Bill C-31 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to improve the integrity of the electoral process by reducing the opportunity for electoral fraud or error. It requires that electors, before voting, provide one piece of government-issued photo identification showing their name and address or two pieces of identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer showing their name and address, or take an oath and be vouched for by another elector.
It also amends the Canada Elections Act to, among other things, make operational changes to improve the accuracy of the National Register of Electors, facilitate voting and enhance communications with the electorate.
It amends the Public Service Employment Act to permit the Public Service Commission to make regulations to extend the maximum term of employment of casual workers.

Canada Elections Act

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Not so fast, Mr. Speaker. The member suggested that this problem was discovered after Bill C-31 was passed, with almost everyone's consent and hard work, and I appreciate the hon. member's hard work on attempting to rectify it by introducing this bill.

What I understand is that although that bill received royal assent in June 2007, in fact the problems had been detected before then. I am a little confused, because the first notice that I would have had was when my hon. colleague, quite in a genteel fashion, suggested that we have an all party meeting on this in the fall of this year.

To be precise, when did it come to the government's attention? The member is a government member, and it is not even the new government anymore; it is the government now. When precisely did it come to the attention of the government that there was this problem with respect to addresses?

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Souris—Moose Mountain for bringing this forward, particularly the hypocritical stance of the member for Wascana, who quite frankly has made several of these comments before. He says one thing, but when we examine the record closely, as my colleague has done, we find out that actually the reverse is true in terms of his voting patterns.

It is quite clear that not only did the member for Wascana vote in favour of Bill C-31, but all Liberal members of the procedure and House affairs committee, during examination, missed the fact that there was this gap. It is a shared responsibility. For anyone, whether it be the member for Wascana or any other member, to say that this was the blame of the Conservative government is absolutely incorrect and hypocritical, since this bill passed this House, with the exception of the New Democratic Party which voted because of the homeless issue, not because of the fact that residential addresses were contained in the bill. We should have addressed that gap.

With respect to my colleague's question about correcting this quickly so that non-residential address voters in his riding can vote, yes, we wanted to deal with this expeditiously.

I should also state that we have the assurance of the Chief Electoral Officer that this bill does correct the gaps contained in Bill C-31. In the opinion of the Chief Electoral Officer, Bill C-18 fixes that problem, completely corrects it in fact. We will have a letter to that effect to bring to the committee when we start examining Bill C-18.

The Chief Electoral Officer also stated that should there be an election prior to Bill C-18 receiving royal assent, he would be prepared to use his powers of adaptation to ensure that no rural voter was disenfranchised because he or she did not have the correct residential address on his or her identification.

Between the powers of the Chief Electoral Officer and the powers contained within Bill C-18, we should have this problem fixed.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to commend the House leader for taking immediate steps on this because it affects rural voters in my constituency, but there is probably a fair share of blame and hypocrisy in the House. I know the member just referred to the comments previously made, but the member for Wascana said that this was a glaring mistake and he referred to it as a Conservative government screw-up, a massive screw-up. Yet at the same time, when we look at the voting record on the Canada Elections Act, the Bill C-31 amendment, the member for Wascana rose on both feet and voted in support of it, notwithstanding the error.

Perhaps the member could comment on the fact that my rural residents now, even with a box number, will have the right to vote with this amendment correction. Perhaps the parliamentary secretary could comment on the hypocrisy exhibited by the member for Wascana.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I should probably correct my hon. colleague, who seems to be confusing two different bills. She quoted my comments in Hansard, and correctly, I might add, but they did not deal with Bill C-31. They were about another bill on expanded voting opportunities. That is a bill through which we want to increase the number of days on which voters can cast ballots in advance polls. We are debating that right now in committee, my committee, which I am missing in order to be here to share my comments with members. It is now called Bill C-16, which used to be called Bill C-55, and is on expanded voter opportunities. It really does not have anything to do with Bill C-31.

However, I would point out one other flaw or misinterpretation the member is trying to foist upon members of this place. She said, quite correctly, that in committee the NDP voted against Bill C-31, but it was not because NDP members identified the flaw of the residential address. NDP members voted against it strictly on the basis that they felt the homeless would be disenfranchised.

I will speak to that, but the NDP voted against Bill C-31 not because, as some of the NDP members have tried to suggest, they discovered before the bill was passed that there was this flaw on residential addresses. Nothing of that sort occurred in conversations in the procedure and House affairs committee. Every single member missed this one gap, this one little glitch that eliminated or disenfranchised rural voters who did not have a residential address. I want to correct the record on that.

Specifically on the question of the homeless, I spoke to that in my main address. We have taken great pains to try to make it as fair and as equitable as possible. Yes, many homeless, perhaps the vast majority of homeless, do not have proper identification. However, if they are members of or frequent attendees at a homeless centre, they can get the attestation, whereby the manager can say, “I verify this person's name and the fact that he or she resides in the centre”. Secondly, they do have the ability to have someone to vouch for their identity.

Finally, I would say, again as I mentioned in my main address, is there any legislation in this place which will ensure that absolutely, without question, 100% of eligible voters will be able to cast a ballot? Probably not. There probably never will be.

However, we have taken great steps to ensure a balance between the ability to ensure voter integrity and the ability of everyone who possibly can vote to do so.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for presenting this bill in an attempt to fix Bill C-31, a bill that the NDP of course voted against when it originally came forward. We raised some very serious concerns at the time about the number of voters who would be disenfranchised, yet all three parties in the House, the Liberals, Conservatives and the Bloc, supported the bill. Now we see the problems emerging.

On June 18, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform said:

What we are trying to do, by presenting a bill that will give increased and expanded voting opportunities for all Canada, is attempt to raise the level of voter turnout.

Yet what we saw with Bill C-31 was that it in fact disenfranchised at least one million people in rural Canada. We also raised as an issue people who are transient or live in homeless shelters. I wonder if the member could specifically comment on how homeless people and people living in transient shelters will actually benefit from this attempt to fix a flawed bill.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is asking about someone who is a snowbird and who is, for example, vacationing down in Phoenix, where I suppose half of Saskatchewan goes in the wintertime. If an election is called in the winter, he is asking, would these provisions capture any inequities in the ability of those individuals to vote?

The regular rules and regulations for special ballots remain in effect. In other words, if people are away at the time of a vote, they can still get a ballot. They can have a mail-in ballot or a special ballot of some sort. They will still have to produce some form of identification to get that ballot, but they will not be required to do anything beyond the norm.

Bill C-18 is here to address an inequity, a gap, that we found in Bill C-31, and it is here to ensure that people with non-residential addresses have the ability to vote at a voting station at the time they show up.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

And what their favourite dessert is, that is right. That happens in rural Saskatchewan. It happens in rural Canada.

So the argument that this bill still does not quite capture all of the potential problems or glitches I think is something that has been captured by this vouching system.

Will there ever be a system where absolutely, without question, 100% of individuals who live in this country and are eligible to vote will be able to cast a ballot unimpeded? I do not think so, but I think the chances are very remote that a lot of people will be in that situation. I think that Bill C-31 and this new Bill C-18 will have captured the vast majority of people who are eligible to vote and who wish to vote.

Therefore, I would strongly urge all of my colleagues to stand in this place and give this bill speedy passage. I know that none of us in this assembly want to disenfranchise anyone who lives in rural Canada because of something that was an error, something that was missed in the first piece of legislation, Bill C-31.

To speak of that for just a moment, Canadians watching this debate may ask how this could have happened. How could this bill contain such an obvious error and omission and still get passed into law? I think that is a shared responsibility, quite frankly. It was simply something that was missed. When we were first discussing Bill C-31, the procedure and House affairs committee gave its unanimous consent to bring the bill forward to be presented as a piece of legislation and we just simply missed this.

We also had officials from Elections Canada come before the committee on two occasions to examine Bill C-31. They missed it. No one picked up on the fact that the term “residential address” might cause some problems for Canadians who had a non-residential address. Bill C-31 went through the whole legislative system, passed this place, passed through the Senate, was granted royal assent and became law. It was only after the fact that we found out there was a gap in the legislation. That is why we are taking swift action to rectify this.

I would certainly hope that individuals in this place would recognize that and pass this bill speedily and get it to the Senate, where I hope the other place treats it in a similar fashion and gives it speedy passage so that we can get royal assent for Bill C-18 prior to any impending election.

One last point I should probably touch upon deals with the non-government issued photo ID requirements that I spoke of earlier. If hon. members recall, Bill C-31 contained two provisions for identification. One is to produce a government-issued photo ID stating a person's name and address, such as a driver's licence. Also, if people do not have photo ID, they can give two other pieces of identification, both of which must have their name on it, but only one of which needs to have an address on it. Those pieces of identification come from a list approved by Elections Canada.

Some would ask what kind of identification would be approved by Elections Canada. There are many pieces of identification that would suffice: student ID cards, hospital cards, library cards or even a government-issued cheque stub with a person's name and address on it. Those are the types of things that would be eligible.

Also, because I know the NDP has questions about this and has problems with the fact that we are even asking Canadians to produce identification, what about people in homeless shelters? The NDP says that homeless people do not have identification.

However, we have attestation, whereby a manager, for example, or a supervisor at a homeless centre, could attest to the fact that a person is who she says she is and she resides in that homeless shelter which is part of that riding. We have even gone to those lengths to ensure that, not only for the homeless but for senior citizens who may reside in seniors' centres and who can be attested for by the supervisors or managers of those seniors centres if they do not have proper identification.

I think we have done as much as we possibly could to ensure that there are no individuals disenfranchised, but also to respect the spirit of the original Bill C-31, which is voter integrity to try to prevent voter fraud. The only way, in our estimation and in the estimation of the procedure and House affairs committee, to ensure that voter fraud is eliminated or at least curtailed as much as possible is to have identification presented at the time the individual goes to a polling station.

In other words, I believe Bill C-31 and now Bill C-18 strike the proper balance between the ability of individuals to exercise their franchise and vote in federal elections and, on the other hand, the fact that we want to respect the integrity of the voting procedures and the voting system by ensuring there is no fraud in the voting system.

That, in a nutshell, is the genesis of Bill C-31 and it is why we introduced Bill C-18 to try to correct that gap contained in Bill C-31. Again, I would strongly encourage all of my colleagues in this place to support Bill C-18. I hope we can see its swift passage through this place.

[Marc Mayrand]

At every election, in every riding, we exercise to determine how many advance polling places there will be. In the last election, the number of advance polling places increased by 20%. It depends on all sorts of geographic and demographic factors as well as the availability of staff, of course. However, we are taking the necessary steps to increase the number of polling stations and to ensure that these stations are located in places that are accessible to voters. Of course, this will never be like a full voting day.

Bill C-31, which has been passed, will also make it possible to do more in this regard. We can now use the returning officers a little more to get this preparatory work done. So that should give us a little more flexibility.

As regards the Register, Bill C-31 introduces some amendments that will come into force in December and particularly in March. They will definitely improve the Register and make the list much more reliable for the parties, entities and candidates.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to stand today to speak to Bill C-18, verification of residence. It is important for me to put things in context as to how this bill came about and why we are debating it here today.

It all started in the last session with Bill C-31, the integrity of voters, in which we debated at committee and in this place on the plans for the government to introduce legislation that would require voters to produce identification before voting at a polling station in their riding. This was something that was unique. Prior to the bill being passed there were no requirements for visual identification or identification of other sorts prior to voting.

We wanted to make sure that we took appropriate steps to ensure that there would be no voter fraud at any election in the future because we had heard many times from many sources information suggesting that there had been perhaps isolated incidents, but incidents nonetheless, of individuals fraudulently casting ballots in federal elections.

In fact, at committee we heard several examples of how this could occur. Very simply it could occur because someone who wished to impersonate or fraudulently vote in an election could pick up a voter identification card. These are the cards that are sent out to Canadians by Canada Post with their name and address indicating that they are to vote at a certain polling station or certain location in their riding.

Here is an example what would happen in some cases. These voter cards would be sent to apartments and many apartment residents might see it in their post office box, pick it up and just discard it in the garbage bin located in the foyer or their mail box location within their apartment complex. Some individuals then could literally go and take one of these voter cards, walk to the appropriate station on voting day, identify themselves as the person whose name appeared on the voting card, get a ballot and vote. Of course, that is fraud and we want to prevent that.

We had other identified cases in committee where one voter might get three or four voting cards. How would that happen? Simply someone may be named “John Doe” and at another address such as a business location might be named “Johnathan Doe”, or maybe “J.D. Doe”. So there are cases in which the same individual might be listed multiple times and that individual, should he or she wish to do so, would have the ability to go to different polling stations within his or her riding with these various voting cards and say “I am this person”, and then vote multiple times.

We wanted to take steps to ensure the integrity of the voting system and that was the genesis behind Bill C-31. When the legislation was drafted, it contained two provisions in terms of identification. One was that in order to be eligible to receive a ballot and cast a ballot, an individual would have to either show one government issued photo identified piece of identification such as a driver's licence or provide two pieces of identification that Elections Canada had prescribed, one of which would have the residential address on it and both of which would have the voter's name on it. Those two then would suffice and the individual would be able to receive a ballot.

Also, I want to inform all members of the House and all Canadians who may be watching that if people did not have proper identification, they still had the ability to get a ballot and cast a ballot by way of vouching. This quite simply was if someone came to a polling station and said “I live here, I am a resident of this riding, I want to vote and I would like a ballot”, but they did not have proper identification in one of the two prescribed forms that I just identified, they could get someone to vouch for them.

In other words, someone who was eligible to vote, who had proper identification and who lived in the same polling division would be able to say to the returning officer, “Yes, I know this person. This is the person who is who he says he is and he lives in this riding”. In that fashion that individual, without identification, would be able to cast a ballot.

We thought that this was an appropriate piece of legislation. It would sort of cover off all of the bases. It would ensure that there was integrity in the voting system, but at the same time it would place some requirements on voters to actually produce identification ensuring that the integrity within the voting system was paramount.

We debated this. We brought in witnesses. All committee members examined this bill very rigorously. We had officials from Elections Canada come in. We eventually passed this through committee I believe on June 20, 2007. It was later given rapid royal assent, which is unusual with some pieces of legislation in the Senate. I believe it received royal assent on June 22, 2007.

The reason we wanted to get this bill passed as quickly as we could, even though we gave it due diligence and we wanted to make it as expeditious as possible, is because as everyone knows in a minority government situation an election could occur at any time. Also, there were several byelections that were pending. We wanted to ensure that this bill was passed into law before any election took place, whether it be a general election or a byelection.

Recently, in the fall of 2007 there were three byelections in Quebec and this bill was in effect. People were required to produce identification. After the election of the three new members of Parliament, Elections Canada then took a look at how this identification requirement worked and whether it was sufficient.

Lo and behold, Elections Canada found a glitch in the system because the bill contained the phrase “residential address”. In other words, proper identification required someone to produce ID that gave the name and residential address of the voter.

There are many Canadians, approximately a million across Canada, who reside primarily in rural ridings or rural portions of a riding at least, who do not have a “residential address”. They have addresses that are contained in the form of a post office box number or a rural route number or even perhaps a land description. Technically, the way Bill C-31 was worded, those people would be ineligible to vote. Although they had an address, it was not considered to be a residential address.

As soon as the government discovered that we wanted to take rapid action to correct it. Once again we could be on the cusp of a general election. Once again there are several byelections pending. We wanted to ensure that there was no disenfranchised voter in Canada because of this glitch in the legislation that we had passed.

Therefore, we started a very rapid consultation process. I know I personally met with my democratic reform critics from the other parties with a suggested wording and a suggested change to correct this glitch in Bill C-31. We also consulted with Elections Canada.

Basically, what we came up with was a very simple but yet very effective fix to the problem at hand. It is quite simply that anyone who can produce identification at a polling station, name and identification of course, and whose address on their identification was the same as the address on the voters list, regardless of whether it was a residential address or a non-residential address, then that individual would be eligible to vote.

In other words, and I will use myself as an example because I would have been or I am currently I suppose, because this legislation has not yet passed this House, I am one of those disenfranchised voters. I live in a small community in Saskatchewan called Regina Beach. We all have civic addresses. I live at 308 Sunset Drive, yet no one has at home mail delivery. We have post office boxes. So on my identification it says P.O. Box 458, Regina Beach, Saskatchewan. Every single resident of Regina Beach has the same non-residential address, a P.O. box of some fashion and some number.

Under the terms of Bill C-31, since I do not have a residential address I would not be allowed to vote. However, by introducing Bill C-18, which we are speaking on today, the address I have on my identification is the same that appears on the voters list. Therefore, I would be able to get a ballot and vote. It is a very simple and effective fix. We feel this is something that, if all members in this assembly agree, could be passed quickly and I think we should.

Some have argued that it still does not deal with the entire problem and there still may be the odd person here or there who is disenfranchised or potentially could be disenfranchised. For example, if he or she moves into a community and does not have proper identification because the election was held within days of moving to a new location, the individual does not have a new driver's licence or any other identification that shows his or her new residential or non-residential address.

However, we still have the ability, as in Bill C-31, to vouch for individuals. If people are able to provide another person who is an eligible voter to vouch for them, they would be able to cast a ballot. I would suggest that in rural Canada this probably would be easier to do than it would be in urban Canada.

Let me explain. In urban Canada or larger cities, people come and go as houses are sold and new residents move in. It has been my experience that a lot of people in the larger cities do not know their neighbours well. Some do, but in many cases they are very insulated. They have a cocoon-like mentality. They go home at night, lock their doors and do not really notice what is happening around them.

Therefore, if voters in urban Canada or in a larger city have just moved into a new neighbourhood and do not have proper identification showing their new residential addresses, they may find it somewhat difficult to have someone vouch for them because their neighbours may not know who they are. That is usually not the case in rural Canada.

I can use my own small town as an example. If someone new moves into our community, it seems that within hours everyone in the community knows it. They know who the person is, where he or she came from, how many children there are and what the person does for a living.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, since this morning, I have felt a light breeze of hysteria blowing on this side of the House. Accordingly, I have decided that I should speak on this bill.

As politicians who have to face the electorate, we always state that the right to vote is not only a right, but should also be an obligation. So it works both ways. From that statement it follows that we must be able to establish the identity of the people who come to vote and to express their democratic choice.

I have heard many comments. They all came back to the fact that one could—at least, that is how it appeared to me—attack some segment of the population. In other words, the comments were discriminatory in some respect, which should not be the case. To exercise the right to vote, one must at least be capable of satisfactorily proving one's identity.

It would, perhaps, be interesting to look at the chronology of the events concerning voting with the face covered. We have gone through a similar situation in Quebec. Let us start at the beginning.

On March 22, 2007 the chief electoral officer of Quebec confirmed that women wearing veils could vote in the provincial election on March 26, even if they refused to uncover their face. Radio program hosts launched a campaign to persuade voters to go and vote with their face covered as a protest against the decision of the chief electoral officer.

On March 23, confronted with a public outcry and the possibility of seeing the election turn into a masked ball, the chief electoral officer of Quebec changed the electoral act: all voters would have to have their face uncovered.

On June 19, the members of the House of Commons adopted Bill C-31 to amend the Canada Elections Act. The bill provides for a photo identification procedure.

On September 6, the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada announced that women wearing veils could vote in the next federal election and in the September 17 byelections in Quebec without being required to uncover their face.

On September 7, the Liberal party, the Conservative party and the Bloc Québécois called on the Chief Electoral Officer to reverse his decision. The Muslim community of Montreal also expressed its disagreement with the new policy. The following day, of course, the New Democratic party reconsidered and demanded that the position of the Chief Electoral Officer be reviewed.

On September 10, at a news conference, Marc Mayrand, the Chief Electoral Officer, stated that he had no intention of using his exceptional power to reverse the situation before the September 17 byelections. On that date, at least four women voted in the byelection in Outremont wearing a burka, to show their disagreement with the Chief Electoral Officer. One man, in a wheelchair, voted wearing a balaclava.

On October 17, in his Speech from the Throne, the Conservative government gave notice of its intention to introduce a bill prohibiting electors from voting with their face covered. On October 23, as we had already announced, the Bloc Québécois introduced a bill to prohibit people from voting with their face veiled. On October 26, the Conservative government came up with a bill to prohibit anyone from voting in an election with his or her face covered.

Of course, the Bloc Québécois supports this bill in principle. However, we feel that there are certain provisions which, while not absurd, will have to be reviewed and probably amended. We are finding that the bill introduced by the government does not fully reflect the principle that all are equal before the law.

Indeed, the bill opens the door to violations of the principle of equality between men and women. The first five clauses of Bill C-6 were included to allow deputy returning officers and poll clerks to delegate their powers to another individual. This means that a male deputy returning officer could accommodate a female voter by designating a woman in front of whom she could uncover her face to confirm her identity.

The Bloc Québécois feels that this is unacceptable. We will, of course, support the bill at second reading, but we will demand that the first five clauses be repealed.

The bill also includes some exceptions. For example, a person who must keep his or her face covered for medical reasons could still vote by providing two authorized pieces of identification and by taking an oath. Bill C-6 also adds new provisions to the act that allow returning officers to appoint additional persons in polling stations, and to also delegate some of their responsibilities.

As I mentioned earlier, I heard some very strange comments, primarily from Liberal members, who said that this is a witch hunt, that we do not have the right to prohibit people from voting with their face covered, and that we were directly targeting a community. In fact, our position is based on the very principle of democracy, on the right to vote, and on the need to make it practically impossible to use someone else's identity.

Not so long ago, it would have been unthinkable for any voter to show up with their face veiled or otherwise covered, preventing their identification. Now, in a specific context where there is much discussion everywhere about reasonable accommodations, a common knee jerk reaction in some people is to often use certain pretexts to find fault with those who wear a veil or cover their faces otherwise. In Roberval, a veiled woman showed up and voted. We are not necessarily talking about a burka here.

This goes to show how the door can be opened for individuals who are probably looking to make a mockery of the whole situation and to demonstrate that it is possible to vote without proper identification.

I was quite surprised by the Liberals' reaction, especially given what the leader of the Liberal Party had said. The Canadian Press quoted him on September 9 as saying, “We disagree with Elections Canada decision and we ask them to revisit their decision. At the end of the day, you must be able to identify yourself when you vote”.

It was the Liberal leader who said that. Later, he stated that, on the one hand, he disagreed with Elections Canada's decision not to reconsider the issue of uncovered faces but that, on the other hand, he might be able to live with the provisions of the existing legislation. This means that, at one time, all political leaders in this House were singing the same tune, saying that identification was necessary to vote.

Several principles guide the Bloc Québécois' position on this issue. As I said earlier, the Bloc Québécois supports the bill. All voters should be equal before the law. I also indicated that, in 2007, the lawmaker amended the Elections Act to tighten the requirements with respect to voter identification. Among other things, Bill C-31, which was passed by the House of Commons in February 2007, no longer allowed people to vouch for more than one elector and required photo ID to be able to vote.

The Bloc Québécois and the other political parties believed that the Elections Act was clear enough and that by requiring voters to prove their identity, it was implicitly requiring them to uncover their faces.

However, because the Chief Electoral Officer refused to use his exceptional power to require that all voters uncover their faces, the Bloc Québécois believes that the act needs to be amended as soon as possible, as we are doing. That is why we introduced our own bill.

We must not forget that groups representing Muslim women assert that they have never asked to be accommodated in this regard. In an interview with Radio-Canada, Asmaa Ibnouzahir of Présence musulmane Montréal said:

These women have been voting for years, and they have never asked for special treatment, even though they know they could. They themselves took the initiative to show their faces, just as they do at customs or the passport office, because they believed it made sense for security reasons. So for them, it is perfectly natural to uncover their faces.

I believe that this quote is enough to put an end to the debate about the requirement to uncover one's face when voting. I therefore ask the Liberal Party to reconsider its position and face facts: in the interests of democracy, people must vote with their faces uncovered.

[Marc Mayrand]

The third operational issue relates to polling stations. Polling stations will be in the same location for day 1 and for polling day. In rural areas, the only places available for use as polling stations are often schools or places of worship. It is possible that churches are available only on the Monday, while schools are available only on the Sunday.

In fact, some 11% of the approximately 20,000 sites currently used for polling on Mondays are in churches or other places of worship. We believe that, in many cases, schools or churches will not be available for two days in a row, on a Sunday and Monday.

Our fourth operational issue is that there are certain risks associated with leaving uncounted ballots in the care of some 64,000 election workers. It is possible that some people will quit—or worse, disappear—between day 1 and day 0. It would therefore be preferable to consider alternatives in order to give returning officers ways of coping with these inevitable situations.

To address the challenges presented by two consecutive polling days, I would ask that you consider the three following solutions.

Firstly, day 1 advance polling stations could be open for eight hours, as is already the case, but on a staggered schedule from east to west. Thus, polling stations would open at 11:00 a.m. in the Atlantic provinces, Quebec and Ontario, at 10:00 a.m. in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, and at 9:00 a.m. in British Columbia. In this way, polling stations in British Columbia would close at 5:00 p.m. instead of 8:00 p.m. on day 1, giving election officers in the western provinces comparable rest time as eastern provinces and thereby reducing the risk that they fail to report in the morning of election day.

Secondly, returning officers should have the discretion to locate a polling station at two different sites in the event that it is not possible for polling to take place at the same site on both day 1 and day 0. Our aim would be to have polling take place in the same location on both days, but in some cases there might be no choice but to use two different sites.

My third proposed solution to the aforementioned challenges is as follows: returning officers in each of the 64,000 polling stations should be given discretion to decide on the best solution for safe-keeping ballot boxes and uncounted ballots, in accordance with instructions from the Chief Electoral Officer. Such instructions would include a range of options for returning officers such as storage in a secure location at the polling station site or the office of the returning officer, or even at the deputy returning officer's home.

The second challenge regards the rules applicable to voting day and the day before voting. The bill states that advance polling rules will apply on day one. On the day after, of course, polling day rules will apply, but it's the same election workers who will have to apply both sets of rules. As a result, they will need to be given additional training so that they can apply different procedures for each of the two polling days they are hired for.

For example, during the advance poll, the poll clerk must complete the register of the names of electors who voted and have it signed by the elector, who identifies himself or herself and provides the required piece of identification before he or she can vote. By comparison, on election day, once the elector has identified himself or herself and provided the required pieces of identification, all the clerk has to do is find the elector's name on the voters list and cross it off. Electors then can vote. This makes the process much quicker, much more fluid, and simpler for both electors and electoral workers.

To address this challenge, I would ask you to consider amending the legislation in such a way that the polling day rules for the conduct of the vote also apply to day one advance polling, except with regard to polling hours. This recommendation would have two effects: one, obviate the need to enter in the register the name and address of electors who have voted and to have electors sign the register; and two, allow bingo cards to be provided to the candidates' representatives every 30 minutes instead of just once at the end of the day, as is the case on the other advance voting days.

Lastly, I would bring to your attention the fact that our reading of the bill is that certain rules applying to polling day will not apply on day one. I'm thinking, for example, of the ban on election advertising and on the first publication of an election survey, as well as the right each employee has to three consecutive hours in which to vote.

The implementation period is another challenge. I'd like to address it, given the significant impact the bill could have on the conduct of elections. As drafted, the bill would come into force three months after royal assent. I have to tell you right off that Elections Canada can't possibly get ready to hold an election according to the new rules in such a short period of time.

The proper implementation of Bill C-16 will require considerable effort to educate voters, update the manuals, train election personnel, and upgrade the 11 computer systems affected by the amendments. Each of these activities require detailed planning, the development and adoption of stringent programs, and painstaking execution. None of these activities can be carried out satisfactorily within the three months set aside by the legislation.

Meanwhile, we still have work to complete to comply with the December 22, 2007, and April 22, 2008, coming-into-force dates for certain provisions of Bill C-31. The overlap with the implementation of Bill C-16 adds to the complexity of the task, particularly when it comes to modifying the computer systems.

Finally, all implementation and communication activities must be carried out while remaining ready at all times for a general election or byelection.

For all these reasons, I would ask you to defer the coming into force of Bill C-16 until January 1, 2009, assuming that the legislation receives royal assent before March 1, 2008. For my part, I pledge to do everything in my power, as was the case for certain key provisions of Bill C-31 last summer, to implement the legislation ahead of schedule if the preparations have been finalized.

Before concluding my remarks, I'd like to point out that the initial implementation costs of this bill will be a bit less than $3.5 million, and adding the two voting days will cost upward of $34 million for each general election. Ninety-four per cent of these costs have to do with the additional advanced voting day the day before the vote. The last general election cost $277 million, including reimbursement to parties and candidates of $54 million. These changes would therefore represent an increase of 14% of the total cost of a general election.

It may therefore be worthwhile to review the impact of these changes on voter turnout for a general election following the bill's coming into force.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, Elections Canada supports the objective underlying this bill, which is to make it easier for electors to exercise their right to vote. I would ask you, however, to consider certain amendments to the bill in order to provide some limited flexibility in the administration of those new rules.

Furthermore, I would ask you to defer the coming into force of the bill so that we can have time to put in place the tools needed to ensure the success of the new provision while ensuring the integrity of the electoral process.

In closing, I would like to provide the committee with some technical documents suggesting wording for the proposed amendments to the bill.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Marc Mayrand]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm pleased to appear before the committee today to discuss Bill C-16, the purpose of which is to add two advance polling days to the election calendar.

This bill provides greater flexibility for us to serve electors by giving them more opportunities to exercise their right to vote. In so doing, it facilitates participation and access to the electoral process. Access is, in fact, one of the strategic objectives Elections Canada set itself in the five-year strategy plan that we recently developed.

However, the bill presents a number of operational challenges, which touch on three elements: the fact of having two consecutive polling days in some 64,000 polling stations: differences in rules applicable for the day before election day and for election day itself: and, lastly, the proposed timeframe for implementation.

These challenges are in addition to a series of changes to the electoral process that include Bill C-31, passed last spring, and upcoming changes addressed in different bills recently introduced in Parliament. The adjustments resulting from the successive changes present challenges for electors, political entities and election officials that must be taken into account.

With regard to the first challenge, the bill provides for one last advance voting day the day before polling day. Day 1 in our jargon, and that is how I will refer to it this morning. Day 1 polling would be held in all of the approximately 64,000 polling stations used on polling day. This creates several operational issues for Elections Canada. I would like to focus on four in particular.

The first operational issue is recruiting and retaining election officers; indeed, this was already a major challenge even before the introduction of Bill C-16, owing partly to the fact that returning officers must wait for political parties to supply the names up to the 17^th day prior to election day to hire deputy returning officers and clerks. And on that day, the political parties have usually supplied less than half of the names needed to fill openings. This means that, 17 days before polling day, most of the recruiting has yet to be done, and we need to be ready for the advance voting days, which start one week later. Furthermore, it is sometimes necessary to train up to 800 people in order to fill the 500 to 600 positions in each electoral district.

The second operational issue relates to polling stations and opening hours. Polling stations will be open from noon to 8:00 p.m. in all regions of the country, which effectively means a 10-hour working day, if one includes preparation time prior to opening the polling stations and procedures required following the close of the polling stations. However, in British Columbia, Alberta and the Yukon, polling stations must open again at 7:00 a.m. or 7:30 a.m. the next day for approximately a 14-hour work day, for a total of 24 hours' work over two days. Not only is this a great deal to ask of election workers, but also a short rest period increases the risk that workers who are not rested and ready for election day will fail to report for work on that day.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I participate today in this debate on Bill C-6, which here and now, in this House, renews the debate on veiled voting.

In these early hours of this debate here in the House of Commons, the whole issue surrounding this bill is a very emotional one. I see that my colleague who spoke this morning and gave a speech filled with emotion is now leaving the House. I can see this is a very emotional issue.

I want to begin by saying that I have a great deal of difficulty, after hearing the first comments by the Liberals, in understanding the Liberal Party's position today in this House. As recently as September 7 of this year, the Liberal Party of Canada was calling for amendments to the act. It called on the Chief Electoral Officer to take action and to reverse the decision he made concerning voting in the byelections that were to take place on September 17 in Quebec. Indeed, it is hard to understand today's statements by the Liberals on this matter, when we heard the leader of the Liberal Party stating the opposite on September 7.

However, the debate here is not new. We must remember that it is part of the debate that has been taking place in Quebec in the context of two recent votes. I think first of the byelection that confirmed the election of Pauline Marois. As it happens, while the issue of veiled women voting was not at the heart of the campaign it certainly was raised during that byelection.

We must also recall that this debate was also raised during the September 17 byelections in Quebec. As a matter of fact, the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada announced that women wearing veils could vote in the next federal election and in the Quebec byelections on September 17 without being required to uncover their faces. The following day, the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party—I emphasize that—and the Bloc Québécois intervened, calling on the Chief Electoral Officer to reverse that decision. Later, naturally after some pussyfooting and hesitation, the leader of the NDP thought better of it and also demanded that the Chief Electoral Officer's opinion be reviewed.

The result is that we are now considering Bill C-6 which seeks to amend the Canada Elections Act to require male and female voters to have uncovered faces when voting or registering to vote.

Of course, the bill before us today includes some exceptions, one of which involves allowing voters to keep their faces covered for health reasons, but only on the condition, of course, that two pieces of identification be presented.

Furthermore, under Bill C-6, certain exceptions would determine under what circumstances—and these are the cases for which the law provides flexibility—a voter must uncover his or her face.

I would remind the House that this kind of debate has already been raised this year, when we amended the Canada Elections Act in order to be able to confirm the identity of voters. As I recall, we thought that the problems raised in the context of the two byelections—especially the one on September 17—had been resolved by that amendment. However, Bill C-31, which we examined clause-by-clause in February 2007, made it mandatory for voters to produce photo identification in order to vote.

Thus, it seemed sufficiently clear that voters were obliged to prove their identity. Fundamentally, that is the spirit of this bill. It is not a racial question, as some members have said here today. Rather, it is a question of verifying the identity of voters. At the time, we thought that amending the Canada Elections Act through Bill C-31 was enough to clarify the situation regarding voter identification.

I would remind the House, however, that the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada refused to use his special authority to require all voters to uncover their faces in order to vote. The Bloc Québécois would like to see that legislation amended as quickly as possible. This is why my hon. colleague from Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord introduced Bill C-465, to amend the Canada Elections Act: in order to ensure that voters vote with their faces uncovered.

I would remind the House that this accommodation, which would allow certain voters to keep their face covered while voting, is not the sort of reasonable accommodation called for by the Muslim community.

I remember that, during an interview on Radio-Canada on September 10, 2007, Ms. Asmaa Ibnouzahir said that Muslim women had decided themselves to take the initiative and unveil their faces because they thought it was a normal thing to do so as a security matter, just as they do at the customs or the passport office. The Muslim community itself, therefore, as represented by Présence musulmane Montréal—an organization that is quite representative of the community—said that these women had been voting for years and had never asked for special treatment, although they knew they had the right to do so.

There is no demand or request for this kind of accommodation, which would mean that women would not need to uncover their face. That is why we need to act as quickly as possible. Is Bill C-6 perfect? No, it is not, but it has the advantage of dealing with the situation in principle, in view of the fact that the Chief Electoral Officer refuses to use his powers under the Elections Act.

What are the imperfections in Bill C-6? We think that it does not abide by the principle of equality between men and women. Under the first five clauses in Bill C-6, deputy returning officers and poll clerks can delegate their powers to another person. Under this provision, a male deputy returning officer could therefore accommodate a female elector by designating a woman before whom the elector could uncover her face to confirm her identity. This is totally unacceptable.

It is as if citizens of Arab or Muslim origin came into my riding office but refused to be served by my assistant because she is a woman. I would tell these people that my assistant is perfectly competent and is there to serve the citizens. There is no possible doubt in this case that the equality of men and women is a basic right. I fail to see why this principle of the basic equality of men and women cannot be upheld in the bill.

I will finish by saying this is clearly an emotional debate. It is a debate that we need, though, because of our responsibility for democracy. We need to find the right balance in our ability to accommodate people. It is important to be able to identify people when they exercise their voting rights. Of course there can be some exceptions for medical reasons, but in general, we should ensure that when a citizen comes to a polling station, he or she must address the deputy returning officers or poll clerks who are there, regardless of whether they are men or women, and identify himself or herself, in accordance with the legislation that we are trying to amend today.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a complex question, because if we are indeed headed down the path of requiring all Canadians to visually identify facially, then everyone will need to have photo ID. Since that does not exist on a universal basis, we have to create it. I suspect that it is doable, but at a substantive cost. There are questions any government would have to ask itself. Is it required? Is it necessary? What problem are we trying to solve? Is there a problem of fraud?

I do not know if there is a problem of fraud. We keep being told that there is not and that we have always approached the electoral process on a trust basis. First of all, we trust electors to register. If they are not registered, we trust them to make sure they get registered and are on the list. We trust that once they are on the list they will self-identify, not necessarily doing it visually with photo ID but with an address and so forth.

At times there may have been some loopholes or some perception that progressively there was some abuse, so we tightened it up here and there. We tightened up one thing in Bill C-31, in that there was a belief that on election day in certain ridings, for instance, the number of people registering totally from scratch to be on the electors list and thus vote was growing by leaps and bounds. I have heard that in some ridings as many as 10,000 people registered to vote on election day, through the third method that I have highlighted. So then Parliament tightened it up a bit by saying that an individual can vouch for only one other person, not a whole slew of individuals.

Therefore, if there is a perception that there is some abuse or slippage, yes, Parliament can tighten it and so forth. In this instance, and it has been highlighted by a number of colleagues from all sides, there is no complaint. There was no report of attempted fraud or otherwise. So what is the problem we are trying to solve here? I do not know. I suspect it is in the perception and the perception that has been given to this. I think that whenever parliamentarians rely on perceptions when they are adjudicating rights, they should be very careful.

[Brian Murphy, Liberal, Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, NB]

Mr. Speaker, we are all interested in maintaining the integrity and credibility of the voting process. Those were the minister's words when he introduced the bill. He talked about widely reported cases of people voting while purposely concealing their faces but no apparent cases of fraud. Where is the line between fraud and concealing one's face?

Second, is the real gap not in Bill C-31 not addressing the concomitant result of requiring, in the first instance, a photo ID? In other words, the first option was photo ID, but there was nothing in the legislation that says what someone is supposed to do with that photo ID, unless my friend could enlighten us. It just sort of said implicitly that the photo ID would be compared to the person standing in front of them.

Finally, and very briefly, are we therefore, by the wedge of this bill, leading to a system where photo ID will be the norm even though many people in Canada do not have photo ID?