Procedure and House Affairs committee  First, when that type of thing happens in a polling station, the returning officer is responsible for maintaining order and to make sure that people proceed the right way inside the polling station. The Federal Election Commissioner does not have that responsibility under the law

Procedure and House Affairs committee  As I told you, the returning officer can call the police if something happens inside a polling station. It is up to that person to play her role. She is on site. Canada is a huge country and I don't have enough staff to be present in every polling station. There are 65,000 of the

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That was the first part of my answer. This is the second part of my answer. When we receive a complaint, it is rigorously analyzed by our legal advisors. The job of these people is to determine whether a specific offence has been committed, whether there are enough facts to warr

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Chairman, I would like to repeat that...

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You see that in 2000 Parliament entered a new enforcement tool into legislation, which is the compliance agreement. If I may indicate that from 2000 to 2006, 83 compliance agreements were entered into, instead of prosecutions being taken before the courts. I think this is a maj

Procedure and House Affairs committee  All cases that are brought to our attention have the potential of becoming a case for prosecution, but in this particular context of voting fraud, the numbers of complaints we've received have been very limited. Some cases are so obvious they make the papers, for example. One tha

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That one is not the example. You see, we still have 114 cases that are being investigated for the 2004 election, so we're not finished the work so far.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  For 2000, yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You stopped the reading paper, or the sheet, that was given to you at a certain point, because there are a large number of cases in which people were alleged to have attempted to vote twice. I don't know if you put that in a category of—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  All complaints that we receive undergo a preliminary evaluation to determine whether an offence has been committed. For certain acts to be considered an offence there has to be mens rea, that is culpable intent to commit an offence. The laws in question have been adopted by Parli

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, it is correct.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, it's true.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. I have it in writing in front me.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The Chief Electoral Officer's report does include a number of figures of that nature, but they come at a time when not all the complaints have been filed. They are incomplete in that sense, but they would become complete as time goes on.