Evidence of meeting #26 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.
7:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
You've taken a minute and some of his time, but Mr. Richards has two and a bit minutes left.
Go ahead.
7:50 p.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Wild Rose, AB
Thank you very much.
I have a couple of things that I wanted to comment on, but I'll skip right to the questions. I think it is on much the same topic.
I want to use that example. A couple of you, I think Ms. Farha and Ms. Zwibel, used the example we're discussing of a woman who has fled from violence in the home and is in a women's shelter. What I'd like to ask centres on that.
Ms. Farha, I think you had indicated you work directly—and I'm not sure, maybe, Ms. Zwibel, you might as well—with women who are in those situations. I'm assuming that the shelter does more for women in those situations than simply provide a roof over their heads. They must do some work to try to help them repair their lives and get themselves back on their feet again. Can you tell me a little about what kinds of things they do to help in those situations?
7:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Canada Without Poverty
In actual fact, in my scenario the woman did not flee to a shelter. She fled to a friend's house, and that is an important distinction. I didn't say whether the woman had children or not, but when a woman with a child who's experiencing violence leaves the home, often she will not go to a shelter. If she has two children, and one is a boy and one is a girl, she certainly will not go to a shelter because she basically may not be accepted. There are complications.
I gave the example of moving in with a friend, or you can imagine a sister or whatever, because doubling up and tripling up and overcrowding in housing is very common in this country. It's an example that we see very much up north as well.
I choose not to answer your question because I don't see its relevance to what I was talking about.
7:55 p.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Wild Rose, AB
There is relevance. If you choose not to answer, maybe somebody else would care to help provide the details of what a women's shelter would do for someone fleeing in that situation in order to help them get back up on their feet? Is there someone who would care to answer the question?
7:55 p.m.
Director, Fundamental Freedoms Program, Canadian Civil Liberties Association
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association doesn't have experience with that population.
7:55 p.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Wild Rose, AB
I ask the question, because I'm assuming that in many cases they would try to help them pick up the pieces. The first thing they're going to do, because you do require ID for so many things, is probably going to be to help them to try to get some form of identification and help them try to obtain a bank account of some type. Therefore, suddenly, they will have the ID required. They would have a bank account, and a bank statement is one of those things.
These are just a couple of examples. There are many examples. If you look at the list of 39 pieces of ID that would allow them to.... Once they begin that process of picking up the pieces, that would be amongst the first things they would do to put themselves in that situation, which would then of course allow them the ability to vote as well.
7:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you, Mr. Richards. I thank our witnesses. You've been great tonight.
As Mr. MacKenzie said—I'll steal his line—you spoke from the heart and the head, and thank you very much for coming tonight.
We will suspend just for a couple of minutes while we change panels.
7:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
We'll call ourselves back to order and start our second hour for tonight.
We have James Quail, a lawyer.
Mr. Quail, can you hear me?
7:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Super. Thank you. We can hear you fine too.
I love the picture in the background.
7:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Oh, sure, now you're going to start being mean to us.
Ms. Tamara Lenard.
7:55 p.m.
Prof. Patti Tamara Lenard Research Associate, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
It's Professor Patti Tamara Lenard.
7:55 p.m.
Conservative
7:55 p.m.
Research Associate, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
I am here.
7:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
You will be our two guests for this hour.
Mr. Quail, if you have an opening statement of five minutes or less prepared for the committee, you can go first and then we'll let our other guest give her statement, and then we'll do questions from the members.
Please go ahead.
7:55 p.m.
Lawyer, As an Individual
Great. Thank you.
I was legal counsel for the voters who challenged the last set of major amendments to the Election Act, when the requirement for approved voter identification documents was first introduced and the scope of vouching was restricted. That was at the trial level, in the case of Henry v. Canada.
In that case, both the B.C. Supreme Court and the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld that the voter ID requirements infringed the right to vote, guaranteed under section 3 of the charter, but ruled that the infringement could be justified under section 1. In the Henry case, counsel for the government admitted that there was no evidence of any substantial amount of fraudulent voting in Canada. The government argument justifying the rules was entirely based on avoiding a perception that there may be a risk of voter fraud.
There is an important difference between fraudulent voting and voting where there has been some procedural irregularity. The more restrictive or complicated the rules are for voting and processing votes, the greater the likelihood there is of procedurally irregular voting—that is, the more complex the process, the more that can go wrong. Above all, we need a simple, fail-safe measure to protect voters from unintended disenfranchisement.
In the Henry case, the government placed heavy reliance on the continued use of the vouching process as the fail-safe mechanism in its argument that the new rules were minimally impairing and would thus survive section 1 of the charter. Eliminating vouching and not replacing it with an alternative safety net so that the only way to establish the right to vote is through the production of identity documents would not only undermine the section 1 justification the government has advanced for the voter ID requirements; it would also predictably cause more improper voting than it could prevent.
Consider the number of adults in Canada at any point in time who are citizens, who have moved their residence from one constituency to another, but who have not yet updated their identification documents. When an election is held, if the only way to establish their right to vote is by producing approved documentary evidence of their address, the only place where those persons could vote is in their previous constituency, which is obviously not the right place for them to vote.
In the Henry case, what we proposed as a less impairing alternative means to achieve Parliament's objectives was to permit voters who don't have ID to swear declarations confirming their identity and their residence. We argued that this would actually be more meaningful evidence than, say, a library card and an Ontario wildlife card, which were both on the list of approved documents, especially in that swearing a false declaration is a crime. It would ensure that no citizen would be wrongfully denied their right to cast a ballot.
I hear in the news today that the minister has now said that he is prepared to consider amending the bill to provide for reliance on sworn declarations where voters cannot produce the approved ID at the polls. I welcome this development wholeheartedly. It is a far better and more straightforward fail-safe than vouching. This remedy would fix the problem entirely in relation to the impact of the bill on access to the franchise in Canada.
The right to vote belongs to the citizens of Canada and not to the government or to any parliament. Especially in the absence of any national consensus that proposed changes are appropriate, the government should not institute any changes that make it harder to vote. Our problem in this country is not that too many people are voting but that not enough people are participating in our democratic process.
Those are my comments. Thank you.
8:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you very much, Mr. Quail.
Patti Tamara Lenard, I apologize; I forgot to say earlier that you're from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
Please make your opening statement.
8:05 p.m.
Research Associate, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for having us here today. I'm here representing the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives—
8:05 p.m.
Research Associate, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
I am also an assistant professor of applied ethics at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, and I am here as a research associate with the CCPA. I'm also—some of you may know this—a co-author with several Canadian professors of an open letter concerning Bill C-23, published in the National Post earlier in March.
The views I express today, though, are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of my co-authors or of the 180 signatories to that letter. Of the many difficulties presented by the fair elections act, I’d like to focus on just one, which Mr. Quail has already talked about, and that is the way in which it would undermine political equality in Canada, by making the right to vote more difficult to access in general, and most particularly but not exclusively, for vulnerable Canadians.
It does this—as we've already heard today—by proposing to eliminate vouching and by imposing stricter voter ID requirements. Let me begin by pointing out that Canada’s voting ID requirements are already more restrictive than in many countries. Indeed, in leading Westminster democracies, the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand, all that is required is that one be on the voter registry; no identification is required. In other democracies, vulnerable citizens are exempt from identification requirements entirely.
According to international best practices of electoral law, governments that require ID should ensure that these are provided to citizens free of cost, as with the VICs that this bill would disallow.
The purpose of beginning here is simply to highlight that the proposals to eliminate vouching and to impose stricter voter ID requirements will move us away from widely accepted international best practices by which states protect the right to vote of their citizens. In Canada—we already heard this today—the right to vote is protected in section 3 of the charter. In my view, the constitutional protection of this right imposes a duty on all of us, particularly our government, to protect that right for each one of us.
In my view, the proposed fair elections act is anything but fair. As we've already heard, it risks excluding some of Canada’s most vulnerable citizens such as seniors and students, first nations' citizens, low-income Canadians, and homeless Canadians. We know from Elections Canada that these groups relied on vouching most frequently in recent elections. It should go without saying that in our Constitution, these citizens’ right to vote is no less important than that of any other Canadian. This bill, regrettably in my view, makes it necessary to underline this point.
In its recent decision in the Etobicoke Centre case, the Supreme Court acknowledged the multiple values at stake in elections such as integrity, transparency, and efficiency. It then gave pride of place to the constitutionally protected right to vote. I quote from the decision:
...the Act seeks to enfranchise all entitled persons, including those without paper documentation, and to encourage them to come forward to vote on election day, regardless of prior enumeration. The system strives to achieve accessibility for all voters, making special provision for those without identification to vote by vouching.... The goal of accessibility can only be achieved if we are prepared to accept some degree of uncertainty that all who voted were entitled to do so.
In other words, our electoral system relies on a certain amount of trust in our fellow citizens not to abuse our most basic democratic right. In my view, this bill rests on the false premise that we should distrust one another.
Bill C-23 will effectively take the right to vote away from some Canadians. How then can we claim to be a democratic country?
The right to vote is not something the government grants us permission to do, like driving, hunting, or practising medicine. It belongs to each of us by virtue of our citizenship status. The job of a truly democratic government is to protect our right to vote by securing the conditions that make it possible. This act does the opposite.
The government’s reason for restricting the right to vote rests on the importance of eliminating fraud from our electoral system. As has been said repeatedly in the media and before this committee, there is no evidence of fraud, only of record-keeping errors that can be dealt with in ways that do not threaten the integrity of Canadian democracy.
So let there be no mistake. The government proposes to protect against imaginary dangers by creating real and significant harms. There is something gravely wrong when we plan to turn away citizens at the voting booth because we imagine they might be trying to cheat the system. There is something wrong with a policy that slanders hundreds of thousands of Canadian citizens as potential fraudsters because they are vulnerable in ways that make it difficult to get a driver’s licence or to have a stable address.
The so-called fair elections act is inconsistent with a commitment to political equality on which Canada’s democracy is built. In my view, Bill C-23 should be rejected.
Thank you for listening.
8:10 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you very much, and we'll go to our rounds of questioning.
Mr. Richards, you're going to lead off for seven minutes, please.
April 2nd, 2014 / 8:10 p.m.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Wild Rose, AB
Good. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
As you mentioned earlier, that's one way I can assure no one will misuse all the time there.
Anyway, I do thank both of you for being here or virtually being here.
I noted that you both sort of centred your opening remarks on one particular aspect of the bill that you had concerns about.
I've also done a lot of thinking, and certainly research, into that particular item, as many members of this committee have. What I've found is that, with the 39 pieces of ID that are available to people to come to the polls, it's quite an extensive list. I've heard a number of different examples given of hypothetical voters who may not have the necessary identification, or not be able to obtain it. I have yet to see an example that I don't feel there is a solution for among the 39 pieces of ID.
We've also heard from some witnesses, certainly one who came here and had done very thorough research and came up with a bit of a matrix, I think, that showed he couldn't find an example of a voter who wouldn't be able to vote.
We had a professor come here from the States who'd done extensive research in terms of some of the states that had switched to requiring voter ID there. The research had shown that there didn't really seem to be any link between those requirements and the turnout in those subsequent elections. In fact, there were examples in the United States where the turnout had actually increased in subsequent elections following the requirement.
But certainly he indicated that his feeling was, through the research he had done, that interest in the political system was the key determinant in voting. I don't think there'll be anyone who would disagree with that particular statement.
Having said that, I do understand that you share concerns—we don't necessarily agree—on that particular provision of the bill. So what I would like to do is to give you an opportunity as well to talk about any of the other aspects of the bill, because you have had some time, obviously, to speak to this. We do appreciate you coming here and sharing your comments, even though we may not necessarily agree. But certainly I'm sure you must have had an opportunity to look at other aspects of the bill.
What I would like to do is just provide you an opportunity. It's quite an extensive bill. There are a number of changes to our elections law that will obviously, we believe, create a greater confidence in our electoral system through a number of different methods. It certainly eliminates some of the voting fraud that may exist or is certainly at great risk of existing with some of the provisions that are in there now. When you look at the idea of vouching, obviously, with the significant errors that have been identified with that, there is certainly a risk there.
But the bill does a number of other things. It looks to protect voters from rogue calls through this public registry for mass calling. That's an example. I guess I'd leave it at that one example, just because I'd like to give you the opportunity.
Can you tell us one or two things from the bill that you've identified that you feel would be good changes? I know you've indicated that you feel—
8:15 p.m.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Chair, I would hope that you would direct to the witnesses that they don't have to answer questions about things that they were not prepared to.... They have a right to come here and talk about the bill, the things that they care about. We can ask if they have other views on them, but no attempt to try to make people be in an awkward spot—