Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 10th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We'll go ahead and start our meeting this morning. This is the 32nd meeting of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. We are here pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, February 10, talking about Bill C-23.

We have with us, in the first panel, two good friends actually. Mr. Casey, it's great to see you. It was great to have a little chat with you this morning. I haven't seen you in a long time, and it's good to see you.

[Bill Casey, Former Member of Parliament, As an Individual]

It's great to be back.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

The Hon. Laurie Hawn is also with us today.

You each have opening statements. I will defer to you.

[An hon. member]

Point of order....

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Certainly.

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

I would just like to say that, if possible, we'd like to spend a few minutes at the end of today's meeting discussing the motion we introduced at our last meeting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Okay.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Also, Chair, if I might raise a little piece of business, we were keenly interested in getting the DPP in for the Monday we return. Were we able to lock that in, sir?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I was able to do that for you, Mr. Christopherson. He will be joining us with the Quebec chief electoral officer on the Monday we return.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Perfect, thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We look forward to that. We think that is our last group of witnesses.

Mr. Casey, I was just getting to you and saying if you have an opening statement, we'd love you to go first, for around five minutes. That would be great.

[Bill Casey]

Thank you very much.

First of all, I just want to say I was a member of this committee 10 years ago, and I have to say it wasn't nearly as exciting as it is now, or interesting. It was kind of dull, and nobody much watched it or kept track of it, but you've done a lot to raise the profile.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Well, we believe it's the chair, but other than that—

[Bill Casey]

I believe it is too, absolutely, it's the leadership of the chair—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Please, Mr. Casey, you can start.

[Bill Casey]

I believe that Bill C-23, the fair elections act, is an opportunity to correct a very unfair aspect of Elections Canada rules that have been in place for many years.

I'm referring to the set of rules that allow a candidate belonging to a recognized party to begin to raise money, issue tax receipts, and prepare for the next election long before the election is called. A different set of rules governs independent candidates, which prevents them from doing anything in preparation for a campaign until after the election is called.

As a for instance, all of you can issue tax receipts, through your EDAs, to contributors today in order to encourage supporters to make contributions to your anticipated 2015 campaign. An independent candidate running against you in the same riding cannot do this. An independent candidate can only begin to raise money and issue tax receipts after the election is called.

There are two sets of rules and they are very unfair.

I'm sure that some of the members of Parliament at this table had funds left over from their campaign account in the last election. That money was probably transferred to your riding association account, and now those funds are available to be returned to your 2015 campaign account to be used in the next election. If an independent candidate running against you had funds left over in his or her campaign account after the last election, the money had to be surrendered to the Receiver General for Canada. It would not be returned to them if they decide to run again in the next election.

Again, there are two sets of rules.

I'm sure that all of you have signs available and information prepared well ahead of the next election, or you will have. An independent candidate running against you can only commit to any purchase after the election is called; again, two sets of rules.

As an interesting example, I've attached an invitation, from the Internet, to a fundraiser event being held to raise money for the riding of the Honourable Pierre Poilievre in anticipation of the next election. The fee to attend is $125 per person, and attendees are provided with a tax receipt for $99. An independent candidate running against him is not allowed to do this. Only after the next election is called is an independent candidate allowed to raise funds and issue tax receipts.

The two sets of rules are very unfair.

I don't mean to pick on the minister, as most MPs from all parties will be raising funds in the coming months in exactly the same way, but it is a good example. Further, $75 from every $125 ticket for Minister Poilievre's fall fundraiser will come from the taxpayers of Canada through the tax credit system. An independent candidate running against him cannot access these tax credit benefits in the same way prior to the election being called.

Please ask yourself if you would consider it fair if your opposition in the next election could raise money earlier than you could, raise more money than you could, and could make campaign arrangements earlier than you for the next election. Ask yourself if you would consider it fair if you had to forfeit cash left over from your campaign, but all the competitors that ran against you could keep theirs.

In fact, I ran as an independent in the 2008 election. The Conservative, Liberal, and NDP candidates in my riding were all able to keep the excess funds from the campaign. As an independent, I was required to surrender my remaining funds.

Again, two sets of rules.

Although these rules have been in place for many years, Bill C-23 seems to exacerbate the disparity. The provision that would generously allow political parties to exempt certain campaign expenses incurred over the previous five years before an election would provide no benefit for independents. I believe this inequitable situation could be corrected relatively easily if independent candidates were allowed to provide a mechanism so they could establish an entity similar to an electoral district association. It would perform the same function as EDAs for party candidates, and most of the problems would be resolved.

In any case, I'm sure that knowledgeable officials would be able to resolve these inequities if directed to do so by this committee. After the election of 1993, and again after the election of 2000, Elections Canada referred to these disparities as draconian and recommended that they be changed. This is the chance to do it. The fair elections act is an opportunity to correct this most unfair aspect of our election rules.

I urge you to amend the bill to ensure that independent candidates are governed by exactly the same rules as party-sponsored candidates.

Thank you. I welcome your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you, Mr. Casey.

Mr. Hawn, please, you have five minutes or less, sir.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for the opportunity to appear today and tell you about our experiences in the 2006 federal election in Edmonton Centre.

My motivation in being here is the concern we all share for fair elections in Canada and perhaps to dispel the notion some may have that election fraud does not happen in Canada.

None of what I say will be an indictment of Elections Canada, but the simple fact of human nature is that there will always be those who, for their own gain, will want to cheat, whether it is on their taxes, EI claims, insurance claims, or elections. Election fraud will probably always be attempted, and to some extent, will always succeed. Elections Canada's job and our job is to try to stay a step ahead of people who will always try to find new ways to get around the rules and will always try to find new holes when old holes are plugged.

We were concerned about abuse of voter identification cards in 2004. We knew that many people received more than one card, and the availability of extra cards and the lack of other ID requirements created an environment that made fraud much easier. Scrutineers reported many cases of voters using VIC cards and nothing else for ID. We also knew that it was not uncommon for stacks of VIC cards to be left in the lobbies of apartment buildings and condominiums.

Although VIC cards were not intended to be ID in the 2006 election, that's how many people used them. All you needed was a VIC card and a name on the voter's list. That also encouraged some people to try to make a few bucks by selling them. I personally received one phone call during the campaign offering to sell me hundreds of VIC cards. It was in the heat of the campaign. I simply declined rudely and got back to campaigning in what was a typically tight election race in Edmonton Centre. Ultimately, in the 2006 election, we had scrutineer reports, some of which I have given to the clerk, about voters using only VIC cards for ID.

Another hot topic at the moment is vouching. Again, in 2004, we had reports from scrutineers of groups of voters arriving by bus and being vouched for by one person. In 2006, we had scrutineers trained like pit bulls, and we had reports from scrutineers of having turned away van loads of perspective voters and of insisting with DROs who seemed willing to go along with it that we were prepared to take immediate legal action to stop it. Again, in the heat of election day, our interest was on getting through the day without allowing any fraud, intentional or inadvertent, to take place.

The really important circumstance for us in 2006 was the very considerable errors in the Elections Canada voter list. We received an email from a lawyer, who advised that another lawyer had been bragging about the number of times he had voted for the winning candidate in 2004, based on the number of leases he held in the riding, which numbered 14. We weren't given his name, but obviously, that put us on high alert.

Partway through the writ period, my campaign manager, Vitor Marciano, had a conversation with an Elections Canada official who told him that she had already stricken about 700 people off the Edmonton Centre voter list for being clearly improperly registered. She had to discontinue that scrutiny due to other assigned duties, and Mr. Marciano is willing to testify to that information.

We received what was to be the final version of the list five days before the election and we put a team together all night going over the list of some 92,000 voters looking for anomalies. We found them right away, with as many as 20 or 30 people registered to vote from the same address, most of which were obviously non-residential. I would be happy to outline some of the fraudulent addresses during questions.

We immediately went public with a press release, news articles, and other aggressive electronic media. Official complaints were filed with the commissioner of elections by our campaign manager, Vitor Marciano, and by our national campaign co-chair, John Reynolds.

About 400 people were removed from the voter list, and we knew of several hundred more who we just didn't have time to get to. We made it clear that we would challenge suspect voters and that we would seek to press charges against anyone attempting to vote fraudulently. We can never know how many people we deterred from cheating, but we went from losing by 721 votes to winning by 3,600 votes. Obviously, there were other factors at play, but we were determined to win or lose honestly.

At no time did I then, nor will I now, accuse my opponent of participating knowingly in what went on. Simply, there are sometimes volunteers or supporters who are more enthusiastic than the law would normally allow.

I have with me some copies of the questionable listings, some handwritten scrutineer reports, the media release, the official complaints, and the final response from Elections Canada, which I have given to the clerk.

The final response from Elections Canada to our campaign manager was dated November 22, 2006. The investigation concentrated on 93 voters who had cast ballots, 74 of whom were actually contacted, and it was found that 16 had voted in the wrong electoral district. They concluded correctly that this small number of ineligible ballots had not affected the election result, this time, but I would remind the committee that the winning margin in Edmonton Centre in 1993 was 12 votes, and many other elections are won by the tiniest of margins.

If one does some simple math with the 16 out of 74 voters checked against all of the names removed, the number of potential voting errors, intentional or accidental, would number well into the hundreds. Such numbers could, indeed, influence the outcome of an election.

Mr. Chair, my aim today is simply to help people understand that election fraud at some level is, regrettably, part of every election, and we all need to take every measure possible to make sure elections are fair. I know we all want to see voter turnout increase, but personally, I would rather have an election with certainty of the result than an election with a large turnout of questionable voters.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I would be pleased to answer any questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I thank you both for staying within your time.

We will go to a seven-minute round, starting with Mr. Lukiwski.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you both, Mr. Casey and Mr. Hawn, for being here.

Mr. Hawn, I could start my questions with you.

You are probably, with the exception perhaps or Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, who appeared here yesterday, the first witness we've had who has either some documented alleged or attempted fraud examples to give us, or perhaps you even have some verification of real fraud.

Obviously the critics have been saying that there really is no evidence of fraud whatsoever, therefore why do you need to get rid of vouching? Why do you want to change the system with VICs?

So I'd just like you to expand, if you can Mr. Hawn, on some of the information that you uncovered during the 2006 election, and more specifically, whether or not you think that fraud did occur in your riding of Edmonton Centre, in either the 2004 or 2006 election, and whether or not, under the current provisions to eliminate vouching, that would have an effect on preventing this type of action from happening again.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Lukiwski.

I do believe that fraud occurred in 2004 and 2006 in Edmonton Centre, and I don't believe it was just in Edmonton Centre; it would be extremely naive to think that.

Let me give you just some of the examples of the misregistration that we found. Some of it would be accidental, but some of it was, to me, clearly not accidental.

There were about 100 apparently non-existent addresses in Edmonton's downtown core. Some of them were fictional addresses in between two real buildings. Hundreds of people registered to vote under their law offices, medical offices, accounting offices, Government of Canada offices. In some cases, again, there were maybe genuine errors; in other cases, entire families were registered to vote out of where the bread-earner worked.

Dozens of people registered to vote out of office towers but did not list a suite number, simply a street number, to make it look like a residential address. In many cases, these people were also registered to vote in other ridings using their home addresses. In other cases, there were voters living in other ridings but only registered in Edmonton Centre.

Dozens of people registered to vote out of small mailbox locations, from self-storage yards, and there is no legitimate way a person can appear on a list of electors from a self-storage yard. That's just.... I don't believe that's accidental. Eighteen people registered to vote out of a truck stop. People registered to vote out of karaoke bars, lingerie stores, dance lounges, galleries—you name it.

Again, fraud is extremely hard to prove—to prove intent and all that kind of stuff—so it's true to say that there are very few convictions or that sort of thing. But I sat in on the PROC meetings in 2006 just after the election, because of the concerns we had from Edmonton Centre, with Mr. Kingsley and others. We weren't the only ones who were talking about this.

Steven MacKinnon, the Liberal Party national director, stated:

The misuse of voter information cards is quite simply out of control. We have reports of neighbourhoods where individual single-family dwelling mailboxes, not apartments, were systematically de-mailed

—i.e., stolen—

of such cards, and with the greatest of respect to the Chief Electoral Officer when he appeared before you in April, he mischaracterized the entire problem. It is not about using the cards as identification for the purpose of registering, an absurd notion....

It's absurd because if you got the card, obviously you're registered. It's a matter of “using the cards as identification when voting.” Clearly in those days, in 2004 and 2006, although I don't think now, you could show up with a VIC and that's all you needed.

Marcel Guimond, an MP for the Bloc Québécois, stated:

The members around the table have all campaigned and, like me, have had occasion to observe that, in election campaigns, when we enter residential buildings, multiple-unit dwellings, at the entrance, where the mail boxes are, we see a series of voter information cards in the blue recycling bin or else outside scattered across the lawn. In the 2004 election, I brought back approximately 150 to the office of the returning officer.

There was also an exchange between Mr. Kingsley and Mr. Godin, an NDP member. Mr. Kingsley said, “On polling day, the only place she can vote is at the polling station where she is registered by her address. There are no exceptions.” Mr. Godin said back, yes, “Unless she has six cards and goes to very various polling stations.”

Jean-Pierre Kingsley made it clear that in the 2006 general election, the voter information card was an identification card, not a voter identification card. But that in fact was how they were used. I don't think that's the case now.

Bloc Québécois member Pauline Picard stated:

People can go to ten different polling stations with cards that do not belong to them. They can vote in the place of 10 other people by going to different polling stations.

Voter cards can be picked up in various buildings. Often, the person who is delivering them is unable to enter a large building, and simply drops them on the floor. There are boxes full of cards that simply sit there.

Marcel Proulx, member for Hull-Aylmer, stated:

Often, when you visit a multiple-unit building, you knock on the door of an apartment where, according to the voters' list, there should be six occupants. When talking to the person who is inside you are told that there are not six people, because it is a bachelor apartment. There has been only one person living there for the last three, four or five years. It is then that we realize that the names on the list are those of the previous occupants.

Well, for every one of those previous occupants, if their name's on the list, there's a voter ID card in there in their name. Mr. Reid commented about his getting three cards. We had Asian people come in who, through no fault of their own, would fairly routinely get.... Chinese people would get two cards and Vietnamese people would often get three just because of the transposition of names.

Now, we didn't collect a bunch of those, but a couple of people who knew us came in and said, “Look what I got.” They had no intention of using them, and I'm not accusing anybody of anything specific; it's just that the potential for fraud was absolutely clear. You'd have to be awfully naive to think that some people didn't use those. Obviously it was known in the community because of people trying to pawn them off for money.

I could go on with other things that members of other parties have said.

With respect to the requirement for vouching, here is a quote from Steven MacKinnon, national director of the Liberal Party:

I was going to comment on Mr. Hawn's observation about the bus with 40 people. Suffice it to say that we are concerned, as he seems to be, about what we call serial vouching, and we are profoundly troubled by the number of on-site registrations: 55,000 at advance polls, plus 795,000 at election day polls, for a total of 840,000, or an average of over 2,700 people per riding.

It was not just me, it was not just the Conservative candidates who were concerned about this, it was candidates from all parties and officials from all parties.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

You have about 10 seconds, Mr. Lukiwski.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

I want to get your comments on whether you think that vouching should be retained or eliminated, since the serial vouching provisions have been eliminated but vouching is still allowed on a one-to-one basis.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Go ahead, very quickly.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

The rule always was one-for-one vouching, not one-for-forty, so that rule hasn't changed.

Personally, I think there's room for vouching if it stays one-for-one and if the voucher—if that ballot is put aside with the information on it and the identity and the validity of the voucher is verified before that vote is counted.