Article content

The parade of professors, public policy specialists and other expert witnesses continued as the Special Committee on Electoral Reform wrapped up the second day of its final round of Hill-based hearings on the state of Canada’s voting system.

During the morning session, MPs heard from a panel that included Jean-Sebastien Dufresne, who heads up Mouvement Democratie Nouvelle, a group pushing for electoral reform in Quebec; Harvard economics professor Eric Maskin,who contends that a ranked ballot system could have prevented Donald Trump from winning the Republican presidential nomination and University of Toronto associate political science professor, and Ottawa Citizen columnist, Peter John Loewen,who advocates extreme caution in proceeding with any change to the system without fully considering the potential consequences.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or @Kady Liveblog recap: Pros and cons of PR vs. ranked ballots vs. first-past-the post on agenda Back to video

Two more political science professors took centre stage during the afternoon session: Laval University’s Louis Massicotte, who, in 2011, observed that voters prefer the “clear outcome” produced by the first-past-the-post system and Melanee Thomas from theUniversity of Calgary,who challenged the claim that proportional representation would do much to increase the diversity of representation in the House.

Leadnow.ca electoral reform campaigner Katelynn Northam, meanwhile, shared the results of her efforts to survey group members on their preferred approach to electoral reform, which came out strongly in favour of proportional representation over preferential/ranked ballots or the winner-take-all status quo.

Read Kady O’Malley’s coverage of the committee here: