Do Canadians think a national referendum on changing the electoral system is necessary?

According to a new poll from EKOS Research, half do and half don’t.

It’s what EKOS President Frank Graves describes as an “almost exactly evenly divided voting population”.

On April 14 and 15, EKOS asked 1,176 Canadians the following question:

Some people say that any change to the electoral system is so fundamental that it would require a national referendum. Others say that a rigorous program of public engagement and Parliamentary review should be sufficient. Which statement is closer to your point of view?

With a margin of error of +/- 2.86 per cent, 19 times out of 20, 46.7 per cent felt a referendum was necessary and 46.7 per cent didn’t — 6.6 per cent skipped the question.

“If you’re looking for an answer from public opinion as to whether this is necessary or not, the answer is just: we don’t know. We’re not sure. There really isn’t any clarity. You’ve got basically the country split into two identically-sized groups — one that thinks it’s a good idea, one that doesn’t,” Graves told iPolitics.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority of Liberal supporters can be counted among the latter — the majority of Conservatives, among the former.

Only 36.5 per cent of Liberals think a referendum is necessary, compared to 62.4 per cent who don’t.

Conservatives are almost the mirror opposite: 62.6 per cent think a referendum is necessary and 35.9 per cent don’t.

Strangely enough, considering how much the NDP advocates for changes to the Canadian voting system, a majority of their supporters (57.0 per cent) think — like Conservatives — that a referendum is necessary. Since the NDP sample size was lower, resulting in a higher margin of error (9.56 per cent), however, that result needs to be interpreted with caution.

Nonetheless, it does suggest — notwithstanding any desire to change the voting system — a predictable amount of wariness among non-Liberals about the government’s intentions.

That partisan divide was on display last Thursday night at a University of Ottawa symposium on electoral reform hosted by the Jean-Luc Pépin Research Chair, Kevin Page.

Conservative MP and democratic reform critic Scott Reid was at loggerheads with his NDP counterpart, Nathan Cullen, and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May on the subject of a referendum, while Mark Holland, parliamentary secretary to the minister of democratic reform, was reticent.

For Reid and the Conservatives, changing the electoral system without a referendum is undemocratic. And the party has always taken that position, he said.

The NDP and Greens, in contrast, see the demand for a referendum as a Conservative strategy to maintain the status quo.

“Referenda on electoral reform changes have been held in a number of jurisdictions. Sometimes they don’t produce change — the example of Ontario in 2007, British Columbia, and P.E.I. come to mind. On the other hand, the referendum was the route by which New Zealand changed its electoral system…It was the route by which Switzerland changed,” Reid said, in an attempt to rebut that argument.

“The Canadian people should not be deprived of the right to choose the system they wind up with.”

Though Cullen didn’t see anything wrong with a referendum per se, he argued Reid and the Conservatives’ insistence on one was hypocritical in light of the changes they made to voting identification requirements, among other things, through the Fair Elections Act.

“The Conservatives didn’t consider a referendum when they changed the voting system last time,” he said.

May added that a majority of Canadians voted for parties that ran on changing the electoral system, giving the Liberal government a mandate to change the system without a referendum.

She also objected to the cost.

“When you add up all the votes of all the people who voted for parties whose platform included getting rid of first-past-the-post — the Liberals, the New Democrats, and even our Green vote — you get to 62.7 per cent of Canadians who voted to get rid of first-past-the-post. Mandate we’ve got,” she said.

“If we’re going to keep the promise that 2015 is the last federal election under first-past-the-post, then to hold a referendum would be as costly as to hold a national election before the next federal election.”

Reid interrupted.

“Well, there are some things that are worth that cost,” he said.

Provincially, EKOS found a slim majority of Ontarians and Albertans favour a referendum, while the rest of the country (again with the margin of error caveat) doesn’t. At 54 per cent, Quebecers are the most opposed to a referendum.

There’s also a not insignificant gender divide.

A slim majority of men support a referendum (54.7), while a slim majority of women don’t think it’s necessary (52.7).

“What I see with these particular results is that the public just haven’t made up their minds. Portions of the public have made up their minds. Conservatives think (a referendum) is a great idea — Liberals don’t think it’s necessary. But the overall picture is one of an almost exactly evenly divided voting population,” Graves said.

“I think it might provide the government with a little bit of flexibility or latitude to maneuver.”

But what about legal flexibility? Is this even something the Liberal government can do?

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Pal, whose area of expertise includes election and constitutional law, thinks so.

Pal also spoke at the Thursday electoral reform symposium, and explained that the Canadian constitution doesn’t really say much about electoral reform.

“We’ve gotten used to, in some ways, potentially having a referendum for large scale constitutional change — a Charlottetown Accord. But there is no formal requirement to have a referendum. I’m not saying that’s not a good idea. But in terms of what the constitution says, it’s not actually required,” he said.

“It might be a convention — something that we’ve gotten used to — but it’s not something we can go to the courts and demand they enforce…in my view.”

That said, the 2014 Supreme Court senate reference has created some confusion.

“There’s some uncertainty that constitutional experts have been trying to wrestle with because the Supreme Court of Canada…said you can’t actually change the Senate without the consent of the provinces. So basically anything that’s really significant, you need to get provincial consent…at least seven provinces, 50 per cent of the population. Or sometimes unanimous consent,” Pal explained.

“The question people have raised is whether the Court would apply the same kind of test to a significant change for the House. The question is whether electoral reform is the same kind of reform that the court was addressing in the senate reference.”