Procedure and House Affairs committee  The provisions of the bill extending the voting period at advance polling stations constitute a measure that meets this fundamental objective. Unfortunately, other measures, such as those concerning the use of voter information cards as proof of identity and the practice of one elector vouching for the identity of another, are ill advised. This last provision undoubtedly contravenes the provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I note as well in the report, and I think this is significant: The most important access barrier for youth was lack of knowledge about the electoral process, including not knowing about different ways to vote and not knowing how or when to vote, followed by difficulty getting to the polling station, difficulty providing identification or proof of address, and not receiving a voter information card. It seems to me there are a number of problems that relate to Elections Canada not doing a very good job of informing people of their rights, and this brings me to the question I actually have.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Do you think if they go ahead and do that in 2015 it will work better if two things also happen, that they make sure to enumerate the student residences on the campuses and they allow voter information cards to be used as one of the pieces of ID? Do you think the whole experiment in increasing student vote would go a lot better if VICs were part of the picture in 2015?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We should be trying to reduce those barriers. Having polling stations, having opportunities to use the voter information card, for example, as a proof to cast a ballot, those are ways to reduce the barriers to voting. I think that many of the measures that are contained in Bill C-23 would in fact create more.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  But, if they're in fact saying that all their correspondence goes to this other residence, including probably their voter information card which would also go there in that instance, they have to then make a decision about what they're going to do. If they live in residence, obviously they can get an attestation of residence.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We recommend that Bill C-23 be amended to ensure that Canadian elections are a transparent process and that Elections Canada's educational programming, including full funding in support of civic education, the student vote program, and other public education outreach initiatives be maintained. We recommend that Bill C-23 add the voter information card, VIC to the current list of valid ID and provide the authority and funding to Elections Canada to enable it to hire and fully train all election workers for elections well before each election, and to make the voter registration list and ID checking even more accurate.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Prud'homme, certainly all the interested political watchers in Canada, once they've finished watching us here, will turn and watch the Quebec election tonight, maybe a few more than are watching PROC. Can you vouch in Quebec? Does Quebec have a voter information card that can be used as identification to vote at the polls today?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. As I said this morning, I did use my voter information card basically to vote. That was good enough. To answer the other question, yes, you can be vouched for basically in Quebec. What we're looking at here is—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Some of us have followed the students at McGill who certainly would not be getting a voter information card of any type, nor would their status qualify them to vote.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think that's an important thing. The only other point I want to add here is that even if the vouching and voter information card provisions were withdrawn from the bill, there are other significant pieces of the bill that are equally important. We would not be content with just having that one section eliminated.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Would you agree with me when I say that for people who are above the age of 50, that voter—I know we keep being corrected that it's a voter information card, but to these people, this is an identification card.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We do know that 805,000 people—this is in all their reports—were eligible to use VICs, voter information cards, in seniors homes and care facilities. We can estimate that the voter turnout was around 65%, because for lower age bracket seniors, it's about 75%, and for higher age bracket seniors, it is about 60% or 65%.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's fine. I should clarify that it is actually a voter information card, not an identification card; it really isn't ID. But I understand what you're saying. You're saying that they chose that. What you're saying is that it was there and it was handy, so they used it.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Firstly, we find the provisions that would no longer allow certain pieces of identification or voter information cards to be used as proof of residence particularly upsetting. This would have a major impact on seniors and would systematically restrict their right to vote, since many seniors no longer have a driver's licence, have not renewed their passport, do not have a lease in their name, and so on.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I want to focus on the VIC card. The government is very touchy about calling it the voter information card, because they don't want it to be the voter ID card. But here's the thing, I'm the furthest thing from a statistician there is on this planet. However, common sense would say to me that if you're drawing from every database that you can to find the most up-to-date address available for a citizen, then that should be as accurate if not more accurate than the databases that you're reaching into, because it's those databases that generate all the other cards and pieces of ID that they say are acceptable, and you have the benefit of the amalgam of all those databases.