Evidence of meeting #14 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was information.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
I think we have to call the question specific to this recommendation, that we open it up or we don't. Let's call the question.
We'll record that the majority of the committee recommends it.
Recommendation 2.11—the rest we have in fact dealt with. Section 2.11 is “Stable Unique Identifiers for Electors”.
The Chief Electoral Officer recommends.... Did I already hear “agreed”?
11:50 a.m.
Some hon. members
Agreed.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
Are we all happy?
We heard yesterday that the Canada Elections Act is not subject to the Privacy Act. I don't want to open a can of worms here, but does anybody want to discuss that?
Mr. Hill.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Jay Hill Conservative Prince George—Peace River, BC
On the issue of identifiers, we've had a thorough discussion at different times about the requirement for photo ID. We all recognize that there are individuals who don't have photo ID. Is there someplace else in our recommendations, or are we going to consider...? As we all agreed, the biggest issue that we need to grapple with is to eliminate, as much as we can, any potential for voter fraud.
My thought is that if we were to have a recommendation that the voter be required to show photo ID, but didn't have any, he or she could provide some other form of identification, which is already required.
In addition, if someone showed up at a polling station without photo ID and had other pieces of identification, automatically the poll clerk would look at the list and say what is your date of birth? To me, that should pretty much eliminate it, if there was a requirement of the polling clerk that if you don't have photo ID, I'm going to ask you what your date of birth is to identify that you are who you say you are.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
Mr. Hill, section 5 of this report deals with all those issues, photo ID, and so on, so if it's okay, I can simply defer that.
Mr. Godin, go ahead, please.
11:55 a.m.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
I have to leave in a minute. I just want to say that I'm not for mandatory photo ID. Jay has suggested an alternative for someone who doesn't have it. We're totally against requiring that someone have photo ID. It's good to look out for fraud, but at the same time, we want Canadians to be able to vote, and we have lots of people who don't have photo ID.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
It has been so recorded. Thank you very much, Mr. Godin.
Let's move on, please. We'll probably get to this issue next Tuesday anyway, so I think we can have this discussion on Tuesday.
Right now we're going to move to section 2.12, “Distribution of Lists of Electors to Registered and Eligible Parties”. This deals with the other half of Mr. Proulx's concern about what we do with this information. It reads:
The Chief Electoral Officer repeats a recommendation made in an earlier report, Modernizing the Electoral Process (2001) to amend sections 45 and 109 of the Canada Elections Act to permit the distribution of voters' lists to eligible parties, whether or not they ran candidates in the electoral districts for which they are requesting the list in the previous elections. Currently, only registered parties are entitled to the lists.
Of course, there are some parties who are running candidates in areas in which they did not run in the previous election, and under current rules, they're not entitled to those lists. I think this makes sense. Is there any comment, or can we just pose the question?
Yes, Mr. Proulx.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Marcel Proulx Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
I want to check the French version, but when they say, “Currently only registered parties are entitled to the lists,” we don't want unregistered parties to have these lists, so what am I not understanding here?
11:55 a.m.
Committee Researcher
Eligible parties are parties that have been accepted for registration subject to their complying with certain requirements and actually running candidates in the next general election. These are parties who have applied for registration between elections.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Marcel Proulx Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
It means that they would not necessarily have a candidate. In other words, they're not fully registered.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Jay Hill Conservative Prince George—Peace River, BC
We're on 2.12. Right at the end, it says that the committee rejects this recommendation. Why are we revisiting it?
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
It says in parentheses, “To be addressed by Chief Electoral Officer...”. I apologize. It sounds like we were going to reject it again anyway.
Section 2.13 is done. On 2.14....
Is there another point of order?
Noon
Liberal
Marcel Proulx Liberal Hull—Aylmer, QC
It's a continuation of Mr. Hill's point. When did we reject this recommendation? I don't think I agree with this recommendation, but....
Noon
Bloc
Michel Guimond Bloc Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC
I remember it very well but just look at the notes we wrote on the document we rejected. We wrote: “No more discussion needed. Reason for recommendation? Figueroa?“ The Chief Electoral Officer confirmed that this was based on the decision of the Supreme Court in the Figueroa case. So we had our answer. It has been rejected.
Noon
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
I appreciate that. Thank you very much.
We're supporting recommendation 2.16. Recommendation 2.17 is done. The next one is 2.18.
We wanted to talk to the Chief Electoral Officer about this--updating lists during elections on the basis of information from the National Register of Electors. It reads:
Express statutory authority is sought to enable returning officers to update lists of electors on the basis of information in the National Register of Electors. Currently, there is only implicit authority for a returning officer to update electoral lists....
Sounds like a bit of an administrative issue. Are we agreed on this?
Noon
Some hon. members
Agreed.
Noon
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
We are now at 2.19, on provincial use of data from the National Register of Electors. It reads:
The wording of sections 55(3) and 56(e) of the Canada Elections Act makes it unclear whether provincial authorities are prohibited from using the provincial list of electors if information in the provincial list originally came from the National Register of Electors. The Chief Electoral Officer seeks an amendment to make it clear that neither section precludes the use of provincial lists of electors according to provincial law.
Are we agreed?
Noon
Some hon. members
Agreed.
Noon
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Gary Goodyear
We are now on 2.20, “Sharing Elector Data with Provincial Electoral Authorities for Updating Purposes”. I think this is more of the same. It reads:
Section 55 of the Canada Elections Act authorizes the Chief Electoral Officer to share electoral information in the National Register of Electors with provincial election authorities. He cannot, however, share information that has not been incorporated into the Register, thus restricting Elections Canada from sharing source or preliminary data. This data is useful for provincial authorities in updating their registers. The Chief Electoral Officer seeks an amendment to the Act to enable him to share all the information from which he is authorized to update the Register.
Noon
Conservative
Joe Preston Conservative Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON
It may need some clarification.
Are we saying that although we can share the whole list with the provinces, the provinces are asking us to share source and preliminary data with them? Now we get back to what Madam Redman was afraid of.
Noon
Committee Researcher
I think what this is directed to is that where the register has not yet been updated by information that Elections Canada has received and a provincial election is taking place, they can send the register as well as the un-inputted data that will be added to the register to the province to assist the province in running their election.