Evidence of meeting #21 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 vouching.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
March 25th, 2014 / 12:40 p.m.
NDP
Alexandrine Latendresse NDP Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
I want to thank our witnesses for having come to share their comments with us today. We really appreciate this very much. Their comments will be very useful to us and they will allow us to continue our work and possibly to amend certain parts of this bill.
I would like to go back to what Mr. Lukiwski just said. We are constantly hearing about the 39 pieces of ID that can be used. Your presentation was very specific. You explained type 1 and type 2. As for these 39 types of ID, at least one of them has to indicate the elector's address, is that not the case? This is the problem. In fact, in a lot of cases, that is precisely the type of ID people do not have to go and vote.
If I understood what you said correctly, Mr. Brock, the problem arises particularly in remote communities, in your territory among others, and in the Canadian north, generally speaking.
I would like to hear your comments in that regard.
12:45 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections BC
Perhaps I could start this round.
Whether we have the right number of type two documents is a never-ending question. In British Columbia we don't specifically identify all of the identification documents that are acceptable. We have categories of documents that are acceptable, and it's at the determination of the Chief Electoral Officer whether a document would be approved or not.
We had some commentary this past election on one of the documents that we included for the first time. Historically what we've done in British Columbia is we've accepted a hospital bracelet as an identity document. Even mentioning that document, I think, gives people a sense of the breadth of the documents that can be used for ID in British Columbia.
Then, we were working with one of the agencies in the downtown eastside of Vancouver, which indicated to us that many of their clients were unable to satisfy the voter ID requirements even with an expansive list of documents. We agreed that we would accept a prescription medication label as one of the identity documents, because among this group of eligible voters, who often don't carry very many identify documents, this is a document that many of them possessed. Now, that document in and of itself could not demonstrate their identity, could not satisfy the identity requirements. It would have to be used in conjunction with another document, such as an attestation of residence from a homeless shelter, for example.
That example illustrates that the agencies work with various service organizations to understand how our different groups of electors can ensure that they can exercise their democratic right and not be disenfranchised administratively because they don't carry the same kinds of documents that other voters may carry as a matter of course.
12:45 p.m.
NDP
Alexandrine Latendresse NDP Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC
Would you agree that vouching would be the final safeguard to make sure those people, even if they are not able to meet these requirements, would be able to exercise their right to vote?
12:45 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections BC
I believe vouching is a very important provision within our system. I would be surprised if the 14,000 people who were vouched for in British Columbia in the 2013 general election had identity documents on their person that would have enabled them to vote. I just don't think it was the case.
Obviously, we don't ask them that, but I don't think it was the case. Consequently, I would expect that many of them would have been disenfranchised for no other purpose than they didn't have the identity documents that were specified in the act. They were otherwise eligible to vote.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you, Mr. Archer.
Thank you, Madame Latendresse.
Mr. Reid, four minutes, please.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I have to reset my little watch here. I'm trying to keep track so I don't go over my time.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
No, it's just that I can't tell.
I have a tendency, like all of us, to launch into long-winded questions.
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
Scott Reid Conservative Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON
That's right.
My question, and you can both respond to it, but I'm hoping to start with Professor Archer this time, is on the different kinds of ID. You have looked at different ID and consulted with different organizations about this. I assume that some similar consultation process goes on with the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada before he chooses to add items of ID to his list.
We on this committee have not had a chance to see what those consultations were, whom they were with, what kinds of outcomes they produced, what kind of expectations they had, and what the results were. None of this is shared with us. It's a source of perpetual frustration to me that this and much other information is not shared with us.
I see this committee's role effectively being—because he is an officer of Parliament, and he reports to Parliament via this committee—as a board of directors. He is the management of Elections Canada, which is effectively a government corporation that is charged with the role of administering elections. I sit on another corporate board of directors, and we wouldn't put up with the lack of information that flows from Elections Canada. It's been a systemic problem. I don't blame just Mr. Mayrand for this; it has been an ongoing problem.
However, these initiatives pop out of nowhere without consultation with us. They are pushed forward without any information being provided to us, unless we ask for it. Then we don't get any feedback on how well they have done, except these sort of off-handed comments that it was a great success, totally non-quantified.
My question is, can these things can be quantified? Are they such arts that they can only be described qualitatively? Perhaps that is the case. Could there not be some sort of mechanism by which we would get better feedback as to the merits and demerits of this list of pieces of identification, which in the federal case is 39, but could be expanded to include others as appropriate?
12:50 p.m.
Chief Electoral Officer, Elections BC
The reporting relationship between independent officers of the legislature and their assemblies I think varies a bit from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. I understand your process federally less well than I understand our process in British Columbia.
I know in our case we had an interesting dialogue recently with the legislative assembly over the requirement for province-wide door-to-door enumeration in advance of fixed-date general elections. The Election Act was amended to require that Elections BC conduct a universal door-to-door enumeration. We haven't done that since the 1980s in B.C. because we use a continuous register of electors, as we do federally.
I was preparing to conduct that exercise, and I prepared a budget for the legislative assembly. It was a substantial budget, almost $30 million. We thought it was going to have almost no positive impact, and I told the legislative assembly that, through the finance and government services committee, which is the committee that I report to.
Fortunately, because I recommended this requirement be eliminated, the legislative assembly did eliminate the requirement. We didn't use it in the last election, and instead brought forward a process of both universal and targeted enumeration. We called it voter registration uplift.
We spent about a quarter of the funding that the other proposal would have required, and we believe we had a very significant impact on the quality of the voters list. My report on the enumeration activities is being tabled in our legislative assembly tomorrow.
It strikes me as one of the natural processes in which we have these conversations with the legislative assembly. We advise on our activities. That is not to say we couldn't improve our process in British Columbia. There may be some tweaks you would like to see at the federal level as well.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you very much. We're going to stop at the end of that round.
Mr. Brock, Mr. Archer, thank you for sharing with us your views today and your jurisdictions. It's been great to have you both and to have a lot of information shared.
Before the members leave, I have a couple of quick pieces of business.
We had originally set up a time for a South African delegation to come and see this committee. They have cancelled. They will not be able to come here.
For those of you still not completely on the paperless test that this committee is doing, please speak to our clerk. I'm not carrying any papers around anymore, and it's fantastic. I know you will love it too, so please talk to our clerk.
Is there anything else for the good of the committee today?
Seeing nothing, we will adjourn. I'll see you all on Thursday.