Evidence of meeting #20 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 elections.
A video is available from Parliament.
11:30 a.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Is the deal better than the one yesterday? Are you going to honour what you're saying now? You make it sound as though you're all on the side of angels and we're already 35 minutes in.
Let's hear from Mr. Mayrand.
11:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
I think that's a great thought.
Thank you very much.
Monsieur Mayrand, welcome and thank you for coming today. Let's see if we can get started.
I know you have an opening statement, so please let's do what we can do. If you can make it briefer so we can get to questions, that would be great. If you can't, that's fine. Let's go that route and we'll get into rounds of questioning. We'll keep that questioning list in order after we come back so we know where we are and what we're doing.
Please go ahead, Monsieur Mayrand.
11:35 a.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Bill C-23 is a very important piece of legislation that touches upon practically every aspect of the electoral process. In this regard, it is the most comprehensive reform of the Canada Elections Act since it was completely overhauled in 2000.
I would be less than transparent, and I would not do service to parliamentarians, if I did not share the full extent of my concerns with respect to the measures presented in Bill C-23, as well as those that, in my view, are missing. Of course, there are positive elements in the bill, as well as a range of technical improvements and clarifications that follow some of my previous recommendations. Unfortunately, the bill also includes measures that, in my opinion, undermine its stated purpose and will not serve Canadians well.
Given the limited time available, I will focus on the aspects that I find most problematic. My officials will be available to provide a more comprehensive technical briefing to members from each caucus.
The government has indicated that this bill will serve three main purposes: first, improving service to electors; second, providing clear and simple rules for everyone to follow; and third, most importantly, ensuring fair elections.
In reviewing the bill today, I propose to look at it from the perspective of these three objectives to see whether and to what extent they are met.
On improving service to electors, when we speak of service to electors, we must be careful not to let this terminology diminish in any way the importance of what is at stake. It is the responsibility of Parliament to provide, and it is my responsibility to administer, an electoral process that is accessible to all who wish to exercise their constitutional right to vote.
Election day should be a time, and it may be the only time, when all Canadians can claim to be perfectly equal in power and influence, regardless of their income, health, or social circumstances. This can only be so if voting procedures are designed to accommodate not only those of us with busy schedules, but also and even more importantly, the more vulnerable and marginalized members of society.
Bill C-23 proposes to modify voter identification rules by eliminating vouching and prohibiting the use of the voter information card, the VIC, as one of the documents that could be used to establish the elector's address. We should keep in mind that it is only since 2007 that the law imposes on electors the obligation to provide evidence of their identity as well as of their address before they are allowed to vote.
Currently, they can do this in one of three ways.
They can present a government-issued piece of ID that includes their photo, name, and current address. In practice, this option is primarily limited to a driver's licence. Approximately 86% of adults in Canada have a licence. This means that approximately four million do not have one, including 28%, or 1.4 million individuals over 65.
Electors who don't have a driver's licence can produce two authorized pieces of ID, one of which must show their current residential address. While there are 38 such authorized pieces of identification, only 13 may include a current address.
Finally, an elector without ID may, subject to certain requirements, be vouched for by another elector who has proper identification.
Experience since 2007 shows that most Canadians do not have a problem complying with ID requirements. For some electors, however, this is a challenge, especially with respect to proving their current address.
Let me give you some examples.
In the case of seniors, it is not uncommon for one of the spouses to drive and to have all the bills in their name. Right now, the other spouse can be vouched for by their partner. Similarly, seniors living with their children often must be vouched for by one of their children in order to be able to vote.
The reverse is also true. Young Canadians often live at home or, as students, move frequently. They sometimes have no documents to prove their current residential address.
First nations electors on reserve also face challenges, as the Indian status card does not include address information.
For many of these electors, vouching by another elector is the only option. Expanding the list of ID documents will not assist them in proving their address.
The Neufeld report estimates that approximately 120,000 active voters in the last election relied on vouching, and we can expect that a significant proportion of them would not be able to vote under the rules proposed by Bill C-23.
It has been pointed out that vouching is a complex procedure and that numerous procedural irregularities were found to have been committed at the last general election in connection with vouching. It is critical to understand that, as recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada, the vast majority of these were strictly record-keeping errors by poll workers documenting the vouching process, and not fraud or even irregularities that could compromise an election. There is no evidence tying these errors to ineligible electors being allowed to vote.
Of course, vouching procedures should and can be simplified, as recommended by Mr. Neufeld. The need to rely on vouching should also be reduced. This is why Mr. Neufeld recommended expanding the use of the voter information card as an authorized document to establish address.
It is worth noting that the VIC is the only document issued by the federal government that includes address information. The Canadian passport, for example, does not include an address. In fact, with an accuracy rate of 90%, the VIC is likely the most accurate and widely available government document. The VIC is based on regular updates from driver's licence bureaus, the Canada Revenue Agency, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, and various other authoritative sources.
During the election period, revision activities at the local level also increase the accuracy of the VIC. This likely makes it a more current document than even the driver's licence, which is authorized by law and used by the vast majority of voters.
The VIC was authorized for voters in certain locations in 2011 based on the evaluation of the 2008 election, which showed that for some electors even vouching is not an available option.
For example, seniors who live in long-term care facilities and who vote on site do not have driver's licences, hydro bills, or even health cards, which are typically kept by their children or facility administrators. By law, they cannot be vouched for by other residents in the same poll who also lack adequate ID, and they cannot be vouched for by staff who do not reside there. In most cases, they can only rely on a letter of attestation issued by facility administrators, combined with another document such as an ID bracelet. Some administrators feel that they do not have the resources to issue such letters and in fact refuse to do so. For electors in that situation, the only document establishing their address is their voter information card.
It is essential to understand that the main challenge for our electoral democracy is not voter fraud, but voter participation. I do not believe that if we eliminate vouching and the VIC as proof of address we will have in any way improved the integrity of the voting process. However, we will certainly have taken away the ability of many qualified electors to vote.
I will now talk about the second objective of the bill.
A second objective of Bill C-23 is to provide clear and simple rules for everyone to follow. The importance of this objective should not be understated. Clear and simple rules are critical for Canadians to exercise their rights and be confident in the fairness of elections.
Bill C-23 provides for a regime of guidelines and advance rulings. I believe that this is an improvement to the Canada Elections Act. Such regimes exist in other statutory schemes, including in the context of elections, and they can be of benefit to both regulated entities and the regulator.
That said, I regret to say that the current proposals, as drafted, do not provide a workable approach.
Rulings are required within unreasonably short timelines, and there is little rigour imposed on the process, unlike in other comparable schemes. It is imperative that amendments be made to these provisions to allow them to function effectively and achieve their intended purpose.
Bill C-23 also provides a harmonized and simplified regime for unpaid claims and loans. This is another important improvement. However, I must alert this committee to a technical difficulty that could seriously undermine the regime as it applies to nomination and leadership contestants.
This difficulty relates to the act's definition of leadership and nomination campaign expenses. As drafted, leadership contestants could easily and legally exclude most if not all of their expenses and funding from the statutory regime. Unless this loophole is removed, the new loans regime as it applies to leadership campaign expenses will remain an empty shell.
The third lens through which Bill C-23 must be examined is its impact on the fairness and integrity of elections. Indeed that is referred to in the very title of Bill C-23.
In Canada, electoral fairness has traditionally been understood to mean maintaining a level playing field among parties and candidates by the imposition of strict spending limits. By increasing those spending limits, and most significantly, creating an exception for certain fundraising expenses, Bill C-23 may well compromise the level playing field.
The fundraising exception is of particular concern in this regard. For anybody who has ever seen one, there is no practical way of distinguishing a fundraiser mail-out from advertising, and it takes little imagination to understand that other partisan communications can be dressed up as fundraisers. Just as importantly, it will be difficult if not impossible to enforce in the absence of any obligation to report, or even keep, phone records of the persons contacted.
In terms of compliance, Bill C-23 would subject political parties to an external compliance audit for the verification of their financial returns. External audits are not a bad thing. They may reassure the chief agents of the parties and improve compliance in some instances, as long as proper records are kept to allow for a truly rigorous compliance audit. However, external auditors should be bound by guidelines issued by Elections Canada to maintain the coherence of the system.
Even so, it is striking when looking at provincial regimes that we remain the only jurisdiction in Canada where political parties are not required to produce supporting documentation for their reported expenses. At every election, parties receive $33 million in reimbursements without showing a single invoice to support their claims. This anomaly should be corrected as I have indicated in the past.
Finally, Bill C-23 would make several changes to the enforcement regime. It would create a number of new offences and increase fines, introduce registration and data retention measures for voter contact services, and place the commissioner of Canada Elections within the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.
It is not clear to me how this last structural change can improve the commissioner's work or the confidence of Canadians. It is important for parliamentarians as well as for Canadians to understand that under the current regime, the commissioner enjoys complete independence from the Chief Electoral Officer in deciding whether and how to conduct investigations. The committee may want to hear from the current as well as the former commissioner in this regard.
Nevertheless, the most important issue for me is not where commissioners sit, but whether they have the proper tools to do their job in a timely and efficient manner. In previous reports, both I and the commissioner have indicated that this is not the case right now and that important changes to the law are required if we are to preserve the confidence of Canadians in the integrity of their electoral process.
In this regard, the bill includes registration and data retention measures for voter contact services, which reflect in part my recommendations.
I am disappointed, however, that the bill does not require a record to be kept of the actual telephone numbers used in voter calls. Without such information, an investigation will continue to be significantly hampered. Most importantly, under Bill C-23, the commissioner still will not have the ability to seek a court order compelling witnesses to testify regarding the commission of offences, such as deceptive calls or other forms of election fraud.
The response of Canadians in the face of the robocall affair has been overwhelming. Canadians rightfully expect that such conduct, which threatens the very legitimacy of our democratic institution, be dealt with swiftly and effectively. Without the power to compel testimony, as exists in many provincial regimes, the commissioner's ability to carry out this investigation will remain limited. All in all, when looking at the proposed changes in relation to enforcement, the bill does not address the most pressing expectations of Canadians for timely and effective investigations.
I will conclude by reiterating the importance of carefully reviewing Bill C-23. As the Chief Justice of Canada wrote, “The right of every citizen to vote, guaranteed by section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, lies at the heart of Canadian democracy.”
Because amendments to the Canada Elections Act affect the fundamental rights of all Canadians, as well as the rights of all political parties, it is particularly important that to the fullest extent possible such amendments be based on a broad consensus as well as solid evidence.
l am very preoccupied in this regard with the limitation that Bill C-23 imposes on the ability of my office to consult Canadians and disseminate information on electoral democracy, as well as to publish research. l am unaware of any democracy in which such limitations are imposed on the electoral agency, and l strongly feel that an amendment in this regard is essential.
In my remarks, l have highlighted what l see as the main areas of concern and suggest some ways of improving the measures contained in the bill. With the committee's permission, Mr. Chair, l would like to submit a table that sets out in a more comprehensive way the improvements that I have recommended being made to the bill. l trust that this will assist the committee in its review of the legislation.
Thank you.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you, Monsieur Mayrand.
I ask the committee's indulgence. I think we will have bells within the next couple of minutes.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Tom Lukiwski Conservative Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK
On a point of order, Chair, I have a suggestion for the committee.
We're just down the hall. It's only going to take us two or three minutes to get there. You're right that the bells will begin to ring.
My suggestion is that we give each party at least their first seven-minute round. If we start right away, that should give us plenty of time to complete one round, and then we'll come back after the votes.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
That's where I was going. I have to have unanimous consent to sit through bells, though.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Mr. Mayrand, the problem with there being a lack of integrity to the voter information card and to the address list and the database on which it's based is not something new. It predates your tenure as the Chief Electoral Officer. I raised this matter with your predecessor. I've been on this committee for a long time.
I should stop. Before I go further, for the benefit of the bloggers in the back sitting behind you, it's the voter information card and not the voter identification card. A few of you have been incorrectly saying it's the voter identification card. The letter “I” is for information. It's information about where you should vote. It's not to identify you.
This is relevant because on April 27, 2006, I told your predecessor, Mr. Kingsley, that in the 2006 election I received three voter cards. There is of course only one of me. I was living alone at the time. One came in addressed to Scott Reid, one to Jeffrey Reid, and one to Scott Jeffrey Reid. That's in fact my full name.
It is possible to vote at the returning office. Your name gets stricken off. Scott Reid could be stricken off there. Jeffrey Reid could be stricken off at the advance poll, and on election day, the third name could be stricken off.
For someone as prominent as a sitting MP, that's probably an unwise and imprudent idea, but you see the point. There is such a profound inaccuracy in the voter's list that I had three cards. It's a database issue, but a profound issue.
After that time, I moved. My wife and I received voter cards at our new address which is 211 Montgomery Park Road in Mississippi Mills in one riding. Because I had filled out my address one way, I received a voter card telling me to vote in the Almonte town hall. My wife received a voter card, because we're at Rural Route 1, Carleton Place, for a different riding, telling her to vote in a different riding.
There are lots of errors. I realize one can't use one's own example as proof of a systematic problem, but there is a problem here, meaning that this is not, contrary to your assertion, a reliable system with a lot of integrity.
When you say a 10% error rate, that's the flip of 90% accurate. That's 10%. I'm not sure how many voters there are in Canada, maybe 20 million?
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
There are 23 million, so that means 2.3 million errors. That would be 2.3 million erroneous cards. That is not, I would submit, something that says this can be regarded as an accurate and reliable piece of information.
Finally, and you don't provide reports on this, I would suggest that the inaccuracy is not spread evenly across the country. It is worse in ridings where there is high movement of people. People change their residences. I can't tell you where this is. I can guess it's in urban areas and that, therefore, there are some ridings, like my own, in which I suspect it is far below 10%, and others in which I suspect it is upwards of 20%, perhaps 25%.
I submit that makes this highly unreliable and facilitates the possibility of widespread voter fraud as one alternative. I'll leave it there. It just seems to me that if this is used as a form of identification, we've opened up the avenue in certain urban ridings for there to be potentially widespread voter fraud and there would be no capacity for you to police it.
11:55 a.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Briefly, the accuracy rate of the voter information card after revision stands at 93%, so there's still 7% that may have incorrect information on them.
In the case of your particular situation, when you look at files, you will find that we sometimes use different names or different initials as we input information at different parts. I don't know, but if you were to look at all your pieces of ID, I suspect you might have some with initials and some without. That is one thing. The other thing I'd like to mention is that there are three million people—
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Don't you agree that means potentially if I were not an honest person, this would indicate that I am not—that the card is literally useless?
In fact, with regard to the second example I gave, isn't it a problem when someone is actually told on their voter information card—and in all fairness, this was not you, but actually Elections Ontario; I want to be clear about that—to vote in a riding in which they aren't a resident? That's actually advice to do something that's unlawful, which someone might follow up on with good intentions, not realizing better. Do you see the point I'm getting at, that the information card is a fundamentally flawed tool if used as identification?
11:55 a.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada
Let's be clear here. I've never proposed that the VIC would be the only piece of ID. You would still have to provide another acceptable piece of ID.
Every year in Canada, three million people move. At any point in time, any piece of ID would be out of sync with the information. Even driver's licences may not have correct addresses. That's why we have a revision process that allows electors to update their address, and at some point in time during the election, I would suggest—we could have a debate on this—that the VIC is the most precise piece of ID that electors can rely on to establish their address.
There is no evidence, again, that the driver's licence is more up to date than the voter information card. Again, if you look at the data that's available, you will see that during an election campaign, during the calendar period, you can expect to have 250,000 Canadians who are moving. Many of them will not have had a chance to update their driver's licence for the purpose of voting, but they may have, through revision, updated their address correctly.
Noon
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Mr. Mayrand, I wanted to turn to the Supreme Court ruling. You indicated the court ruled that Mr. Opitz, who sits to my right here, had in fact been elected legally and that no fraud had occurred. That is true. It is true because the polls that were looked at were mobile polls, where people cannot simply come in and vote. These are seniors at a closed access residence. The whole vouching issue has nothing to do with that.
The Supreme Court did rule, “The majority...found no proof that administrative breaches of statutory provisions had resulted in ineligible persons voting. On this basis, the evidence before the Court was deemed not to meet the test for annulment of an election.... Nonetheless, the case found that election officers made many serious errors in their duties on Election Day in the 2011 Etobicoke Centre election—
Noon
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
—and the Supreme Court made it clear—
Noon
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
—that such errors in other circumstances could contribute to a court overturning an election.”
That is the point—
Noon
Conservative
Noon
Conservative
Noon
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you.
We can hope that Mr. Mayrand gets in an answer to that in his time.
Mr. Scott, for seven minutes, please.
Noon
NDP
Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON
Mr. Chair, I wonder if I could give Mr. Mayrand a chance to say anything he might want to in response to what Mr. Reid was finishing with. In particular, the minister likes to talk about a one-sixth error rate with his voter identification cards. He does not like to mention that you need a second piece of ID. He does not like to mention that names and addresses are on these cards.
Is there anything you would like to say about the likelihood that errors on voter identification cards are leading to citizen fraud?
Noon
Conservative
