Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 10th, 2014

[Youri Cormier]

Yes.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I notice on here that you have this chart on the back, and your instructions say if you use the QR code, you can get all the answers using the interactive online version. I took out my camera and did exactly that. I then tried using the part about finding your polling station. I clicked on the pink bits, on the interactive site, and I was brought to something where I could fill in my postal code and get a polling station.

I can't determine what accuracy this has, but I'm really impressed. I wonder if you could tell us more about this effort, which, as far as I know, is not being replicated at the federal level and perhaps should be.

[Youri Cormier]

Yes. We talk about accessibility and we talk about motivation. This card tries to do both.

On one side, we're giving arguments as to why people should vote, and why their vote matters, and on the other side we're obviously trying to create all the mechanisms that are needed for someone who's never voted before to know how to vote. I think the interactive part of it is probably the nicest part of it. It just allows you to click your way through a fairly complicated ordeal.

You had a question with regard to VICs. The entire question, in fact, is just that we need to put as many different tools as possible on the table. If one of those tools works, that's great. If that one doesn't work, then there's another one and another one and another one.

So my goal, eventually, is to get this out. Obviously for the federal elections in 2015, we're going to go big. We've shown that it actually works really well. What's interesting with this particular version is that it was done in cooperation with the National Association of Friendship Centres, and it was targeted to aboriginal youth in Quebec, who are known to have a very low voter turnout. My partner Nahka is here from the NAFC. Thanks to Twitter and Facebook, we're able to target in ways that we could never do in the past. We know now and we can track that people in Natashquan, Sept-Îles, Val-d'Or, or Chibougamau were reading this information and getting all they needed to vote.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

If the information has been collated, would you be able to provide the committee with what kinds of results you got and any thoughts you have as to how well it worked and how it could be improved in the future?

Obviously the reason I'm asking is that if one were to try to do something like this at the federal level, we would want to learn from examples. Among the issues that occur to me would be whether you find that it's used more by people in rural or urban areas, which kind of demographic, how far in advance one has to start preparing something like this, and so on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Could you do that for us?

[Youri Cormier]

The most important part when it comes to figuring out if something worked or not—the cost-effectiveness—is the partnerships with the electoral agencies. I'll give you an example. Recently, in 2013, we partnered with Elections Canada and Elections BC, to do a registration drive in British Columbia. We sent street teams to bars, to campuses. Everywhere there happened to be youth, we were there registering people to vote. The outcome of that, which we're going to be publishing soon, but we don't have the results yet, is very promising.

What allowed us to measure it was that Elections BC was tracking every single person we registered to vote. When they went to vote, afterwards we could identify what the percentage of voter turnout was for the treatment group, the group we had registered. That is going to be published in the next month.

With regard to this particular project, we're handing in a report to the DGEQ within the next month as well. We could probably table it here, if you'd like a copy of it.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

We would love that.

Thank you very much. That was very helpful.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You have about 25 seconds left.

We could just chat, or I could go to Madame Latendresse.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Why don't you go to the NDP.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Madame Latendresse, you have seven minutes, please.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

That's quite kind of you, Mr. Reid.

Right off the bat, I want to be perfectly frank and make very clear where I come from.

I want to tell you, Ms. Laberge, that I attended Cégep de Rimouski, so I took part in a number of the FECQ's conferences in the early 2000s. I am very familiar with your organization and the work you do to increase the political involvement of young Quebeckers. I think that's extremely important. My own introduction to politics was through student politics, an element that is extremely useful and quite effective.

I very much appreciated your presentation and the four points you outlined. It is said that the main reason young people don't go out to vote is that they don't know where to go. You provided a clarification in that regard, saying it may not necessarily be the real reason. It's an excuse, as you explained so articulately. It is somewhat embarrassing for people to admit they know little about the political system. What's more, young people don't know whether voting is worth the trouble. They aren't engaged in the process. When asked why they didn't vote, they will often say they didn't know where to go. The fact is they could have found the information; they were simply using that as an excuse.

As far as the government's arguments for amending section 18 go, I really have a tough time understanding why the government sees the powers as mutually exclusive. I don't see why the government can't just ask Elections Canada to focus on providing information about when, where and how to vote, while allowing it to continue running programs to encourage Canadians to vote.

Did you have something you'd like to add?

[Éliane Laberge]

Yes, and I'd like to come back to something I mentioned in my presentation, if I may.

It's important to understand that providing information on where, when and how to vote is simply not enough. The next logical question that needs to be answered is why vote and for who.

Whenever I would talk to a student on campus during the election campaign, I would ask them four questions. The first was whether they were indeed registered to vote, meaning were they on the voters list. The second was whether they were aware they could cast their ballot on campus. Quebec amended its election act to allow students to vote outside their home riding so they can cast their ballot on their school campus. The third was whether they knew who they were going to vote for. They didn't go into panic mode at that point but often replied that they didn't really know. That's where we lose them. I would tell them to decide before election day because if they didn't, they wouldn't go and vote. And the fourth question was whether they could give me a reason that would make them head to the polls.

I know the argument is that the political parties will address that matter. I just experienced an election campaign, and I can tell you the parties aren't doing it because they have too many people to reach out to during the campaign. What's more, it is certainly no secret that youth aren't big supporters of political parties, and as a result, politicians tend to reach out to that demographic less.

At election time, no effort is made to explain the issues to young people in a digestible clear way. But they need access to other tools to guide them in their decision making, especially those voting for the first time. They aren't familiar with the political parties. What they are interested in are the election issues. And those issues are easily usurped by more controversial ones and political attacks amongst the parties. And that's something else that causes young people to tune out and disengage.

We see that element as part of the whole. Young people have to feel a sense of duty when it comes to voting, they have to understand the electoral and political processes, and they have to be interested in politics. And making all that happen will obviously take a lot of work, not just at election time, but all the time.

We believe Canada's Chief Electoral Officer has a role to play in providing that education to the public. As we see it, that's the only way to raise first-time voter turnout and thus overall voter turnout, which is currently at 58%.

The need for action is urgent, in our view. What will voter turnout look like in 10 years if we don't do something about first-time voter turnout now?

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

I agree with you completely.

My next question is for Mr. Shedletzky and has to do with provisions in Bill C-23.

I'd like to talk specifically about the powers that the bill doesn't grant Elections Canada. The ones that come to mind are the authority of the commissioner to compel a witness to testify and the authority of Elections Canada to request documentation from political parties.

Could I get your thoughts on that?

[Adam Shedletzky]

Sure. We think that the Chief Electoral Officer and the commissioner of Canada and all of the independent experts who have studied this know a lot better and are the experts on this. We should be listening to them rather than a party who has an implicit—or at least the perception—of bias. When you look at the Chief Electoral Officer requesting certain things, there is very little rationale other than they want to improve the functioning of our democracy.

So in the absence of evidence to the contrary, it would be our perspective that you would want to give the Chief Electoral Officer and our elections watchdogs the powers they requested. Whether that's to compel parties to provide documentary evidence of receipts of money that they spend, or more importantly in our opinion, the power to compel testimony.

I mean you look at the rest of Canada, I believe seven provinces have the power to compel testimony. Australia has a power to compel testimony. The United States has the power to compel testimony. Just saying that because the police don't have it, Elections Canada shouldn't have it, is not a rationale. The Competition Bureau has it. They used it 26 times last year and very effectively. The Auditor General has it. So in our opinion we generally trust the recommendations of independent and non-partisan experts.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Mr. Lamoureux for seven minutes, please.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I too, like Mr. Reid, was looking at the card, and it's a very impressive card, I must say. That's one of the things that I truly believe. If you want to get more young people to vote, then get young people engaged and encourage young people to get out and vote. One of the thoughts that came across my mind was the ICR on the back and how something of that nature would go on a voter card, or how our voter cards themselves could actually change, maybe modernize a little.

I have a couple of questions and I wouldn't mind getting a quick comment from the three of you on this. Do you believe that it is important that we keep the current voter information card in principle, and maybe change, or look for ways of modifying it, improving it? Do you think it would be a mistake for us to get rid of that particular card or devalue the card in any way?

[Youri Cormier]

It's unfortunately something I can't really comment on because of the nature of my organization.

[Éliane Laberge]

I think it's important to keep the voter information card. Indeed, as we mentioned, one of the barriers that prevents young people from voting is the fact that they are in transition, meaning their permanent and temporary addresses can change. Therefore, simplifying the tools they need to vote is an important step, and these cards are a way of doing that.

As I pointed out earlier, in Quebec, we've been fortunate given that the elections act was amended to allow students to vote directly on campus, regardless of their permanent place of residence. That's one way to simplify the process for voters in transition situations or those who can't easily access other pieces of identification. Methods like the voter information card are necessary for any segment of the population that is more mobile.

Getting rid of the voter information card altogether, without introducing some other tool to help those who have difficulty proving their permanent or temporary address, would be a mistake.

[Adam Shedletzky]

We also believe that the voter information card is very important and should be maintained. If you look at the evidence, between 36% and 73% of Canadians who were part of a 900,000-person pilot used this card, and there was no reported fraud whatsoever. We need to figure out the balance between making it as easy as possible for people to vote and ensuring with 100% certainty the integrity of every single voter who votes in Canada. There's a balance.

Every single piece of ID has problems. My understanding is that the voter information card is the most accurate form of government ID. I believe that's correct, so if that's the case, then why should we be not permitting that use of ID and permitting other uses of ID? It doesn't make any sense to us.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

It's not a perfect data bank, but there is no such thing as a perfect data bank.

I made a comment that, if you want to get good ideas in terms of how youth should get more engaged, you often go to youth. I recall the benefits of these youth parliaments. You know, I've been a parliamentarian for over 20 years now and I find that the number of youth parliaments seems to be decreasing. I don't know if you have any sense of that, but it seems to be more than just about when to vote and how to vote. It gets them engaged in a very real and intangible way.

I often thought that if Elections Canada did a study on that, maybe Elections Canada should be doing promotions of youth parliaments in order to get young people thinking about politics. They're definitely opinionated if you ask them questions.

If you were posed, and I'll pose the question to you, what would be an initiative that you think Elections Canada could do if it in fact had the authority? The authority is being taken away under proposed section 18, of course. Do you have ideas—or if you want to comment on the youth parliament you can do that—that you think would be important to help encourage youth to be engaged in politics?

[Youri Cormier]

I'll start by going back to the previous question and then answer this one as well.

There's something that I can mention with regard to the voter information cards. We found a survey by EKOS that suggested 72% of the people who were allowed to use the VIC as proof of identification thought it made voting easier or much easier. That's something to keep in mind when we know that youth are finding it hard to vote.

With regard to your current question, I think the most important thing for us with regard to our partnership with Elections Canada is their expertise in research and their ability to help us measure our success and our impact. To go back to what I was mentioning a while ago with regard to our Elections BC and Elections Canada partnerships, we were able to measure how far we can get in terms of raising the voter turnout just by interacting with youth and tracking that interaction.

It's worth noting that in American research projects peer-to-peer and in-person campaigns have been shown to raise voter participation by up to 8% or 10%. It's a huge impact. Again, we also know that when youth speak to youth they get a lot more done in terms of getting the vote out. That's something to keep in mind. Also, if there's any way that Elections Canada can help make those interactions happen, then obviously it's going to have an impact.

[Éliane Laberge]

In the FECQ's view, Elections Canada, like the chief electoral officer of Quebec, could be more active when it comes to educating the public. That's an integral part of the equation as far as improving youth voter turnout is concerned. I would say that achieving better voter turnout probably takes as much effort before an election as during. At election time, Elections Canada obviously has to have tools to educate people about the importance of voting, but if it can do more in that regard, then it should.

Getting youth involved in mock parliaments and youth parliaments is essential to help them really understand how our political system works, and to get them excited about the process and interested in it. Programs like Student Vote and its Quebec counterpart, Voters in Training, are also essential because they teach young people what it means to vote, years before they are able to do so.

It is our position that igniting an interest in politics is key if we want people to vote. It has to start close to home. More local education programs are needed in that regard. That's the way to help young people better understand politics at the national level.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to our four-minute round. If we stay good, we'll be able to finish our day with everything intact.

Mr. Richards, you have four minutes.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I think I'll direct my questions mainly to you, Ms. Laberge, just because what I want to discuss essentially relates to students who are away from the home they grew up in and attending post-secondary school. I think you'd probably be best placed to respond.

My understanding from some of the past witnesses we've had at committee is that for those students in particular, it has been pointed out that people feel there may be concerns for them in regard to being able to meet the ID requirements. My understanding is that there doesn't seem to be any issue with proving who they are; all students have a student card or whatever, so there's no issue with proving who they are. I'm led to believe that proving their address of residence is the problem.

I'm just wondering.... For example, one of the pieces is correspondence from a school or an educational institution. There are things like bank statements, bank records, or tax assessments, because most students do of course work during the summer, so there would be tax assessments. These kinds of things are all items that can be used to prove residence. Can you tell me a bit about what the issue is there in terms of why those aren't sufficient for students to be able to prove their residence? Of course, there's also the attestation from a student residence as well, if they live in residence.

Can you just tell me a little bit about why...? If you can, try to keep it brief, because I have a few other questions as well.

[Éliane Laberge]

I didn't address the identification issue given that we aren't experts on that. That wasn't the focus of our presentation.

But this is what I said earlier.

If the government is going to make as big a change as this so that people can meet the ID requirement on election day, it has to be done the right way and for the right reasons. I said that the federal government could follow Quebec's lead and set up polling stations on campuses. That would be a positive step for voter turnout on federal election day.