Bill C-23 (Historical)

Fair Elections Act

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act (“the Act”) to require the Chief Electoral Officer to issue interpretation notes and guidelines on the application of that Act to registered parties, registered associations, nomination contestants, candidates and leadership contestants. It also requires the Chief Electoral Officer, on request, to issue a written opinion on the application of provisions of the Act to an activity or practice that a registered party, registered association, nomination contestant, candidate or leadership contestant proposes to engage in.
The enactment also modifies the Chief Electoral Officer’s power under section 17 of the Act so that the power may only be exercised to allow electors to exercise their right to vote or to allow votes to be counted. It also limits the Chief Electoral Officer’s power to transmit advertising messages to electors and requires the Chief Electoral Officer to ensure that any information so transmitted is accessible to electors with disabilities.
The enactment further amends the Act to permit the Chief Electoral Officer to seek approval from parliamentary committees to test an alternative voting process (but where such a pilot project is to test a form of electronic voting, the Chief Electoral Officer must first obtain the approval of the Senate and House of Commons). The enactment also eliminates the mandatory retirement of the Chief Electoral Officer at age 65 and replaces it with a 10-year non-renewable term. It provides for the establishment of an Advisory Committee of Political Parties to provide advice to the Chief Electoral Officer on matters relating to elections and political financing. The enactment also amends the Act to provide for the appointment of field liaison officers, based on merit, to provide support to returning officers and provide a link between returning officers and the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer. It also enables the Chief Electoral Officer to temporarily suspend a returning officer during an election period and provides for the appointment of additional election officers at polling stations. Finally, it empowers registered parties and registered associations, in addition to candidates, to provide names of individuals for election officer positions and changes the deadline for providing those names from the 17th day before polling day to the 24th day before polling day.
The enactment also adds to the Act Part 16.1, which deals with voter contact calling services. Among other things, that Part requires that calling service providers and other interested parties file registration notices with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, provide identifying information to the Commission and keep copies of scripts and recordings used to make calls. That Part also requires that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission establish and maintain a registry, to be known as the Voter Contact Registry, in which the documents it receives in relation to voter contact calling services are to be kept.
The enactment also replaces Part 18 of the Act with a new, comprehensive set of rules on political financing that corrects a number of deficiencies in the Act. Notably, the enactment
(a) increases the annual contribution limits for contributions to registered parties, registered associations, candidates and nomination and leadership contestants to $1,500 per year and by $25 per year after the first year;
(b) increases the amount that candidates and leadership contestants may contribute to their own campaigns to $5,000 and $25,000, respectively;
(c) permits registered parties and registered associations to make transfers to candidates before their nomination is confirmed by the returning officer;
(d) requires a registered party’s auditor to complete a compliance audit in relation to its election expenses return indicating that the party has complied with the political financing rules;
(e) requires registered parties, registered associations and candidates to disclose details of expenses for voter contact calling services in their returns;
(f) reforms the rules governing unpaid claims, making it an offence for claims to remain unpaid after three years and strengthening the reporting of unpaid claims;
(g) reforms the reporting requirements of leadership contestants;
(h) permits higher spending limits for registered parties and candidates if an election period is longer than the 37-day minimum;
(i) includes new rules on political loans; and
(j) defines “capital asset” for the purposes of reporting the distribution cost of advertising or promotional material transmitted to the public using a capital asset, so that the expense is reported as the corresponding rental value for the period in which it was used, and for the purpose of the disposal of the campaign surplus.
With respect to voter identification, the enactment amends the Act to require the same voter identification for voting at the office of the returning officer in an elector’s own riding as it requires for voting at ordinary polls. It also prohibits the use of the voter information card as proof of identity, eliminates the ability of an elector to prove their identity through vouching, allows an elector to swear a written oath of their residence provided that their residence is attested to on oath by another elector, and requires an elector whose name was crossed off the electors’ list in error to take a written oath before receiving a ballot.
The enactment also amends the Act to provide an extra day of advance polling on the eighth day before polling day, creating a block of four consecutive advance polling days between the tenth and seventh days before polling day. It requires a separate ballot box for each day of advance polling and details procedures for the opening and closing of ballot boxes during an advance poll. Finally, it gives returning officers the authority to recover ballot boxes on the Chief Electoral Officer’s direction if the integrity of the vote is at risk.
The enactment also amends the Act to, among other things, establish a process to communicate polling station locations to electors, candidates and political parties, to provide that only an elector’s year of birth is to be displayed on the lists of electors used at the polls, instead of the full date of birth, to permit candidates’ representatives to move to any polling station in the electoral district after being sworn in at any polling station in the district and to establish a procedure for judicial recounts.
The enactment further amends the Act to change how the Commissioner of Canada Elections is appointed. It establishes that the Commissioner is to be appointed by the Director of Public Prosecutions for a seven-year term, subject to removal for cause, that the Commissioner is to be housed within the Director’s office but is to conduct investigations independently from the Director, and that the Commissioner is to be a deputy head for the purposes of hiring staff for his or her office and for managing human resources.
The enactment also amends the Act to add the offence of impersonating or causing another person to impersonate a candidate, a candidate’s representative, a representative of a registered party or registered association, the Chief Electoral Officer, a member of the Chief Electoral Officer’s staff, an election officer or a person authorized to act on the Chief Electoral Officer’s or an election officer’s behalf. It also adds the offences of providing false information in the course of an investigation and obstructing a person conducting an investigation. In addition, it creates offences in relation to registration on the lists of electors, registration on polling day, registration at an advance polling station and obligations to keep scripts and recordings used in the provision of voter contact calling services.
The enactment further amends the Act to provide for increases in the amount of penalties. For the more serious offences, it raises the maximum fine from $2,000 to $20,000 on summary conviction and from $5,000 to $50,000 on conviction on indictment. For most strict liability offences, it raises the maximum fine from $1,000 to $2,000. For registered parties, it raises the maximum fine from $25,000 to $50,000 on summary conviction for strict liability political financing offences and from $25,000 to $100,000 on summary conviction for political financing offences that are committed intentionally. For third parties that are groups or corporations that fail to register as third parties, it raises the maximum fine to $50,000 for strict liability offences and to $100,000 for offences that are committed intentionally and for offences applying primarily to broadcasters, it raises the maximum fine from $25,000 to $50,000.
The enactment amends the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act to authorize the Chief Electoral Officer to provide administrative support to electoral boundary commissions. It amends the Telecommunications Act to create new offences relating to voter contact calling services and to allow the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to use the inspection and investigation regime in that Act to administer and enforce part of the voter contact calling services regime in the Canada Elections Act. It amends the Conflict of Interest Act to have that Act apply to the Chief Electoral Officer. It also amends the Director of Public Prosecutions Act to provide that the Director of Public Prosecutions reports on the activities of the Commissioner of Canada Elections.
Finally, the enactment includes transitional provisions that, among other things, provide for the transfer of staff and appropriations from the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to support the Commissioner of Canada Elections.

Fair Elections Act

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for the question.

This is not about rejecting amendment 18. We can consider it, as it is worded in the reform, while preserving the rest of the Chief Electoral Officer's mandate in the area of public education. We do not have to choose one or the other. Nor am I saying that the measure presented by the minister to inform young people is not good. I take issue with the exclusion of the rest of the mandate.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this legislation would take away spending limits on fundraising activities. We know this type of activity often includes negative messaging, political messaging, particularly from the Conservative Party. We also know that this kind of messaging actually turns off voters.

I would like to quote from a Conference Board of Canada report on voter turnout, which concluded by saying that “...without fundamental changes in the way in which politics is conducted in Canada, these are goals that could well remain out of reach for some time”.

Would my hon. colleague conclude like me that this legislation would only serve to suppress the youth vote rather than result in a larger youth voter turnout?

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, although it is difficult to predict these kinds of things with any certainty, I agree that the result will be that youth will be detrimentally affected, to the extent that they are among the sectors of our population who most benefit from the voter ID experiment pilot project and from vouching.

I will give one thing to the minister, although it is not at all clear whether this is intentional in the legislation, because it is so indirectly worded, that if it turns out to be true that the bill would allow for e-registration of voters, and going online to then change an address and everything else, something the Chief Electoral Officer has asked for, then that might help. There is a provision in the bill that seems to suggest that whatever the Chief Electoral Officer deems as an adequate signature for purposes of registration is sufficient. If that is meant to include electronic registration, then that would be a countervailing factor that I would give to the minister as something that might actually help if it sends a message to our youth as a means to get them to register.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and for Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about the minister's comments about not wearing a team jersey.

When talking about the election commissioner, the bill states that appointees who hold the position will hold it for a non-renewable seven-year term and, to maintain the integrity of the position, those individuals who have previously been a candidate, an employee of a registered party, exempt staff of a minister or a staff member of a member of Parliament, or employee of Elections Canada, will not be eligible for the appointment to commissioner.

My first question is this. Would the hon. member agree that those individuals who have been identified previously as partisan should not hold a position where they would in essence be passing judgment on candidates and, in particular, members of Parliament who do hold partisan positions?

The second question is further comment on the vouching issue. The member talked about a couple of situations where vouching was a good thing. However, there are many situations, especially for those of us in urban areas, where we have seen problems with vouching, where our official agents or the scrutineers we have at the polls are not able to challenge people who are being vouched for and whom we know are not eligible to vote. I can provide a specific example from 2006 for the member. As a scrutineer at a poll, I was shocked to learn that my mother had voted. She had actually passed away in 2005, and when I asked the person why her name was checked off the list, she assured me that my mother had been in earlier in the day to vote. When I explained to her that was not possible, I was ushered out of the polling station. For every good there is always a bad, and the integrity of elections is always paramount in any decision that we make going forward.

Could the member comment on those two things?

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is important to return to some of the wisdom in the Supreme Court of Canada's judgment in the case involving Etobicoke Centre, in which it said that we had to be extremely careful about disenfranchising voters, especially in the name of procedural irregularities. In fact, that rationale and reasoning obviously benefited in a fair way one of our colleagues in the House, because he kept his seat for the reasons the court gave.

I would simply say in response to individual anecdotes like the member gave that if there were evidence of a scientific sort or an even more generalized anecdotal set of evidence that this is a serious problem, then it has to be presented at committee so that we can understand it. At the moment, we are looking at a rampant anecdotes that do not seem to correspond with the sense of people in the system. I would also say that my colleague, the democratic reform critic for the Liberal Party, did ask a straightforward and important question about whether reworking and trying to figure out better ways to vouch would not be better than, to use a worn-out cliché, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and ask my colleague some questions on this file.

The minister suggested that 25% of those being vouched for had something wrong about them, when in fact the Neufeld report does not say that anywhere. In fact, the Neufeld report suggests widening the use of the voter information card as a valid piece of address information, yet the government has ignored that part of the report and is now suggesting the elimination of the use of the voter registration card.

The whole notion of vouching allows 120,000 people to vote who otherwise might not be able to vote, and the government would like to remove that. However, this report did not ever recommend it. Could the member comment on that, please?

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an important piece of information that goes back to what I said would be important at committee. We have to get down to the level of evidence. The minister, I will concede, is very good at presenting the case as he understands it, but we have to ensure that it is grounded in evidence of the kind that would justify infringing on a constitutional right, the right to vote, which drove the Supreme Court's reasoning in the Etobicoke Centre case.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the minister and the critics today for the quality of the debate.

I have a question about a potential gap in the legislation. I understand that there will be penalties now for impersonating elections officials. However, in my case in the last election someone impersonated my campaign manager and sent a voter across town to an incorrect polling place. I wonder if that penalty for impersonating elections officers could be extended to cover that case, where someone actually impersonates a campaign manager.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very interesting example, another important anecdote. Society is built upon anecdotes like that.

However, I think the important answer is that we do not need to amend the act to catch that. There are already at least two provisions in the Canada Elections Act that deal with the criminal illegality of trying to divert people from voting.

Adding the impersonation offence is a matter of adding specificity to something that is already there in generality. This is also what my colleague, the Leader of the Opposition, was getting at with his questions in question period today, making sure that the government side understands that nothing in the bill, in terms of newly framed crimes, means that the existing act does not already cover the kind of behaviour cited by my colleague.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-23, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to thank the House and all the members within it for elevating debate over the past hours. As my colleague for Kingston and the Islands has pointed out, there have been some very interesting facts put out there, and it has been a very good debate. We have talked a fair amount about how we would fix the problems we have seen in the news headlines over the past three or four years and how we would address these issues. I want to thank all members, including the Minister of State for Democratic Reform.

I want to start with a summary of what the bill proposes, as it is quite extensive in many respects.

Bill C-23 would protect voters from rogue calls and impersonation. There would be mandatory public registry for mass calling, prison time for impersonating election officials, and increased penalties for deceiving people out of their votes.

The bill would give law enforcement sharper teeth and allow the commissioner to seek tougher penalties for existing offences. The commissioner would have full independence, with control of his or her staff and of investigation, and a fixed term of seven years so that he or she could not be fired without cause.

The bill would also crack down on voter fraud by prohibiting the use of vouching and voter information cards as replacements for acceptable ID. Studies commissioned by Elections Canada demonstrate mass irregularities in the use of vouching and high rates of inaccuracy on voter information cards.

According to legislation, there are 39 forms of identification. However, a question earlier talked about how some identification does not have the required information on it, such as addresses. We have experienced this problem in some rural areas, and many seniors especially do not have the right amount of information. I am hoping that the government would accept an amendment that would allow the practice of some sort of vouching in an official manner to take place. I guess we will have to study that in committee, if indeed the bill manages to get to that stage.

The bill would also make rules easy to follow for all, which was pointed out earlier as being in section 18. The commissioner has had to sign 15 different compliance agreements with those who have breached election laws, some due to honest mistakes. Members of all parties have noticed that the rules can be unclear.

Complicated rules bring unintentional breaches and intimidate everyday people from taking part in democracy. As my hon. colleague pointed out, this relates to youth engagement, those with disabilities, and others.

Of course, in this particular case, there are people who find themselves disenfranchised from the entire system of voting and feel that their vote is not necessary or does not mean much in the long run, but I would say to the government that we need to come up with a plan to bring out the best in our democracy, which is to say that we need to bring up the turnout rate.

It used to be high many years ago. I have to admit that in my own riding, the voter turnout was at a dismal 44%, which was the second-lowest in the country. We managed to finish just ahead of the Fort McMurray area. That is often the case where we have transient workers.

In many respects, I agree with what the minister is saying, because we need to reach out to transient workers who may not be aware that they are able to vote in other ridings. The facilities are there for them to do that. The only problem is that some of these people work in oil fields and that sort of thing. However, they can, even in their own ridings, vote at any time whatsoever. They can go to the returning officer and do that at any point. That, to us, proved to be the most effective way to communicate to people who travel a lot, and not just to the oil fields in western Canada, but those who work in oil and natural gas fields around the world.

The bill would also increase the level of donations from $1,200 to $1,500. I am not really sure if that would go a long way, other than allow some people who can afford it a little more room. I do not see anything wrong with the measures that were currently in place, the $1,200 and the incremental formula that was already there. In the meantime, I must say that with the personal contributions, there are some positive steps in the right direction when it comes to the election and the leadership.

The Commissioner of Canada Elections is the one that has been causing some headaches within our party as to how we are deal with the independence that is being bandied about by the government. I would like to talk about how this works in the sense of the commissioner himself.

Several of the requests that the commissioner made to Elections Canada were basically that he wanted to have the power to go to a judge to get people to comply with the seeking out of information. At the time, we thought that it was a reasonable thing to ask, given what has happened over the past little while, certainly when it comes to some of the byelections that we have witnessed and the general election before that.

However, I am not certain whether the Commissioner of Canada Elections' investigative tools have been increased within this, so I do not know if the effectiveness has increased for that particular person. That concerns us. If we make this person independent, that is one thing, but if we do not give the increased ability to seek out the information he is looking for in order to conduct his investigation, all we are really doing is shuffling the offices. I will get to that part in just a moment.

The commissioner did endorse the recommendation made by the CEO that the Commissioner of Canada Elections be given the power to apply to a judge for an order to compel any person to provide information that is relevant to an investigation, which is what I just spoke of. There was some debate today as to whether he does have those tools or not. Throughout the course of this debate, I hope that more light will be shone on that subject and that it will perhaps come up again in this debate at second reading.

Regarding the lack of flexibility when dealing with the conventions of the Canada Elections Act, the commissioner suggested that more tools are needed to deal with the breaches of the Canada Elections Act that are too severe to be handled through compliance agreements but not serious enough to be dealt with through prosecutions. The commissioner pointed to recommendations contained in the CEO's report on the 40th general election: candidates and political parties that exceed their authorized expense limits should see a dollar-for-dollar reduction in their elections expense reimbursement, and when a candidate or political party fails to file a report by the applicable statutory date, they should forfeit up to 50% of their nomination deposit.

All of this is to say that some of this stuff has been addressed, and we applaud the minister for putting these measures into the bill.

However, let me just go back to one of the key tenets of this, which is the ability of the commissioner to do his or her job. In this case, it is his job. If we look at the chain of command and look at the commissioner himself, by this route, through Elections Canada, he is ultimately answerable to Parliament.

A flag went up for me when I looked at all of the testimony and news stories that dealt with election irregularities and possible and actual violations over the past three or four years. A lot of this work was discovered by auditors. A lot of the violations were discovered by people on the ground within Elections Canada. What they were able to do was advise the commissioner on a continual basis because they were within that sphere. They simply went down the way and told the commissioner what was going on. The commissioner, if given the right tools, would have been able to investigate that further, we believe, in a more effective way. Separating those people and putting them in a different office altogether, in public prosecutions, makes the gap just a little too wide for the information-sharing process that was taking place. That is what I fear.

I know the government will argue that these people had the ability to go to whomever they wished, but being together in that one area certainly would have allowed a freer flow of information that would have allowed the commissioner to do a better job, given that he had the tool that was suggested about compliance.

When it comes to public prosecutions, they are ultimately answerable to cabinet, so certainly we have reservations about that as well. I am sure the minister will address that also. I am hoping he will convince us it is not necessarily the case.

What is causing a great unease among us is the ability of the commissioner to do that investigation. If sharper teeth are required to do an effective job, I am not sure the teeth the Conservatives are seeking would be obtained within this legislation.

A code of conduct for political entities was also suggested some time ago, after the 41st general election. Then there is the idea of extension of the application of privacy protection principles to political parties and new requirements governing telecommunications with electors. If I could go to that point for just a moment, the robocalls, as we affectionately call them around here, have been a topic of discussion for quite some time. They have certainly been a topic of derision for some time as well.

Judge Mosley said in his judgment, seemingly, that it was obvious to him that the origins of some of these robocalls that are called into the question of nefarious activities point to the database that is used exclusively by the Conservative Party, known as the CIMS database. There is no relation.

I want go back to the robocalls situation. We feel some of the measures will be quite effective, and we applaud the minister for them. As an example, the bill says:

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission shall, on the request of the Commissioner, disclose to the Commissioner any document or information that it received under this Division that the Commissioner considers necessary for the purpose of ensuring compliance with and enforcement of this Act, other than this Division.

We agree. We are into an electronic age. Robocalls, as we call them, have proliferated in every aspect of society, not just politics but in commerce and marketing as well. Therefore, the legislation needs to keep up to standard. A lot of this goes a certain way, so we commend the Conservatives for that.

Every person or group that enters into an agreement with a calling service provider under which voter contact calling services are provided shall keep, for one year after the end of the election period,

(a) a copy of each unique script used in live voice calls [...] (b) a recording of each unique message conveyed by an automatic dialing-announcing device [...]

This is great for the investigative tools necessary in order to cut down on this practice. We commend that as well. It is certainly overdue as far as updated legislation is concerned.

I also want to talk about contributions. I touched on this point briefly earlier, the $1,200 to $1,500, but also, subject to proposed subsection 405(4.2), contributions that do not exceed $5,000 in total would permitted to be made by a candidate for a particular election out of their own funds for their own candidacy, and for leadership it would be up to $25,000. Some of this is necessary to be updated.

The bill also says that contributions made under proposed subsection 405(4.2) do not have the effect of limiting the amounts that the candidate or leadership contestant, as the case may be, may contribute under proposed subsection 405(1) to the other candidates.

I would say that updating this legislation is necessary. I do not know why the contribution limit went up to $1,500. I think the current regulations and rules in place certainly do suffice.

I talked about the commissioner and about some of the other instances that took place over the past little while that raise alarm over how we need to fix our system. The in-and-out scandal took place. The Conservative Party admitted to election overspending and submitting inflated election returns and had to pay the maximum fine under the Elections Act. There were fraudulent election robocalls, which I just touched upon.

We know of individuals such as Peter Penashue, formerly of this House, who also over-contributed. Whether he was actually asked to leave or quit before all that happened, there was a huge fuss about it altogether. He did not seem to know the rules of the game.

How do we get out there and tell society that we want to explain to people the rules of how to function in elections when we have trouble bringing that information to our own candidates? It is somewhat ironic, but nonetheless that is water under the bridge, as some people say.

As for increased fines for Elections Act violations, Liberals are supportive of raising the fines for violations of the Elections Act. My hon. colleague from Beauséjour put forward legislation in the House that did just that and was voted on, Bill C-424, so we agree with that as well.

One of the other things we are in agreement with is the additional advance polling day. I live in a rural riding, as I mentioned, and a lot of people commute back and forth. I commute within my own riding to vote, which is two or three hours away, and the extra day is certainly advantageous. Of course, there is the premature transmission of election results, which is also necessary given the fact that everybody has the Internet, if I could use a colloquial expression.

In summary, there is a lot of unease about this bill, despite some of the elements of it that Liberals fully support. For us, the unease is created from things such as what is happening at Elections Canada, with the commissioner in particular; and other measures within this bill certainly cause unease to the point where accepting this bill in principle would be difficult for us to do.

I hope that over the course of the next little while the debate will be elevated to the point where, if this bill passes, is accepted in principle, and goes on to committee, the government would be accepting of some of the amendments we have discussed here today. Until we reach that point, I am thankful for this time.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Minister of State (Democratic Reform)]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to answer a question of the member's Liberal colleague from Kingston and the Islands, who asked whether the bill would address the impersonation of a candidate or a candidate's representative. I am happy to report that, in fact, the fair elections act would create a new offence for impersonating a candidate or a candidate's representative. Likewise, it would be an offence to impersonate a registered party or association. Of course, as the member for Kingston and the Islands acknowledged, it would be an offence under the fair elections act to impersonate Elections Canada. That answers the question the member for Kingston and the Islands posed earlier to the NDP critic.

As for the speech that the Liberal critic just presented, he expressed a concern that there might be a barrier of information flow between Elections Canada and the newly independent commissioner, who would be the law enforcement watchdog. I want to assure him that we thought very carefully about that problem and that is why there is nothing in the fair elections act that would prevent Elections Canada from sharing information with the independent commissioner or to prevent the commissioner from sharing information with Elections Canada. There would be no barriers to communication between them, merely a separation of power between them.

My question to the Liberal critic is this. What additional legal assurances would he need inserted in the bill to give him comfort on this point?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, the obvious answer to that is, if that particular commissioner would not have the power to go to a judge to get more information and be in compliance, then I would say to him that I do not know why, in the beginning, they would make the person in that position as independent as they say he or she is going to be.

I think what the government would have done is send that person to a different office without giving him or her a different set of tools by which he or she could exercise the job. I always thought that being closer to the agency that gets all the reports, the vast majority of them anyway, whether they are auditors or deputy returning officers, allowed a lot of the allegations and violations that were detected over the past three or four years to come through that process.

I understand what he is saying about the fact that there would be a free flow of information. I am rather suspicious as to whether, in practice, that would happen.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has been in the House as long as I and went through this in 2006 through the debate on the photo ID bill. I do not remember the particular title that the Conservatives gave the legislation back then, so I will characterize it as that.

Through that process a problem was identified with respect to voting, and that problem was not well articulated by the Conservatives. It does not bear up under the examination of ridings, such as we heard from my colleague about Trinity—Spadina.

What is the problem we are dealing with here by taking away another form of identification for people? Does my colleague still hold to the position that his party took at that time, that the requirements of fraud were so onerous that we needed to put restrictions and conditions on people going into a voting booth? Does he still hold to the position that we have actually improved Canadians' ability to vote over these last eight years of Conservative management, or have we created more problems for people who want to vote?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has brought up a good point.

I mentioned earlier to the Minister of State for Democratic Reform that a lot of seniors in rural areas were disenfranchised over the past little while because they did not have the proper identification, such as a post office box instead of a street address, that sort of thing. I remember having a fairly good conversation with the current House leader about it. We discussed how, in many ways, it is not a one-size-fits-all solution for people who want to be identified at the polling booth and exercise their democratic right.

I am assuming the member is talking about the voter's card being taken away. That could be problematic. I know many people who still believe that all they have to do is show up with that one card and they can vote. We all know what happened in the last couple of elections when people needed more than an address. Some of the 39 cards identified do not have an address written on them in order for someone to do that.

That being said, I do understand where they are coming from in the sense that a lot of fraud did take place in the last election and it has to be addressed. If this legislation passes second reading, I hope we will get a chance to address that within the committee structure.