Special Committee on Electoral Reform to travel across Canada

With a mandate to broadly consult Canadians from all walks of life, the Special Committee on Electoral Reform will criss-cross Canada this coming September and October. The Committee will use this opportunity to hold formal hearings and public sessions where members of the public may share their views on electoral reform, online voting and mandatory voting. For the open-mic sessions, it will be first come, first served. The format for these public sessions and the specific locations for the sessions remain to be determined. A press release providing further details will be issued at a later date.

The Committee’s mandate was set out in the motion adopted by the House of Commons on Tuesday, June 7, 2016. The Committee must present its report to the House of Commons no later than December 1, 2016.

Committee’s Travel Schedule (Tentative)

Monday, September 19	Regina, Saskatchewan
Tuesday, September 20	St-Pierre-Jolys, Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba
Wednesday, September 21	Toronto, Ontario
Thursday, September 22	Québec, Québec
Friday, September 23	Joliette, Québec
Monday, September 26	Whitehorse, Yukon
Tuesday, September 27	Site visit (to be determined) Victoria, British Columbia
Wednesday, September 28	Vancouver, British Columbia
Thursday, September 29	Leduc, Alberta
Friday, September 30	Yellowknife, Northwest Territories
Monday, October 3	Montréal, Québec
Tuesday, October 4	Halifax, Nova Scotia
Wednesday, October 5	St. John’s, Newfoundland
Thursday, October 6	Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
Friday, October 7	Fredericton, New Brunswick
To be determined	Iqaluit, Nunavut

Those wishing to contribute to the Committee’s discussions may find out how do so by reading the full news release on the Parliament of Canada website..


We wonder exactly how useful these few meetings where the committee members will hear a few opinions from a limited number of people on a first come first heard basis, I would suggest a written submission would be to the committal to be much easier and more effective for most folks. I also wonder about the above proposed schedule which details one meeting per province or territory EXCEPT Quebec where 3 are scheduled and BC where 2 are on the list, I wonder what criteria such inequality was based upon?


We know that each MP is expected to hold a 'Town Hall' to permit some of their constituents to express their views on electoral reform and many have done so already and been reported upon in various local news media. It will be interesting to see how closely the subsequent reports from those MP’s match the actual general tone of said meetings and how much of the various 'party lines' colour these synopsis of the meetings!


Finally for those not following such thing closely one of the Conservative members of the committee has withdrawn, it is unclear if a replacement has been named or if he or she will be equally wasting the committee’s time bellyaching about having a referendum!


According to the Hill Times’s report, Mr. Kenney “quietly gave up his spot on the key federal reform committee in the middle of August.” How quietly? According to the publication, his resignation was “unbeknownst to journalists who at the time were covering testimony” to the committee on Aug. 22, and also “even unknown to at least two MPs on the busy panel” until last week.
No loss I would say given his confrontational style both in this instance and elsewhere.



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