Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 25th, 2010

[Marc Mayrand]

I think Elections Canada has a role to play, but I doubt it's the leader. Elections Canada's role is to ensure that electors understand the various voting options available to them.

We could discuss at length how to motivate electors to vote, but that gets a bit delicate for an electoral agency. It's very hard to motivate electors to vote without discussing the issues. When electoral agencies start discussing the issues, they immediately expose themselves to being perceived as being involuntarily partisan.

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

To start with, there's a lack of interest in politics. There's also a lack of motivation. We can make it easier to vote, but if electors aren't motivated, there's a problem.

[Marc Mayrand]

It's a vicious circle. I don't question that.

However, I would say to you that—and this is why our initiatives are based on evaluations of the last election—55% of electors did not vote. They told us why they didn't vote: it wasn't accessible enough; they had schedule conflicts; they were too busy; they had to feed the children; there was a soccer game, and so on.

As an electoral agency, it is our responsibility to ensure that voting is as accessible as possible. It's clear that that won't motivate electors. That's another aspect. All of civil society must get involved in that aspect.

Elections Canada can do a little work with young people in the area of civic education. We try to do it on the campuses, but, here again, it's quite complicated if you're on a campus and you want to go and vote. Our role is to try and see how we can simplify that. That's a broader responsibility, and civil society has to take charge of it.

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

In my opinion, you're getting off on the right foot by starting with the schools. That's where it should start.

[Marc Mayrand]

Yes, absolutely.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you very much.

I thank you for coming today. It's been informative. I look forward to June 17. I don't get out of this room very often, it seems, so being out on the road, just being out there somewhere....

Thank you very much.

[Marc Mayrand]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

The question for the committee: shall vote 15 under Privy Council carry?

PRIVY COUNCIL

Chief Electoral Officer

Vote 15--Program expenditures..........$29,568,000

(Vote 15 agreed to)

Shall the chair report vote 15 under Privy Council, less the amount voted in interim supply, to the House?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I'll proceed to committee business. We have the Mexican president speaking to the House on Thursday morning. Many other committees have cancelled their eleven-to-one time slot in case it goes beyond that time. I believe there is a bit of a reception after it, also.

I need the will of the committee. Should this committee be meeting on Thursday? Should we meet late? What is your choice? I'm open. As I've said, I've certainly heard from many other committees, through the little bit of research I have done, that they will not be meeting on Thursday. They're just collapsing their time slot and picking it back up. I need to know what the committee thinks.

Monsieur Proulx.

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

What were we supposed to have?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We have a report almost ready on the technology piece, the use of BlackBerries in other jurisdictions and other legislatures. We were going to talk about that and about whether we do a report. Then we also were going to talk a bit about how close we are to a report on the prorogation issue.

I see that June 3 is open for us. We have one more witness in Professor Heard, who we really wanted to hear from. He's probably an hour-long witness on June 1. We could use the second hour on June 1 to accomplish those two pieces I talked about, too. So it's really up to the committee.

[Guy Lauzon, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

I think that's a great idea.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I just think it's easier not to schedule if that's the case. We won't schedule in case the Mexican president does go long. You know how sometimes these things in the House don't quite start on time. You know what great time managers members of Parliament are. So I think that's the case then.

Is it the will of the committee that we will not meet Thursday and we'll meet again the following Tuesday, June 1?

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

What about doing an hour on Thursday from twelve to one?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

That's the question. How do we know we're done and ready? I originally thought that, and talked to the clerk about doing that. The question is we need to prepare a little bit more about making sure the report's done. That's not hard, because you know the crackerjack staff have that done, but having food here, who's attending the reception for the Mexican president and who isn't--those types of things.

I'm open to the committee if the committee would like to meet, but there are some grey areas as to whether we can or can't.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Mr. Chair, in view of the fact that the subject matter isn't of an urgent nature, I would recommend that we—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Yes, we're not really turning down a witness at this point. I would have been fearful if in fact we'd had a witness scheduled and we're trying to change them around, but we really don't.

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

No, but we're pushing back the work of the committee for two hours.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

For the Mexican president, yes.

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

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

All right?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

So we'll see each other a week from today.

Thank you very much.