Bill C-6 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (visual identification of voters)

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to require that electors have their faces uncovered before voting, or registering to vote, in person, and supplements the authority of Elections Canada to appoint sufficient personnel to manage the conduct of the vote at the polls.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Mayrand, it has already been said, during meetings that did not necessarily relate to Bill C-6 but rather to elections administration, that staff recruitment was a relatively serious problem. I, for my part, have not been faced with this problem because I live in an urban environment. However, several of my colleagues tell me that, in rural areas, it can be quite difficult to recruit workers for elections, and, in the case at hand, I should rather be talking about female workers.

How can you say that this will not cause a problem, whereas it appears you have difficulty recruiting women to work in polling stations, and under Bill C-6, you will have to hire women to visually identify women whose face is hidden but who will agree to remove their veil before another woman?

[Marc Mayrand]

With regard to the Charter and legal advice in this regard, I did not require an opinion. I believe it is up to the government to obtain this type of opinion and to draft bills accordingly. My responsibility consists in enforcing this act, as passed by Parliament.

The text of Bill C-6 that I have thus far seen provides us with sufficient flexibility to administer the law in a way that is consistent and respectful of the rights and obligations of each and everyone. With regard to its enforcement, I foresee no administrative difficulties at the moment.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome, Mr. Mayrand, Ms. Davidson, Mr. Perrault and Mr. Molnar. It is most kind of you to have come here to meet with us this morning to discuss Bill C-6.

Mr. Mayrand, you have been subjected to an avalanche of criticism by the government because of the position you took with regard to the interpretation of the act. Following this pronouncement, the government wished to save face. Your position with regard to the presumably illegal expenses of the Conservative government during the last election has not helped get your name added to the list of people that the government has a good opinion of.

What is your view of the changes made to Bill C-6 and how do they compare with what existed previously? I would also like to know if you have obtained from your legal advisors opinions or interpretations relating to the Charter of Rights? Under Bill C-6, you would be required to verify people's identity visually. It is you who, through your representatives and contract staff, among others, would be required to carry out this verification.

Do you believe you will be able to fulfil this obligation comfortably or will it be yet another source of tension between Elections Canada and the Conservative government, as was the case when you spoke out about its potentially fraudulent expenses?

[Marc Mayrand, Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have with me Mrs. Diane Davidson, deputy chief electoral officer and chief legal counsel, also responsible for regulatory affairs; Mr. Stéphane Perrault, who's our senior general counsel; and Mr. Rennie Molnar, who is the associate deputy chief electoral officer, responsible for electoral events.

I'm here this morning to discuss Bill C-6, which concerns the visual identification of voters. Bill C-6 requires that electors have their faces uncovered when providing identification at an ordinary or advance polling station. This rule will also apply to electors who go to the office of a returning officer to obtain their special ballots.

I do not anticipate any difficulty in implementing the bill, as drafted, upon its royal assent. It provides the authority and flexibility necessary to ensure the good administration of the Canada Elections Act.

The bill raises only one technical issue: Clause 4 restricts the delegation of powers and duties by deputy returning officers and poll clerks to additional staff. This excludes the election officers already present at the polling site.

It would seam appropriate to authorize deputy returning officers and poll clerks to delegate their powers and duties to any election officer present at the polling site. This would allow a more efficient use of resources.

Moreover, it would be preferable to permit such delegation not only at polling stations, as currently provided for in the bill, but also at advance polling stations.

I have brought with me a technical paper containing the changes I am proposing to the wording of Clause 4 of the bill.

My colleagues and I would be pleased to answer your questions concerning the bill.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[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.

[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.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to underscore an issue that has actually been raised by a couple of colleagues, and that's the fact that this is remediating an unintended consequence of a previous piece of legislation.

While I certainly concur with Minister Van Loan that the request was made through House leaders, I'm wondering if there is an occasion to have the Chief Electoral Officer back to talk about some of the other legislation before us, such as Bill C-6. Maybe the chair could let him know that this is an issue that we would like to address.

I would certainly like to have the assurance of the Chief Electoral Officer that this is indeed remediating what we are trying to do and there are no other unintended foreseeable consequences before we deal with this piece of legislation.

[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.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

What I was trying to determine was that since Bill C-6 has been tabled, there has been no uproar against it. No one is raising their arms and saying that's absolutely the wrong approach. The reason I'm asking is because if that is the case, as you mentioned, we seemed to have all-party support at one time. We do work closely with the other parties. I don't want to put you in a difficult position, but I'm wondering if you still sense all-party support. If not, have recommendations been made to win all-party support?

Groups have not approached and said that Bill C-6 is absolutely in the wrong direction. They're in favour of it. Yet we seem to be losing party support. From my perspective, I'm wondering if that's all-party support. Is that from your perspective as well?

[Lucienne Robillard, Liberal, Westmount—Ville-Marie, QC]

So consequently, Minister, the requirements are different. I understand that proof of identification requirements would be different when voting by mail as opposed to in person.

I'd like to know if your specialists or associates, when preparing Bill C-6, voiced an opinion as to whether or not the bill complied with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Furthermore, was the notion of equality between the sexes considered by your associates?

[Natasha Kim]

Bill C-6.

[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?

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you.

That wraps up this session. I want on behalf of the committee to thank all the witnesses for the time you took to prepare for today and for the fact that you actually came here. You gave very insightful answers. On behalf of the committee, I appreciate this very much. All Canadians thank you for your work and your commitment.

You are excused. Thank you.

Colleagues, we are going to take the last few minutes. There is a meeting in this room right after us, so we have to hurry. I will mention that there have been discussions taking place, and I think we've solved the steering committee issue, in that we've agreed to meet on Monday at eleven o'clock in Room 112-N.

The issue of who participates in that committee has not been resolved; however, I feel it's important to get through that committee meeting first. The reason is, I'm not wishing to entertain motions of any kind when there is legislation before us until I am instructed by the steering committee.

If I may just drift aside for one second, I would like to apologize to Madam Redman. In my attempt to maintain civility here in the committee, I think I crossed the line, and I offer my sincerest apologies. You have my greatest respect and admiration. I apologize for the sternness of my comments. In no way did I mean them to be that way. I also apologize to members of the committee for the same reasons.

Colleagues, we have the possibility of ordering in the minister for one hour on Tuesday from eleven to twelve on Bill C-6, and from twelve to one on Bill C-18. We also have some more witnesses we will try to set up for Thursday. It looks as though we are going to have another four witnesses on this particular issue for Thursday.

Perhaps I should ask whether that's acceptable, at this stage of the game, to the committee members.