Bill C-50 (Historical)

Citizen Voting Act

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to
(a) eliminate the international register of electors and incorporate all of the information contained in it into the Register of Electors;
(b) require electors who are resident outside Canada to make an application for registration and special ballot after the issue of the writs at each election;
(c) stipulate that electors who are resident outside Canada may only receive a special ballot for the address at which they last resided in Canada;
(d) require that electors who are applying for a special ballot under Division 3 or 4 of Part 11 include in their application for registration and special ballot proof of identity and residence and, if they apply from outside Canada, proof of Canadian citizenship;
(e) require that an external auditor perform an audit and report on election workers’ compliance with special ballot voting procedures and requirements for every election;
(f) authorize the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to provide the Chief Electoral Officer with information for the purpose of assisting the Chief Electoral Officer to, among other things, delete from the Register of Electors the names of persons who are not Canadian citizens; and
(g) add the offence of voting or attempting to vote by special ballot under Division 3 or 4 of Part 11 while knowing that one is not qualified as an elector and add offences under those Divisions of attesting to the residence of more than one elector and of acting as an attestor when one’s own residence has already been attested to.

Citizen Voting Act

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

moved that Bill C-50, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the occasion to address the House today on the citizen voting act.

The citizen voting act has three principal objectives. The first is to help prevent non-citizens from voting in federal elections. The second is to require voters living abroad to provide proof of identity, past residence, and citizenship. The third is to create one set of rules for all Canadians voting from outside the country.

To start with the background that led us to this legislation, I would bring members' attention to the Ontario Superior Court ruling in Frank et al. v. Attorney General of Canada. In this case, the court struck down the law that had been in place preventing citizens from voting if they had been out of the country for more than five consecutive years or have no intention of returning. Estimates show that the reading could lead to 1.4 million new eligible voters and an outdated system to administer their votes.

I will now work through some of the individual problems that exist within the status quo and how the bill seeks to address them one by one.

The first problem is that an estimated 40,000 non-citizens are on the voters list. Elections Canada has brought this number to my attention. It has indicated that these lists are not perfect, and that as a result, names of people who have interactions with various levels of governments get into the overall system and inadvertently end up on the list of electors. These people are sent voter information cards that indicate where they can go and vote, although they are not eligible to do so.

The problem is that there will be some who go and vote, even though they are not citizens, because they think that they are allowed. If they get a voter information card that says they should show up at the elementary school around the corner to cast their ballot, logically they would think that they, as permanent residents, are allowed to do that. There will be people among that 40,000 who will accidentally break the law.

There will also be some who might deliberately break the law. With their names being on the voters list, they do not even have to sign oaths asserting that they are a citizens when they go to cast their ballots. It is only those who are not on the voters list who have take an oath of citizenship when they vote.

The solution in the citizen voting act would authorize the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to provide the Chief Electoral Officer with the names, genders, birthdates, and addresses of non-citizens who are in Canada so that Elections Canada can cross-reference and remove them from the National Register of Electors. This would be a very difficult and tedious undertaking, I am afraid, but it is a worthwhile one. If it can reduce that number of 40,000 non-citizens to a smaller number, or perhaps eliminate it altogether, we can celebrate that as an improvement in the accuracy of the voters list and the fairness of our elections.

The next problem is that under the current law, Canadians voting abroad do not need to have any proven link to the riding in which their vote is counted. At present, if a person is living in London, England, or Washington, D.C., for example, and wants to vote in Canada, that person can register to vote in pretty much any constituency with which they feel that they have a connection, and that connection will not be verified by Elections Canada. Everyone else has to vote in the riding in which they reside, because the residential link is a critical part of our constituency-based system, but there is a double standard that allows some to pick their riding and do riding shopping, while others have to vote where they live or where they have a residential connection.

The solution is to bring about the same rules for everybody. The way we would do that is by requiring proof of past residence.

Obviously someone living abroad most likely would not have a current residence in Canada, so I think it would be reasonable to ask them to cast their ballot for the constituency in which they last lived before they left the country. The citizen voting act would do that. The bill would require that they prove their identity and their most recent Canadian address, using the same documentation as do voters who live in Canada under the new rules that came in through the Fair Elections Act.

The options would be a photo ID containing a prior address, or any two of the 39 pieces of ID approved by the Chief Electoral Officer of Elections Canada. If none of the documentation has their address on it, the voters would be able to rely on someone who would sign an attestation that in fact they did reside in the riding in which they want their vote counted, and that attestation would quality as a proof of past residency.

These rules might seem familiar. That is because they are the same ones that the Fair Elections Act brought in. Under that bill, we require people to show ID when they vote, but if that ID does not have an address on it, then they can rely on someone to sign an attestation or co-signing an oath that they in fact do reside in the riding in which they want to vote. We are simply taking that set of rules that we apply within Canada and applying it outside of Canada.

Some might ask about expired documents. If someone has been living abroad for 10 or 15 years, obviously their documents would not be up to date. We have specifically stated in the bill that expired documents are acceptable forms of ID, so if somebody has an old drivers licence that is past the expiration date, it would still qualify as proof of previous Canadian residency and render eligible that voter in the riding where he or she is attempting to cast a ballot.

The next problem is that there is a double standard for voting abroad.

There are two types of voters who cast ballots from abroad. There are those who are resident in Canada but are on vacation or working abroad during the election. Examples are the snowbirds who go down to Florida or California during the winter. They have to vote by something called a special ballot. When they vote, they actually have to apply for the ballot at each election. They have to provide ID to show where they reside in Canada, and then they get a ballot for the riding that they come from. They send that ballot back in the mail, and it is counted in the correct constituency.

By contrast, those who are long-term non-residents, those people who live outside of Canada, do not have any of those obligations. They merely apply to be on the voters list once, and then into perpetuity the ballot arrives in their mailbox as soon as the election is called. This causes a lot of problems.

One problem is that someone could easily have moved. Someone resident in Mexico City might move to another part of the world, but their ballot would still come from Elections Canada to the Mexico City mailbox of someone who has no connection to Canada and should not be in possession of a Canadian ballot. As a result, into perpetuity we would obviously have ballots going to the wrong people, and there is no way of verifying that the address is accurate in that kind of circumstance. The requirement to apply for a ballot for each election is an organic way to keep the list of those Canadians who are voting abroad up to date.

Next we move to the issue of proof of citizenship. The citizen voting acting would require in law that everyone voting outside Canada provide proof of citizenship. This requirement would not apply to Canadian Forces members, but it would apply to everyone else.

Finally, the citizen voting act would apply some audit procedures to Elections Canada to make sure that all of these rules are followed. That process was established in the Fair Elections Act for voting when it occurs within the country. We are simply applying it to all of those who vote from outside of the country.

How does this proposed system compare to other countries around the world? Many like-minded democracies place restrictions on voting by non-residents with limited exceptions for citizens serving abroad.

For example, in the U.K., non-residents can only vote if they have been out of the country for less than 15 years. In Ireland, non-residents cannot vote. If they do not live in Ireland, they do not vote in Ireland. In Australia, non-residents can only vote if they have lived abroad for less than six years and intend to return to resume residence in the country within six years. They must provide either their Australian drivers licence number or their Australian passport number or have a person who is on the federal electoral list confirm their identity—not their address—by signing the application form. In New Zealand, non-resident citizens can vote only if they have been abroad for less than three years. In Germany, non-residents can only vote if they have been abroad for less than 25 years. They also must have lived in Germany for three consecutive months following their 14th birthday.

To avoid getting into all of the details, members can surmise from these examples that among our peer group, Canada, which currently allows Canadians living abroad to vote without restriction, has basically one of the most generous systems of enfranchisement for citizens abroad.

This legislation would not change that, but it would improve the integrity of the system. It would ensure that only citizens vote, that their vote is only counted in the riding from which they come, and that they only vote once. That is basic to the integrity of our electoral system, and the bill would bring the rules for Canadians abroad in line with the rules we have now established for those voting here at home.

That is in essence the proposal we bring forward to the House. I thank the House for this opportunity to address the chamber.

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

Mr. Speaker, my general views about the bill will be made known in my reply speech, but I am hoping to ask a series of specific questions to the minister that could ease the way in committee if the answers are clear.

Although this may not be intended, a new provision, proposed subsection 143(2.11), says that any ID authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer must come from some governmental entity or an entity formed in Canada. I am just wondering whether it is known by the government that this language looks as though it would exclude private leases, leases issued by individual persons. Students, for example, are often subject to those leases. I am wondering if this was intentional, and if not, whether the government would be open to a clear amendment on that point.

Second, the snowbirds phenomenon is such that they have the temporary absence voting rules, but unlike other citizens abroad, who can be vouched for by anybody from the entire riding, temporarily absent Canadians can only have somebody from their poll vouch for them. However, the polls are not known until about 10 days before election day. That is when the VICs get issued, so the fact of the matter is that any snowbirds who have to rely on the new vouching provisions would not be able to do it in time. They are in a specific problematic situation. I am wondering if the minister realizes that and would fix it.

Third, under the current system a special ballot can be mailed to an address that someone has failed to change in the international register. As an example, a Canadian who moved from his or her address in Mexico City may have failed to change the address in the international register, and a Mexican may now live at that address and receive the ballot. Does the minister really believe that the Mexican will pick up the ballot, fill it out, send it back, and vote in Toronto—Danforth, or Nepean, or wherever else? How real is that scenario as one of the reasons for changing this entire system to make it much more difficult for citizens abroad to meet deadlines and fulfill the requirements in order to be able to vote at all?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on the first question about the list of eligible ID that voters abroad could use to prove who they are and where they last lived in Canada, the bill's intent is to see that the list of eligible ID produced by the CEO of Elections Canada would apply to voters abroad just as it does to those here at home. I do not have the section he refers to in front of me, but I would be happy to look at it and go over the specific wording. However, that is the intention of the bill. It is a very exhaustive list with about 39 different forms of ID. The bill requires that the ID be of Canadian origin. In fact, it would have to be of Canadian original to prove someone's past residence. One would not have a foreign driver's licence showing where one lived when in Canada, so it would be impossible to use a foreign ID to provide that information.

On the question of providing attestations, for example for snowbirds, the rules would basically not change a whole lot. The major change is that the person would have to provide proof of citizenship. For snowbirds, or someone who is vacationing abroad, that is pretty straightforward, because they would not leave the country without their passport, or else they would have a lot of trouble getting back in. A NEXUS card would apply as well, but proof of citizenship is a pretty straightforward requirement for someone who is vacationing outside the country, that is, if they ever want to come home.

The member's final question was whether or not a ballot mailed to someone's home, from which they had moved long ago, might be returned by someone who is not eligible to vote. When ballots are sent out and go to the wrong person because the address of someone changed long ago, we do not really know what will become of the ballot. I am not pointing to this example as evidence of an enormous crisis, but I think the member would agree that it is an administrative problem if we send ballots to people who are not citizens and just happen to reside in the former residence of a Canadian.

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

Mr. Speaker, I can obviously tell the minister is fighting a flu, so I will try not to be too long and prolong the agony.

I just want to ask some specific questions. My colleague asked one of them, but there is another one I want to ask. When we talk about people employed by the Government of Canada, such as military personnel, people working in embassies, and so forth, there is an exemption for them, but I am worried about their families who are also Canadian and also eligible to vote. Will they be included in that?

Second, the timelines here are really tight. People have to register. They are living in a country abroad, which could be halfway around the world, and they would have to do three things. They would have to apply, get their ballot, and it then it has to go back as their vote. With a 36-day writ period, it is a very tight timeline for people living halfway around the world to follow.

My third point is about riding shopping, as was described, where one gets to choose any riding. Was that really a problem brought to the minister by Elections Canada or any other entity? In the press release they say that they want to get rid of it, but where is the research showing this was such a major problem and major abuse?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for showing me such mercy, given the state of my health today.

On the first question of the timelines, I did think about this quite a lot, because the member is right that ballots would have to travel to the voter and then be returned. One thing I would correct is to say that the application would not have to travel by mail. It could be done online. Therefore, the Canadian citizen voting, say from Abu Dhabi or Beijing, or some other location that is hard to reach, could actually provide a scanned document and email the identification and have the ballot mailed very quickly.

Canadian residents who happen to be around the world use that process right now. They do so with success. In my time I have never encountered a snowbird, for example, who said they wanted to vote but that there just was not enough time for the mail to go back and forth and so they did not get their vote counted. Therefore, I think if it works for Canadian residents who are visiting abroad, it should work for Canadian non-residents abroad. It basically would create one system for all electors who happen to be outside of Canadian borders, whether they are resident here or not.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. minister, knowing that we are going to have an opportunity for amendments.

My question very much builds on what my hon. colleague from Toronto—Danforth pointed out. There are a lot of complications within the bill, such as regarding residence. As my friend from Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor pointed out, we have Canadian families overseas, people in the diplomatic service, and people in long-term jobs or potentially teaching in foreign universities who have every intention of returning to Canada. Making sure that every Canadian has the right to vote is fundamental.

As we go through the minutiae of the bill, because it is complicated in how it would apply to different categories of citizens, is the minister prepared, as he was on his previous bill, the so-called Fair Elections Act, to take amendments forward during the committee process?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her question, although I do think she is over-complicating the bill. It is actually quite simple.

Basically, if someone is residing abroad and wants to vote, they merely have to submit their ID proving who they are and where they last lived in Canada. A ballot would arrive in the mail, they would tick the box, and send the ballot back to be counted. It is not that complicated as a procedure.

The member seemed to suggest that there are different rules for different categories of voters. Actually, the truth is the opposite. We would be removing the different categories. For example, before, special ballots for snowbirds were treated completely differently than ballots for people living abroad. We are now merging the same practice for all people who happen to vote outside the borders of Canada into one simple process: a person would send in their ID, they would be sent a ballot, and they would vote and send the ballot back.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for his presentation. Along with my colleague from Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, I acknowledge that this may not be the best day for the minister in terms of his health. Accordingly, in the spirit of what we heard from the Minister of Foreign Affairs, I may be a little more gentle than I was intending to be.

Some here might have had a chance to read the piece that came out today in the National Post, where I make it very clear that I do believe—this sounds like how I started the debate on Bill C-23, what we call “the unfair elections act”—that the effect, at minimum, of these changes in Bill C-50 would voter suppression of citizens living abroad, and something that I am not sure the minister is fully aware of, namely, that it could create chaos with voting in Canada, because of the changes to a section that would prohibit the Chief Electoral Officer from authorizing any use of ID that basically does not have its origin Canada. I will explain why that could cause those problems.

I will stick with this phraseology that “in the result”, this is the problem, although seeing what has been knowingly put in the bill, I honestly think that the minister has to realize what these impacts would be. I hope that with some of the presentations during this debate and some of the criticisms he is already beginning to receive, he will be open to some serious amendments, including a couple that, to follow his own line, would be quite simple and could actually get rid of some of the serious blocking effects that I see. It is also important to note, although the minister did not really make hay of this in his own speech today, that in the presentation back in December when the bill was tabled, there very much was an effort to spin this bill in a way that created two false impressions. This is important to know.

One is that the press release in the backgrounder made it seem like the government was implementing the Frank judgement, which basically said that citizens away for more than five years now have the right to vote from abroad. It was very unclear from the presentation whether or not the Frank judgment was being accepted. It is important that everyone knows that Bill C-50 would not remove any provision in the Canada Elections Act that was struck down by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice in the Frank decision. It is still sitting in the statute. The reason for this is that the government has clearly decided it is going to continue to fight to prevent citizens who have been away for more than five years from voting. It is appealing the decision, and it even sought a stay of the trial judgment to try to prevent it from going into effect. The Court of Appeal for Ontario denied that stay.

The fact of the matter is that the government is still actively seeking to keep as disenfranchised Canadians who have been living abroad for more than five years. Yet the presentation of the bill made it look like this was somehow an effort to bring things into line. If this were really bringing things in line with the Frank judgment, all the government would have to do would be to adopt the suggestion by the member for Halifax in her Bill C-575 and simply repeal the same sections the judge found to be unconstitutional in the case. Instead, the Frank decision is being used as a supposed reason for a wholesale change of issues that never arose in the Frank case. It is important to ensure that the Frank judgment does not carry the government along in any sense where people think the government is actually respecting that judgment. It is still appealing it.

Second, the press release directly claims that all Bill C-50 would do is to apply the same voter identification rules enacted by the so-called Fair Elections Act, Bill C-23, and extend those rules to Canadians voting from abroad. There is some truth in that. There are some analogues that get brought forward. For instance, the vouching for an address gets brought forward. However, Bill C-50 inserts a new prohibition on the kinds of documents the Chief Electoral Officer could designate as identity documents. It would apply to documents used by all.

The new subsection 143(2.11) would apply to all electors and would basically create additional limitations on what the Chief Electoral Officer would be free to authorize by way of identity documents.

Because of the wording in that provision, this would have impacts in Canada. It would also make it extraordinarily difficult for some Canadians abroad to produce the right kinds of ID that now they have to produce. They would not be able because of this change. This is new. This was not in Bill C-23.

I just want to set the scene by making clear that this is the case.

It is also important to note, to set the scene, although the minister has downplayed it in his presentation today, and I acknowledge that. There was a sign it was not going to go this way. There is virtually no reality to the idea that there is a fraud problem from voters from abroad. The judge in the Superior Court, Mr. Justice Penny, basically said that those kinds of claims were so unreal as to not even constitute a pressing and substantial reason under section 1 of the charter to limit the right to vote.

“Riding shopping” is not something that Elections Canada has ever seen as being a problem. All that happens at the moment is that multiple points of contact are available to increase the chances, the ease with which somebody from abroad can vote. The idea that there is something illicit going on when people choose to vote where their parents live versus choosing to vote where they last lived seems to me to be a spin that is designed to make this look palatable or necessary when there is actually no problem. There is no such thing as “riding shopping”, except perhaps in the minister's imagination.

It is important to clarify that when the minister talks about 40,000 non-citizens being on the register, this was brought to his attention—and I am glad that two years later he is acting upon it—by the Chief Electoral Officer. The new mechanism that would allow the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to allow Elections Canada access to the non-citizen database that CIC has would be great. However, it is important to note that we are talking about a fear, by error, that approximately that number of people are on the national register, not on what is, until this point in time, the international register. To get on the international register, one has to actually show one's citizenship.

It is a separate issue that would be dealt with in the bill, but it should not be confused with anything to do with a concern that non-citizens are voting from abroad. I fear that, unintentionally, the minister's emphasis on that could allow people to think this is what is going on. No, the issue is cleaning up the national register for people who are in Canada. That is fine. That one particular piece is a good thing in the bill.

I do feel duty-bound to note that Elections Canada was not consulted on this, except for the discussion a couple of years ago on the issue of trying to ensure non-citizens were removed from the national register where they appeared in error. That will probably prove to be a problem at the time of committee because we will probably hear some very detailed testimony from Elections Canada about many problems the bill would create.

As long as the minister is open, seriously open, to changing them, because these have not been foreseen because there has been no consultation, we might well end up with a productive committee process. If the minister thinks it has all been thought through and that whatever he hears from Elections Canada will not change his mind, then we will have a serious problem. What we will have, in effect, is the minister confirming that the intention here is to make it much more difficult to vote from abroad and that it is not just the unfortunate result of how the act was written.

Let me go to this issue that is the sleeper issue. It is the question of subsection 143(2.11). It is a new provision that would basically create a new prohibition on the Chief Electoral Officer. It says:

—the Chief Electoral Officer is not permitted to authorize...a type of identification that has been issued by an entity other than...a Canadian government, whether federal, provincial or local, or an agency of that government; and...an entity that is incorporated or formed by or under an Act of Parliament or of the legislature of a province or that is otherwise formed in Canada.

It is fairly complex wording.

The bottom line, as the minister made clear, is to ensure that ID only originates in Canada, essentially. That seems to be the general idea. The problem, however, is that it has been done in a way that might actually end up creating some serious administrative, and even more serious problems, in Canada.

This new prohibition, which is intended to deal with voters from abroad so they have to somehow produce Canadian-originated ID, is going to have an impact on everybody who shows up on election day in Canada.

What is the reason for that concern? First, “formed in Canada” is not a legally known concept and is not defined in the bill. The question of what an “entity formed in Canada” means is going to produce some serious problems in Elections Canada trying to scope it out, and then having that interpreted on election day by pressed election officials. We really need to ensure that this will be clear. Obviously the intention is probably that organizations like the CNIB are covered, and it is not just documents issued by corporations, for example, utilities bills, et cetera. However, the language is used in a way that is very unclear.

Here is an issue. Now a voter can use a Visa, Amex or MasteCard bill as one piece of ID to show an address. However, people could show up with it, and the deputy returning officer or the chief poll officer could look at it and ask if Visa is a company incorporated or formed in Canada, is there a Visa Canada and who has issued the document. The chance of that kind of minute questioning will be a problem, even if it seems farfetched. It will create serious workability problems. I know for a fact that Elections Canada is concerned about this extra burden and the mistakes that could be made.

The second thing is that it is not at all clear to me that private leases will be caught by this wording, as I asked in my question to the minister. The language is all about corporations, entities or government agencies. There is no scope there for a document that has effectively been issued by an individual, which is what private rental leases are. They are often a form of identification to prove address that students in university tend to use.

The bottom line is that this will create workability issues that I do not think the minister intended to create, but that we will hear about in committee from Elections Canada. The unworkability issue is major.

I am also concerned that some party scrutineers who now would be allowed to ask to inspect identification documents as a result of Bill C-23 would see these new rules as an opportunity to ask, more often than they should, for proof that this new provision has been met by whatever document has been presented by somebody showing up.

If somebody shows up with a Visa bill, somebody might ask the deputy returning officer if that is a document issued by an entity formed in Canada. Maybe it is a document issued by an entity doing business in Canada. We can imagine the opportunity for mischief that could occur.

I am being a bit like the minister in that I am looking down the line at what kind of abuse is possible. The minister looks in one place and I look in another. We have to talk about that.

In my remaining minutes, I want to talk about what everybody knows is a big concern. The big concern here is that the new requirements for citizens voting from abroad can be extremely onerous. They can produce delays that can result in ballots not arriving in time to be counted.

The primary problem is the requirement that voters have to register for each election, apply to receive their ballot or register, the same kind of thing collapsed into one, only once the writ has been dropped. People have to be aware that it has happened. They have to register quickly enough in order to ensure that all the mail can occur. As the minister has said, sending in their application, even if that is virtually, and receiving the special ballot and mailing it in and doing that from Dar es Salaam, New Delhi or Sydney, requires time.

There are all kinds of reasons to think that the way the mail service works or the way citizens abroad may be not be immediately on top of when a writ has been dropped could result in timelines that could be almost impossible to make. Currently, people can register in the international register at any time. However, I believe we will hear testimony from Elections Canada saying that currently when people wait to register until the election has been called, there is an increased incidence of the ballot not arriving in time.

A system has been created in this new bill whereby that problematic situation that we already know exists, for some who wait too long to register, get their ballots and mail them in, is now scripted as the only way. Therefore, the delay issue is huge.

We should also not underestimate the problem of ID. The longer people have been away, the chances that they have retained Canadian-issued IDs, apart from their passports, may go down dramatically. In some jurisdictions when people get local drivers' licences, they actually have to hand in their old drivers' licences. People who are hoarders, and have kept every ID they have ever had, may have no problem. However, with no notice, many of the two million Canadians already abroad may already have sort of jettisoned or lost the IDs that they now have to use.

They cannot rely on the Chief Electoral Officer to issue a list of acceptable foreign IDs that go along with proving people's addresses. Let us say people still have to prove their last known addresses in the way the bills wants, but they can use their passports and some foreign piece of ID as corroborating ID. The Chief Electoral Officer is not permitted to allow that, even though a foreign driver's licence is at least as good in proving who one is as a Canadian licence. It has nothing to do with the address, but it does with identity. Therefore, there are serious problems with actually producing two pieces of ID for some abroad that we have to take into account.

Let me now talk about vouching. The bill would get rid of the possibility that people could vote where they would have a strong connection to relatives and would focus only on people's last known addresses. The problem is they have to prove it affirmatively. If people do not have pieces of documentation saved, such as a driver's licence, which in New York state they have given up to the Americans, then they basically will have to rely on this new vouching provision.

The new vouching provision says that people have to provide proof of their last place of residence, so they would have to contact their neighbours and ask them if they remembered them when they were neighbours seven years ago. They would have to ask them to do this attestation. They would need a statutory declaration, see their IDs to prove they are voters, have them fill out a form, get the form back to them and then include it in their package in applying to vote. We can obviously see that the one big problem is the delay this will create. The need to have someone vouch for them within a 35-day election campaign period will already make it virtually impossible to meet that deadline.

The other issue is that all the same rules in Bill C-23 apply. A person cannot vouch for more than one individual. If a family of four living abroad can only find one neighbour who still lives where the family used to live and the neighbour lives alone, that neighbour can only vouch for one of them. The other three are out of luck.

Therefore, it is very clear that the issue of how the vouching system would work will not be as relatively easy as it is in Canada when somebody on election days goes with the person to vouch for him or her. The idea of saying that the rules are the same for those voting in Canada and those voting abroad is a very formalistic understanding of equality, because when the same rules are applied to very different circumstances, there is a serious disadvantage in complying with the rules. The committee will find example after example like this and the minister will really have to get his mind around them.

Let me give another example. Students going abroad to get their masters degrees or Ph.D.s quite often are heading off from a previous university. Now, sitting in London, Paris, or New York, they will have to prove that their last residences were in university towns and pretty much the only people who know that was the case are former students, who themselves have moved on. How will a proper vouching system be created for that particular case? It may sound like an imaginary issue, but it is not. When we think about students moving around internationally, they usually move from a university town or an address that they lived at to obtain their education.

What I would say is that in its result, Bill C-50 is a clear exercise in suppressing the votes of citizens abroad in a way that is diametrically opposite to the spirit of the Frank judgement, which the minister started out by invoking as the reason for these changes.

In sympathy for the minister and his illness today, as he seems to have the flu, I will not hit too hard any more, but I very much hope that he is not doing this intentionally in the bill. I also hope that, for once, we will be able to make serious changes at committee based on the evidence that there are problems with this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, we have been through this on a few occasions now, where we have talked about changes to the Canada Elections Act, and here we go once more.

I agree with 99% of his speech. However, one of the issues that I would like to address with him is the issue of coming into force. It states that it would come into force 60 days after royal assent. On top of Elections Canada getting used to the changes made in the former bill, Bill C-23, this will be a particularly hard thing to do, especially when we are dealing with outside entities, and especially with issue he brought up of the Canadian entity.

How do we get the poll clerks trained to the point where they are able to recognize that? It could result in the mass confusion he talked about. I am not sure if he addressed that issue, but could he address the coming into effect of this particular piece of this legislation?

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

Mr. Speaker, that is an extremely good question. In fact, I took the liberty of talking to Elections Canada about that specific issue, and I very much expect that its testimony will be that 60 days would be impossible. The transitional provisions of the act do say that it would go into effect 60 days after entering into force.

It is not just an issue of th poll clerks across the country having to be trained, but the central staff at Elections Canada in Ottawa that would be receiving the applications from citizens abroad. They are in a better, more concentrated position to pass judgement on the identity documents that are coming in, but even they would need to do this accurately and take the time to do it within a very limited period.

I personally believe, and I believe that Elections Canada confirmed it during my discussions with them, that the 60 days is completely unworkable.

[Ève Péclet, NDP, La Pointe-de-l'Île, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to summarize what was said in somewhat simpler terms. I have many friends who moved to other countries to go to school or to work for Canadian companies located outside Canada. After this bill passes, I will have to call those friends and tell them that if they want to vote in the next election, they need to start preparing now, or else they unfortunately will not be able to vote.

I think that is going to cause quite a lot of stress for people who live in a country where they do not speak the language or do not have the necessary knowledge because they have not lived there long enough. It is truly ridiculous for the Government of Canada to treat citizens like that, regardless of whether they live in Canada or not.

Other members mentioned how students are already dealing with fairly high levels of stress. They will have to start thinking about preparing all those documents now. They do not have a driver's licence and cannot get a Canadian health card because they no longer live in the country. Where does that leave them?

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

Mr. Speaker, it would be a really good idea to warn friends and students to be prepared, as my colleague said.

However, no one can register until an election is called. People can have their identification ready, but they cannot register.

Furthermore, it is not clear whether we can contact people in advance to ask them to swear that a certain individual was in a certain riding and sign an attestation. The bill is not clear on whether that can be done in advance. It may be that we have to wait until the election is called. There are some real obstacles, and this should be clear to the minister. I do not know why these obstacles exist.

In the United States, for instance, people have to register every year. However, people can do it on January 1 every year, whereas here you have to wait five years, or until the election is called. It makes no sense.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with care to my colleague's exposition of the law, and it bothers me tremendously to know that even though we have a fixed election date and the law now says that the next election will be on October 19, even if we wanted to ensure that at each election we had a fresh voters list for Canadians living abroad, surely the doors could be open now.

How many people do we estimate would have to register and be processed and do all of those things within the 35 days of a writ? What possible reason could there be for not starting that process on January 1 of an election year under the fixed election law?

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

Mr. Speaker, we know from the court case and from some other testimony that the government alone believes that 1.4 million or 1.5 million Canadians would potentially be enfranchised by getting rid of the five-year rule.

In terms of those of the right age who would have the right to vote and would be added to this—beyond the military and diplomats, et cetera, who are excluded from the provisions of all this—let us say that the court in the Frank case said that it was at least a million, that does not mean that people would want to vote or would try to register. However, the fact of the matter is that it is a right to vote and if someone has that degree of connection to Canada that they want to vote, then a certain percentage of that one million people would be what we are dealing with.

The idea of shoving all of this into the campaign period and overburdening Elections Canada makes no sense. Contrast that to France, which has gone out of its way in recent years to make it easier and easier for citizens abroad to vote. They can do it postally. They can vote by Internet now, and they can also go to one of over 700 locations around the world to physically vote. France does it three different ways to make it as easy as possible.

While France is trying to make it as easy as possible, the government here is going in the opposite direction, in the name of some kind of weird set of principles that have no application to any known mischief or problem.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his speech on Bill C-50.

Does the member believe the government's claims that this bill comes in response to the Ontario Superior Court decision in Frank et al. v. The Attorney General of Canada, which specifically addressed paragraph 11(d) of the Canada Elections Act, or is it simply a way for the government to try to change the law on the pretext that it really is a response to the Superior Court decision?