Evidence of meeting #21 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was vote.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Marlene Jennings Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
So if I understand you, in 2007 they received a slight salary increase and an additional increase through indexation. There were two prongs.
Was the slight salary increase to take in account the increased responsibilities, or not?
October 8th, 2009 / 12:50 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
It did not take into consideration the Bill C-31 new responsibilities that they have.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Marlene Jennings Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
Thank you.
When was the last time there was an actual door-to-door enumeration?
12:50 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
I believe it was in 1996 or 1997.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Marlene Jennings Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
You talked about there being more than one million electors who are not registered, and this is now without enumeration. What was it when we had the door-to-door enumeration?
12:50 p.m.
Rennie Molnar Deputy Chief Electoral Officer, Electoral Events, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
There was about 5% that we never got. Enumeration got about 92% of electors. We picked up an additional 3% during the election, and we kind of maxed out at 95%. So it would have been around the same amount.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Marlene Jennings Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
So whether it's door-to-door or the methods you're using now, it comes to approximately the same thing.
12:50 p.m.
Deputy Chief Electoral Officer, Electoral Events, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
Correct.
12:50 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
Interestingly, if I may add, Australia, which has mandatory registration, gets about the same number: 95%. The last 5% of the population is very difficult to reach.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
12:50 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
Yes, and they have over 90% turnout.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
12:50 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
The poll workers, the deputy returning officers and the poll clerks, earn $153 or so on polling day. Often it's 12 hours of work officially, but they spend 15 hours on that side. The poll clerks earn a little bit less.
They're also getting $35 for training.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
12:50 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
It's less than three hours, but that's an issue that we have. Again, the processes are becoming ever more complex.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
12:50 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
No. We would need to add hours, but again, given the constraint on recruitment and the timelines, it's very difficult to add time.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Marlene Jennings Liberal Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC
At some point you're going to be making another report to this committee. I know you had discussions with the government through the Treasury Board about increasing the remuneration of poll clerks, etc., and you were told no, they're going to suffer the same freeze.
Given the questions you've been asked here, would you be prepared to make a report to this committee about the actual situation now, the actual reality through the experience of the last election, as to how many hours people are really putting in, what they're actually being paid and what the breakdown of that is, so that we have an actual portrait of how we as a society and as a government are treating our Canadians who step up to the plate to help protect our democracy and put in time, hours, etc., and this is how we're treating them?
12:55 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
I could certainly add a section in the report on the issue of remuneration. In fact, one of the things that you will see in the report is some proposals as to how we need to modernize the way we are managing the voting process. If we start looking at that, of course, we'll need to look at the tariff structure for workers.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
Very quickly, I don't think I heard a definite answer for my colleague's question on costs. You identified many costs just in the polling station, like hand sanitizers and the like, but you have to have 20% increased staff.
Have you done any minimum cost estimates as to, at bare minimum, how much the preparations for the H1N1 are going to cost Elections Canada?
12:55 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
At this point I can confirm to the committee that for the basic measures we have in place, we have spent a little bit over $700,000. As we go about--
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
No, my question is how much will it cost, not just what it has cost you to date. But to employ all of these extra considerations across Canada at every polling station, have you done an estimate for how much that's going to cost at the end of the day?
12:55 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer
The short answer is no, because there is an infinite series of scenarios there. Mostly it is cost displacement. There may be some additional costs because we will have recruited more people, let's say 10% or 20%, but basically these workers are paid strictly for the training in those cases, which is $35 per worker.
Again, in terms of costs associated with finding alternative sites and what the options are, right now we're not in a position to forecast all of those costs, given what we know about the situation.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
Right.
The last question is off the H1N1. Are you prepared to give us a sense of some of the proposed changes you're going to make on the regulatory side for official agents and financial agents? You mentioned you'd be bringing those forward in your next report, and I know that the burden that is placed on them is a concern of many official agents. Can you give us a sense of some of the things you're considering to ease the burden on those individuals?
