Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to again speak to the bill because I, along with my caucus, truly feel that this bill is bad for Canada, bad for the electoral system and is not what we need right now.
We have heard many arguments in reference to that this afternoon. I truly hope Canadians are listening.
Before I came into the House I met with some businessmen from Alberta. I told them that I had to come back into the House to speak to this bill. They asked me why I was doing that in the House of Commons and for what purpose. I told them that I did not have an answer. However, as I sit and think about the clauses in the bill, I can find some answers.
More and more, those parties want to turn politics into a retail business and, by having birthdates, it can be done. Using modern computer systems, we can target voters and give them selected information that will appeal to their age group, the kind of people one fully expects to see in there. By that token, we can be less than honest with voters about our intentions when we govern by selecting the kinds of policies that we present to them.
There is anonymity in the voting system and among the voters. Politicians need to tell them everything. When politicians get elected, they know they have not told the voters what they should know. This is a glorious opportunity for political parties to be selective with the voters in the information given. That is not part of the political system in which I want to participate. I want people to have full information about political parties, not some kind of Sears public relations platform that parties produce for different age groups.
This is probably where the voter age information is going and where it will be used by clever minds in political parties that do not have the integrity of the voter in mind first.
We have heard the numbers for voter fraud: 4 cases among 24 million voters. Let us talk about the candidate fraud that we have seen. How many candidates have misrepresented themselves when they said they were Liberals or Conservatives during the past three elections and then changed their mind? Out of the 308 ridings, we are talking about a far larger percentage than the voter fraud we have in this country. Canadians are tired of that.
What did we in the House do? Did we do something to stop the practice of candidate fraud? No. Two of the political parties turned down our bill to deal with candidates who do not stick to what they say after they are elected. Candidate fraud is, by far, the larger number in our electoral process.
What do we have here? We have a bill that tries to determine voters' identities. In many cases, a photo ID will be required. What percentage of Canadians have a driver's licence? Was that evidence presented to us? No evidence was given on the percentage of Canadians who have identification available to them at a moment's notice.
We do not understand the impact of this legislation on Canadians. We do not understand it and yet those three political parties are supporting it. This is shoddy work in the House of Commons. If one does not understand what is going to happen from the work one is doing, then one is not doing one's work properly. Since the evidence about the availability of identification to Canadians was not raised in committee, then we have not done our work. This bill should be sent back and re-examined in light of that kind of evidence.
We have a flawed bill. We have a bill that was amended with a clause that even Conservatives found unacceptable when they first heard it. Their gut sense told them it was wrong. They changed their minds for purely political reasons.
Now we have a bill in front of us that the three parties are willing to support and yet they are not even here to hear the arguments because they do not want to hear the arguments. That is a shame. That speaks to the problems we have in our system. I am not going to go--
