Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, in my opinion it would, as long as the process for verifying the ballot is reasonable. We have a system where we have scrutineers from the parties who are there. People can challenge things and there would be an opportunity for whatever investigations were required. That wou

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I would use a stronger word than “fraud” to describe what was reported in the last election, and that word is “subversion”, in fact. I would also like to comment that we have been blessed in Canada with some really excellent people filling the post of Chief Electoral Office

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, that's one of the real problems with vouching. It's a very serious shortcoming of vouching, you're absolutely right. It's an even larger problem with restrictions on vouching that were put in place in the last round of amendments, whereby you can only be vouched for by some

Procedure and House Affairs committee  [Technical difficulty--Editor] ...existing rules for voter identification with vouching violate section 3 of the charter.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. In British Columbia, both our B.C. Supreme Court and our Court of Appeal have confirmed that the existing rules before this bill came along violate section 3 of the charter, but the court was convinced that it would survive the section 1 test, which looks at whether there ar

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The real problem arises where people, for example, in the poorest part of Vancouver, and I'm sure you're aware of the problems of the Downtown Eastside—and this was part of the evidence we presented in the Henry case—was that one thing people get stolen from them all the time in

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sure. I do have concerns about removing the investigative powers and essentially reducing the communication role of the Chief Electoral Officer. I think those are serious problems. An important piece that's missing is the lack of capacity of the Chief Electoral Officer, or whoeve

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I have concerns about—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Absolutely—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Anything that restricts robocalling, in my opinion, is a wonderful thing. If there's one thing, personally as a Canadian citizen, that I loathe is receiving robocalls. Anything that reduces that junk coming into my telephone, frankly, is a good thing. I'd like to address a coupl

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Great. Thank you. I was legal counsel for the voters who challenged the last set of major amendments to the Election Act, when the requirement for approved voter identification documents was first introduced and the scope of vouching was restricted. That was at the trial level,

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes I can.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Great. It's a lovely day here in Vancouver.