Bill C-18 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (verification of residence)

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to allow an elector or voucher who provides a piece of identification that does not prove his or her residence to use that piece of identification to prove his or her residence provided that the address on the piece of identification is consistent with information related to the elector or voucher that appears on the list of electors.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

Colleagues, I appreciate the opportunity to ask a couple of my own questions to clarify.

Colleagues, if you could put your Bill C-6 folders aside, we'll move right to Bill C-18, which is verification of residence. We already have an introduction of our experts at the end of the table.

Perhaps I could offer Monsieur Mayrand a moment of introduction to this bill. We will then move to our rounds of questioning, colleagues, beginning with seven minutes.

Monsieur Mayrand, please.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Because we dealt with this on Bill C-31, my recollection was that there were three or potentially four. I say that, Chair, just because the nature of this bill and the bill we'll be dealing with in the second hour hinges on Bill C-31 and I think it's important to underline that.

It is our party's contention that this bill and Bill C-18 are creatures of Bill C-31, and if we didn't have a flawed Bill C-31, we wouldn't have Bill C-6 or Bill C-18. That's the reason for my inquiry and for my statement.

So what we have here, and I've said this before, is the solution looking for a problem and we've certainly found them. This bill seems to be analogous to a hammer killing a fly. I look at the amount of money we've spent, the amount of time we've spent to deal with what I am understanding is a problem that hasn't existed, and I hope we'll hear from witnesses from the community.

Specifically, Chair, and to our panel, I haven't encountered one person who has been unwilling to unveil when she has come to exercise her franchise. Are we aware or are you aware anecdotally of...?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Let's bring our meeting to order, please.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, November 15, 2007, the committee is examining Bill C-6, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (visual identification of voters).

We will also be studying Bill C-18, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (verification of residence) later in the meeting, pursuant to the committee's order of reference of Friday, November 16, 2007.

Colleagues, today we have Marc Mayrand, the Chief Electoral Officer, and his team with us again.

We certainly appreciate and welcome your presence before the committee.

Members will appreciate that we're actually studying three pieces of legislation and one motion all at the same time. I appreciate members' ability to do that and, certainly, the ability of the Chief Electoral Officer and his team to brief us on three pieces of legislation, for the most part at the same time.

What we will do this morning is begin with an opening statement from Monsieur Mayrand. Then we will go to our first round of questioning. The plan would be to study Bill C-6, for which you have a briefing in front of you, for the first 45 minutes, and then in the second 45 minutes go into Bill C-18. I want to maintain a half hour at the end of this meeting to discuss committee business and clarification of some issues that have arisen here today.

With that, I will open the floor to Monsieur Mayrand. Would you introduce your team for the record? Then if you have any opening statement on Bill C-6, the floor is yours. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

At 11 o'clock.

Colleagues, you're so good to me. I appreciate it very much. That will be the decision.

A reminder: witnesses for Bill C-6 and Bill C-18, please. There will be the summary of the reports to members by Monday, with the idea of going to clause-by-clause on Thursday. With respect to amendments, we said one o'clock on Tuesday.

Thank you, members. We did well.

The meeting is adjourned.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

I have to agree with members: that's not enough time to read them, assess them, analyze them, and come up with amendments, should there be any.

All right. We probably cannot go to clause-by-clause study on Tuesday. That's going to be far too tight. Can we have amendments in by Tuesday at one o'clock and plan to do clause-by-clause study on Thursday, which relaxes things a little bit?

Colleagues, that seems to be the decision.

Moving on, we need to have witness lists in for Bill C-6 and Bill C-18. We do have some witnesses, and we'll work on that probably for Tuesday, but I also want to remind members that we need to have those witness lists in.

We don't have a lot of time, and I don't want to be rude to Madam Dawson. You have been handed out the revised report of the steering committee. Can everybody pull that out? We're attempting to adopt a report that is asking for extra meetings for the continuation of the debate on the motion by Madam Redman.

I'm not sure we're going to have time to deal with this; I do apologize. I will adjourn the meeting at ten minutes to one. Just so we don't get into confusion, room 139 north is down the hall on the right side. The Ethics Commissioner and her team are waiting there for us right now for our meet-and-greet. This room is not available, so we have to evacuate at that time.

The floor is now open, however, for this. I suppose there's a motion to adopt the report. We're into a debate. I don't think there were any names on our list last time. Does anybody wish to comment on this new report?

I have Mr. Reid and Mr. Lukiwski.

Go ahead, Mr. Reid, please.

Tackling Violent Crime Act

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin to speak to Bill C-2, I have to address my hon. colleague's contradictory comments about the lack of mandatory minimums. On the one hand, he lambasted the Liberal Party for not wanting mandatory minimums. On the other hand, he said very clearly that we had them and we called for a strengthening of them.

When the member for Mount Royal was the justice minister, he introduced mandatory minimums for weapons offences. That was a good thing. That is why we support Bill C-2. We have been trying to drive forward much of what is in the legislation. Ironically, we have been obstructed by the government.

I will go through the facts. Unfortunately, in the House one could look at the old adage that “in war, truth is the first casualty”. What we have here is war by another name. Sometimes truth is the first casualty in the House of Commons, and that is sad for the public.

Let me talk about the facts for a minute and give viewers a bit of history on the bill.

Bill C-2 is an omnibus bill involving a combination of five bills, including mandatory minimum penalties. We support mandatory minimum penalties. I caution the government, however, to ensure that the mandatory minimum penalties for weapons offences, violent offences and sexual offences cannot be plea bargained away and that they run consecutively and not concurrently. Too many times people who have committed serious offences receive penalties that get plea bargained away, so there is no effective penalty.

We also support an increase in mandatory minimums for weapons trafficking. My colleague from Mount Royal introduced many mandatory minimums for these offences in the last Parliament.

The Liberal Party supports the provisions for dangerous offenders, impaired driving and reverse onus in firearms offences. Many years ago there really was no penalty for a person using a weapon in the commission of an offence. That was changed by the last government. The Liberal Party supports the changes in Bill C-2.

Let me talk for a few moments about a few facts around the passage of the bill.

On October 26, 2006, our Liberal leader made a first offer to fast track a package of justice bills in the House, including Bill C-9, as it had been amended, Bill C-18, the DNA identification legislation, Bill C-19, the street racing legislation, Bill C-22, the age of consent legislation, Bill C-23, the animal cruelty legislation and Bill C-26, respecting payday loans. We also added Bill C-35, on March 14 of this year, a bill for bail reform, and we support that.

On March 21, we attempted to use our opposition day to pass the government's four justice bills: Bill C-18, Bill C-22, Bill C-23 and Bill C-35. The Conservative House leader raised a procedural point of order to block the motion. Those four government bills would have been fast tracked through this place in the same day, yet the government House leader, for reasons unknown to us and the public, blocked this. Those are facts.

What has been the path of government justice bills through the Senate? Of the six justice bills that had been passed before the summer break, only four went to the Senate. How on earth could the Senate pass bills that it just received prior to the government proroguing Parliament? It could not do that. It is disingenuous for government members to stand and suggest that the Senate was trying to block their bills. By the time the Senate received the bills, the government closed Parliament. Those are the facts. Anybody can check them out if they wish.

We support Bill C-2. However, I want to bore down on a few dangerous issues that the government is pursuing. One deals with the issue of drug trafficking. The government has said that it will increase the penalties for those who traffic in drugs.

There are two populations of traffickers.

There are those parasites in society who are involved in commercial grow operations, frequently attached to organized crime. We should throw the book at them. Those people are a cancer in our society and they deserve to be in jail.

There is another population that will be swept up in the government's anti-trafficking bill. It is the low level dealers who sell small amounts of illegal drugs to people, but they themselves are addicts. In essence, they are selling drugs to pay for their addictions.

If we criminalize people who have addiction problems and throw them in jail, they come out being hardened criminals. We also do not deal with the underlying problem, which we will have at the end of the day when they come out. In effect, we increase public insecurity and costs to the taxpayer. We do not address the underlying problem and we make our streets less safe. That is stupid, not to put too fine a point on it.

If the government goes through with the bill to criminalize people who are addicts, the low level people buying and selling drugs, it will end up with the situation we see south of the border, which has used a war on drugs approach. It has proven to be an abysmal failure.

What we see south of the border is a view of the future for us if the government pursues its course of action. There have been increased rates of both soft and hard drugs use, increased numbers of people have been incarcerated, increased costs to the taxpayer and more violent crime. Society loses.

The government ought to work with the provinces to implement solutions that address some of the underlying problems.

I will get to the organized crime aspects in a moment.

For the drug problems, I cannot overemphasize what a disaster this will be. The government has been warned of this by people across the country.

Let us take two projects, in particular, that have been extremely effective in dealing with people who have intravenous drug use problems. Both of them are found in Vancouver and championed by Dr. Julio Montaner and Dr. Thomas Kerr, superb physicians and research scientists, who have underneath them the Insite supervised injection program and the NAOMI project.

The supervised injection program is a place where addicts can go to a supervised setting and take the drugs they are given. What has that done? It has reduced harm, put more people into treatment, reduced crime and saved the taxpayer money. Fewer people have gone to emergency and there has been less dependence on our health care system. It works.

The other project I would recommend we pursue is the NAOMI project. Before I get to it, I point out that in the eleventh hour the government extended Insite's ability to engage in its program up until June 2008.

All the evidence published from The Lancet to The New England Journal of Medicine shows, without a shadow of a doubt, that the Insite supervised injection program saves lives, reduces crime and gets people into treatment. It is good for public security and it saves the taxpayer money. Why extend it to only eight months?

If the government gets a majority, it will kill the program. That, in short, will be murder. The government knows full well the program saves lives. To remove that program, would result in, essentially, the killing of people.

A program that works better, which the government does not support but ought to expand, is the NAOMI project. The NAOMI project deals with hard-core narcotics abusers. These people are over the age of 26. They have had five years of drug addictions and two failed attempts at treatment. They are the hard nuts of intravenous drug use.

The NAOMI project took 243 addicts and randomized them into three populations. One population received intravenous heroine, the other one received intravenous dilaudid, which is a prescription narcotic that is legal, and the third was to take oral methadone, which is a weak narcotic.

What happened to those populations? Of the population on IV drugs, more than 85% of people were still taking those drugs, receiving treatment and counselling, getting their lives together, obtaining skills training and being able to live while not being on the street and not engaging in criminal behaviour to feed their addictions. Of the third population, the ones in the methadone program, 50% of people were still in treatment after a year. It works.

What the government should be doing for both Insite as well as NAOMI, is expanding those programs across our country. Our urban centres need it.

In Victoria there are 1,243 people living on the street, 60% of which have what we call dual diagnoses, which means some of them have both a drug problem and a psychiatric problem. I would also add that some people within that population have had brain injuries in the past and have fallen into the terrible spiral of drug use by being on the street. Those people could be you or I, Mr. Speaker, who one day fall off a ladder or get into a car accident, sustain a significant closed head injury, have major cerebral trauma and as a result their lives are affected forever.

Some of those people are on the street and take drugs. Do we throw those people in jail? Do we throw the psychiatric patient, who is dealing to pay for his or her addiction, in jail? That is what would happen with the bill that the government has introduced. Those people need medical treatment. They do not need to be in jail.

My plea to the government, to the Minister of Health, the Minister of Justice and the Prime Minister is to bury their ideology, follow the facts and implement the solutions that will help people with addictions, keep our streets safe, and reduce costs to the taxpayers. It is a win-win situation for all concerned.

The interesting thing about the NAOMI project is that because NAOMI actually gave the drug to an individual who was proven to be an addict, that person did not have to go on the street to get the drugs. If that were done in a broader sense, it would be horrific to organized crime that benefits from this situation because the NAOMI project severs the tie between the addict and organized crime. That is what we need to do.

Organized crime would be horrified if a forward thinking government one day were to enable drug addicts to receive their drugs. Doing that enables addicts to get into the treatment programs that they need. It enables them to detoxify, obtain addiction counselling, skills training and the psychiatric therapy they need. If we do not do that, we will not make a dent in what we see on the ground. There will not be any affect on addictions and it will actually increase the criminal population in our country.

The other side of this coin, of course, deals with organized crime gangs, as I mentioned, the parasites and cancer in our society. These parasites are essentially people in $3,000 suits who benefit from a substance that is nearly worthless but has a value well beyond what it ought to have because it is illegal.

I have a bill on the order paper that would decriminalize the simple possession of marijuana. No one condones anybody using marijuana, everybody wants to prevent people from using it, and everyone certainly encourages children not to use this or any other illegal drug. The fact of the matter is that people do use it and a significant percentage of Canadians have used it at one time in their lives, particularly when they were very young.

Do we throw those people in jail? Do we throw an 18-year-old who has a joint in his or her back pocket in jail? Do we throw an 18-year-old in jail who exchanges or sells or gives a couple of marijuana cigarettes to a friend? That would be trafficking under the government's bill. Do we throw that 18-year-old in jail? Do we give an 18-year-old a criminal record, which is what we have today, affecting his or her ability to work or gain employment and have access to professional facilities for the rest of his or her life? Is that a humane way to deal with our population? It is not.

The worst news for organized crime, in my personal view, would be that marijuana is legal and regulated. It is not to say that marijuana is safe. It is not. It is dangerous, but so are alcohol and cigarettes.

If we can imagine today that cigarettes were going to come onto the market and were proposed as being something that ought to be sold today, do we think for a moment that they would be allowed, with all the cancer, respiratory and cardiac problems that cigarettes cause? No, they would not be, and neither in fact would alcohol. Alcohol would not be allowed today either, for all of the damage it does, but the fact of the matter is that cigarettes and alcohol are legal today.

The groups that benefit the most from the status quo, from marijuana being illegal, and it is just a weed with its value elevated well beyond what it ought to be because it is illegal, are the organized crime gangs. They are making billions of dollars off the status quo, and those billions are used to do any number of things including: trafficking of weapons and people, prostitution, embezzlement, fraud and murder. That is what organized crime is involved with.

What the government should be doing is coming up with a more comprehensive plan to deal with the biker gangs and organized criminal gangs who are--

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much for the clarification. That's why I'm reading this out, so that we know what we do have to do.

Monsieur Proulx asked for a copy of any response from the Chief Electoral Officer to the minister's requests. Not much later, Madam Redman brought up the suggestion about bringing the Chief Electoral Officer in to discuss Bill C-6.

Would it be a smart idea to bring the Chief Electoral Officer in to deal specifically with Mr. Proulx's request as well as Madam Redman's request, as well as Bill C-18, if he has comments on it? We could have him here one time and deal with all three.

If no one objects to that, we will send the Chief Electoral Officer, then, a letter and give him notice of that.

We are still waiting for a letter from Monsieur Blanchet regarding Bill C-16. We haven't received it yet, so we will follow up on that.

This week, colleagues—I just want to remind members—tomorrow, on Wednesday, November 28, we have the subcommittee on the code of ethics meeting in room 112-N from 3:30 to 5 p.m. for the election of a chair and continuation of the committee's review of the code of ethics commissioner's report.

At five minutes to seven is an informal meet and greet with the Chief Electoral Officer, Monsieur Mayrand, at Elections Canada. All are invited to attend who can.

On Thursday from 11 to 11:45, we have two academics, Jon Pammett and David Docherty.

Scheduled from 11:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. is Chief Electoral Officer Jean Ouellet, from Saskatchewan.

Following that, there is also an informal meet and greet with Mary Dawson, who is the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner.

That brings us to a problem I'm going to ask my clerk to explain to members before we go into consideration of the report; it has to do with the ability to televise future meetings. There was some conversation yesterday at the steering committee about televising and when it would happen and what rooms are available.

We have priority, as this committee takes priority over other committees, and it would be up to the whips to determine whether we take precedence or priority over a televised room.

I'm going to ask Mr. Latimer to explain to committee members the difficulty with televised rooms. Then we'll move right into the report so that members can consider it.

Please, Mr. Latimer.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Bill C-18, the verification of residence bill, is one designed to ensure that legitimate voters will be able to exercise their fundamental democratic right to vote.

I think everybody recalls how we got to where we are. Bill C-31 was passed by this Parliament to improve the integrity of the voting process and prevent voter fraud. The bill was made based on recommendations that came out of this committee in a report that was dated June 20, 2006, and it was a report that was supported by all political parties.

For the first time ever, and many voters comment to me positively about this, the bill required voters to demonstrate their identity and residence before being allowed to vote.

To establish identity and residence, voters must either show one government-issued piece of identification containing a photograph, as well as the name and residential address of the voter; or show two pieces of identification approved by the Chief Electoral Officer, both of which contain the name of the elector, and one of which contains his or her residential address.

Or, the voter must have another registered voter in the same polling division vouch for the elector, after having shown the pieces of identification required to prove his or her own identity and residence.

These new requirements were designed to ensure that those who vote during elections are actually legitimate voters.

With the new requirements, people will no longer be able to pick up voter information cards abandoned at apartment building entrances, and vote under the name of a different voter.

There will also be no way to vote in a riding where the voter works, rather than in the riding where the voter lives, in order to support a particular candidate in a particularly tight race.

Since the bill received royal assent in June, Elections Canada has identified a problem with the requirement for voters to demonstrate their residence before voting.

In defence of this committee, which dealt with the bill originally, it should be said that the problem had not been identified by the Chief Electoral Officer when he originally came to testify before you.

To that extent, while everyone here shares an ownership in the problem, that ownership in the problem is in part because the ownership was spread out and the Chief Electoral Officer did not communicate the problem to you at the time you were originally dealing with the bill.

This problem is that many voters do not have a piece of identification with a civic address that can prove their residence on polling day.

For some voters, the problem lies in that the full municipal address is not provided. Others have one, but it does not appear on their pieces of identity.

It's a problem that arises most often in rural areas across the country. It's most often in these areas that individuals may only have a postal address, such as a post office box, a rural route number attached to a post office, or simply a mailing address that provides for general delivery to a particular post office.

These individuals will be unable to produce identification with a civic address that can establish their residence.

Moreover, because the problem affects particular regions, the voters in question would have trouble finding someone to vouch for them, because their neighbours will probably not have a home address on their piece of identity either.

Now, once the government was informed of this problem by Elections Canada, we moved very quickly to solve it, with the assistance of Elections Canada and in consultation with all the other political parties.

The solution proposed in the bill provides for an address on a piece of identification to prove residence, even a non-civic address if the address is consistent with information about the voter on the list of voters.

When registering to vote--that would be registering for the first time--the voter would have to prove they lived in the polling division where they intend to vote. Since this is the case, we can now use the mailing address that appears on the voters list to corroborate that it is the same voter who has already proven that they reside in this polling division.

The same would apply to someone who vouches for another voter. If the mailing address on his or her pieces of identity corresponds to the information on the voters' list, that will be considered sufficient proof of residence.

An election official or a candidate's representative who has reasonable doubt about a voter's residence will still be able to challenge this voter. In such a case, in order to vote a person would have to take an oath as well.

It's important to note that for individuals not on the voters list, who are seeking to register at an advance poll or on a polling date, to be on the voters list they will still have to show a piece of identification that contains a residential address, or otherwise be vouched for. This is to ensure the integrity of the information in the register and to ensure that those who are registered to vote in the polling division really do reside in that polling division.

Mr. Chair, our verification of residence bill solves the problem of verifying the residence of voters who do not have a civic address on their identification. Now that the government has acted quickly, with the assistance of Elections Canada and in consultation with the other political parties, it's incumbent, I believe, on Parliament to act quickly so that Elections Canada can apply these rules at the earliest possible opportunity.

I'd like to thank you for your attention and answer any questions you may have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

I'm planning to go for 45 minutes, which means ending at one. I will obviously not want to cut the minister off and not want to stop some interesting questions, so I will be listening to verify that the questions aren't repetitive and that they are on the bill, rather than on something else. If I sense the committee is done with the minister—no offence—then we will move into committee business, but I am planning to go to committee business at one o'clock.

Without further ado, Minister, thank you again for being so prepared for this meeting on two bills. We invite your opening statement on Bill C-18.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Colleagues, thank you. We're going to reconvene our meeting today.

I'm not sure we have to go into introducing our witnesses, as they've already introduced themselves and are in fact the same.

Colleagues, in this second hour, pursuant to the order of reference of Friday, November 16, 2007, we will be dealing with Bill C-18, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (verification of residence).

I understand that all members have the act in front of them, as well as some research on the act.

I will simply remind members that I need some time—we will go over a little bit at the end of this meeting—to deal with committee business. But at this point in time I will ask the honourable minister to open up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you, colleagues.

What I'd like to do right now, if there are no further questions for the minister on Bill C-6 , is suspend the meeting for one minute so that colleagues and the witnesses can remove all their research papers and notes on this bill and prepare themselves for the next item of business, which is Bill C-18. I will suspend the meeting for one minute.

[Marc Chénier, Counsel, Legislation and House Planning, Privy Council Office]

My name is Marc Chénier and I am the legal counsel at the Privy Council Office's Legislation and House Planning section. I am here for the consideration of Bill C-18.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Colleagues, let's begin our meeting today.

First of all, welcome. Thank you for attending the meeting.

Ladies and gentlemen, today we have, pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, November 15, 2007, Bill C-6, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (visual identification of voters). We have the honourable minister before us this morning for that, which I hope we can deal with in the first hour.

Colleagues, following the first hour we will also have the minister with us, but we will be dealing with a separate bill, Bill C-18. We can go into that in the second hour.

As well, colleagues, I'm going to ask that we have an additional fifteen minutes—and we probably don't need that long, but an extra fifteen minutes—to deal with committee business at the end. We will do our best to speed it along, but we do have some committee business.

Without further ado, I would like to welcome the honourable minister, Mr. Peter Van Loan, leader of the government in the House of Commons and the Minister for Democratic Reform.

Minister, I will ask you to introduce your team, and then we will allow you some time for an opening statement.

Colleagues, we'll follow the usual procedure of a seven-minute round of questions. And, members, in front of you is the legislative summary for Bill C-6, an Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (visual identification of voters). Although the minister is here and has a number of bills before us, it would be very helpful to stay focused on this particular bill. We'll deal with the other ones as they come up.

Minister, I'm going to offer you the floor for your opening statement, please. Welcome. Could you introduce your team?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand and respond to the question by my hon. colleague from Rainy River.

First, let us set the record straight. Bill C-31, which is the genesis of Bill C-18, was debated at the procedure and House affairs committee and ultimately ratified by the entire committee.

I am the first one to admit, since I am a member of that committee, that we all share responsibility in missing the one element of that bill, which, in turn, disenfranchised or potentially disenfranchised a million rural voters because of the term “residential address”

The point I am making is that every one of us on that committee missed it. We all share that responsibility. In fact, the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, who appeared twice before that committee to discuss Bill C-31, did not notice in the legislation itself that there would be anything that had the potential to disenfranchise rural voters because they did not have a residential address.

When it was first discovered, which was about two weeks after the recent Quebec byelections that were held in September of this year, the Chief Electoral Officer, in examining how the ramifications of Bill C-31 affected that byelection process, noticed for the first time that there was an element that could potentially cause the disenfranchisement of voters in rural Canada.

We took immediate steps to correct the situation and introduced Bill C-18 to rectify the situation. We are hoping for speedy passage in committee and by members of the House to take care of that situation.

However, even if there were an election call before that bill became law, the Chief Electoral Officer has assured us that he would use his powers of adaptation to ensure not one rural Canadian would be disenfranchised if we had to go to a vote, whether it be a general election or a byelection.

However, I want to concentrate my remarks for the last few moments that I have to point out the absolute hypocrisy of the Liberal Party of Canada. Not only has the member from Rainy River suggested that this was a problem created by our government, but other members of his party have done the same. The member for Wascana has done several interviews in which he has suggested that this was a government problem, that this was something that was created by the government, that it missed it and that it was sloppy legislation.

The entire Liberal caucus voted in favour of Bill C-31. The sheer hypocrisy of their statement suggesting that it was only the government's problem because it made the mistake is staggering. Everyone shares some culpability. We all share the responsibility. We are willing to admit it. Members of his own party who were on the procedure and House affairs committee said nothing about the possibility of disenfranchisement of voters because they missed it as well.

While I am here to say that we will take immediate action and, hopefully, we will have some compliance with members opposite when the bill gets to committee so we can deal with this quickly and expeditiously, it is just so irritating to stand here and listen to members with the sanctimony and the hypocrisy to suggest that it was someone else's problem and that it was not part of their own doing.

For the record, we all share responsibility. I wish the member from Rainy River would stand up and admit that.

[Ken Boshcoff, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago, I was one of the several Liberal MPs who brought to the government's attention a glaring error in Bill C-18. It was the basic fact that the minority government had left one million voters off the voters lists. Imagine, with all the Prime Minister's drum pounding, if he had forced an unnecessary election, what one million eligible voters would have done if they had found themselves disenfranchised. In my great riding of Thunder Bay--Rainy River, a minimum of 5,000 voters would not have been able to exercise their democratic right.

Although all parties had missed the fine print, it shows us what can happen when bills are rushed through.

The standing committee was advised in May and after much deliberation, still the government ignored the public service's advice. Even after the Quebec byelections, the government should have leapt to the alert and proactively resolved the problem. Instead, an effective opposition was once again compelled to expose the government's haste and clean up yet another mistake.

It is unfortunate the government tried to avoid facing up to the problem. The straightforward solution is relatively simple. If the address contained in the identification provided does not prove the elector's residence specific to a domicile, but does reflect the most precise residential address typically available, then it should be deemed in compliance.

I am hopeful that after the events of the past few weeks the amendments will succeed in addressing the issues outstanding and that we can resolve this matter.