Mid-week pod: Make sure the electoral reform plate is not 'too full'
Canada's former chief electoral officer is warning parliamentarians to keep their electoral reform discussions as focussed as possible.
"That plate, with all those topics on it in front of me right now, is too full," Jean-Pierre Kingsley told Chris Hall on The House mid-week podcast.
"If you start to include in detail discussion about online voting, discussion about compulsory attendance at the polls, if you start discussing amendments to the Fair Elections Act, as it was called... this is huge as an agenda," Kingsley said.
The 12-member committee that will study electoral reform will be composed of five Liberals, three Conservatives, two New Democrats, one member of the Bloc Québécois and Green MP Elizabeth May.
Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef has talked about wanting to hear from Canadians and exploring various options.
But Kingsley argued that given existing time constraints, the committee should narrow its focus.
The former chief electoral officer also talked about his successor's decision to leave.
Marc Mayrand said this week he would step down in December.
That means the person who will replace him will be in charge of overseeing the next election and the new system that will likely come with it.
"Frankly, it means that we're going to need to recruit someone who's going to pick the ball and play with it right immediately," Kinglsey said.
He also spoke to The House about the possibility of putting the proposal for a new system to a referendum and his own thoughts about what a future system could look like.
Also on this week's podcast: constitutional expert Emmett Macfarlane joins us to talk about what will happen to an amended bill C-14 once it heads back to the house of commons, and CBC senior reporter Alison Crawford joins us to discuss another bill getting a rough ride in the Senate: bill C-7.