Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join in the debate.
Watching this bill has been an interesting journey. Given the way the Conservatives are ramming it through, I suspect that it will get a lot more attention in the historical sense than it will any proper consideration by the House or committee.
It has been interesting to watch the hon. minister rise, from the first day, and hold up the Neufeld report as his shield. When the bill was first introduced in the House, for every question that came up that had to do with vouching, the minister would stand and talk about the Neufeld report. That was the answer to everything. He had the magical answer in the Neufeld report, and that was going to give the legitimacy he was looking for to bring in the changes to vouching, which we know, and the experts know, would deny people the right to vote, more than 100,000 people at least. We also know that this is the whole purpose, because the vast majority of people who would be vouching, the government has determined, and they may indeed be right, would likely not vote for the Conservatives.
Voter suppression is not exactly something that captures everyone's attention. Anyone who pays attention to what is going on in politics south of Canada knows about voter suppression techniques. When the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that one of its laws was no longer in effect, suddenly a lot of the states that had been holding back on some of their voter suppression techniques had those bills, within 24 hours, back in the house to be passed for the sole purpose of suppressing the vote.
What did Mr. Neufeld have to say about the hon. minister holding up his report as justification for denying the use of voter identification cards? He said, and I quote:
I think any fair-minded person who reads that report would come to the conclusion that [the minister] has not been fair in his assessment of my findings.
I thought it was interesting that he used the word “fair” twice in its proper context, as opposed to this bill, which is anything but fair.
With the minister's main support mechanism shattered and in shreds, the government also has a lot more people than just the official opposition saying that this is a huge problem and that this is less than people expect from the democratic country of Canada. This matters so much in terms of what happens in Canada's democracy that a group of international scholars got together and wrote a joint letter. One would wonder why anyone outside Canada would care much about a Canadian election, other than as a point of interest. It matters because Canada matters. Canada matters in terms of emerging democracies. Canada matters in terms of looking at countries in the world that have the kind of democracy everybody would like to have. We are not the absolute best and the only one, but we are one of a very short list of countries in the world that are looked at as democratic models and ideals. That is why, to perfect our system, we will hopefully get to proportional representation, which is the next big step in bringing better democracy to Canada.
These international scholars are concerned, because if the international standard, which we are part of, starts to get watered down, what would that do for emerging democracies? Those of us who have done a number of election observation missions around the world in emerging democracies know that it is true that they hold up Canada that way. If they see Canada floundering, it leaves them wondering what hope they have.
Mr. Speaker, I forgot to add that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Honoré-Mercier.
To continue, what did these international scholars say? They said:
We, the undersigned, international scholars and political scientists, are concerned that Canada's international reputation as one of the world's guardians of democracy and human rights is threatened by passage of the proposed Fair Elections Act.
We believe that this Act would prove [to] be deeply damaging for electoral integrity within Canada, as well as providing an example which, if emulated elsewhere, may potentially harm international standards of electoral rights around the world.
It does not get much bigger than this when those outside of Canada are looking at this unfair elections act, blowing the whistle, raising the flag, and asking “What is going on”? Once again, the world is left shaking its head, asking “What happened to Canada? Where did Canada go? We have this Harper government thing, but where is Canada?”
Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my wording. It was my mistake. It was a slip. I apologize, sir.