Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 15th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Order. Please address comments to the chair.

Monsieur Guimond.

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

We want to compel them to report volunteer work. Although Mr. Reid says this is already well covered, we need to think twice before rejecting this. I know it will be complex. For example, a lady came to help us answer the phone at my campaign office for two hours during a 36 or 42 day election campaign. I know this will mean a lot of work. We want to prevent the kind of fraud that was revealed at the Gomery Commission.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Next is Mr. Simard, and then Mr. Hill.

[Raymond Simard, Liberal, Saint Boniface, MB]

I understand Mr. Guimond's comment, but at the same time, I don't think you base policy on the exception. There are 308 people who will have to do a lot of work.

This happened once, and I just think that in the future...I'm not prepared to start holding a stopwatch to the volunteers coming to work for me, whether they've worked 50 or 40 hours a week. It's absolutely ridiculous. This is for me a non-starter.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Mr. Hill.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

I agree. I think most of us agree with the general intent of what they're trying to get at here. It's to prevent someone being given a huge advantage by having a whole bunch of paid volunteers who in effect aren't really volunteers--some company is paying them to work on my campaign or someone else's campaign.

As Mr. Simard says, it's gotten to the point now that.... When the CEO was here, we should have asked him how many returns--and we have to submit all this paper--are found to be in compliance now. It's getting ridiculous. There's a huge deterrent to most people to run for public office, because you take a look at what you have to do and...you have to have an accountant now to be your official agent. It wasn't so many years ago that just about anybody competent to run a calculator could be an official agent if they wanted to donate the amount of time required. It's getting more and more onerous on the candidates and on the parties.

I think we owe it as well to the smaller parties that aren't represented on our committee to also try to represent them. The Green Party certainly objected to this, and I would suggest that anybody considering running as an independent often has to rely even more than we do on volunteers, because they're unable to raise the same amount of money that most people running for a recognized party could.

I think it might be well-intentioned, as with a lot of the recommendations--give them the benefit of the doubt--but I think it's not workable for a lot of people, and it will provide another deterrent for people to seek public office.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you.

Madame Picard is next.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I agree with Mr. Hill that it would be very difficult to comply with such a requirement. In a riding where you have 45 municipal governments, a large industrial city with a population of 80,000 people and rural municipalities, and where 500 people work on your campaign, how are we supposed to know how many hours such and such a person worked, who arranged to be replaced by somebody else, etc.?

I find this totally utopian. How could we keep track of all the hours put in by people who work for parties during an election campaign? And we have been talking about one candidate only. When you have five or six candidates, that is a lot of people wandering about. In my view, no political party will be able to account for all the volunteer work.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

I'm hearing the same thing from everyone. Does anybody have anything to add?

I'm hearing from the committee that although this is a well-intentioned thing to do, it's not necessary and there may be another way to do it. We don't support it; we reject it. Thank you.

We have dealt with recommendation 4.3. We rejected recommendation 4.3, by the way.

Next is recommendation 4.4

Recommendation 4.4 is “Extension of the Deadline Process for Candidates' Returns”. I believe we have dealt with that; we supported it.

Next is recommendation 4.5, “Candidate Audit Fees”. We can simply deal with this. It is an administrative thing. It reads:

An amendment to section 466 of the Canada Elections Act is sought to expressly establish the amount of the candidate audit fees as the amount of the audit expense, to a maximum of 3% of the candidate's election expenses and $1,500, whichever is less. The minimum audit fee would be $250.

Mr. Reid is next, please.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

When Mr. Kingsley was here, I asked him why we have the audits at all. He audits our returns after we submit them. Aside from trying to create jobs, why do we have our own external audits? We don't do this with income tax, where you are audited and then they audit your audit. They select people on a random basis and do the audits on those people. I'm completely mystified by the point. And when he was here, I didn't think he gave a very coherent explanation.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Perhaps members could correct me, but I think his reasoning for doing the audit a second time was that he did not have access to your receipts and so on. Am I incorrect in assuming that?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I think he said something like that.

I'm not saying we should get rid of his audit. Keep that one, the internal one. They can pick the people they think it's most appropriate to look at. It doesn't have to be random. It can be based on their suspicions and so on.

But if they're competent people who are being used, then the audit is completely unnecessary.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Monsieur Proulx.

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

My understanding is that this particular audit, the one we obtain and submit to Elections Canada, is the audit of the elections report. That's why we're forced to use recognized accountants, whether they be chartered or general accountants. The only difference is that I don't think there was the 3% that applied previously; I think it was just a rounded figure.

I think this audit is fine. I've had the circumstances where we made mistakes in preparing the report. The auditor found it. We corrected it within two days. It saved us from having to deal with this for probably two or three months with Elections Canada. So I have no objection to this audit. I think it's fine.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Are there any further comments before I call the question on section 4.5?

Do we support section 4.5?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

There is one opposed.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are doing very well.

We'll move to section 5. A lot of the sections that we're going to deal with now are those that have been brought up by other witnesses and members of the committee.

Let's go to section 5.01, “Identification at the Polls”:

Members of the Committee are extremely concerned about the potential for fraud and misrepresentation in voting. We have no means of knowing whether this concern is warranted or not....

I'm not going to read this entire thing.

Ultimately, what we're dealing with is what the committee feels is a reasonable amount of identification. I can remind the committee that in Quebec they do ask for two of three pieces of identification. That's basically the gist of this. We are all in agreement that we need to tighten up identification at the polls. How do we do that?

Mr. Hill.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Without going through this, I think everybody was here when I remarked a while ago what at least one step is that we could undertake. There's no point in me going over that.

The base should be photo ID. I think the vast majority of Canadians have photo ID, as has been pointed out by my colleague, Mr. Preston, and others, during the discussions we've had over the last number of weeks. That would take care of most people. For those who don't have that ability, I think there are other ways we can do it.

My suggestion was basically that Elections Canada have some policy where the poll clerk is required to ask a question. I think part of the problem is that people at the polling stations are reluctant or shy—or whatever term you want to use—to confront someone. They might even be suspicious, but they're not sure they have the right to ask that person to identify themselves. So in many cases they just don't do it.

If it became standard procedure, where it's written into the act that if you don't have photo ID, you're required to produce some other identification.... In addition, the poll clerk would be required to ask for the date of birth. They would have that information in front of them. To me, it's a very simple check, that people identify who they are.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Ms. Crowder please.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Thank you. Forgive me, because I wasn't here for the earlier discussion, but I'm sure I'm reiterating a point that Monsieur Godin would have made, which is that photo ID is a problem for a percentage of the population and it would be really important that there are alternatives to photo ID. I just wanted to be on record to state that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

That's fine. Thank you.

Mr. Guimond, please, and then Monsieur Proulx.

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

Under the Quebec legislation, someone who is 88 years old might not have a driver's licence anymore or never had one, but he or she probably has a health card. We also accept the Canadian passport. Fifteen percent of people have a passport. We also accept any other card with photo ID. This means any other photo identification issued by the government. This way, we put all the chances on our side.

I fully agree with Mr. Hill's comments. We should not leave this responsibility to scrutineers since under our system they are not agents appointed by the returning officer but election agents appointed from lists submitted by the party. It could turn out that a scrutineer appointed by a given party systematically sends people to attestation, which could penalize some other party.

It has to be clear in the act. In his advertising, the Chief Electoral Officers can make voters aware that the voter card will not be sufficient and that they need to show photo identification, but that they could still vote since there will be a process for swearing an oath as to one's identity. If the message is clear, the responsibility will not rest solely on the scrutineer who might sometimes be embarrassed to ask a voter to swear an oath to establish his or her identity. This scrutineer might be accused by others of systematically delaying the vote if there is a line-up at the identification table. It has to be clear in the act.

Contrary to what Mr. Kingsley might think, everybody recognizes in 2006 that the voter card is an outdated system that facilitates fraud. Whether the Chief Electoral Officer places that card in a sealed or a scented envelope will change absolutely nothing.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you very much.

Before we ask Mr. Proulx to continue, I will remind folks that Quebec requires that voters provide their name, address, and, if asked, their date of birth. They must also produce as identification one of the following: driver's licence, health insurance card, Canada passport, or other government body document.

We have had discussions about a driver's licence, a health card, something with a date of birth on it, a photo ID, a passport, a senior's card. I have heard comments from members that this could decrease voter turnout. I did my own study, comparing Quebec turnout and Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba, and indeed there is no statistically significant difference between voter turnouts. So this does not appear to be a deterrent.

I just wanted to make those comments. We'll continue our discussion and then we'll ask the question. I would focus the committee on the two pieces of identification, what would they be, or two of three, so that nobody is restricted perhaps. That's just a suggestion.

Monsieur Proulx, please.

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

Thank you.

I agree with Mr. Guimond's conclusion, although I don't necessarily agree with his reasons for arriving at that conclusion. I think scrutineers, whether they be recommended by one party or the other, once they are sworn in by Elections Canada, as far as I'm concerned, are doing their job.

I don't want to do micromanagement, but it's very important that we not leave identification using other pieces of identification to the voting table, because it's going to create havoc. But there's no problem for the card. I think we have to go with photo ID, and we could specify that it be any card with a photo, as Mr. Guimond was mentioning, which we have in the province of Quebec, issued by a government, whether it be municipal, provincial, or federal, including passports, including a driver's licence.

[A voice]

Age of majority.