Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Toronto—Danforth, who has clearly taken the time both to read the bill and pore over the Neufeld report.
My question is a deeper one based on his comments apparently recognizing the error rates. He quoted some of the error rates involved in vouching. Whether those error rates are a result of fraud or just error in the system is not ascertained in the reports, but the error rates are there nonetheless. What he is referring to is the voter ID card, which has been a pilot in recent years. It has not been a staple of elections in Canada for the last generation, but as a pilot in the last two elections, and the cards themselves have a one-sixth error rate.
The bigger question I would like to ask the hon. member is this. In the modern age, there are multiple forms of voter identification, 39 different types of identification. Vouching comes from an age when there was no such photo identification, when there were no such measures. Is it not time we recognize that those inherent error rates, whether fraudulent or not, are not appropriate in a democracy?