heard a lot of them during these last few elections, you know, talking about it's not clear, as clear as it used to be. Like at one time, as I said, communities were smaller and you knew that down at your local community hall was where you voted, and you had friends or neighbours or relatives who could get you there if you couldn't get there yourself.
With our society, you know we've become modern and yet in another way we haven't. We've lost contact, so we have these seniors in their homes who aren't sure where to vote maybe, which is a big problem with some of them. The cards come out saying that they're voting in one place and it's been changed. Okay, that was a big issue in this last federal election, it happened to a lot of them - what the card said was not where they were voting. When they did find out where they could vote, it's a big issue, this mobility problem and that.
The only reason I brought up about the young people not voting, that has become really clearer to me. I don't know whether it was an issue, but I do know now it is, only because I happened to be having to ask that question, and it's been a real eye-opener for me asking that question to realize - like I expected it to be half and half or something at least - when I realized it's not the fact, you know that's an eye-opener. I'm talking young people 18 to 25, that particular question I'm asking . . .
MR. STEELE: And the point that I was trying to make is voting among youth is low, that's absolutely true, but my point is that it probably was always that way. We don't have any evidence that it used to be a lot higher than it is now. So sometimes I think that all the focus we have and Democracy 250 had on youth is misguided because they probably never voted anyway. We just saw - I mean, after a month's long advertising campaign aimed specifically at youth by D250, we have no basis for saying that the youth vote was any higher in this round of the federal and municipal elections, it's like it made no difference. I just wonder if maybe that's evidence that the whole focus on getting more youth to vote is misguided - they're not the ones who used to vote and then stopped.
MADAM CHAIR: Are there any further questions? Thank you, Marilyn, thanks very much.
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I think probably that concludes our presentations for this evening. Tomorrow we're in Amherst; there is no youth focus group. You've all been provided with an updated itinerary for tomorrow and for Monday. There is an adult focus group tomorrow in Amherst at 3:15 p.m. and the public meeting will be at 7:00 p.m. On Monday, we are in Yarmouth and we do have a youth focus group at the community college there, the adult focus group at the Rodd Grand, and the public meeting in the evening.
So I think that concludes the information that we need to provide to the members. If you have substitutes, people who are substituting, will you let them know about these changes on our itinerary? Thank you very much.
We stand adjourned.
[The committee adjourned at 8:19 p.m.]
