Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the hon. member for Burnaby—Douglas, for his passionate defence of trying to strike some balance in the approach whereby the government seeks to allow citizens to participate fully in electoral processes and vote with a clear conscience.
It seems to me that in many of the decisions we take in this place, we are constantly trying to strike a balance, personal liberties versus security, questions of economy and the environment. Here we are trying to strike a balancing point between allowing true voter participation, allowing people their charter rights. That is one of the basic rights, the third right in our charter. It has been very clear and upheld continuously by the Supreme Court of Canada: the right to vote, the right to participate as a free engaged citizen.
We tend to take some of these freedoms for granted and yet over the course of human history and human governance, the right of each and every individual citizen to vote is a relatively recent phenomenon.
I can remember when I first started campaigning in 2003, I would visit first nations communities in my riding. They would recall the name of Frank Howard, an MP that stood in this place and represented Skeena for many years. It was Mr. Howard who along with a Liberal colleague and with some support from the then Progressive Conservatives filibustered for almost three years, every Friday afternoon, to ensure that first nations in our country had the right to vote, because at that time they did not.
At the time, the first nations people, particularly those living on reserve, were deemed to be less than other citizens. Clearly, there is no one in this place, none of the candidates who run for any of these parties or any parties not represented here, who would suggest that we would return to that. The fight was a long fight. The fight was a struggle. There were many so-called wise and ancient experts in this place who debated against Mr. Howard's proposal and said first nations should not have the right to vote; as there were, years before, those who argued against the women's movement and their right to vote.
It seems to me that we have come to a certain enlightened place. We know that every person who is a citizen of this country deserves the right to vote and should be respected for that right.
I think a lot of us, as elected officials, are thinking back to our own election processes and whether we saw discrepancies or challenges.
I am reminded of the recent provincial election. There are five provincial ridings that go into my federal riding. There was one in particular where we had a fellow running for the New Democrats provincially. We won two out of three main ones. His was unsuccessful in electoral terms, but was extremely successful in another term, and this was a condition that they set out for themselves at the beginning of their campaign.
There is a strong first nations presence in the Bulkley Valley: the Gitksan and the Moricetown Bands of the Wet'suwet'en. Yet, the voter turnouts have been just absolutely abysmal for many years. This fellow, whose name is Doug Donaldson, was a candidate for the New Democrats. He has been adopted into the Gitksan community. He made as one of his campaign efforts to go door to door and help people register to vote.
As I was chatting with some of my Liberal colleagues and I have talked to some in the Conservatives as well, particularly on first nations reserves, the connections of an address and photo identification are very difficult to come by at times. There can be more than one family living in a household. So, if the phone bill comes, it will identify one person who is paying that bill, but not another.
So, when a first nations person shows up at the office to vote and is required to show a proof of a phone bill, that might not be forthcoming, and the identification given out by Indian Affairs shows a photo, but does not show an address.
Then in rural Canada, as in my own case, we use box numbers for a lot of the identification. We have seen that when there is more than one voting office in a community, a box number does not suffice. It does not tell the Elections Canada person where the people actually live. Are they at the right polling station? Should they be at another one? Under this bill, these people are not able to vote.
It seems to me that in our efforts at striking a balance between fairness and allowing people to access our democracy, we want to remove the barriers from people who have traditionally not participated in a democratic process. That seems like an intention I would hope all my colleagues would agree with.
The reason I bring up the case of Mr. Donaldson in the Bulkley Valley is because they were starting to run out of ballots at some of their voting offices. Their signup campaign of going out door to door and saying, “Please make sure you register to vote”, was so successful that Elections Canada had almost been lulled to sleep. It had gotten so used to first nations people in that part of the world voting 10% or 20% of the time that it just simply did not expect a 50% or 70% turnout at the polls. This was an encouraging thing. This was an encouraging thing for every party that was participating in that race, particularly for fist nations people. If people do not vote, politicians do not tend to pay much attention to them.
The currency of our fare is in the voting process and knowing that people will support our positions. But we can also look at those who are economically constrained. We know the statistics, they are not in dispute. They do not tend to participate. Therefore, the decisions that get made in this place do not tend to reflect the interests of those who are not participating in our democratic elections.
There has been a constant allusion to the massive electoral fraud some of my colleagues have talked about. Yet when the Chief Electoral Officer of this place testified before the committee, a fellow who is charged with working on behalf of Parliament, who is non-partisan and does not work for any party, when he was asked about fraud, he said it was not a leading concern. When his officers come back from the field, are briefed on the last election, are asked about what went wrong, whether there were enough polling stations and if they were in the right place, the people who are actually at the polls overseeing our democratic process are not referring to these massive cases of fraud.
I do not know how members can stand up in this place and keep referring to fraud when in 2000 there were three charges, in the 2004 election there were none, and in 2006 there was one. The Chief Electoral Officer and the people working for him are telling us as witnesses that this is not a problem. Yet we are tipping the balance too far in the direction to catch these four people in the last three elections. One has to question whether the balance is being struck. For the first nations people in particular, those of lower income, those with greater mobility who are moving between houses, and who do not own their houses, it seems that we have gone out of bounds.
The NDP proposed what we thought were reasonable amendments based on witness testimony and we were consistently voted down 11 to 1. We must reconsider this bill. We must establish something that strikes a better balance, more fairness, and allows first nations people, people of lower income, people who traditionally have not voted to be part of the voting system, so they can influence our decisions here and make for a better country.