Bill 1 Elections Act (fixed election dates) - 2nd reading

Elections Act (amended) - Bill 1

CLAUDIA CHENDER: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise and speak to this bill. I know that the Premier is taking notes on what I’m saying and paying close attention. I will start by saying that we are in favour of fixed election dates.

Everyone in this House is in favour of fixed election dates. Stephen McNeil introduced several pieces of legislation arguing for fixed election dates. Those never came to pass, but it’s true that this is an achievement: fixed election dates.

Yet it is profoundly frustrating that what should be an unadulterated piece of good news in fact feels like old-fashioned political trickery from the government that is pledging to do something different and be a new voice.

We are the last province to have fixed election dates in place. We’ve discussed that. We have several pieces of legislation on the order paper that would institute fixed election dates - all private members’ bills. Do you know what all of those dates, all the dates in the legislation, all the dates in every other province have in common? They are not in the Summer: none of them, not a single one.

The reasons should be obvious but given this bill that we are debating, I will enumerate them, Mr. Speaker. The idea of having an election in the middle of the Summer, which surely this new government experienced on their own behalf, each of them, is that it suppresses voter turnout. It makes it difficult for young people to vote. It makes it difficult to connect with people. Many people are not in their home riding; they don’t get information; they don’t get their voter information card; and they may not be in the province. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. These are the things that are so self-evident that no Legislature has tried to mandate fixed election dates in the middle of the Summer.

The most recent example I can give of how difficult it is to do a Summer election is the one, as I mentioned, that we just had. When we had this bill briefing, Mr. Speaker, and when the Premier spoke and we heard about the rationale, we heard, well, you can use schools for polling places. I don’t know how many people in this Chamber had schools as polling places. It could have happened in rural Nova Scotia where there’s more space in schools, but I will tell you that in HRM, where half of the residents of this province live, I would be surprised if there were more than a handful of school that had polls.

The reason for that is because maintenance happens during the Summer, Mr. Speaker. So, when schools are being maintained, you can’t have a polling place in them, other than of course election day if it’s on a weekend, which it clearly isn’t.

The other challenge you have, Mr. Speaker, in terms of enfranchisement and people actually being able to vote is that one of the rationales given for this legislation was that people didn’t feel comfortable with polling places and continuous polls and advance polls being held in places of worship. All I can tell you is that in my constituency I didn’t have an advance poll. I didn’t have a community poll because they could not find space. But the returning office was in a church because that was the only place they could find, because all of the community centres which had historically hosted those advance polls and those community polls were being used for summer camps, for programming.

Mr. Speaker, far from making it more accessible for people to be able to vote for Elections Nova Scotia, it makes it more difficult. Again, it is shocking to me that I even have to make any of these comments. These are things that as MLAs, the 55 people in this Chamber know, the government knows it, the Official Opposition knows it, and we know it.

This brings me to why would we have dates in the Summer. Why would the government have chosen this? I mean I can only guess, Mr. Speaker, why the government would have done this. What I can tell you is a friend shared an anecdote with me the other day that the late, great John Buchanan said: “There’s nothing better than a Summer election.”

At the risk of stealing anyone’s thunder, I will just say that this is historically true for Progressive Conservate hearts. Why is that? Because the share of the vote of Progressive Conservative Parties is older, is whiter and is - sorry, no offence, Mr. Speaker - more likely to show up to the polls, is going to be committed to that because they have a family history, they have the privilege of coming from a place where people have always been able to exercise their right to vote, free from interference and with help. We know there are many, many people in this province for whom that is not the case.

Mr. Speaker, are fixed election dates good? Yes, we need fixed election dates. Are they the most important things in terms of democratic reform? Arguable. I mean we’ve put forth a whole suite of democratic reforms. Those include a sitting calendar, proportional representation for one. We know that the majority of Nova Scotians did not vote for this government, didn’t vote for our last government. That’s something we might want to remedy . . . (Interruption) We’re not going to go back that far, we’re just going to go with two, but point taken - or the government before, so there’s something wrong.

I think if you listened to the questions that we heard in Question Period today we heard a number of questions that say, you’re proposing this blanket policy - how are you going to ensure that people aren’t left behind? The response from the government has been it’s going to work.

You have said that you’re going to do this thing and we’re worried that some people might not benefit. The response from the government has been we’re going to do it and it’s going to be good.

You can’t blame me for being a little concerned when, in the name of democratic reform, the first bill that this government puts forward is a bill that very directly historically benefits their partisan interests in the name of democratic reform.

I think that’s very unfortunate. I have a lot more to say, not surprisingly, but I’m going to save it for third reading, because although the Premier said that we now have fixed election dates, I know he’s new in this job. He hasn’t been sitting in that chair for very long. He surely knows that we have a legislative process. We actually don’t have fixed election dates right now. We have a bill on the order paper that suggests fixed election dates, and now we have a legislative process where we discuss whether that is something that will indeed happen.

I left out one thing which I think is important to mention. The Premier, in his remarks, said - we’re now getting used to the Premier’s particular way of just eliding people’s concerns - they’re concerned, it’s going to be fine.

We’ll see. Maybe it will all be fine. I hope that I am proven wrong, but one thing is not going to be fine: the democratic education of our students. The idea that a program like, for instance, the one the Premier raised - I think it was Student Vote - the idea that a program like that could happen independent of an actual election is absurd. That whole program is built around students actually participating in an election. They vote on Election Day.

I know that there are many members of this Chamber who have young children and children in school, and many of you will have stories about how your children think about Election Day. They watch their parents campaign. They talk about how many signs each team has. That’s what my kids do. My kids even wrote a song, a little jingle . . . (Interruptions).

THE SPEAKER: Order, please. The honourable member for Dartmouth South has the floor.

CLAUDIA CHENDER: My kids wrote a little jingle in 2017 called “We Have a Plan to Defeat the Liberals.” Didn’t work. I mean, it worked for me.

I raise that because we want to raise democratic citizens. The idea that a 53 per cent turnout in a provincial election is a good turnout - I think the Premier said we had a good turnout. It was about one per cent higher. I don’t think one per cent is appreciably higher. Yes, technically 53 per cent is more than 52 per cent, but it’s a lot less than 80 per cent. It’s a lot less than 70 per cent, which any democratic body like ours that purports to represent the interests of Nova Scotia should be aiming for.

Instead, we’re not aiming for the top. We’re aiming straight at the middle. That middle is status quo. I don’t know about my colleagues, and I don’t know about the government, but I’m not here to maintain the status quo. It’s not why my constituents elected me. It’s not why I do this job. I’m here to increase the effectiveness and participation in the democratic process.

Unfortunately, I will conclude by saying that I don’t know that this date the government has chosen does that. I will say that I think the way that we could see real leadership from this government right now, I think the way this government could really walk the talk . . .

AN HON. MEMBER: Walk the walk

CLAUDIA CHENDER: I think it’s walk the talk, actually. I’m going to say walk the talk and then we’ll see who’s right.

I think the way that this government could walk the talk is to show up to these debates, is to show up to Law Amendments Committee, with an open mind and to hear the concerns that people register about this. I will be the first in line to sing to the rooftops how happy I am that Nova Scotia finally has a fixed election date if it’s not a date that falls in the middle of the Summer. I look forward to the Law Amendments Committee process.