Evidence of meeting #19 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was chair.
A recording is available from Parliament.
6 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Aha, I thought I was in the big leagues when I got to the big House. I've got to tell you, I saw a lot more democracy at Hamilton City Council than I'm seeing around here.
6 p.m.
Conservative
6 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Some days, and some days I would have been the problem, so fair is fair.
All right, new stuff.
One of the government members, Michelle Rempel, there's a story here with a headline:, “Public hearings 'a big delaying tactic'.”
Notwithstanding the fact that we are using parliamentary procedure to try to affect bad parliamentary procedure, it's not delaying for delaying's sake. It's not an obstructionist move. If it was, I would say so. Why not? That doesn't change. I still have the floor. Nothing would change. I would be upfront and open about it, which is what I prefer. I'm sure we're all that way. But it's not. It's not just about trying to be obstructionist, because that only gets you so far as a political party if you're hoping to get good media. I mean, they are not foolish.
With the media, especially those who have been around politics and politicians for any length of time, it doesn't take too long before they start rolling their eyes and saying, “Oh, they're just grandstanding, hoping to get a headline. There's nothing really here.” That's not the case at all. We are very serious about this, which is why we have committed the time and the effort that we have so far to try to convince the government of the error of their ways. To continue to have government members take shots at what we're doing is not helpful to the government, in my view. It's really not, because those who agree with you are already there, and those who aren't sure are watching. There are impressions being developed, and Canadians may or may not agree that what's going on here is in their best interest.
If I might, Chair, I would like to also make some reference to another set of hearings that was held by the House of Commons. It was the Special Joint Committee on the Constitution of Canada. I definitely won't go too far in talking about the process, because I have made the statement, and others have too, that this is one of the most important pieces of legislation we have. We say that about a lot of things, but really, when you're talking about the fundamental process by which Canadians are given or denied the right to vote, the procedures for the actual voting, money in particular is huge. Some of those concerns that the government has made point to a bill that money talks. That's the opposite. I thought one of the best things that was ever done for democracy in Canada, and I give full marks to former prime minister Chrétien, who brought in exactly what the government undid, but the public financing was one of the best improvements to democracy that we could have.
For instance, I was in Morocco not that long ago doing an election observation. They don't have a lot of elections, and those that they do have don't necessarily meet all the standards one would hope they would meet, but you know what? One of the first things they guaranteed was that there was public financing for all the parties so that money didn't skew the field. Morocco: a monarchy has a better sense of democracy then we do. It's going to take so long to bring that back, and it's a shame. It was an easy one for the Conservatives to go after, and no one should be at all surprised that the party of money took funding for political parties out of our regime and left it to just the money. Yet the emerging democracies of the world are the ones that are making sure it's in there right from the get-go, because they get it. If it isn't a fair playing field, if it's not fair for everybody, then it's not a fair election. That which we have undone, emerging democracies that are nowhere near the level of evolution that we have—and we're far from perfect or finished—get that point that they don't want money buying or skewing their election.
Does money guarantee you win the free election? No, but it's nice to have. If you give me a choice as to whether I have 300 signs out in a neighbourhood, or 500 signs, I'd rather have 500 signs. If I have 500 people who want to put them on their lawns, now I need the money to buy the signs. That's a lot easier if you have friends with money, and you have rules that allow you to hire people through the back door and link that with stifling the Chief Electoral Officer, skewing a few other things, lack of consultation; you put it all together and there is so very little democratic about any of this, that it's an outrage.
I was starting to make reference to the process that the special committee on the Constitution used. They held hearings. Again, the Constitution: pretty important; election laws: pretty important. So you'd think there might be some similarity in how Parliament would approach these two subjects. But it turns out that it's not really Parliament per se. It's the government of the day. If we were in a minority government situation, we would be back where we were before doing the work of the Chief Electoral Officer and starting from there. This would be such a different world.
If anybody dared suggest when we were having those discussions that a government is going to come along and unilaterally impose their will of an election law, every single member of that committee would have said, “Are you crazy? That's never going to happen. Who would dare do that? How could that be?” Yet here we are. Here we are, living, breathing in Canada, and the bill before us didn't have any input. If the government had their way, there wouldn't be any after it was tabled. We saw that by virtue of their ramming it through the House. They said they want to do committee work here. The first thing the opposition does is put forward a very straightforward motion, offers also to move off of that position to find a negotiated compromise that the government can live with and that we can live with, and it's still, no, no, no, no.
They don't want to meet around the clock. Every time I mention we might meet around the clock to do the bill if we get towards the end and run out of time, it's, “Are you crazy? We're not going to work around the clock.” Yet, if it's necessary to go around the clock to shut down the official opposition, they say, “That's just regular business. That's okay. But we're not going to do that kind of work, work, work. We're only going to do that if we have to, to get one of you guys,” because we're mucking up their idea of how laws should be made in Canada.
6:10 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
I have a point of order, Chair.
Is this really relevant, the attacks on the motivations of our government? Is that really relevant to the motion before us today?
6:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Not specifically, Mr. Lukiwski. I have had this discussion with Mr. Christopherson before, that we're treading on new ground here. This committee has never had a motion to tell it how it will study a bill. We've always done it through our own steering committee. Say what you will, it has not been our method in how we would determine a study. It has always been this committee that sits here and discusses how we would study it.
I recognize there's a slight difference between the two, but we've just never done it by motion like this.
Thank you, Mr. Lukiwski.
6:10 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
No, and I appreciate the civics lesson, but I would also remind honourable members that we've never seen an election law rammed through and been feeling the tyranny of the majority either. But I do appreciate you told me I'm on new ground making this motion. Does that help my relevancy argument? No?
6:10 p.m.
An hon. member
It helps.
6:10 p.m.
Conservative
6:10 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Bit by bit, I'm gaining ground. I can feel the momentum.
Why did I raise this? Because it's directly related to my motion in terms of showing that, notwithstanding what you have said, Chair, it's not the usual way. I have said that. I can't say it again because I've already said it, but I have said that this process is not the one we want.
I have been comparing other exercises by our Parliament in terms of looking at major pieces of legislation, and I'm trying to validate as well as I can my second point, which calls for travel, and why that's important.
I am pointing out, Chair, that the special Beaudoin-Edwards committee was struck in 1991, which is back a little bit but not that long in terms of the history of our country. How did they approach the same kind of situation we're looking at right now in terms of a major important piece of legislation, the Constitution, and how would they go about that?
What did they do, Chair? They held hearings in ten provinces and two territories. I think there were just barely three then. When did Nunavut come in, 1997 or 1999? Nobody knows? It was something like that.
March 4th, 2014 / 6:10 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Anyway, the point is that they did solve.... By virtue of what we just said, they went everywhere. At least they went to every province and every territory that existed at the time. That's the antithesis of the process that's being suggested here. That's my point, Chair. That's why we've made the motion.
I grant you that we have not done it this way per se, but it is not at all unusual or unacceptable that committees would travel when seized with pan-Canadian issues. What the heck could be more pan-Canadian than our election laws? If you'll accept the notion that our Constitution matters, it makes perfect sense that the Beaudoin-Edwards committee of the day went to every province and every territory. Why? Because it's the Constitution and every province and every territory is a party to it.
Cities aren't, as we know. Cities are not in the constitution. They are creatures of our provinces and territories. It's that legislation that brings them into existence, and there's usually specific legislation for different communities.
But the Constitution, that committee sat there and said to themselves—I'm guessing, but in some way or another, Chair, they said to themselves, “Okay, we have the Constitution. Who's impacted by the Constitution? Everybody. Well we can't visit everybody. The main parties to the Confederation that we have, it might make sense to visit them.” That's what they did. It sounds very democratic: the Constitution, which speaks to provinces and territories in the confederated state of Canada and the relationship powers and authority of said national federal government and those of the provinces and the territories. That's what our Constitution does.
So it would make every sense.... Let me flip it around and come at it the other way. Think how ridiculous it would be to talk about amending the Constitution or changing anything with the Constitution and you wouldn't go and ask the provinces and the territories what they thought. Yes, you could have them come here, but that's not what happened. Why? Because they showed the respect of a confederation. A federated state is different from other states and there is respect that has to be shown to the component parts. In this case, it's the provinces and the territories.
The federal government showed its respect for its equal partners in our Confederation of Canada by going—I suspect they probably went to their capitals. I don't know that for sure, but I'm suspecting.... At least they went to a major population centre in each of the provinces and territories, and said, “What do you think?”
Here we are in 2014, seized with a bill that proposes to amend our entire Elections Act. It's already somewhat controversial. We haven't even gotten to the guts of it yet, and we can't get the Conservative government members to agree that we need to show the same respect to Canadians that our predecessors have done, and that provinces and territories in Canada have done. I've also shown the examples of how other mature, respected democracies listen to their people. I've shown that emerging democracies that don't have the same reputation we do, the good reputation, went out and asked their people about their election laws.
When you look at it in its totality, everything I've been talking about, Chair, all of it taken together, one cannot, I don't care how, have a reasonable person look at this and say that the government is being democratic. There government's not being democratic. They are not being fair, and they really have no interest in hearing what Canadians think. What they care about is rigging the next election and getting the fix in early by getting their election law, the Conservative election law, the unfair elections act.
We have much to learn from those who came before, and I can tell you, Chair, that it cost them in their own time and their own constant dollars just as much money as it would have cost us, and it would have taken just as long, maybe even longer. The jets weren't as fast, but the fact remains that what is at stake here and what is missing is respect.
There is no respect shown for colleagues who happen to belong to other parties or who are independents in the House of Commons. They are showing no respect for Elections Canada by not even asking them to be part of this process. They are sure not showing any respect for Canadians and their right to be heard. It's all very disrespectful. It's a disrespectful bill. It's a disrespectful process. Part of why we're doing this is to give Canadians a chance to be aware.
I had mentioned some of the groups in my motion, in the first part, or at least some of them. This is not exhaustive when we make that statement. This isn't everything. But it was an attempt to provide fair representation of who we would have and why.
I want to return to a subject mentioned here, but not something I've already said about it. Referring to my motion about youth groups, I've talked about some groups, but I haven't said what we want to ask them. What we want to hear from young people is, first of all, what they think about the bill, and second, whether it meets their needs. We hear the minister in question period all the time referring to ID and how students are going to benefit, and things like that, but again, it's a democracy. The dialogue is two-way.
What we want to do is, fine, we'll hear from the minister. We showed that respect. We did that, and it was the official opposition that made sure that happened the way it did by giving a guarantee and honouring it. So we heard from the minister.
What we are asking for is the same respect for Canadians, and in this case, the case in point I am talking about, young people. We know that one of the biggest challenges we're facing is that more and more young people are saying, “A pox on all your houses. I'm not going to get involved at all.” They're throwing the whole system away. By doing that, it skews the results because not everybody is voting, so it's not everybody's opinion.
There are suggestions in this bill that certain educational aspects of the Chief Electoral Officer's job will be limited. Who is that going to affect the most if not our young people? They're the ones on whom we're trying to instill the notion of the importance of citizenship.
My colleague reminds me there are new Canadians who are thirsty to learn about their new country and thirsty to find a way to participate and be participants. Let me tell you, a lot of those new Canadians come from places where democracy isn't even spoken, where you hear a knock on the door at three in the morning, and you're not heard from again.
Now, we're not there. I'll leave it to experts like my colleague, Mr. Scott, to advise how far away we are from that. We are not there, I'm not accusing that, but I have to tell you, when you start ramming laws through that change the elections and you don't give people a chance to have their say, that's dangerous.
We want to give students and young people an opportunity to participate, to also bring out issues that aren't.... As I said before, there are things that need to be raised that maybe aren't in the bill, but that's the point to raise, “You didn't do this,” or “There's this problem over here.”
One of the best examples is the kind of powers that the Chief Electoral Officer has asked for in order to get to the truth when he's searching out fraud in elections. Those powers have not been given to the Chief Electoral Officer. I won't debate the merits of that particular point, Chair, but I will point out that it is part of the slippery slope of losing our democracy. It can't be said too many times how wrong it is to have this bill in front of us, when nobody asked the Chief Electoral Officer what he thought, what his recommendations would be? It's a process we've already done before.
We can bemoan the fact that young people aren't voting, and we do and rightfully so. It's a real concern, but it's not going to change if we don't ask them, because with a few exceptions, and my caucus has probably more than some of the others, we're not young people, and I don't speak for myself, but some of my colleagues are. You know, once you're here, your view of everything changes somewhat, so it would seem to me that someone who was, say, a youth activist at McGill, could make up some kind of crazy idea. A student at McGill maybe suddenly gets elected and becomes an MP. Something like that happens—it couldn't really happen, but say it did. It wouldn't take too long, I suspect—you can answer better than I to my colleague—that your view does shift a bit. I wouldn't call it a full Stockholm syndrome situation, but you start to become part of that world and you understand things differently. Sometimes it's a matter of, “Oh, I get that now; I didn't before,” but nonetheless you're viewing it differently.
What we still need in every democracy is to hear from those who are part of the voices that need to be heard and are those who aren't in the political loop, and by that I include the media. Those of us who do politics every day, an honourable profession, should be listening to the young people and asking them. That's why our motion includes the young people and their advocates, and new Canadians, because we don't know everything. Maybe some walk around believing that, but we don't. Even collectively we don't know everything. We can make mistakes. Sometimes a mistake is not doing something wrong, but the absence of doing what is right. It doesn't mean you've always done that for evil reasons, but even if by exception, or exclusion, or serendipity, you're making those mistakes, they have to be fixed.
We've made the case in our motion that young people, youth groups, their advocates, their representatives should be heard. We said the same thing for new Canadians. There's so much more we could be doing, Chair, rather than just being here defending, trying to get simple democracy, which is the right to be heard. What we should be doing is looking at trying to make this bill and our election laws as good as they can be. We're nowhere near that.
The government can stand up on their soapbox and say, “We're bringing in these great laws; these are the improvements.” Well, that's fine, but that's one voice that happens to be the government, but they won't give anybody else a voice, unless it's under their timeframe, their constraints, their rules, rather than giving people a chance to be heard in the places where they live.
That's why our motion mentions so many different groups, because we need to hear from them. We ought to be listening to them, commenting on proposals that are coming from the Chief Electoral Officer, from the collective experience of those of us who are here as a starting point.
We have such a democratic deficit on this process before we even get to the bill. That is shameful. I'll give the government this: they're consistently shameful when it comes to their denial of democratic rights to Canadians.
Chair, you mentioned to me that normally we don't have motions like this at PROC. Each committee is master of its own destiny, so we all do things a little differently. I would say to you, Chair, that's part of the reason we are where we are, because we were left with no choice but to do it. It's not so much colouring outside the lines, but trying to change where the lines are, to give everybody a say.
At least it's an attempt, because we can't go to every province and every territory. It's just not going to happen, but we could have worked out something. It's a shame because we're rapidly losing any opportunity for that to happen. The government is digging in. We're digging in. People are starting to become aware but not in enough numbers to move the government, not at this point anyway.
That's why we included in our motion as many representative groups as we could to at least start the notion, because it's not exhaustive, it's not exclusive, that there are other people we need to hear from. Our motion gives an example of what some of those groups might be.
On the question of travel, if we don't go out and give students an opportunity to be heard, how is it going to happen? There will be some representatives, perhaps. That will be good. That will be helpful. But it's still not the same as hearing from Canadians.
I know you won't let me read any more e-mails—it's frustrating, but I respect your right to make that ruling—but it is an indication, if you read enough of them, where you start to see.... I didn't have anything to do with that. We're not pushing, at least I'm not. I don't know anything about it. They just come in to me. There's enough evidence that Canadians want to be heard.
We're left with continuing to fight over what we consider to be basic rights of Canadians. Our motion has called for travel. I've given examples of how different jurisdictions have looked at this differently, and I've compared it in my comments as a way to support my arguments and to support my motion.
I can give more.
In the U.K., the mother ship, they now have a select committee on political and constitutional reform and they are doing a study on voter engagement. It's an ongoing study, but they're doing the crazy idea of asking the British people what they think. It sounds like a familiar argument, to give your own citizenry a say in your election laws and voting procedures.
What's interesting is that they're actually focusing—and this is what I meant earlier by the kind of things we should be doing to make our laws better. This is exactly the kind of thing. This is a perfect example to underscore my point, which supports my motion. They want to increase voter turnout. Did they stay in London? No, they didn't. They were giving all the British people an opportunity to be heard, and that's all we're asking.
Listen, I can't go too far, I know, Chair, but I think it's fair for me to give a representation of a couple of the questions they're asking themselves to show how they're tied in to what we're doing.
For instance, under reasons for and impact of low voter engagement, they ask their own people what the main factors are that have contributed to low voter turnout in recent U.K. elections.
We could be asking a similar kind of question. What are the deficiencies in our election laws? What socio-economic factors affect registration and turnout, and what, if anything, can we learn from this about how to improve voter registration and turnout?
I can't go into the specifics, Chair, because it's not part of my motion, but I certainly can make the point that according to our Minister of Democratic Reform, those are exactly the kinds of issues that Bill C-23 is supposedly going to address.
We in the opposition feel there is a really good chance that not everybody is going to see it that way. We'd like to give them that chance to be heard, especially when you have to take into account the geography of Canada.
They also ask how arrangements for British citizens living abroad to register for and vote in elections in the U.K. can be improved. It's not earth shattering, and I don't imagine that alone would generate too many headlines, but those are exactly the kinds of tombstoning questions you would ask if you're going to be looking at changing your election laws.
Rather than all of us sitting here asking ourselves those same kinds of questions and asking how we can get answers to those kinds of questions because we want to improve these things, we're left with having to bring in a motion which, as the Chair has pointed out, is a little bit different from what we normally do, simply because we're trying to force the government to be more democratic than they're prepared to be on their own inclination.
The very questions they're asking in Britain, and remember, that is the mother ship; that is where all these traditions start. When you go to a Commonwealth meeting, you'll find that with regard to all kinds of questions about parliamentary procedure, almost all of them, very quickly they will start by asking what they are doing in Westminster, what they are doing in the U.K., because they've been doing it for so long, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. But we're not.
Maybe a basic democratic lesson we could still learn from the mother ship is that when you want to change laws that affect people everywhere and that are fundamental to your democracy, your very first starting point should be to ask Canadians, or your own people in a generic sense, what they think.
In the U.K. example, you could tell just from the procedure that they cared what their people thought, so they put together a process that allowed their citizens to have their say. In the U.K. it's the same thing; in Canada, not so much.
6:35 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Zimbabwe. I don't think they're part of the Commonwealth. Are they part of the Commonwealth? No?
Maybe we kicked them out.
6:35 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Yes, where is Scott Reid when you need him. Our resident....
6:35 p.m.
NDP
6:40 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Okay, but the point is that whether we're talking about emerging democracies or arguably one of the longest democracies on the planet, both have the same idea about how to address the fundamental questions of how the election laws should work, and what improvements should be made.
A government that got less than 40% of the vote but has 100% of the power should at the very least ask the people, “What do you think of what we want to do?” It really is just “we”, the Conservatives, meaning them, because nobody else got a say.
I know I keep coming back to that. I'm not trying to be repetitive on the point, but it's legitimate to take a couple of basic points and come back to them and underscore them without expanding on them, so I'm constantly coming back to the lack of democracy, the lack of input, the lack of caring what anybody thinks. That's what's going on, folks.
I do not know where Bill C-23 was written, but it was not written with the input of the opposition members or the Chief Electoral Officer. That alone should scare the dickens out of Canadians, that their election laws are being treated this way. By the time Canada Day comes, if the government has their way, the Conservative election law, or rather the election law to elect Conservatives, will already be in place. The next time we'll be talking about this and being seized of it in any way is after the next election, and that's just fine with them.
Back to my point, back to my motion. From the most experienced to the newest, the richest to the poorest, democracies everywhere are showing what it is to be democratic and to give the appearance of being democratic.
That takes me back, I had talked about the referral—I'm shifting gears, as you may have picked up, but I had mentioned earlier about the process of referring from first reading, and I used my own explanation, which is never as good as the bible. As everybody here knows, O'Brien and Bosc, House of Commons Procedure and Practice, is the bible.
Chair, I did mention earlier that the government has the option, if they wanted to, to push a reset button and get us back to first reading. We still could put this back on track. It really could be done. I don't imagine at this stage, with everything we've witnessed, that the government is at all interested, but by unanimous consent the House could turn itself back. I can ask and see if he can do anything.
6:40 p.m.
Conservative
6:40 p.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
This is definitely repetition. We've talked about that several times before over the last few days.
6:40 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
It is. What is also true is that I didn't read the actual reference to be accurate in making my point on my motion.
