Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 13th, 2006

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

But my understanding is that the purpose of the committee is to have a bill in place in time for the next election. That's the basis on which I would be working at this, as well as on any other recommendation coming from this committee.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

Maybe this is a last question.

I would certainly encourage more mobile polling and split polls. We did that in our riding again this year, and it was extremely successful. With a winter election, seniors were saying yes, we want to vote, but we're not going to leave our apartments to vote. In my first election three years ago, many of the polling stations were in seniors' complexes. For some reason in the second election, they were often moved out to be located in schools.

So I'm wondering, when you instruct your returning officers in the different ridings, do you encourage them to have polling stations in seniors' complexes?

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

You're raising an issue that's one of the points for clarification here, which in effect is loosening the grounds whereby mobile polls can be established. Right now, it has to be something that's related to the health of the people who are there, and effectively we're saying a simple residence should be, if I remember correctly from my comments or recommendations.... It would be very helpful for the process, which is a clear indication I favour the establishment of mobile polls, and we instruct returning officers to have them to the fullest extent possible.

This is not hard to achieve now that we've gotten experience since 1993. It's not hard to organize now. It turns out to be slightly more expensive, but I don't think it's a question of money. I've certainly never said not to establish them because of money. I've said to establish as many as you can, but within the existing guidelines.

I'm recommending to you that the guidelines be broadened so that the grounds for limiting that application can be removed from the statute.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you.

I'm going to ask for clarification on one point, Mr. Kingsley, expanding on Mr. Simard's issue with the schools.

When a school agrees to have a poll at their school, then cancels at the last minute, are there any obligations to prevent that from happening? I mean, if they agree to it one month, why would they not agree to it the next month?

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

It's very hard to answer that question in the sense that you can say, you have a legal contract to fulfill with me. But if they decided not to, what is the Chief Electoral Officer's recourse, except moral suasion? Do you take a school board to court for a matter like this? Do you seek an injunction because they're deciding one week ahead of the polls? You have to apply reasonableness here.

What we try to do is accommodate their concerns. If it's something that happened from the time that they agreed to the time they're seeing that they should disagree, what happened in between? That's what we try to address. I think in the main we've been successful.

But I don't want to understate the looming problem I see with school boards. I think we're going to have to reach out even more to make sure there's a keen appreciation of the importance of the schools as public institutions, for which people pay with their taxes. They belong to the community.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

I don't want to take time.

Pauline, would you like to speak?

Thank you.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Good morning and welcome to the committee once again.

I understand, Mr. Kingsley, that you are not in favour of adding the year of birth to the electoral lists, as is done in Quebec. I would like to know why that is.

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

Are you referring to the birth date?

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Yes.

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

In my report, there was a recommendation that deputy returning officers and poll clerks, the people who run elections, have this information. It would help them identify people quickly in some cases, for example when a 70-year-old comes in to vote and claims to be 30 years old.

However, distributing general lists with personal information on them, including the birth date, seem to present a problem in our view. I continue to believe that that would be the case. However, it might be advisable to check with Ms. Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner. She should appear before the committee.

If she agrees with this idea and does not think it would be a violation of the legislation, I would be able to take the necessary steps quite quickly.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Why have you never discussed this with your provincial counterparts? In Quebec, the birth date is helpful and using it does not present any difficulties.

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

This is a matter that we perceive as being a requirement under the federal act. In this regard, it is important that I clarify one matter.

In 1993, when the act was amended, there was a great deal of concern about protecting people's privacy. In fact, that is still the case today. The issue we are discussing here is perceived as involving personal information.

Personally, I think it might be possible to share this information, provided it is made perfectly clear that any disclosure of this information to an unauthorized source would be a serious violation of the act.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

We know that it is increasingly difficult to update the electoral list. It contains many errors, people move, and so on. I think 1993 was the last year in which an enumeration was carried out. People think that having enumerators go door to door is the best way of registering voters and getting them on the list. This is the method that apparently causes the fewest problems.

Would you be in favour of using the existing national registry to do an enumeration and thereby fully update the electoral list?

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

I would have no major objection to that. I think we need to consider a procedure other than an election as a means of periodically checking the list. We must remember that the federal list benefits greatly from the Quebec list. To some extent, the Quebec list is our main source of information. In any case, I think it is important to try to establish a verification system.

Since you mentioned door-to-door enumeration, I will take this opportunity to talk to you about the visits to 1,400,000 households by two revising agents during the last election campaign. They went to places where people had moved such as student residences, nursing homes, and so on. After knocking twice at 1,400,000 doors, they did not even get 300,000 names. That is the type of response we get to this type of operation these days. It would definitely be possible to check the list by means of mailouts or by matching data with an agency such as Statistics Canada, which is already working in this area. These possibilities should be explored further.

However, I cannot guarantee that all of this will be ready in time to amend the act in the fall. Nevertheless, we would like to study these issues with you.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

The information you have comes from income tax returns. You also have agreements with the other provinces with respect to other information.

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

Of the major sources of information by which the list is updated regularly, meaning once a month, once every three months or every six months, income tax is number one. We no longer add to the list: there are updates and address changes. There is a problem on the income tax side. We refer to this elsewhere.

As for drivers' licences, we have agreements with most of the provinces, but not with Quebec. In fact, in this case, the Chief Electoral Officer provides information directly to the list. He gets this information from similar sources. Finally, the civil registry is used to purge the names of deceased individuals from the list.

There are other agreements. For example, Citizenship and Immigration Canada provides us with the list of new citizens. Over 90 per cent of them agree to have their name added to the voters' list. It's possible to do so once people become Canadian citizens, but not before.

In short, these are the main sources of information used to periodically update the voters' list.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

All right. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Monsieur Guimond, you have one and a half minutes, so go.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

My question is for Mr. Landry.

It appears that most of the comments or complaints that you receive get pretty much the same answer. I don't want to insult you, but you're somewhat like the Tower of Pisa: you always lean to the same side. Every request for an investigation gets the same answer: everything is fine, everything is in compliance with the legislation. I would like your comments on this.

I would also like you to tell us, without giving us any names, about complaints that you dealt with in 2004 and the way in which they were resolved. Were they statutory offences or, once again, “was everything fine?”

[Raymond Landry, Commissioner, Elections Canada]

Mr. Chair, I want to start by answering the second question, on my office's activities in 2004.

We received 1,699 complaints during the course of the last election, and we continue to receive more. These are complaints by candidates, political parties, political party representatives or voters. However, most of the complaints, about 75 per cent, were made by Elections Canada.

Of that number, 143 complaints, about 8 per cent, did not involve violations of the Canada Elections Act. It could have been an allegation about the violation of legislation other than the Canada Elections Act, for example the legislation regulating the CRTC, the Income Tax Act and so forth. So, 8 per cent of complaints were resolved on that basis.

Of the 952 complaints from the Election Financing Directorate of Elections Canada, 291 detailed a breach of the legislation on the opening of a bank account by an official agent. The legislation clearly stipulates that the official agent's name must be clearly indicated and followed by the words “official agent”. The Election Financing Directorate looks at these files and sends them to us immediately following a technical breach. So, there were 291 files that, for the most part, in the absence of any other alleged violations, were rapidly closed, given the inconsequential nature of the complaint and the offence.

In addition, 196 of those files involved allegations that the wrong person had issued receipts in the rush of an election. For example, another person issued receipts in order to help the official agent.

Of those 952 complaints, 335 stated that candidates' financial records contained incorrect information.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Excuse me, sir, could we speed it up? If there's a report, perhaps you could just hand it out. I think the question was how many complaints you have received and how many are successfully prosecuted.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

We can ask Mr. Landry, who is obviously reading a chart, to table it with the clerk.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Exactly.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

I would like a more general, overall figure. Please do not give me more details because you are losing me.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

We'll come around in round two. I'm terribly sorry, but we've gone way over on that round.

I'd like to go to Mr. Godin.