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
In Attendance:
Ms. Kim Leadley
Select Committee Clerk
Ms. Sherri Mitchell
Select Committee Clerk
Witnesses
Town of Berwick
Mr. Bob Ashley, CAO
Municipality of the County of Kings
Mr. Brian Smith, CAO
Ms. Ann Longley, Municipal Clerk
Mr. Wayne Atwater, Councillor
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KENTVILLE, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2008
PARTICIPATION IN THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
MR. CHAIRMAN: Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to tonight's meeting of the Select Committee on Participation in the Democratic Process. My name is Michel Samson, I'm the MLA for Richmond, Cape Breton, and, as well, I am Chair of this committee. This committee was formed following a resolution of the House of Assembly which was unanimously supported, which called for the creation of a committee with three representatives of each caucus, that being the NDP caucus, the PC caucus and the Liberal caucus.
The intention of the resolution was as a result of the last number of provincial elections where we have seen a decline in voter turnout in Nova Scotia and we felt that it was important that MLAs try to find ways of suggesting changes that would increase the participation of turnout in Nova Scotia.
As part of doing that, we've been undertaking review of research materials, both from here in Nova Scotia, as well as from other jurisdictions in Canada and even some international jurisdictions, to see what the causes are and what the trends are in other jurisdictions.
As part of our research we felt it was important to give Nova Scotians a chance to provide us with some feedback on their thoughts or suggestions on this very topic, which is why we've set up a link to the Legislative Assembly Web site. We also have a Facebook site, an e-mail site, a fax number, a mailing address, phone number. We've tried to find every means of giving Nova Scotians the opportunity to provide their feedback.
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Part of that was a decision the committee made that we should also go around the province to various centres to give Nova Scotians an opportunity to speak to us in person. Starting last week, we were in Sydney on Monday, Antigonish on Tuesday, Truro on Wednesday and Amherst on Thursday. This week we started on Monday in Yarmouth, last night was in Bridgewater and tonight we find ourselves here in Coldbrook.
Not only are we having these public presentations which we have this evening, as well in the afternoon and in the mornings we have been holding focus groups, first of all with youth, which could be a combination of representatives from various high schools or community colleges, and in the afternoon we have welcomed individuals who are part of community organizations to attend the focus group, as well, and share their thoughts or concerns.
Tonight we give you, the public, an opportunity to speak to us directly with your thoughts or concerns. As we start off, we do have two presentations listed, but we've relaxed those rules in other communities we've visited to the point that if there is anyone who would like to share any thoughts or concerns, who has come here tonight, I would invite you to do so, to first speak to one of our committee clerks, Kim Leadley, standing at the side of the room, should you wish to present to us.
Before we begin, I'd like to have the members introduce themselves so you know exactly who we have around here at the table.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, members. As well, I have over here to my left, seated next to me, Sherri Mitchell who is as well, one of the clerks from the Committees Office. We also have Paula Romanow who's sitting behind the laptop computer over there who is our researcher for this committee and we also have Joanne Kerrigan, sitting in the back of the room who is with us from Communications Nova Scotia. Over to my far left, we have representatives from Hansard, which is the official record of the House of Assembly. As well, representatives from Legislative TV who, while they are not doing a video recording of this evening's meeting, they are doing an audio recording.
I would like to advise everyone that tonight's meeting is being recorded and will be part of the Hansard documents and there will be a final report done which will include the comments made at tonight's committee meeting. As well, there may be members of the press who come here and any comments or remarks that you make may be recorded in the media.
I should point out there is a sign-up form on the table over here should you wish to receive a copy of the transcript of tonight's meeting or should you wish to receive a copy of the final report, which we hope to have ready within the next number of weeks, once we begin our deliberations following these public meetings.
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With that, I would like to start by asking Bob Ashley to come forward and make his presentation. Mr. Ashley, if you would just want to sit, speak directly into the mic, you don't have to lean forward or anything, it's adjusted for you to be comfortable. Please state your full name for the record and your address, please.
MR. BOB ASHLEY: My name is Bob Ashley and I live in Berwick.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I should also point out, following your presentation, committee members may have some questions for you, so if that's not a problem for you after your presentation, there may be some questions the members would like to ask based on your presentation. The floor is yours.
MR. ASHLEY: That's fine. Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable MLAs for this opportunity. I have a written submission, it may not come across as well as a spoken one, but if you'll indulge me.
Just by way of introduction, Democracy 250 has been a laudable initiative broadcasting the message of participatory citizenship, particularly to youth around the province. Laudable as it is, the initiative is celebratory and therefore something akin to a singular event. We won't be celebrating Democracy 251. It might be likened to parachuting into a desert armed with a water pistol with the idea of transforming the desert into a garden.
[7:15 p.m.]
But if democracy is deep-rooted, grassrooted, it deserves regular care and feeding - not just a fertilizing event in Spring and another in Autumn. The Democracy 250 initiative is a great start and I hope it spurs on sustained effort year after year.
I've grouped my main points into sub-topics. The first one is civic study, I call it. I believe we need a consistent, applied focus on democracy in our education system. We might do this by reviving a stronger emphasis on civics as a compulsory subject in elementary and secondary schools and even in colleges and universities.
Civics is not just about civic government, it's about learning how to be a responsible citizen, how to be civil. Civil is the root word of civilization - civics, civil, civilized, civilization, the roots of our civilization are sunk in the soil of civics. It's a basic start. When students are positioned to discover the connection between local civics and global civilization, some will remain impervious and uninterested, but some will become interested, some fascinated, and a few positively engrossed in the idea of democracy. The logical outcome to this interest in civics is a parallel or complementary interest in the democratic process, the democratic possibilities and, of course, democratic responsibility.
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My next heading is on government initiatives. I'm the chief administrative officer for the Town of Berwick and I might say that I especially like this opportunity because while I'm used to giving, or trying to give, non-partisan, objective advice, this is a forum for me to express a partisan opinion, which is my own, so it is especially meaningful for me to be able to do that.
We in local government, in partnership with senior governments, both provincial and federal, can offer meaningful complement to civics education by opening the door to what I'd call civics-in-action. By this I mean freeing up resources for democracy-specific projects, projects which can be deliberated upon, debated, voted upon, designed, planned and implemented by local youth. This impetus toward youth engaging in civics-in-action presents a Herculean challenge for local government because civics-in-action ranges into the social realm, and responsibility for the social realm and public policy is largely taken up by senior governments.
Local government, given its paltry reach when it comes to taxation - pretty much property tax and that's about it - does not have the financial muscle to get this sort of initiative moving in a big way, but senior government can design funding programs which target social outcomes with youth engaged in civics-in-action, through the medium of local government. In essence, they will be learning local government by doing a version of it themselves. Doing is going to stimulate an enhanced awareness and, hopefully, an appreciation of democracy administered by governments - municipal, provincial and federal. Awareness is everything.
My next heading is called, going where democracy needs to go. Governments need to go where youth go. The idea of inviting the public to attend the town hall meeting is quickly becoming a quaint, non-starter. The huge proportion of our populous does not attend public meetings and mere smatterings accept invitations to special town hall get-togethers.
Where is everybody? What are they doing? Well, more than 120 million people are on Facebook, a social media experience of which more than 90 per cent of our youth subscribe, spending many hours a week fertilizing and feeding on-line friendships, some of which have real-life, physical counterparts. Where is government? Right now, for the most part, it's in the musky back room of council chamber or cabinet boardroom, the participants engaging no other participants than those in the room. It is cloistered, lonely and remote.
One needs to look no further than the U.S. presidential election to see a sophisticated, strategic use of electronic social media in helping to raise funds, raise support and rally the voting public. Obama's continuous attention to network-building on-line demonstrates the power of social media.
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Here's an example of a progressive initiative to deepen community engagement. It's sponsored by the Knight Foundation in the United States and they're offering a big pile of cash in grants for neighbourhood innovation on-line and in their challenge competition. This is quoting them:
"We're giving away around $5 million in 2009, for the development and distribution of neighbourhood and community-focus projects, services and programs.
If you have a great idea that will improve local, online news, deepen community engagement, bring Web 2.0 tools to local neighbourhoods, develop publishing platforms and standards to support local conversations or innovate how we visualize, experience or interact with information, we'd like to see it! You have the opportunity to win funding for your project and support within a vibrant community of media, tech, and community-oriented people who want to improve the world."
That's a good example of where I believe Canadian governments - federal, provincial and municipal - can join up to help public engagement through democratic dialogue and help it to go where it needs to go.
For the Town of Berwick, we were one of three towns in Nova Scotia - Stewiacke, Windsor and Berwick - to use electronic voting in the recent municipal election. About 44 per cent of Berwick's voters chose to cast their ballots from the comfort of their home, by the Internet or by phone and could do so 24/7 from October 10th right through to election day on October 18th. We don't have all the data back on our voting statistics, however we do know anecdotally that Berwick had voters cast votes from Saskatoon, Truro, New Jersey and even Scotland. One fellow tried to get through from an oil rig on the Atlantic so he could vote and, unfortunately, their communications system was down and it was the last day, so he missed out. I was hoping I'd be able to add that one to my story, that we had somebody on an oil rig vote in Berwick.
Our voter turnout was 53 per cent, the second highest in Nova Scotia. Stewiacke was really impressive with the highest voter turnout registering 71 per cent. This is progress if we can say that in the traditional voting process the turnout would have been less, perhaps much less. I can't prove this, of course, but it is suggestive.
Finally, to wrap up my comments, I solicited my council for comments that I could bring to this committee. The ideas I've given you are pretty highfalutin ideas. The comments coming from members of Berwick's town council are much more pragmatic and down to earth.
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I'm quoting from here on in. "Some people were turned off by stories of voters being turned away at federal polls for the demand for highly-specified identification. The sour taste carried over into the municipal election."
Another councillor said, "Some people said, what's the use of voting? What difference will it make?"
Another councillor said, "If we looked at households, some of which have two or three or more voters, perhaps the numbers wouldn't look so bad. How many households participated?"
And finally, "Some people don't feel qualified to vote because they don't know the issues, they don't know the candidates. If your vote is not informed, what is the point?"
With that, that's the close of my presentation.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Ashley, for your presentation. I have questions from Minister Parent.
HON. MARK PARENT: Thank you for your presentation, Bob, very interesting and obviously a lot of thought put into it. Two very quick questions.
The civics studies in education, which, I think, the rest of the committee told me they've been hearing a lot of, at what grade level would you see that as appropriately pitched? On the electronic voting, did you find that all ages participated in the electronic voting or did you find that mainly young people used it or mainly older people? Or, do you have that information? So, two questions.
MR. ASHLEY: Minister Parent, to the first question, I think on that one I would defer to people who are experts in education. I don't have any expertise in that, however, I'm drawing on what I think to be an anecdotal or just a general knowledge type of supposition there. I'm not an education expert, but I suggest that what kids learn in school can be relevant and should be relevant.
MR. PARENT: Alberta has just started one pitched at 6, 9 and 12. How about the age? Did you find any . . .
MR. ASHLEY: We don't have data on that yet. The firm that administered the electronic voting is still putting that together for us, so I still don't have that information. However, anecdotally, I can say that, as a member of Facebook myself, I tried to promote voter turnout through Facebook. As we were getting close to the 50 per cent turnout mark, I think we were 120 voters short, I started pitching it on Facebook. I said, please get out and vote, or pick up the phone, or use the Internet and vote, we're down to 120. I did that every
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10 voters and apparently it stimulated 10 or 20 votes, so people were reminded that way. The network of people who are using social media like Facebook is a fairly dense network in our town. Many more people go there than go to the town's Web site.
MR. PARENT: Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Parker.
MR. CHARLES PARKER: Thank you, Bob, for your presentation, it was interesting. I just had a couple of questions around the e-vote system. You mentioned 44 per cent of voters did it by e-vote, now was that 44 per cent of the total or 44 per cent of those who actually voted?
MR. ASHLEY: It was 44 per cent of those who voted, voted electronically of the total. So 56 per cent voted the traditional way at two advance polls and one election day poll.
MR. PARKER: And a 53 per cent turnout this time, how did that compare to the last time?
MR. ASHLEY: Well, the last election was skewed, we believe, by the presence of the plebiscite on Sunday shopping. We think a more robust comparison would be between this year and the election before that and the one before that. I believe that in 2000, it was a little over 30 per cent and it was about the same in the election before that. So we're looking at a fairly significant increase.
MR. PARKER: Yes, comparing apples to apples I guess, you know, this time and two elections ago, it's up quite a bit. So it's difficult to compare it to last time because of the Sunday shopping plebiscite?
MR. ASHLEY: Yes, it's difficult to draw strong conclusions. I wouldn't want to leap that far.
MR. PARKER: I know it's early and you are just getting the data, but how did it actually work? Were there any glitches along the way? Other than the oil rig worker, do you know of anybody else who didn't get to vote or the system didn't work for them?
MR. ASHLEY: No, it was flawless from beginning to end. There wasn't a single electronic glitch. In the event we may have lost the Internet, we had the backup of using the phone. In the event we lost phone and Internet, we had the backup of going to the paper ballots. So we were covered all the way down the line but we didn't have any glitches. We had many comments. People said it was slick, it was easy, it was fast, it was convenient. We had several stories of voters who had not voted in previous elections, who were disabled or infirm, who called to say, this is the first time I've voted in the last three elections because
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I could vote from home, and I think that's important to a lot of people. We don't know many people who are infirm or disabled, or for whatever reason, can't come out to the polls because we never see them. They're already shut-ins. There are a lot shut-ins and I'm encouraged by getting phone calls like that and responses like that.
MR. PARKER: So you actually hired a company to do the Internet voting and can you share with us what the cost of that would be?
MR. ASHLEY: Berwick paid $2.75 per voter, for eligible voters. That included a lot of administrative support, setting it up and it included a mail-out which postage alone was pretty significant; advertising support; the whole electronic and phone support during the whole period of the election. It's like a voter help line. So we were very pleased with the service we got from the firm and that was the same firm that also worked for Stewiacke and Windsor. They've done elections in the U.K. as well as in Ontario they've done quite a few. Winnipeg is looking at doing an advance poll, similar to Halifax, with them.
[7:30 p.m.]
MR. PARKER: Just one final question on that, were there any concerns about security or about people voting twice?
MR. ASHLEY: Well, certainly no system is perfect and we might liken it to people's use of PIN numbers for their banking, their debit cards, their credit cards, their on-line purchases. You can say the same thing for those. Of course, there are security issues but we felt quite confident that no one would know who voted for whom, for example, and the idea of losing PINs or having PINs bought, first of all, it's a criminal offence. We inclined towards trusting voters and candidates to do the right thing. We didn't hear any stories of any kind of malfeasance or any kind of - and especially in small towns - pity the poor candidate who would try to gather PIN numbers. The word would be out before he even got to the fourth household, the whole town would know. News travels fast in a small town. So we're quite confident with the integrity of the election.
MR. PARKER: And if there had to be a recount, is there a way to count those ballots? With electronic voting, where is the ballot, or how do you count it? If it were a tie vote, or a very close vote for a recount, how would you do it?
MR. ASHLEY: I don't know. Probably the same way you might count an on-line banking transaction. I'm not a technology expert, so we relied on those people to answer that type of question.
MR. PARKER: Okay, thanks very much.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Parker. Ms. MacDonald.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Thank you, a very interesting discussion. I think this whole idea around electronic voting is something we're very interested in knowing more about and exploring, and that you have first-hand experience is really very useful for us.
Mr. Parker has asked many of the questions I had, but I do have a few supplementary questions, I would say. I am interested in knowing what the turnout was when there was a referendum question on the ballot, which you could look at Sunday shopping as.
MR. ASHLEY: It was half a percentage higher - 53.5 per cent electronic and our turnout was 54 per cent with the controversial Sunday shopping plebiscite.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Thank you, and in previous years when it was lower, were elections contested, like the mayoralty in particular, because that sometimes is a feature, I think, as well?
MR. ASHLEY: I'm glad you asked that question because yes, in earlier years, that did happen. This year there was no mayoralty race, so our race was not particularly exciting, there were no particularly controversial issues. Contrast that with Stewiacke where there was a hotly contested mayor's race, and the councillor race was also quite competitive, so that should give you some indication.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Just to the mechanics of doing the electronic voting this time, I think the integrity of our voting system rests on two principles: one-person, one-vote being fundamental; and the other principle, of course, being that it's a secret ballot. I know that Mr. Parker has asked about the privacy issues, but how were the PIN numbers distributed? Are they simply mailed? How is the list made up that you use? Is the list that you use the provincial voters' list from 2006?
MR. ASHLEY: Yes. We started with the provincial list and then we had a revision period of two weeks, I believe, where the public was invited to come in and let us know about changes that should be annotated on the list, so that happened. Then our council officially approved what was known as the final list in August. Thereafter, voters were enumerated if they came in, they weren't added to the final list, of course, because the list is final, but another list was kept of those people.
There were errors in the list and there were a couple of stories of people who voted who maybe shouldn't have voted. Where we tried to limit that was we had the Post Office check the trash every 15 minutes on the day of delivery, to pick up all return mail or any of our envelopes so that the PIN numbers contained in them would not be taken by anybody. Is there anything else?
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MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: So the PIN numbers were mailed out to people in a sealed envelope?
MR. ASHLEY: Yes, which said "Important Election Information" and the PIN number was on that letter.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Thank you. That's it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. MacDonald. Mr. Bain.
MR. KEITH BAIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just one question and it's concerning what Mr. Parker had mentioned before. If someone uses electronic voting, what mechanism did you have in place that I, as a voter, who had voted electronically, could walk into the poll and vote again?
MR. ASHLEY: We tested that. We had an auditor who would try to jig the system by doing that exact scenario. If you had a cellphone and you were standing outside our polling station and made the phone call and walked in, that vote would have been recorded and you would have been turned away. We would have said, you just voted at 7:51 - if that's when you voted - and you voted by phone, it's instantaneous. We tried it several times and it was flawless.
MR. BAIN: I guess my next question as a result of that then would be, you're dealing with the Town of Berwick, but what would happen when it's broader, when you're talking about the Province of Nova Scotia, if you were talking about Kings North as an example?
MR. ASHLEY: I'm just a small-town boy and I wouldn't even pretend to speculate on that, I don't know. That's beyond the scope of what I would know.
MR. BAIN: The reason I'm saying that is because a part of our discussions this afternoon was just on this very issue. In order for e-voting to work you would assume that every polling station would need a computer, or a screen, in front of them to say that when Keith Bain comes in to vote, I'm sorry, you voted.
MR. ASHLEY: Yes, that's exactly how it worked. There would be a gateway in the polling station, you go to the person sitting at the computer first. They say what's your name, my name is John Smith, they type that name in, they disable the PIN number if that's what they want to do, so they can do a paper ballot and then they go and drop their ballot in a box.
MR. BAIN: So you were required to have a computer at every poll?
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MR. ASHLEY: We needed a computer to disable anybody's PIN who came in so that they could vote manually.
MR. BAIN: Fine, thanks.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Bain. Mr. Ashley, I'm curious, how many polling stations did you have in the recent election?
MR. ASHLEY: One polling place with two polling desks or stations, if you want to call them that.
MR. CHAIRMAN: So it was just one location?
MR. ASHLEY: It was like an A to M and N to Z, so they're small.
MR. CHAIRMAN: How many districts were contested in the election?
MR. ASHLEY: There are no districts.
MR. CHAIRMAN: So there are so many people who put their names forward and you elect a certain amount?
MR. ASHLEY: That's right. The population of Berwick is 2,500 and the number of eligible voters is 1,675 - minus me. I couldn't vote, I was the returning officer.
MR. CHAIRMAN: But obviously it wouldn't have been an issue in Berwick. I'm assuming you have Internet access throughout the town and it wasn't an issue of finding a location where you could have Internet access to conduct this type of voting, I take it?
MR. ASHLEY: The town has full high-speed Internet access, but notwithstanding the Internet people could use the phone.
MR. CHAIRMAN: No, I just mean on election day as far as your polling location, because I think that's one of the issues Mr. Bain was getting at. If we were to look at this provincially, some of the issues that have been raised is that we wouldn't need every polling station to have Internet access. Right now, unfortunately, in Nova Scotia there are still communities that don't have that, which is one of the challenges. But we're told that will be taken care of next year, so maybe it won't be such a challenge after all.
I'm curious, Mr. Ashley, one of the issues that we've been looking at, there has been talk about how voter turnout municipally is historically low around the province, but it's not really the case. In Richmond County, for example, out of 10 councillors, eight were contested. I don't think they've worked out the average yet but one district was 94 per cent
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turnout, another one was 88 per cent, 85 per cent, 80 per cent, 70 per cent, and only one fell under 60 per cent. If we look at some of the other ridings around us, you had similar types of outcomes.
I'm curious, just in your own experience, how do we explain the differential, because it's not only municipal politics? When we look at some of our provincial ridings, we have some ridings well over 70 per cent and then we have some ridings in the low 50s or in the 40s? I'm just curious if you have any observation on why there is such a discrepancy from one municipal unit to the next.
MR. ASHLEY: No, I don't. I wish I could offer something on that but I'm basically only familiar with my own area. I might offer that there is a wide cultural diversity in Nova Scotia, which may include political engagement as historical or traditional factors in some regions and municipalities, more so than others, but beyond that I think I would just be hypothesizing.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm curious as well, the fact that, in our case, it's actually one individual versus another individual, or one person versus two other people, so there are identities that are identified, and it's either voting for this person or you're voting for another. Whereas under your system it's a bit different in that you had a list of candidates - it's not really anyone against anyone else, it's more that they're putting their name forward, so that might be an aspect as well.
I was interested when you mentioned about the use of the Internet and the Obama campaign, I think it's something that we'll all be trying to mimic at some point or another here in Nova Scotia. What will be most interesting about that is whether voter turnout in the U.S. goes up at all, or whether it's going to remain the same, even though there seems to be a much greater interest in it - there's certainly a great interest here in Canada. Some of our presenters spent probably more time speaking about the U.S. election than our election, there is a great interest there, but only time will tell whether that is going to actually make a change in the turnout.
Have you had any way of identifying - I know that you mentioned a few individuals you were aware of who said they had voted electronically and had not voted before. One of our questions is - especially looking at the HRM numbers of the participation and the fact that the overall rate did not really move - has Internet and electronic voting brought new people in to vote, or has it just provided a new avenue for existing voters to vote? I'm wondering if you have any data on that or any observations as to whether it has really brought more people to voting who were not voting before, or have you simply given your existing voting base, which always went out to vote, just a new way of casting their ballot?
MR. ASHLEY: I can't state any conclusions with any surety about that because I don't have our data back yet. I do know anecdotally of several young people who did spread
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the word in their own circles, through the Internet, and did vote. But you're also correct in stating that the electronic option was something that people who would have voted anyway chose to use the electronic means to do it. I think we'd find evidence of both of your suggestions.
MR. CHAIRMAN: It certainly will be something we'll be watching, to see how many new voters it brought out, because obviously it will have proven its success if it has managed to do that.
Just one last observation that you indicated, and we've had these discussions, you indicated at one point that in Berwick you trusted voters. I think that's one of the problems with the system we have, because our voting laws have almost been written on the basis that Nova Scotians aren't to be trusted, that you have to put in all of these safeguards to make sure they don't vote twice. Yet here we are, as a select committee, trying to figure out why people are not voting, let alone trying to find the means of preventing them from voting twice.
I'm certainly hoping that we're going to see some changes there so that we can start saying, as a province, that we actually trust Nova Scotians and that we're not of the belief that everyone is trying to vote more than once. I think the fact this committee exists is proof that people aren't even going out to vote once, let alone trying to find ways of voting twice. I thought that was a very worthwhile comment on your part and something that we will be bringing forward. I have Mr. Wilson with a question.
[7:45 p.m.]
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): I have a quick question, Mr. Chairman - certainly not as long as you've taken. (Laughter) It's a democracy, is it not, Mr Ashley?
The question I have is concerning Internet voting. We've almost accepted this now as a little bit of a no-brainer, that perhaps this is something that's going to have to happen. But when you talk about the integrity of the system and you talk about whether or not you have safeguards that are there, you really have no way of ensuring that the PIN number that's issued to me is being used by me, as my vote.
As you said, it's one thing to say, great, we had votes from here and from there, and on the Internet you can vote from anywhere in the world, basically, if you have that PIN number. But to ensure, if I'm sitting at home by my computer and I take the PIN number that you've sent me in the mail and I throw it in the garbage and my son or daughter walks by and says, well, if he's not going to vote, I'll vote for him. They take out the PIN number, enter it into the computer and bingo, you could have a 14-year-old with a vote, which is not allowed in our system. But you have no way of double-checking to see whether or not a 14-year-old or a 12-year-old or a 25-year-old voted. When you talk about the integrity of the
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system, I guess that's one of the questions that comes to my mind - how do you get around that and how do you ensure it?
Halifax, in their advance polls, had a voters' list with dead people on it that were issued PIN numbers. Now, you said you didn't have that problem here and, as you stated very accurately, there is no perfect voters' list that exists. I don't know if the dead people actually voted but they were on the list.
MR. ASHLEY: The reason those dead people got PIN numbers was because of the list, not because of the electronic system. An electronic system - garbage in, garbage out, so that would not speak to a fault in the electronic system.
You're absolutely right about the other criticisms, that those things can and may have happened, but in Berwick we did not begin with that premise, that people - it's sort of akin to why would anyone ever stop at a stop sign if there's not a cop around? Why would anybody leave their wallet on the kitchen table with the PIN numbers for their banking because their son might steal money or something? We're not basing it on that. And also - I've lost my train of thought.
We felt confident in the way that Halifax felt confident, that overall, given anomalies which can and may happen and the risks that anyone would take in committing this serious criminal offence of manipulating PIN numbers or stealing them or buying them is a very serious criminal offence, much more serious than not stopping at a stop sign. We do try to instill that and warn people on the letters that we send out, this is your vote and your vote alone. I don't know what we can do beyond that.
This also speaks to - we should not hold this up without holding up what the deficiencies of the traditional system are. The traditional paper system is far from perfect. For example, Ferdinand Marcos said: You may have the vote, but I have the count. In fact, in anticipation of questions like this, I did a Google search on election fraud and election fraud has been happening since elections have begun. Whether they're electronic or whether they're paper, there's no mutual exclusivity between the two, as one being pristine and pure and without fault, and the other being faulty. I don't think that's a very strong argument.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): Just one last point. I do agree with you when you say this puts us on a different playing field altogether when you talk about accessibility and what Internet voting will allow in terms of accessibility. It is a different world altogether. Thank you very much.
MR. ASHLEY: You're welcome.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Ashley, just a follow-up to what Mr. Wilson said. Were there any agents observing the vote on the day in question, or throughout this process, on behalf of the candidates? In the case of if an agent was there and all of a sudden saw in the system that their neighbour had voted and knew that their neighbour was away and wasn't planning to vote, were there any checks and balances in that regard? Were there people kind of keeping an eye out for that?
MR. ASHLEY: Well, I was a returning officer and I was able to extract who had voted, up to the second, at any given time. I was encouraging candidates to come in and see me, to look at the list any day during the week, and oftentimes candidates would come in and look for who had voted that day or that morning, or that minute for that matter.
There were a couple of stories of somebody who said they had voted but weren't on the list, but we were able to track it back electronically that they did not complete the electronic process and we were able to tell exactly where they left off. So we were able to phone that person or the candidate could phone that person and say, you forgot the last screen, try it again - oh, it worked. That happened a few times, but not very many times.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I guess, can I ask you, did you have any instances of someone having recorded a vote who then claimed that they had not cast a ballot?
MR. ASHLEY: Yes, that did happen a couple of times. We did have somebody who said, I tried to vote by phone. We looked them up and we said, you must have tried it by Internet about a half-hour ago. Oh yes, I did - sorry, I forgot. I don't know what their intent was - maybe they thought the vote had not been registered, or they were testing the system, I don't know.
MR. CHAIRMAN: But you have no cases that you heard of someone saying, I never tried to vote at all, or I wasn't even in the area, yet somehow my name is showing up as having voted?
MR. ASHLEY: Well, they wouldn't know that. Only the candidates had access to the lists.
MR. CHAIRMAN: And no candidate reported any sort of situation like that?
MR. ASHLEY: No.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Theriault.
MR. HAROLD THERIAULT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Internet seems to be taking over this meeting and that's all fine and dandy. I think that it would be nice if we
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could make things really easy for people so they didn't have to get off the couch at all to do anything, with a remote control for TV and God only knows what's coming next.
I think we have to get back to the basics of why people aren't going out to vote. If I can't take 10 minutes of my life to go out and vote - and maybe a little bit of exercise to get to the voting poll would be a lot better than worrying about e-mails. I think that's what we should be looking for, why people aren't going out to vote, period.
Two things I want to touch on. You said government needs to go where the children are and you also said government councils and government leaders, when in meetings and stuff, stay too remote and they're not getting out to the public. Can you elaborate a little bit on those two things that you said?
MR. ASHLEY: A lot of voters in the last election, or a lot of people I spoke to who didn't vote, said they didn't know who the candidates were. That, to me, means that for the last four years the incumbents were not in the public eye sufficiently enough, and across enough demographics, to leave an indelible impression. A lot of work goes on in the council room, but the outreach is less than stellar. A lot of people do not know who is representing them.
MR. THERIAULT: So it doesn't matter how easy it is to vote, then? That's what I mean.
MR. ASHLEY: You have a point there, yes.
MR. THERIAULT: That's what we have to get at, and I think you've stated that.
MR. ASHLEY: That's very true.
MR. THERIAULT: And getting to the children . . .
MR. ASHLEY: Well, I didn't mean children, I meant youth.
MR. THERIAULT: Whatever - you said the government needs to get to the children . . .
MR. ASHLEY: Yes, democracy needs to go where youth are and where youth are is on-line - 90 per cent of youth have Facebook accounts, they communicate. You see them, they're texting on-line. That's the world we're in and that's the world we need to engage. It's the 21st Century, we're going there whether we like it or not.
MR. THERIAULT: Thank you.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Ashley, for your presentation and for taking the time to answer the committee members' questions. I believe you indicated you provided a written presentation, so we certainly thank you for that.
MR. ASHLEY: Thanks very much.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Next we have Brian Smith, Ann Longley and Wayne Atwater co-presenting. Could you state your full name and your address, just for the record.
MR. BRIAN SMITH: My name is Brian Smith and my address is 5 Dalhousie Avenue in the Town of Kentville.
MS. ANN LONGLEY: I'm Ann Longley and I live at 38 Duncan Avenue in the Town of Kentville.
MR. WAYNE ATWATER: I'm Wayne Atwater, 1746 Morden Road.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Welcome to all of you and the floor is yours.
MR. SMITH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's always difficult - Mr. Ashley and I work a lot together and he's always a tough act to follow, he is again tonight. It was a pleasure to kind of listen to the discussion, it reminded me a lot of the discussions that we had at our council in terms of electronic voting. We did not opt for electronic voting but, just as you hinted, our municipality is quite different than the town. We're closer to 50,000 people, and we're the third largest rural municipality - or municipality actually - in Nova Scotia; and we're a mix of urban and rural, and communities like New Minas with big-box stores to more rural communities like Morden.
When we heard about your committee, it was just about the time we were counting ballots on our municipal election. So I thought I would bring along some papers - and I did - with the summary results of our election, and a few points. I have to thank - because we're all of a certain age, and Councillor Atwater is actually the youngest of the trio up here - we had some help with Krystal Therien who has joined us through a provincial program actually of Service Nova Scotia and Municipal Relations as a municipal administrative intern for one year, and she was working with us as a project coordinator, and I just kind of mention that because it is a way to engage young people in municipal government. We certainly value that, and you'll see some of the value I think just in the comments that we've put together for you tonight.
I'm going to go through this paper - you can take it away and look at it at your leisure, and you can look at those participation numbers and see, just as you mentioned, different communities in our county voted very differently. But overall it wasn't very good. Unfortunately, our overall turnout in Kings County was about 26 per cent across nine
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districts. We had two acclamations, including Councillor Atwater. You will see their district percentages range from 33 per cent to 15 per cent, and the 15 per cent number is actually from probably one of our most densely populated areas - the community of New Minas. We could speculate about why people didn't come out, but the fact is they did not come out, and did not come out in significant numbers. We have to give some thought to what the causes and solutions are to this problem.
So we've written a few things and my hope is that after I go through the prepared text, Mrs. Longley, who has been a returning officer with our municipality for a large number of years and worked on a very large-scale election, we had something like 30,000 eligible voters and we had something like 75 polling stations - it's a big operation, believe me, I just signed the cheques for it tonight and I was an hour signing cheques for the people who worked on our election. Councillor Atwater has been involved not only in municipal elections, but in elections at every level for a number of years and really understands certainly the rural community as well as some of the urban areas of Kings County.
The first heading that we have on our bit of a paper there is Comparison. We're not unique. I was very pleased to hear about Richmond County and the turnouts there - I know the retiring CAO there and some of the people in Richmond quite well, but we don't have that kind of number. In looking across the country, even Toronto, as big and as wonderful as that is, does not have very good numbers in terms of an election turnout - around the year 2000, it was about 35 per cent. We know what the federal election is, but gosh I wish we did have 60 per cent, even if it was only 60 per cent - as people working for municipal government in this area, we would kill to have a 60 per cent turnout.
[8:00 p.m.]
One of the issues this time for us seems to be frequency. We actually wrote a letter as council - and I think it was Councillor Atwater who suggested it - we wrote to the Prime Minister and told him he picked the wrong time for the federal election. I'm not sure he answered that letter - now that I think of it, he was busy. But in any event, the public was concerned. As you can see here in the research that Krystal has put together, since 1999 in this community there have been about 10 elections - and that's a lot. It's an awful lot to ask people - yes, it's only 10 minutes, just step outside. And there is the confusion factor - some people didn't know whether the candidates coming were federal, provincial, or what have you. And I'll say a little more about that a little later on.
Motivation - I think what we're seeing here is your committee, as you look at these things, will probably come across the comments that we often make, that voting is a civic duty. People should get out, they really should, but what's probably more important is to try to get a handle on what it is that would engage the public. Why would they want to vote, as opposed to why don't they vote? It's a different spin, it's the kind of thing that opinion surveys are done and that kind of thing to try to understand what would engage people. It
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would be very interesting, for example, to know why people are so engaged in Richmond County compared to here, to look at the data that exists on the last provincial election and take it apart and see why some districts, some ridings, had better turnouts than ours.
We had our councillors give some comments too and, just as Bob said, I think they were really kinds of practical things, but they probably hint at larger issues. I'll just kind of go through them, about what our councillors were talking about. This business of where to vote, I know that because we had a municipal and a federal election going, we were actually competing for returning office space, for polling station space. We would get hold of a place and we'd hear that the feds were after it and we wouldn't let them have it because we wanted it. And we kept that spot - we've used it for years, what have you.
What the councillor is saying is we should kind of stick, in these communities, to the same place, so people don't have to think well, where am I going? They know the last time I voted here in the federal election; I voted here in the provincial election, what have you. Repeated there with the warden's comment that people didn't necessarily know where to vote. I will say, for a municipal district the size of ours, it is a challenge. We even put up an electronic system that you could go to our Web site and type in your name and it would say which district you're in and where to vote. That was our best guess as how to encourage people to find their way through.
Councillor Spinazola - this was kind of an interesting one - she thought the public was confused by provincial and municipal representatives campaigning together - and, clearly, had there been federal and municipal, it would have been really confusing. We didn't seem to have much of that. But they weren't necessarily sure who they were voting for, I guess, in those instances, and we talked earlier that some municipal representatives are more visible and perhaps better known than others. Some members of our council are not well known in other than their home community.
Councillor Atwater's comments - very similar. We should look at these polling locations carefully so the public isn't confused. There are times when some are closer to one district, closer to another and people go to one and are told they have to go to another one and they get quite ticked off and, in some cases, they go home.
From Warden Whalen - electronic voting. We've talked about that and I think our council will be looking at that again the next time we go to the polls. We have lots of time to think about that because we know our next election is four years out. A little comment there - generally what we heard from our council had to do with barriers to voting: people getting turned off, people showing up, people not liking what's going on there.
There's a little paragraph above that Engaging Citizens heading that talks about the provincial voters' list. We chose not to do an enumeration this time; we chose to use that provincial list. You may not be aware of this - I hope you talk to the people who keep that
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provincial list up, because it's an important responsibility, both for you as elected folks and for us as municipal people, that that list stays up - you may not be aware, but we input to that list regularly as municipal governments.
One of the things I plan to do, with the municipal clerk's help after this election period, is meet those people because there are a lot - as you say, there were dead people on that list and there shouldn't be dead people on that list. Councillor Barry Peterson and his wife, who represent this community, went to vote - they're municipal councillors and they weren't even on the provincial list, and they've lived in this community long enough that he has been a municipal councillor for some years.
So there's something going wrong, and we know we're inputting and spending a lot of time sending that information in. What I'm not clear about is between provincial elections, is there anybody home? And there may well be somebody home and they may be working hard, but I'm just not reassured at this point that list is being kept up - and Mrs. Longley may have a little more specific to say about that. But it's certainly very frustrating when you find people who are well known in the community somehow got lost on a list - it should be a fairly simple process.
The last part of what's here and, I guess, speaking to the discussion about what can we do, we think we have to engage the community more regularly, and we think that you do. The kind of outreach that you're doing tonight is probably a good example of that, and creating a Facebook, as you have, is probably a good example of that.
Voting can't be just a thing that you do every four years or, with provincial governments, every three or four or whatever that number happens to be. You can't expect somebody who is just not engaged to suddenly take on and become involved and engaged because there's an election - what's so special about an election, really? You need to find ways to engage them.
We do here - we have constant issues about land use planning, particularly between agricultural and residential development. We fill our council chambers quite regularly on public hearings and stuff. The thing that we have as a challenge is to somehow make the connection between that enthusiasm and engagement and the actual turnout at the election itself. That's a piece of work where we still have lots to do, but it is something we want to do.
Finally, in the previous presentation we talked about engaging youth and I think our council feels the same way - we have to get to young people. I haven't seen a school class in our council chambers. We meet every month, daytime hours, from 9:00 a.m. to about 3:00 p.m., one day. We've never been contacted. We should probably outreach ourselves and contact the school board - I mean we all should do a better job of that, but we're not even sure that civics is being taught as it was when some of us were younger. And that's a piece
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that I think provincially, as was said, you've got a real opportunity here to talk to educators and find out what can be done. I don't want to tell you your job in any way, but that is an opportunity.
Before I finish, I do want to make one kind of "PS" on the last discussion - the company that was doing electronic voting processes for the three towns and HRM is a Nova Scotia company, and that's kind of interesting, I think. I sent them information about your process and I hope they follow up with you, but I just mention that given the questions you had, the fact that there's a group in Burnside that you could talk to is a whole lot easier than calling Arkansas. I just think that, again, might be worthwhile as part of your research, to talk to those folks and Bob - any of us can get you the information because they are at our Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities meetings and that kind of stuff. We know all of those people and it's good, perhaps, to get a cross-section. I know it's a sales pitch, but it's a Nova Scotia sales pitch.
So finally, I guess, we want to compliment the Legislature for what you're doing. It's critically important to engage more people in the democratic process. What we hope, I guess, as municipal government, that the things you're learning and the changes you might make to the provincial election procedures will have some carry-over to the very traditional, very structured municipal election procedures that we've just worked through.
That's kind of my brief overview and, municipal clerk, if you've got anything to add.
MS. LONGLEY: Thank you. I'm going to speak on a couple of issues. The first one, which Mr. Smith spoke on already, is the voters' list. There was great concern by the deputy returning officers that there were a lot of dead people on the list - not recent, actually two and three years old. I believe the province gets records of deaths and I was surprised the list wasn't kept up, more to date. I know there are people who move to different locations and, of course, we wouldn't expect them to be on, but there were a lot of people also who were not on the list - as he said, Councillor Barry Peterson and his wife. But we also had a husband and wife who had been married and lived in the same location for 20 years, one would be on the list, the other one wasn't - very, very strange things like that.
As a result of the number of people that were sworn in - probably just at a guess, 200 or 250 - those people will be added to the list that we have and we return that list to the province so, hopefully, when the list is re-done for the next provincial election, it will be a little bit improved because we have added those people, and it help out in the whole process.
On the subject of locations - I think the federal election did cause a lot of concern because people were going to some locations for the federal election, other ones for the municipal. And we did run our advance polls the same day as the federal election, and that caused confusion because we ended up - we had two locations for advance polls, one in the east at the New Minas fire hall and one in the west at the Aylesford fire hall - we had a lot
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of people who came to those locations and they did vote municipally, but they were really looking for the federal election poll. It becomes a concern when two elections are so close together.
Boundaries between municipal and provincial are very different and, as a result, different locations are used and that does confuse the public as well. I think your polling districts are much smaller than ours are and, as I say, when people have to go to different ones for provincial, municipal, and federal, they become confused. I think that's what I found as a returning officer, and for a number of years. The same comments are made - I've been with the municipality quite a long time and have been a returning officer and those are comments that are made election after election by the public. That's it.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Mr. Atwater.
MR. ATWATER: I've just got some points, Mr. Chairman, that I'd like to make. The first one I want to make is I disagree with you. I think Nova Scotians can be trusted, that the majority of the people can be trusted. Most of them are outside the jails instead of inside the jails, so I think the biggest majority can be trusted.
Canada Post is a pretty popular place, where most people pick up their mail, and I expect probably they know most people who are alive and most people who are dead. I don't see why we can't work with Canada Post to see if we could get some sort of a voters' list from them. So maybe Canada Post should be at least looked at.
Location - I can't stress that enough - location, location, location for your voting. Try to be consistent. It's not that difficult to have it at the fire hall or the Legion, or wherever you're going to have it, every time. It's not rocket science - you don't have to move it around; you can have it at the same place.
Fixed elections - promises can be made for fixed elections just as well as they can be made election time, so I would encourage fixed elections as well. This gentleman on the end - I forget his name - said something about 14-year olds. It's a great thing you said that 14-year olds might make a chance on voting. Well that's absolutely true, but you know those 14-year olds are great people when it comes time to pick a MLA because they can pick a MLA, help pick a MLA, so why can't we let them vote? Just something to consider.
You know as politicians, we're all chasing the same people. I think no matter what we do, we have to do something to increase the voter turnout. So just don't go away and put all the stuff that we've talked about across the province on the shelf, and do everything exactly the same one more time, because the people, I expect probably sitting in front of me, they're closer to elections than what I am. Thank you.
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[8:15 p.m.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you all for your presentations and, Councillor Atwater, let me clarify that I was speaking tongue-in-cheek about not trusting Nova Scotians. I think that's the problem with our Elections Act right now, that we don't trust them enough. In my four elections I've yet to find someone who tried to vote twice - it was finding people to vote once that was a challenge enough, let alone anyone trying to do it on two occasions. So I think once we start using the approach that Berwick used, of actually trusting their voters, I think we'll see much greater success here in the province.
Before other members ask questions, I just want to ask - when you obtained the lists from Elections Nova Scotia, did they give you the updated lists or did they give you the 2006 lists? Or did they tell you the difference, I guess, because that is what is not clear to me at this point.
MS. LONGLEY: As far as we know, it was the updated list. Our technical people in planning were in constant contact with the people in Halifax on the list . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: So you were told it was an actual updated list?
MS. LONGLEY: We were told it was an updated list.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, we'll certainly be raising that issue because that's a nightmare for us going into the next election, if that's the case. My understanding always was that they were obtaining information either from The ChronicleHerald obituaries or from the undertakers themselves, who are feeding it in. I can't believe that people who passed away two and three years ago are still showing up on that list - something went wrong somewhere.
MS. LONGLEY: I was the same as you - I was very surprised.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Yes, and again I want to assure Councillor Atwater that the concerns we're hearing - we're looking forward to seeing positive changes take place as a result of these concerns, and we'll be following up on that for sure.
Committee members, do you have any questions? Okay, I have Mr. Bain.
MR. BAIN: Thank you. Just a couple of questions, just for clarification on my part. You say that your municipality would forward the updated list to the province - does every municipality in the Province of Nova Scotia do that or is this just something you do yourselves?
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MS. LONGLEY: No, it's my understanding that it's part of the process that you use the provincial list, but in addition to that I know that the last election, in 2004, when that election was over we were requested by the province to send in our voters' lists, which we did. Now, whether everybody does it or not, I can't tell you, but we certainly did and this time, once our lists are updated with the people who were sworn in, it will be forwarded.
MR. BAIN: I'm sure if every municipality did that, it would certainly make a big difference in the provincial list.
I want to go to the age of voters. In some of our discussions as we travelled throughout the province, some said a 16-year-old can drive a car, he or she should be able to vote, and I want to ask your opinion on that - anybody?
MR. ATWATER: I certainly want to give you my opinion. The 14-year-old is a great person, he or she, whoever it is, to help pick an MLA - so, my God, if they've got brains enough to pick an MLA, you know, sometimes . . .
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): They don't pick an MLA, they pick a candidate.
MR. ATWATER: Well, they help pick a candidate, and if that person happens to win, then, thank God, that MLA, I'll bet you, was pretty happy he got those 14-year olds because he got elected, by some fluke chance or for whatever reason. So if you're going to engage the youth, how else are you going to engage them? No matter what magic number you pick - whether they're 16 years old and can drive a car - what would be terrible about having a 14-year-old vote?
MR. BAIN: You're saying there should be consistency as to that process - whatever the age is for voting, that's how you choose your . . .
MR. ATWATER: Whatever the magic number is.
MR. BAIN: Do you feel 16 is - I'm using 16 because that's what we've been hearing - a good age for young adults to vote?
MR. ATWATER: Yes, I do.
MR. SMITH: I guess what I was going to say, as an example, we brought a young person onto our police advisory committee and I'm thinking that young lady is probably about 16.
MR. ATWATER: Yes, she was 15 when she joined, because I got her to join.
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MR. SMITH: There was quite a gulp from some members of our council to bring this young person forward, but at least we've started to make a bridge with the youth and with somebody in one of the high schools - and, you know, there's somebody in the building talking to us about municipal issues from a young person's perspective. So I hope not only do we look at ways to allow people to vote, but we look at ways to engage them in some of our processes. It might interest them then and allow us to start talking to them better.
MS. LONGLEY: I'm not sure about the age and I won't comment on that, but if I may just say something that was mentioned earlier about the education. Years ago there were classes of school students that came down to our facilities and we did mock council sessions with them and took them around. But in the last, probably, eight years there has not been any of that. I'm not sure whether that is a difference in teachers or just not part of the curriculum anymore, but I know the children really enjoyed it - I think they were about Grades 5 and 6 that came.
MR. BAIN: Just on that I guess, one final question is, what about your relationship as a municipality with the local school board, or councillors or administrators going into the schools and speaking, is there any hesitation or reluctance on behalf of the board for that to happen?
MS. LONGLEY: Not a lot of that goes back and forth. We have, on occasion, been requested to have someone go in and speak, and they have, but it's not a regular event. I think it depends on the teacher and what their particular subject happens to be at the time.
MR. SMITH: I think we have had one request in the past five years that I've been in this job.
MR. BAIN: But I guess - and maybe this will go to Councillor Atwater then, have you ever requested to visit a school and speak to the students and, if you have, have you ever had difficulty with them, the board saying, yes you can, or no you can't, or the school saying yes you can, or no you can't?
MR. ATWATER: I've never asked in 18 years, and they've never asked me in 18 years.
MR. BAIN: Okay. Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Bain. And if I'm not mistaken, Paula, I believe, is it the Annapolis Valley Regional School Board, your school board here has actually taken the position of not permitting elected officials from entering into your schools? You're the only school board in the province that has actually taken some policy that prohibits elected officials from being in the schools, which is a bit bizarre but it goes to the fact there is no uniformity.
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MR. SMITH: That's recent. I know that one of our candidates was complaining that another candidate had raised municipal election issues in the classroom recently, so they may have developed a policy just recently because of the campaign and not necessarily for always, but . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: No, our understanding is it has been in place for quite some time and maybe Minister Parent, who is up next, can enlighten us on that policy.
HON. MARK PARENT: I'm not aware of the policy per se. I think it would apply only to campaigns because I have spoken in high schools, I've spoken in schools across, but not during a campaign - and have been very welcomed, so I suspect that just applies to the campaign, but we can check that out.
Thank you very much, Ann, Brian and Wayne. Question - there are so many different questions that could be asked, but I'm aware of the hour now, and Shirley has been waiting patiently to come up so I'll limit myself. This whole question of engaging citizens in between the voting period and how to translate that into increased votes, because I, too, was sort of surprised by the low voter turnout in Kings County as a whole, particularly in light of the discussions about land use that we've had.
It seemed to me that intense citizen participation didn't translate into the higher voter turnout you would see, and I'm wondering if that's because the citizen participation was because it touched an issue that was dear to them, so if you're putting a wind farm near somebody you'll get all this, sort of, citizens coming out - while voting is much broader than that, you're looking at not just one issue in isolation, you're looking at the whole question.
There's not really a question for you in that, Brian, but I think it is important because if they're involved throughout the years looking at issues, then the chances are they will vote, while if they're not involved, then they'll vote because they feel they're supposed to do it - but that sense of you're supposed to do something so you do it is falling away and so you're getting a lower voter turnout. So I think you threw out the challenge to us and I'm just wondering, do you have any thoughts on how to tie those two together better?
MR. SMITH: Well, earlier there was a question about what grade in school to pitch and that sort of thing. It seems to me it's one of those "all of the above" answers, that we need to do a variety of things to engage people. My colleague, Mr. Ashley, is very good at Facebook and that kind of stuff - I still haven't quite figured it out - but I think we need to do more to survey our people, put things on our Web sites that ask them those little questions, just engage with people more regularly.
I think sometimes we're deceived. When our council chamber is filled with 100 people, we think that we've really touched the whole community - we've touched the 100 who are most deeply concerned, and I think all of those 100 voted in Port Williams this time,
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for example, but I'm not so sure that the other people got involved and we just assumed that they would tell two friends and they would tell two other friends.
But we have to find different ways to communicate. The speed, when you look at this American election and you find the 16 different ways, that Obama's campaign is even into video games - it has never crossed my mind to put Kings County into a video game, but maybe that's where we have to give it some thought, and talk to young people about how to communicate with them. I think that's the real answer.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Ms. MacDonald.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Thank you very much for a very interesting presentation. I'm interested in knowing what the voter turnout has been in previous municipal elections in your county, in 2004 and in 2000 in particular.
MS. LONGLEY: In 2004 we had around 50 per cent. Of course, there again it was the plebiscite and, as a matter of fact, we had an advance poll where they ran out of ballots for the plebiscite and people stayed there until I drove the 20 minutes from town out to deliver more ballots, because they were that interested. So that was the draw in that particular one.
Ours has traditionally been 30, 35, sometimes as high as 40 per cent, but generally between 30 and 35.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: What impact do you think the federal election happening the same week may have had in driving your traditional vote down in this election?
MS. LONGLEY: I think it had a lot to do with it because people, especially the elderly, who made the effort to go out to vote federally can't be bothered to go again on Saturday.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: The other thing I noticed - and this is really helpful to provide us with this little district-by-district overview of what went on - is as I look through the results, one of the things that jumped out from the statistics you've given us is that the closer the race, the more likely it was to have a higher voter turnout, and where the margins are broader between candidates, the turnout is really low. So that suggests that a more competitive race is a more interesting race and that brings more people out. I mean, it's sort of self-explanatory, but you can see it there in black and white in the numbers.
MS. LONGLEY: Exactly, and we did have the two districts that had councillors go in by acclamation, and there were school board elections in those. One, the turnout, we don't have the figures here, but it was very low.
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MR. ATWATER: Less than 200 people.
MS. LONGLEY: Yes, very, very low and we're talking our voter population per district is between 3,000 and 3,300, approximately.
The other district, one of the school board candidates was very, very active in getting the voters out and it had a much better turnout - not huge, mind you, but about average with the other polling districts. But traditionally, if there's only a school board election, the people don't really get out either - and the school board elections are as important as councillor elections.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. MacDonald. If I can just follow up on what Ms. MacDonald asked there - this is great information - it doesn't indicate who the incumbents were, which I find interesting. I'm just looking at some of the lowest turnouts, unfortunately; District 11 and District 12 - District 11, I see where Eric Smith was elected, was he the incumbent?
[8:30 p.m.]
MS. LONGLEY: Yes, he was. I can run them down, if you want.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Sure.
MS. LONGLEY: District 1, the incumbent was Jim Taylor, who was elected; District 2, Janet Newton was the incumbent; District 3, the incumbent did not re-offer; District 4, Fred Whalen was the incumbent; Districts 5 and 6, as you can see, are acclaimed; District 8, Ted Palmer was the incumbent and he was defeated; District 9, the incumbent did not re-offer; District 10, the incumbent was Chris Parker; District 11, Eric Smith; and District 12, John Fuller. So of the incumbents in the districts where there were elections, there was only one who was defeated.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm just curious, in both cases, Districts 11 and 12 - Eric Smith, is he a long-term councillor?
MS. LONGLEY: He's only been there one term.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Just one term. And what about District 12, John Fuller?
MS. LONGLEY: Two terms.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Two terms. That's great. Mr. Theriault.
[Page 29]
MR. THERIAULT: I'm going to try to answer a question of Mr. Smith's that he asked earlier about Richmond County. The last week of going around the province, last week especially, I asked some children what would happen if no one voted. No one could really answer that, but we know the answer - if no one voted we would live under a dictatorship, and we would eventually lose our freedom.
In Richmond County the people come out and vote, they're Acadian people. Down in Clare, the people come out in droves and vote, everyone. Wayne Gaudet told me there was only one year when there were only eight or nine people who didn't vote, and they found out they were out of the province. So we asked this question around, we didn't know why. Why? Why? I was home last weekend and I spoke to an elderly friend of mine, an Acadian, and I asked, why is that? Why do they go out and about like that? He said, sir, we lost our freedom once in this country, we're not losing it again.
MR. SMITH: I guess my only comment to that is sometimes, when I'm cynical, I remember we're running about a $33 million-a-year business in Kings County and we can only get a 15 or 25 per cent turnout to elect our board of directors - so it's a real challenge to then run that company and hope that you're following the wishes of your stakeholders. Sometimes on my dark days I wonder about that, but on the good days I don't, because people are active in our issues - they're not active in our vote, but they are certainly active on our issues.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. I'm sure if Wayne Gaudet, Chris d'Entremont, and myself, as Acadian members would like to think maybe people like us as well, which is why they come out to vote.(Laughter) Thank you for your historical explanation just the same, so we'll talk about that a little later this evening. Mr. Wilson.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): Thank you. You indeed made a very interesting presentation. There are a couple of points I'd like to pick up on. Number one is I think you've hit the nail on the head when you say that we suffer from voter fatigue. I've been in politics now for nine years - I was involved in a by-election, so including that I've been in four elections in nine years. As you can tell by my youthful appearance, I'm not that old. (Laughter) Why did you laugh?
I think you also hit the nail on the head again when you say that you cannot, as you put it here, people cannot be "guilted" into voting. It hasn't work; we've tried it. We've tried the "you have to protect democracy, your grandfathers, and so on, fought for it" and it's not working. Obviously if it was, you wouldn't be sitting here telling us about the dismal turnout that you had during the municipal election.
I don't know how to cure that. You've touched on a number of topics that we could do to try and solve that problem, but I think you're right, you have to engage your community. I always was of the opinion that issues sometimes drove elections, but if you're
[Page 30]
telling me you have great interest in issues but still a poor voter turnout, then that makes me wonder too. All of these questions are there - but it has been extremely helpful.
And, Councillor Atwater, congratulations on your acclamation, which is also part of democracy which any one of us would absolutely kill for, but it has never happened to . . .
MR. ATWATER: It's the best way.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): Yes, it really is.
MR. ATWATER: I tried it both ways.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): And you are absolutely right in terms of the age that we have to nominate candidates within our Parties - I'm not sure about the New Democratic Party . . .
MR. PARKER: It's 14.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): It is 14, too - so it is for the Progressive Conservatives as well. No one in this room would believe me if I told you that was lowered to 14 so that youth would get experience in politics. That was never the reason I don't think that it was lowered to 14. It was lowered to 14 to get more people out, and you had a chance to get more voters there and to elect yourself as a candidate or whatever the case may be or leadership whatever the case is. But I think from the 14-year olds that I've known that have been involved, it does start that process, it does start them in becoming interested in politics.
Now when I questioned the Internet and the age group, my point there I think was more to the fact that you don't know who's going to vote, never mind what age they are, they just don't have any real - you cannot identify who's going to vote on the Internet, you just can't do it, but PIN numbers don't do it. Anyway the fact that, I think, when you start talking about lowering the voting age to 16, and we've talked about this, I, in the past - and our chairman has a bill before the Legislature that would do exactly that, it would lower the age of voting in this province to 16 - I really haven't in the past been a proponent of that.
I'm still thinking about it and wondering whether or not we should do it, but again, you know, where I'm left in a quandary here is having seen 14-year olds become motivated and start to get into politics, and having seen 16-year olds whom I don't think really are responsible enough to have a vote - I know 18-year olds who aren't responsible enough to have a vote too, and a lot older - then again I go back to the fact that if you're going to engage your community and you've got to educate your community, you have to start at a very young age and you have to do that within our educational system.
[Page 31]
I think that's probably the common thread that we've been given throughout this province so far - I don't think there's a session that we've gone through, both in our focus groups and in our public hearings, that someone hasn't said we have to change the educational system in this province to include some sort of civic instruction along those lines. But . . .
MR. SMITH: I . . .
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): Sorry, go ahead.
MR. SMITH: Well, I guess just as you were talking, I wanted to remind you that Nova Scotia, as Mr. Parent will often say, is a leader in solid waste, and my history is in solid waste management. I was in Halifax when the green carts came in, and the reason we're so good is we engage the schools. We continue to engage the schools in the sorting that we do as Nova Scotians, and it seems to me that should send us all a signal of how to be successful.
I used to run both Metro Transit and the solid waste system, and my marketing budget for solid waste was bigger than my transit marketing budget - and I think our marketing budget for civics and for democracy should be at least as large as our solid waste marketing budget across Nova Scotia. If you look at what that is, if you check the RRFB and see how much is being spent, we've got a ways to go if it's really important to us to engage the community. But starting with the youth, as you were talking, it just reminded me that the way into the youth was some way through the school to engage those people.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): Absolutely, I would love to be at the point right now in this province - you know, if I walked to the garbage bin in my house right now with a potato peel, three people I think would jump me and say that's not where it goes, but they wouldn't do that if I had said don't bother going out voting, I'm not going out to vote. I think that's where we have to . . .
MR. SMITH: Yes.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): . . . that kind of motivation and that kind of - it's almost like you have to do PR, you know, a publicity campaign that's . . .
MR. SMITH: I guess I'm just saying we've learned that in Nova Scotia. You could do that in Ontario and nobody would jump you, but you can't do that here.
MR. DAVID WILSON (Glace Bay): And we've done a great job; we've done a great job. Anyway, thank you very much, it's a very interesting presentation.
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MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you. Ms. MacDonald.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Just one thing - we have had now a couple of presentations from people at the municipal level who do point out that the voter turnout when there was the Sunday shopping question was higher. We don't have a tradition of referendums really in terms of government, but there are systems that do and they find that they do generate some controversy. Now that particular question was one that the UNSM, in fact, didn't want on the ballot because they felt that it would detract from the issues of the municipalities, so without talking about that specific issue, what is your feeling about perhaps using referendums more regularly in our electoral process as a means to generate interest?
MR. ATWATER: I think personally it's a great idea - whatever you have to do to get out the vote. So if there are five things on a referendum or three things on a referendum, it will intrigue somebody and that person will come out and vote - and they might even mark the right candidate.
MR. SMITH: I'll tell you my advice to my council, because they were thinking of a municipal referendum. We had one short discussion and I kind of said, well, first all 11 of you have to agree on the question, and that's going to take us awhile. That was my advice.
The other thing that really rankled, I think, municipalities when the shopping referendum was - you were taking advantage of a municipal election, as the province. I think it's a great idea if the province has a provincial referendum question as part of your election, that's great, and you do allow us to ask municipal questions - Lunenburg district had a referendum on the last election about mayor or warden and they chose to have an elected mayor. That's all very cool, but when the senior level forces one on, and distorts our process, of course we're upset. So yes, I think as you're studying provincial democracy and you want to have more referendums as part of your process, that's great, but don't pick on the little guy.
MS. LONGLEY: And as someone who worked in the municipal election as assistant returning officer for that particular one, it did certainly overshadow the municipal and school board elections. That was what people came for, to vote for that, as shown at the advance poll. They didn't really care if they voted for the municipal or school board candidate, they wanted to vote for the Sunday shopping and it did cause concerns, from our point of view.
MR. PARKER: Just a couple of quick questions. The Internet voting was what the previous presenter was talking about considerably and your municipality chose not to do that, at least this time. Was it that you wanted to see others roll it out, see how it might work for them, or was it the cost, or was it security concerns - why did you choose not to do it?
[Page 33]
MS. LONGLEY: I think all of the above. We have over 35,000 voters and when you multiply that by $3 a voter, it becomes very expensive. Our total budget for elections is $100,000 and I'm hoping to come in well under that - then you still had to have your paper polls on top of the electronic. You also would have had to have computers and computer hookups. We have one remote area that is an hour's travel from here - it gets very expensive to run one. Also, it was my feeling that I would like to see some other areas - I'd like to see another rural municipality try it, a smaller one, before we ever.
MR. ATWATER: I was totally in favour of it when it first came out. I almost jumped right in bed and hauled the quilts up over my head. Then I talked to the mailman and he said, Wayne, let's talk about this. Just imagine what can happen - just like you talked about the mailboxes, where the ballots really are, and who throws them in the garbage and who doesn't. That threat is there. Then I said, well, maybe we'd better let somebody else test the water first and maybe we'll try after that.
MR. PARKER: You haven't ruled it out for another time, but you're just still trying to see how it works elsewhere.
[8:45 p.m.]
Okay, I just had a couple of little questions here about your results from the last election. District 7, do you have a councillor in District 7?
MS. LONGLEY: We don't have District 7. Our boundary review was in 2000 and we had a petition submitted by 50 people and that forced us to another boundary review in 2004, and as a result the URB did away with our District 7 and amalgamated it into two of our other districts.
MR. PARKER: So you have 11 councillors?
MS. LONGLEY: We have 11, yes.
MR. PARKER: I used to be a councillor in the Municipality of Pictou County and I served on District 7 for 10 years, so that's why I was looking for it - I noticed it was missing.
MR. SMITH: It had nothing to do with your service in Pictou County, I can assure you. (Laughter)
MR. PARKER: Very interesting. Finally, have you, as councillors, selected a warden yet?
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MS. LONGLEY: No. On the 4th.
MR. SMITH: Next Tuesday evening.
MR. PARKER: Okay, thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Again, thank you very much for your presentation, for being here this evening. I certainly saw the amount of questions and comments from the members regarding your presentations. We certainly appreciate you taking the time out tonight. I want to wish you and all of your council well in not only choosing your warden, but in the next four years as you move forward. We certainly want to thank you again for the presentation you provided us with tonight.
As I mentioned earlier, while we had two presentations that we were aware of, if there's anyone else who would like to make a presentation, who has not spoken as of now, you're more than welcome to come forward. If not, I want to take this opportunity again to thank everyone for coming here this evening, thanking all of our support staff who have helped make this a reality, and to all of our members and Minister Parent for joining us for tonight's meeting. So again, thank you very much.
Committee members, we do have some administrative issues to deal with. If I could ask you to stay back, once we're done here, so we can deal with those matters which will save us from having to hold another meeting outside of our regular schedule.
So, with that, we'll terminate our formal process and deal with a few administrative matters. Thank you.
[The committee adjourned at 8:47 p.m.]
