Procedure and House Affairs Committee on March 27th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

A very short answer from each them—a second to each.

[Nathalie Des Rosiers]

I do think that diminishing the role of Elections Canada will be bad for Canada.

[Alison Loat]

Agreed.

[Graham Fox]

Based on our work, it would have to be no.

[Taylor Gunn]

My health card, embarrassingly enough, is my only piece of official ID, and it doesn't have my address on it. So my wife couldn't vouch for me—that's my personal opinion—but obviously I have a couple of years, hopefully, to fix that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Okay.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

I'm proud of anyone who, at your age, doesn't have a driver's licence. Thank you very much for your testimony.

[Taylor Gunn]

I have the TTC.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Ms. May.

We'll move on to Mr. Lamoureux.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I appreciate the quick answers. I can tell you that I don't think there is anyone outside of the government who is actually proposing that we get rid of vouching. So it's reassuring when we hear from non-profits or independent groups coming before the committee, reinforcing how critically important it is that we retain vouching. I understand there might be need for some amendment or ways we can modify it, but you don't have to kill vouching. That's an important aspect to our democracy.

I wanted to pick up on the robocalls, because that is an issue that tens of thousands of Canadians are very familiar with. Literally thousands of phone calls were made to Elections Canada because of what had taken place.

One of the biggest criticisms of the elections bill was that Elections Canada was not being afforded the opportunity to compel witnesses. I think, Mr. Fox, you indicated something to the effect of what happens to you if you get caught. Getting caught can be a problem for the simple reason that they just have to say, “no comment”. They don't have to show up.

My question to you is this. How important do you think it is that Elections Canada or the commissioner have the ability to compel a witness to provide testimony?

[Graham Fox]

I think giving the investigator the ability to compel witnesses would be a positive addition to the bill.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

The other issue—I'm not sure who raised it, it might have been you Mr. Fox—is an issue we don't hear enough about it, the whole issue of privacy. We do have these huge data banks. All political parties have data banks. It's very limited in terms of what's there to protect the voters on this particular issue.

How would you recommend, or who should oversee...? Should it be the privacy commissioner? Should it be Elections Canada? How do we protect the voters with these data banks, in your opinion?

[Graham Fox]

I'll leave it to experts to express a definitive view on that. I would say the expertise currently resides at the privacy commission, so I would start there. And I think I would look at the Privacy Act and at extending certain provisions to political party activity—and I think it's important to say—without going all the way to preventing political parties from communicating with voters or knowing more about us. I think it's important for democratic activity to make sure political parties can do that legitimately and without too heavy a regulatory burden. But it is almost nonsense in the information age that we're allowed to keep those databases without any kind oversight about what happens to information that's about us.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I think that's the major point here, and in fact, something could have been incorporated into the legislation that at the very least would have dealt with the issue. Is that a fair comment?

[Graham Fox]

It's a fair comment, and I would say a separate bill could deal with that as well, but it's definitely a policy gap that we have identified, that others have identified, and that needs to be dealt with.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Right.

Mr. Gunn, I read part of your report, and it was interesting that you make reference to a resolution on February 17, 2004, and this is what it states:

That the House direct the Chief Electoral Officer and Elections Canada to expand its initiatives to promote the participation of young Canadians in the electoral process and that these initiatives include making available educational material to schools and other organizations and supporting parallel voting opportunities for prospective electors during federal elections, including making available polling materials and the publication of results of such parallel voting, and that Elections Canada work creatively with such groups as Kids Voting Canada, Scouts Canada, Guides Canada, teachers and others and provide regular reports on these matters to the House of Commons through the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

And this is something that was supported by all parties back in 2004. Now, this legislation does not do that, and I'm wondering if you want to provide comment on that.

[Taylor Gunn]

I put this in just because it was hard-earned, to engage Elections Canada at the beginning to do this. This has been a 10-year effort and they said no to us many times, and it might have just been that they weren't yet ready to interpret the existing section 18 as something that would allow them to, say, work with future electors, as we were proposing. Luckily, MPs in the House disagreed and they basically told Elections Canada at that time to work with us. That name, Kids Voting Canada, was the first name we came up with.

So they put that in it and the very next day we received a call from Elections Canada asking us to go to Ottawa and meet with the chief election officer to begin to speak about how they could potentially support us. I'd like to point out too they didn't always support the entire cost of the Student Vote program. It started with in-kind contributions, no cash towards our time, for example, and through much heavy negotiation—that's probably a polite way to put it—and also an accident of the 2008 federal election falling on Labour Day weekend, which I don't think they were prepared for, they had to cover the full cost if they wanted us to operate. Now since that time they've done so.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Yes, and I raise it because we have seen a flip-flop in attitude from the government. At one time they supported Elections Canada and they voted to go out, reach out for Elections Canada and today what we're seeing is quite the opposite. All four presenters articulated how important it is that Elections Canada have the ability to communicate with the public.

If the amendment is not brought forward, could you see this as good legislation, by tying the hands of Elections Canada in any form, if that amendment does not succeed? Just a very quick yes or no from each presenter would be much appreciated, or a three-second comment.

[Taylor Gunn]

I think I made my position on that clear in the remarks.

[Graham Fox]

We need to preserve the public education function, for sure.

[Nathalie Des Rosiers]

That's what I said. I think it's not going to be good for Canada if Elections Canada cannot continue in a public education function.

[Alison Loat]

I agree and I also think that in my remarks I tried to strengthen it further by arguing that they could actually be doing a better job. I think there have been some concerns articulated. Mr. Reid, who was here earlier, articulated some concerns about the advertising. I think if we had a more rigorous approach of assessing what worked and didn't and had that shared, I think we could make amendments to encourage that sort of behaviour that might even strengthen it further.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you very much.

Again, I caution the members about asking complex questions with two seconds left in their rounds.

Mr. Richards, for four minutes, please....

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thank you.

I'm going to follow along on the education part of it as well here. I think what we're talking about is voter turnout when we're talking about the education and the information. I think there are two things that drive voter turnout. The first one is motivation to vote, and the second one is information about voting. Obviously, information is the responsibility of Elections Canada—that's quite clear—letting people know how to vote, where to vote, when to vote. Their own data show that they have been doing a fairly poor job of it.

After the last election, there were reports of young non-voters not knowing where to vote, 25% of them saying they didn't know where to vote. Twenty-six percent didn't know when to vote. Nineteen percent didn't know how to vote. So obviously that would have played a role in their decision not to vote. So that's a barrier there.

I wanted to just ask Mr. Gunn and maybe Ms. Loat—I want to ask you to be quite brief because I've only got three minutes left at this point—if you could just give us a bit of your sense...that tells us about the information part of it, but the motivation part is the part I'd like to ask you about. Can you give us any insights? What are your feelings as to what motivates a person to vote? Obviously the approach of Elections Canada means millions of dollars spent in the last several years, and it doesn't seem to be working.

Tell us what your feelings are, again, briefly. What motivates someone to vote?

[Taylor Gunn]

Mr. Richards, I just had a problem hearing on that last one. I just wasn't sure if you were implying that the money spent on the Student Vote program wasn't working or the money spent by Elections Canada in general?