Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 30th, 2014

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

I asked you whether we could deal with amendments BQ-3 and BQ-4 now.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We can't do them both together, but we'll remember how you presented this so when we get to BQ-4, we can make the vote apply to both. Okay?

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Yes, we could vote on both at the same time, since they're about the same thing. It would shorten the process.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Would anyone like to apply this vote to all the rest? No, I'm just kidding you.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Just mine. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll keep it brief, as everyone's familiar with the topic.

In 2007, the CEO decided to change certain rules to allow people to vote with their faces covered. At the time, the Prime Minister said he seriously disagreed with the CEO's decision. Bills to amend the Elections Canada Act were later introduced, one by the Bloc Québécois and one by the Conservative Party. The Conservatives also mentioned it in the Speech from the Throne. In 2011, the current minister, Steven Blaney, put forward a private member's bill requiring electors to show their face when voting.

The Bloc Québécois just wanted to bring the federal legislation in line with Quebec's: anyone who goes to a polling station must show their face when voting. It's a bit like passports, where the photo shows the person's face. The same applies to driver's licences.

Since the Conservative government has always supported the measure, I would ask its members to vote in favour of my amendment, because I already know the other parties are against it. Of course, if we could bring them around this evening, that'd be ideal. Voting with your face uncovered is simply a matter of fairness to all voters.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Thank you.

Madam Latendresse.

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

I'll make it quick.

I won't be supporting this amendment because of how it's worded. It doesn't include any exceptions or possible accommodations. As it currently stands, someone who's been badly burned and whose face is all bandaged up wouldn't be allowed to vote.

I won't be supporting this amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I see no other speakers on BQ-3. This also covers BQ-4. We'll have a recorded vote.

(Amendment negatived: nays 9; yeas 0 [See Minutes of Proceedings])

It is defeated, and that would also defeat BQ-4.

We will move on to G-5.

G-5 has a line conflict with NDP-30, LIB-18, PV-29, NDP-31, and NDP-32.

Mr. Lukiwski.

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

Chair, I'll move this amendment.

This is getting down to the section of the act where we talk about ID requirements when voting.

We've heard the argument that it's not so much ID, who you are, but the residency requirement as to where you live that seems to be the major problem. We've heard that time and time again from people who made interventions. In fact, it seemed that the vast majority of people did not seem to have a problem with producing identification to prove who they were. It was only the residency that seemed to be the sticking point.

Therefore, we're suggesting that to overcome that problem of not being able to prove residency, rather than vouching, someone who has a proper piece of identification showing who they are can have another voter from the same polling station, who has both proper identification as to who they are and where they live, sign a written oath of residency. The voter himself, who doesn't have the proper residency requirements, will be required to co-sign the oath attesting to the voter's address. In other words, we would have a situation similar to what currently occurs in Manitoba.

Just to be clear, everyone will have to prove who they are. They will have to have a proper form of identification. But through the signing of an oath, or attestation as some people would call it, we can allow those people without proper identification of residency to still vote.

That's what this amendment is about. I'll leave it at that, because I'm sure there are members from the opposition side who have questions on this amendment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Scott.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I'm just double-checking. Am I right in hearing that because of the line conflict NDP-30, NDP-31, and NDP-32 cannot be dealt with as a result?

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

That's correct.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Okay. Just for the record, NDP-30 and NDP-31 would have been the NDP's amendments to restore the Canada Elections Act to the vouching provisions that are there, that we've lived with in this country until Bill C-23, but by virtue of the line conflict, we won't be able to move them so we'll discuss vouching in the context of this amendment. I wanted to be on record that those two amendments can't be put forward.

This is welcome, although it also has problems in scope. It's welcome in the sense that the committee did indeed hear among its 71 witnesses a lot of groups and representatives of groups who very articulately set out why it was that removing vouching from the Canada Elections Act could impact them, large numbers of different sectors of society. We already knew about 120,000 people had vouched in the 2011 election, and a face was put on that in committee, I would say, for a good chunk of the folks who would have needed to vouch.

At that level the outcry across Canada about the removal of vouching appears to have had an effect. I can only say I welcome and am glad the government is putting forward an amendment to their withdrawing of vouching that institutes a vouching by address system whereby one piece of ID plus vouching is going to allow people to vote.

I have a couple of concerns I want to flag and see if we can talk through them and get to the point of a possible very small amendment.

I'm not sure if people following the committee remember we had testimony from a Professor Abe Oudshoorn, who works with the homeless in London, Ontario. He described an organized process of vouching in London. Social workers and community workers on the day of the election will take clients who show up at their agency to polling stations and vouch for them. He later explained this meant they would obviously have to pair them up for their specific polling divisions because you can only vouch within your polling division.

This was made easier for a number of elections in one of our biggest agencies. The London InterCommunity Health Centre was a polling station, for example. Staff there were kept busy vouching. He predicted by the end of the day it was very hard to find a London social worker who hadn't vouched for somebody.

He explained it as follows. This was part of our testimony:

When a person experiencing homelessness but without identification enters an agency and expresses an interest in voting—often the agencies have a sign that says, “Ask us how you can vote”—they are connected with someone who can vouch for them, whether it's someone who works in the agency or another person who's homeless who's also said that they would like to vote. They will be accompanied by someone who can vouch for them at the polling station. This is made simpler in our community because one or more of the serving agencies use our polling stations and it makes it a little easier for everyone in terms of the walking.

The reason I've taken the time to set this out is that one of the provisions in amendment G-5 that sets out the conditions for vouching adds a threshold that doesn't currently exist in either the law or the practice of vouching under the Canada Elections Act.

I'm referring to new proposed subparagraph 143(3)(b)(ii). It basically says that one of the conditions of being able to vouch for somebody.... Actually, there are two paired together on the second page of the amendment:

(ii) they know the elector personally,

(iii) they know that the elector resides in the polling division,

At the moment, the law effectively is only the second one, (iii). They know that the elector resides in the polling division because it's taken as a given that when you know that, you actually know the person sufficiently to know that. There's no test for how well or how much better you know the person other than knowing that.

By introducing “they know the elector personally”—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Reid.

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

No, no, I'm just....

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I'm just making a point of letting you know that I've put you on the list.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Simms, also.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Adding the language “they know the elector personally” is new and it seems they want it to be a little bit additional to the idea they know that the elector resides in the polling division.

To me this is a problem, because it opens up the ability of whatever officer on election day to be able to start asking, “Do you know this person personally?” and make judgment calls. What does “personally” mean? For how long, and in what context?

I can see absolute chaos, as well as potential unfairness. Inconsistency of application is one form of unfairness and then there's the unfairness of turning somebody away because an elections officer says, “You haven't known them for a year. You haven't known them for a week. You just met them an hour ago.” But you reliably know they live at that address because the social agency that has paired you up with them has indicated that they use your services. I think the openness, the generality of this, is going to produce a real problem of application.

I have a second concern. Mr. Richards may remember we had a bit of a discussion on this. Under the current Canada Elections Act, the sections on vouching, there is basically the idea that what I was calling citizen-to-citizen vouching is completely acceptable. The idea is you know the person, where they live, you've come to know them enough that this is the person who lives where you're vouching for them and that's all that has ever been required.

I'm hoping it's not an intention, and I can't imagine it's an intention, but this is by result potentially an anti-homeless clause, because if you use a system like the one described for London or anything that's similar to it, there's a danger that the threshold of knowing the person personally won't be met. The citizen-to-citizen vouching has literally been written out of the possibility by using the word “personally”, and whether that means you live in the same division and it's family, you live in the same division and it's a neighbour, you live in the same polling division and it's somebody else who somehow you know personally, whatever that might mean, I just think it goes far too far for what is otherwise an openness of spirit to everything else that was heard in the days of testimony.

I'm hoping that through some further discussion we can find a way. I will be wanting to amend this to excise it because I think it's completely unnecessary to start with, and then I do believe it can create barriers. I'm hoping that the other side will look at my concerns and say that's not what they intended and therefore we can work with this, and let's see what we can do.

I wanted to flag one last thing about this. Let me take a step back. In the 2011 election, roughly 900,000 or a million people were able to vote, legally able to vote by authorization of the Chief Electoral Officer, by using the voter information card as proof of address alongside a piece of valid ID. Some figures suggested over 400,000 actually did it that way.

We know that one of the government's amendments to the Canada Elections Act in Bill C-23 is to get rid of the use of voter information cards. So we have, let's say, 400,000 people who use these and we don't know what percentage of them can easily find that piece of ID with an address to replace the voter information card, but we do know that this new system will allow them to come out with their ID and if they can find somebody voting at the same time or somebody they know, they can have them vouch.

What percentage of those 400,000, along with the 120,000 who vouched the last time who could find a piece of ID, are going to need vouching?

I actually think there's a big potential for additional red tape here because—and I'll explain this later when we get to voter information cards—a decent percentage of those 400,000 who use the VICs will remember that they did so. A decent percentage of them probably couldn't find a piece of address ID, and the only choice for those people now will be vouching. This will create potential logjams and all kinds of pressures on some polls if that turns out to be the case.

What's the solution? That we happily embrace the government's amendment, hopefully getting rid of this knowing personally business and we keep voter information cards, because then, what will that do? That will accomplish exactly what Mr. Neufeld recommended in his report.

Let's diminish the amount of vouching that's needed. One way to do that is to increase the use of voter information cards and make them generally available.

If the voter information card is available, you don't get to the vouching fallback here for many people because they will actually be listed and will be able to use the voter information card. Some of them will be able to find other pieces of ID with their address; I recognize that.

There's a danger, however, that this well-intentioned amendment, the government's version of vouching, address vouching, will potentially add to the numbers of overall vouching because the VICs are gone. If the government is content with that, then I just hope Elections Canada can find a way to make sure that they're ready for the pile-up that might occur at some polling stations. I think the easiest way, again, is to replace it to make sure the VICs stay, as well as this amendment.

However, there will be people who will not be able to vote because we heard good testimony that made sense just as a matter of logic, that there are some people in society who, by the time an election is called, can't lay their hands even on the one piece of identity that would then allow for vouching, plus they would have to find somebody to vouch. There will be cases, and it may not be nearly as many as otherwise would be the case if this weren't brought in, but because the right to vote is a constitutional right, every possible effort should be made to allow anybody entitled to vote, to vote.

We have to be aware that, as Mr. Lukiwski said, the vast majority would be able to vote using this, and the rest of the provisions, the showing of ID. But he accepted, by using that expression, that some people won't, and that, ultimately, is what the current vouching provisions in the Canada Elections Act are intended to be there for, as the final safety net.

That's also why there are scholars who have begun to write about why not having that kind of final—let's call it—full vouching ability could lead to.... The absence of that may be declared unconstitutional.

I'm delighted to see this. I really do think that the government's bringing vouching back into the Canada Elections Act is a positive. I actually thank the government for doing that, for having bent to pressure, frankly, but hopefully members of this committee also conveyed all the testimony they heard, and that played a role.

After having set out the context, I'm hoping we can have some discussion on this “they know the elector personally” business.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Reid.

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

Mr. Chair, the purpose as I understand it of the section of the amendment that would become the new proposed subparagraph 143(3)(b)(ii) containing the words “they know the elector personally”, is to make sure that some of the basic qualifications one must have in order to vote are fulfilled.

Knowing that someone resides in a polling division is also required, and this is of course a good start. We need to know as well that the individual who is being vouched for is eligible to vote based on their criteria. You have to be 18 years old to vote. You have to be a Canadian citizen to vote. Now I will grant that there are many people who are obviously over the age of 18. I might submit myself as a case study in this regard. I do want to say for the record that I was carded once after I reached the age of 40—true story—but I have a suspicion that I looked not like a youth but rather like a liquor inspector. Anyway, that's my guess.

Be that as it may, there are people, and students are an excellent example of this, who may or may not be of voting age. Often they will look younger than the voting age when in fact they're over, and the reverse. This is a reasonable thing. You have to know the person personally in order to determine that. A person can easily establish their identity through a piece of identification without being able to establish their age. Likewise, considering the large list of types of identification that are acceptable, including everything down to utility bills, most of these things do not include date of birth, nor do they include citizenship. Indeed I am hard pressed to think of anything other than a passport that actually serves as identification as to your identity that also indicates whether you are a citizen of Canada.

These are two things that are accomplished in this particular case. I, too, kept careful records of the witnesses who came before this committee raising concerns about individuals who would not be able to vote if vouching were removed and not replaced with something. I am hard pressed to think of a plausible example that qualifies. The example that had the greatest resonance with me was the example offered by one of the witnesses who asked what happens to a woman who has left a violent and abusive husband and is now residing outside her home. Initially, I thought she was making reference to somebody residing in a shelter for battered women, but she said later on that what she meant was someone who's living with her sister.

Using either of those two examples, the individual is unlikely to have literally no identification at all. In the event that she's at the shelter for battered women, she is very likely to have or to be capable of getting an attestation from the administrator of that home. In the event she's with her sister, there are any number of pieces of identification that don't attest to her address but do attest to her identity that she would either have or would be capable of getting in fairly short order. Remember, the CEO has the ability to create new identification that would allow her to establish this. I'm not actually saying he will do this, but he could do this if he wanted to. For example, he could allow that famous prescription bottle that is used in British Columbia to be used. I'm not recommending that necessarily, but it was suggested to us as a possibility.

Establishing some form of identity is fairly reasonably established. Remember that her sister, using this example, can vouch that she is indeed someone she knows personally. The only people I can imagine falling into the category of where no one knows them personally.... It doesn't say intimately, you'll notice. It says personally. The person is not just introduced to you that day.

I'm struggling. You have to be literally outside your community and outside your community in a way where you have not established any knowledge because you are an extraordinarily recent arrival, as in within the last few days or less than a week, I would think.

I'm struggling here. I guess one could argue that a homeless person who has just arrived in a municipality has this problem. But don't forget that for all people, including homeless people, there's the option of voting at the returning office, at the advance poll, and on polling day, to say nothing of a number of special balloting options.

I am not suggesting that these are easy options to access. Nothing is easy for you when you're a homeless person, but the point about them is that they're spread out over time chronologically, meaning that you're not likely to be someone who is not known personally to anybody at all, even if you're a homeless person.

I suppose if we conjured up an example of somebody who lives in the woods, unknown to other human beings, and who emerges on voting day, we would indeed have hit somebody who would not qualify to vote under this.

Now I want to go back and point out what is fundamentally wrong with Professor Scott's argument and indeed with the entire argument that the opposition has been making from the start. Their argument is that the right to vote under section 3 of the charter is sacrosanct, and I'm willing to concede that is true. It is so sacrosanct that if we can find one example, no matter how preposterous, anywhere in the country, we should therefore expect the Supreme Court to overturn every single measure required to ensure that people who are not eligible won't be voting. We have to strip away all security, all potential to avoid fraudulent voting.

I know their argument, their additional argument, that there is no electoral fraud in Canada—none, zero, nothing, nada, rien, ever. They point, I suppose, to the 2011 election from which there were no prosecutions, and the 2008 election from which there were no prosecutions.

But I make the humble suggestion that in a country where many millions of people vote across the country, with inadequately trained personnel—we all concede that occurs—with inadequate voters lists—we all concede that, including the CEO, who points out that the voter information card has a 14% error rate with regard to identity.... The voter information card is issued on the basis of the preliminary voters list, not the final voters list, which admittedly is improved. The rate is over 20% in ridings he has chosen not to identify for us. I would argue that there is indeed, in some situations, fraudulent voting. We just can't track it.

Numerous members of Parliament, from literally all parties—Liberal, NDP, Conservative, and Bloc Québécois—when we were dealing with the piece of legislation that came prior to some amendments to the Elections Act that came in 2006, all stated that fraudulent voting was a concern. All of them did.

This is the goal: to strike a reasonable balance. I think we have gone an extraordinary distance to ensuring that no plausible scenario can exist, as opposed to the implausible, and we can always invent something. Another example that occurred to me was that of someone who was kidnapped by aliens and returned to Earth just on election day, and their ID was out of date or was kept by the aliens. Who knows? But no plausible scenario exists in which an individual will be unable to cast a ballot during the writ period given all of these safeguards that are in place, including the ones that are here, including the numerous safeguards that have been in existence for some time, such as the existence of advance polls, voting at returning offices, and so on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I'll go to Mr. Lukiwski and ask for some expedience. I know we're talking about a very important piece.

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

This will be completely expedient, because anything I would have to say after the comparison about aliens coming to vote in Canada would pale by comparison.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

That's repetition, Mr. Lukiwski.

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

I can't say anything that would top that, Chair.