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.

[Marc Mayrand]

That was done before, in Bill C-31. Again, so far, it makes an improvement here by requiring those who place those calls to keep a list of the calls they place and provide that to the CRTC. There is an improvement—

[Annette Ryan, Director General, Employment Insurance Policy, Department of Employment and Social Development]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Chair, honourable members of the committee, good morning.

I am pleased to appear here today to speak to you about division 17 of part 6 of Bill C-31, which provides enhanced flexibility for Canadians taking care of ill family members to access employment insurance sickness benefits.

To provide context for the amendments proposed in Bill C-31, I'll briefly start by reviewing the Helping Families in Need Act, which was tabled in September 2012 and which did three important things to improve special benefits and support the families that are relevant for the section reviewed this morning.

First, the Helping Families in Need Act established a new benefit for parents of critically ill children, who are referred to as PCIC, of up to 35 weeks to support parents who are taking time away from work to provide care to support a critically ill child of less than 18 years of age.

Second, it provided a new flexibility to Canadians receiving parental benefits, allowing them to suspend those benefits and to access sickness benefits, if they are ill or injured themselves, and subsequently to reactivate their remaining parental benefits, if applicable.

Third, the act that was tabled in 2012 amended the Canada Labour Code to protect the jobs of parents who were taking leave of absence to care for these children, or also for children who were murdered or missing, which was another grant introduced at the time outside of the EI program.

With the coming into force of the provisions of the Helping Families in Need Act on March 24, 2013, the government effectively changed the rules for Canadians receiving EI parental benefits so that they can now qualify for sickness benefits if they fall ill and then can subsequently draw the parental benefits. The government, then, was essentially bringing new flexibility and responsiveness to the EI program for parents caring for children.

The new measures under discussion this morning in division 17 of BIll C-31 further extend this type of flexibility to access sickness benefits for EI claimants who are receiving the parents of critically ill children, PCIC, benefits, or compassionate care benefits, CCB, which are benefits that are extended for up to six weeks for Canadians who are taking care of an ill family member, whether parents, spouse, or members of the extended family—sisters, siblings, that type of thing. These benefits are similar in nature to parental benefits in that the claimant receives temporary income support to take care of vulnerable family members.

The proposed change would allow parents in receipt of PCIC or compassionate care benefits to interrupt their claim and draw up to 15 additional weeks of sickness benefits under the EI program. Based on our estimates, this change might benefit approximately 300 claimants per year. It's a bit difficult to put a firm number on it with the new flexibility, but we cost it at roughly $1.2 million per year. There are administrative costs on the order of $109,000 per year that will be absorbed within existing reference levels of the department. The proposed legislative amendments would not cost a lot of money but would provide additional income support and flexibility during essentially very difficult periods of family life.

I will note this morning that women receiving EI maternity benefits cannot suspend benefits in the same way. Maternity benefits provide income support for a 15-week period surrounding childbirth to allow recovery from physical or emotional effects of the pregnancy and childbirth. The logic is that because sickness and maternity benefits both essentially provide income support related to physical or emotional recovery, there is not that same logic to allow women who are receiving maternity benefits to suspend and to go on sickness. That is a core logic to table for you.

That said, the Helping Families in Need Act was structured so that, should a new mother's illness continue beyond the 15 weeks of her maternity benefits, she can now switch to sickness benefits when she starts parental benefits, which gives her the possibility of collecting up to 65 weeks in total of special benefits—15 weeks of maternity, 15 weeks of sickness, and 35 weeks of parental benefits—if that's the amount of time she wishes to take. This ability to combine benefits for maternity claimants was not available to birth mothers prior to the Helping Families in Need Act.

Finally, in addition to the changes to the Employment Insurance Act, amendments to part III of the Canada Labour Code are also being proposed in order to fully align existing leave provisions, particularly those regarding compassionate care leave and leave related to critical illness, with the associated EI special benefits. Changing the benefit policy means changing the Labour Code.

More specifically, these amendments would clarify that compassionate care leave and leave related to critical illness can be interrupted to allow employees to take sick leave and work-related illness and injury leave and then return to work.

I'll also mention that these legislative amendments, once approved, will need to be followed by changes to the EI regulations and the EI fishing regulations, so that we can ensure equal treatment among claimants across economic regions and types of claimants. All legislative and regulatory amendments would come into force on the same day, which has been targeted for the fall of 2014.

Finally, I will note that in division 17, a very limited technical amendment is also proposed to the Employment Insurance Act. This amendment adds a reference to the PCIC benefit in an instance where it was inadvertently overlooked when the EI legislation was first introduced to bring in this bill.

Let me conclude by thanking you again for the opportunity to contribute to your study. This brings an enhanced flexibility to accessing the EI sickness benefit, which is essentially targeted to enhancing the fairness of the program and strengthening the support provided to Canadians who are away from work taking care of family members when those people giving the care become ill or injured themselves. That's the core of the measure before you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Opposition Motion—Proposed Changes to the Elections Act

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House today to express my views regarding the New Democratic Party's opposition day motion concerning various reforms the fair elections act would bring to voter identification procedures under the Canada Elections Act.

The motion before the House also deals with the effects of these important reforms for specific groups in Canadian society. My remarks today will focus on this dimension of the issue and will demonstrate why the fair elections act would have beneficial effects on the voting rights of the groups listed in the motion.

I welcome this debate today, because it gives me an opportunity not only to contribute my perspective on what the real impacts of the voter identification reforms and the fair election act would be for the groups specified in the motion before us today but also because it will be an opportunity to provide colleagues with some of my thoughts on the multiple and significant advantages the fair elections act would bring to Canada's electoral system. In particular, I would like to highlight the importance of upholding the integrity of our elections and of protecting Canadians' right to vote.

I would like to make it clear to the House from the outset, however, that I disagree with the motion put forward by the New Democratic Party today regarding the bill.

The motion would have the House pronounce an opinion against the needed reforms the fair election act would bring to the current voter identification procedures set out in the Canada Elections Act. Furthermore, the motion would have Canadians believe that the fair elections act would have negative effects on the voting rights of the groups specified in today's motion, but I am pleased to say that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the fair elections act would have just the opposite purpose, that of protecting all Canadians' electoral rights from the risks of fraudulent voting and high rates of administrative errors, factors that can undermine confidence in the integrity of elections.

I would like to begin my remarks today with a few preliminary observations regarding the important enhancements the fair elections act would bring to our electoral system. The fair elections act proposes comprehensive changes to the Canada Elections Act. It is unquestionably important legislation that will reinforce the integrity of Canada's elections and will revitalize our democracy.

An element of particular relevance in today's debate is that the fair elections act would provide better customer service for voters by focusing Elections Canada's advertising on the basics of voting: where and when and what identification to bring. This measure will benefit all Canadians, including by facilitating the voting processes for all the specific groups referenced in today's motion.

For example, Elections Canada concluded in its evaluation report on the 41st general election that a top priority to increase youth turnout would be, and I quote, “increasing awareness about when, where and how to vote, by providing information in formats suitable for youth”. The fair elections act would ensure that Elections Canada would focus its communications messages on this crucial information for our electors.

I would like to add that the act would also establish an extra day of advance polling. The proposed change would give Canadians access to four advance polling days: the 10th, 9th, 8th, and the 7th days before election day. This important measure would also benefit all Canadians, including, again, those specific groups in society that are the subject of our debate today.

This would be an appropriate point to note that among the most important initiatives included in the act are measures to combat voter fraud and increase the confidence of Canadians in the electoral process. I think all members can agree that the prevention of electoral fraud is a very worthwhile goal and that every fraudulent vote not only undermines confidence in our elections but also, in effect, cancels out the legitimate vote of a Canadian.

In light of the fact that the motion before the House today refers specifically to the prohibitions in the fair elections act on the use of the vouching procedure and the voter information cards as replacements for acceptable identification, I would at this point like to take a few additional minutes to outline for the House precisely why it is imperative that those practices be prohibited.

I will first provide a little background information to explain precisely how the use of the vouching mechanism and the voter information cards for identification purposes relate to the current voter identification procedures under the Canada Elections Act.

With the passage of Bill C-31 in 2007, a mechanism was introduced for verifying the identity of electors and their residence upon registration at the polls and for voting. This was a significant advancement that our government brought to voter identification for federal elections in Canada. It helped bring us closer to restoring the confidence of Canadians in the electoral process.

As a result of those legislative changes, an elector voting in a federal election at an ordinary polling station must prove his or her identity in one of three ways. The first is by presenting one piece of identification issued by a government that includes a photograph of the elector and his or her name and address. The second is by presenting two pieces of identification, each of which establishes the elector's name and one of which establishes the elector's address. The third is by taking an oath, if accompanied by another elector whose name appears on the list of electors and who, after providing the piece or pieces of identification referred to, vouches for the elector on an oath. That is what is known as the vouching process.

There are certain safeguards in place that are intended to make the vouching process more reliable and accurate. For example, the voucher must have the required pieces of identification. He or she cannot previously have been vouched for. The voucher must reside in the same polling division as the elector. The voucher can only vouch for one elector; multiple vouching is prohibited. Most importantly, there is also supposed to be a record of who the voucher is and who he or she vouched for. This ought to create an effective deterrent to anybody who gives thought to vouching for an unqualified elector. However, in practice, those safeguards are undermined by the fact that there are high levels of irregularities being reported at the polls regarding the use of vouching.

Studies commissioned by Elections Canada demonstrate mass irregularities in the use of vouching. According to the Neufeld report relating to administrative deficiencies at the polls in the 2011 election, vouching procedures are complex, and there were irregularities in 42% of cases where vouching was used.The report indicates that even with increased quality assurance, the problem would not be remedied. The report found that in 38% of the cases where vouching was required, there was no record in the poll book that clearly indicated both who the voters and the vouchers were. This clearly does not mean that all of these cases were instances of voter fraud. However, it does mean that polling day irregularities by elections officers regularly undermine an essential safeguard in the vouching mechanism, which is to have a record of who vouched for whom.

While Elections Canada has estimated that as many as 120,000 voters chose to use the vouching procedure on election day, those voters could have proven their identity and their residence by other means. The fair elections act will require in law that Elections Canada communicate what forms of identification would be acceptable at polling locations. This important measure would provide voters with the basic information they need about what identification to bring to the polls before they go to the polls.

I would also add a few words about the measures in the fair elections act regarding voter information cards, which play an important role in informing Canadians about where and when they need to vote. It is important to recognize that voter information cards are not currently authorized forms of identification and cannot be used as proof of identification and residency. Since the voter identification requirements were established in 2007, we have had one general election when voter information cards were permitted to be used on an exceptional basis and one general election when they were not authorized forms of identification at all.

Potentially serious problems could arise if those cards were used as replacements for acceptable identification, since there is evidence that the use of voter information cards as identification presents the risk of voter fraud. For instance, studies commissioned by Elections Canada showed a one-in-six error rate on voter information cards. Such inaccuracies could allow those attempting to subvert election laws to use them to vote more than once or to vote in the wrong riding.

I would like to take a few moments to outline the current situation regarding the various forms of identification available to voters and to address the question of whether the reforms in the fair elections act would have any effect on their availability. This will illustrate quite clearly that the important voter identification measures contained in the fair elections act would not in any way disenfranchise the groups mentioned in today's motion: first-time voters, such as young people and new Canadians; aboriginal Canadians; and seniors living in residences.

I would also like to emphasize that the flexibility of the Canada Elections Act would not change. Rather, the goal of the fair elections act is, as I mentioned earlier, to prohibit only those specific administrative procedures that are risky and counterproductive, in particular the use of vouching and voter information cards as replacements for acceptable identification. In this way, it would minimize the risks of fraud and error in the voting process.

Nevertheless, even with the new protections introduced by the fair elections act, voters would still be able to choose from among 39 forms of authorized identification to prove their identity and residence, including a lease, bank statements, library cards, hunting licenses, Canadian Forces identity cards, and many more. In fact, the current authorized list includes not only about two dozen different kinds of identity cards but also a wide variety of original documents that contain a name and an address.

I would like to emphasize that this latter point is of particular importance with respect to certain groups in society that for various reasons may face challenges in proving their identity and residence. I would like to take a moment to elaborate on this point.

The kinds of original documents with a name and address that are among the 39 forms of authorized identification include a statement of government benefits, which would be employment insurance, old age security, social assistance, disability support, or a child tax benefit. It is unquestionable that this option would facilitate the identification process, for example, for seniors who live in a residence. They would be able to use their old age security statements to provide identification at the polls.

Moreover, the list of original documents considered to be suitable identification for the purposes of voting would also include letters from a public curator, a public guardian, or a public trustee. It could be documentation, such as a letter of stay or an admission form, issued by the responsible authority of a shelter, a soup kitchen, a students residence, a seniors residence, or a long-term care facility.

Clearly the option of presenting a letter from the responsible authority of a student or seniors residence could be quite useful for seniors who live in a residence or for young first-time voters who may be students living away from home while they attend an educational institution. Students would also have the ability to use correspondence issued by a school, college, or university to provide their identification. All of this would be in addition to the fact that student identification cards and old age security cards are both authorized forms of identification.

I have not yet mentioned the forms of authorized identification that would be of specific benefit to aboriginal Canadians. Specifically, the forms of identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer would include certificates of Indian status, also known as status cards. This is in addition to attestations of residence issued by the responsible authority of a first nations band or reserve.

I would also like to emphasize at this point that the Chief Electoral Officer would continue to authorize acceptable forms of identification at the polls. Furthermore, the Chief Electoral Officer would be encouraged to continue his efforts to ensure that the list of authorized identification contains documents to allow those with particular challenges in proving their identity and their residence to be able to do so. In fact, this is the central message of my remarks here today in the House.

The fair elections act would do nothing to detract from the flexibility and adaptability that is inherent in the current system of voter identification under the Canada Elections Act.

The government recognizes that these are key strengths of our electoral system, and as a consequence, the reforms in the fair elections act would serve to enhance those positive elements in the current system while minimizing the very real risks of electoral fraud.

With specific regard to new Canadians, those who are eligible electors would have been resident in Canada for some time prior to obtaining their citizenship and being able to vote in their first election, and so would not face greater challenges than any other Canadian in obtaining one or more of the 39 forms of authorized identification I have just talked about.

Additionally, I would like to note that Elections Canada has produced, in 27 languages in addition to English and French, a document concerning voter identification at the polls, which is intended to make this important information more easily accessible to voters from ethnocultural communities.

The fair elections act would do nothing to impede such important and fundamental advertising on the basics of voting: where, when, and what identification to bring. In fact, the fair elections act would ensure that Elections Canada focuses its advertising on this crucial information.

The reforms that the fair elections act would bring to the voter identification procedures under the Canada Elections Act are important and much needed measures that would help to ensure that our electoral system operates with the integrity that all Canadians expect and deserve.

In particular, the prohibitions in the fair elections act on vouching and the use of voter information cards as replacements for acceptable identification are designed to protect the vote of Canadians. This certainly includes the specific groups that are mentioned in today's motion: first time voters like youth and new Canadians, aboriginal Canadians, and seniors living in residences.

As I mentioned in my earlier remarks, the fair elections act actually has just the opposite purpose, that of protecting all Canadians' voting rights. With the fair elections act, our government continues to respond to emerging challenges in order to ensure fair elections in which the voice of every voter is counted.

I will bring my remarks to a close today by reiterating my opposition to the motion that has been put forward by the New Democratic Party today concerning the important reforms the fair elections act would bring to Canada's voter identification procedures.

I certainly hope hon. members will join me in opposing this motion and supporting the important changes in the fair elections act.

Fair Elections Act

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we might come to that. I think voter suppression is the key aspect of the bill. Bill C-31 started that, and we saw that in the United States. People were joking about voter suppression. I pointed out that it started here, when they were referencing some of the United States in the last election where voter suppression methods were used. We just had to look here where we are restricting people's access to their franchise.

Again, if the government really believes in universal suffrage, then universal enumeration should follow. I have to say that curtailing the Chief Electoral Officer is clearly a play to suppress elections, generally, by the government, to have more control. I know the government does not like it, and it is a matter fact. If we do not give resources and powers to the Chief Electoral Officer, then the government is being very transparent in one way, that is, it wants to, and is trying to, suppress votes even more.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today determined to outline our party's perspective on the difference between making changes to the Canada Elections Act to allow more people to vote and increasing the franchise for people.

Bill C-23 is really about the Conservative Party and about the problems it has had over the last number of years. We outlined some of them earlier.

I want to speak about our vision of a fair voting system and how we could improve voter turnout, not just for young people but for those individuals who find it difficult to vote. I want to speak about how we might do a better job.

I have previously quoted Alfred E. Smith, a former well-known governor of New York and a populist. He was a reformer in the area of child labour. He believed deeply in the idea of democratic development and was very passionate about it. He was a passionate advocate for the poor. He pushed for more democracy. One of my favourite quotes is, “All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy”. I believe in that.

We feel that we can address these issues in a better way than what we see in this legislation. The bill contains layer upon layer of technical aspects.

The Conservatives had a lot of problems. I will not go over all of them, because they are well known.

We hear from the government that this would open up opportunities for more people to vote. It would increase voter turnout. The problem is that the legislation would take away the very powers required by Elections Canada and its agents to encourage more people to vote.

In 2006-07, I was the NDP critic for democratic reform. I was responsible for providing our party's critique on Bill C-31. That was the last time we looked at changing some of the provisions in the Canada Elections Act. Photo ID was one of the provisions.

One of the provisions in that bill at the time, which we fought vehemently, was the addition to the voters list of birth dates. My colleagues and I had to enlist the support of the Privacy Commissioner to kill that provision. The other parties thought it was a great idea. They thought it was okay to have one's date of birth on the voters list. At the time, I called it a voter ID theft kit, brought to Canadians by their government. As we know, all that is needed for fraud is having someone's date of birth, address, and some other information. That is what the government wanted to provide. Thankfully, that was taken out of the bill after a lot of persuasion.

Another part of that bill was also interesting to me. When we were pushing the government on the issue of the introduction of photo ID, it had to acknowledge that many people do not have access to that kind of information. There was a huge hue and cry from people on low incomes, from seniors, and from transient people.

The government suggested that the provisions being put forward would be okay. One of those provisions was on vouching. The government changed the vouching system so that not just anyone could vouch for someone. It would have to be someone within the riding, and only one person could vouch. We came up with a suggestion we thought made sense. We suggested having a vouching system whereby the citizen could vouch for who he or she was and the ballot would be put aside if there was any concern and could be tracked.

The most disconcerting part of that legislation was that the Conservatives decided to continue what the Liberals had done in 1997, and that was to end universal enumeration.

I have listened carefully to the speeches. There is a lot of rhetoric from the other side about young people who are not voting. They said that with this legislation and by promoting the idea of voting, and the minister talked about telling people where to vote and how to vote, they will vote.

All of that has been done in the past. We have seen it. What has not been done and has not been acknowledged by the government, and which the minister and one of his colleagues acknowledged was a good idea, is having universal enumeration, meaning going out and making sure that every single person who is eligible to vote in every election is given that opportunity. We do not have that anymore.

Growing up, Mr. Speaker, you and I looked forward to when we would turn 18. A person would come to our door and enumerate us for the election. Our names would go on the voters list. We would know for certain that our names would be on the voters list, because we were enumerated.

We are asking that this provision be brought in. Let us go over what the government has said this bill will do. It has said that it will bring more people to the voting stations, because they will know where the voting stations are, and that more people, such as young people and others who are typically under-represented, will participate because of more publicity.

One thing is missing in that equation, and that is giving people the opportunity to vote because they have actually been enumerated. The sad thing is we put that idea forward previously, when I was the critic in 2006-07 when we debated Bill C-31, and the government rejected it.

Everyday people, as the government likes to call citizens, think it is common sense. It makes sense for everyone to have the opportunity to have his or her name on the voters list. What would that do for people who are students? I have a couple of universities in my riding. In the last election, they were caught between voting here, where they were at school, or where they reside in the summer. Their names did not show up on either list. If we had a dedicated process for universal enumeration, and not just in certain areas, as we do now, we would actually deal with that.

Seniors who might be moving from their residences into care homes or who have been in the hospital and have moved back home are another huge demographic that is left off the voters list.

For first nations, what we found out last time was that the requirement to have a photo ID also meant that people had to have an address. Well, when we look at addresses for people living on some of the reserves and in first nations communities, that was not the case. They did not have the address provisions. Tweaking was needed there. If people were there to do the actual enumeration, that would take care of it.

Those are what I would call common sense ideas, along with doing some other things that we have seen the Government of Manitoba do. It provides voting in places where we see actual activity, such as having young people voting in shopping malls. I think that makes sense. We could extended the opportunity to vote by extending the number of days for early balloting.

If we did those things, we could also promote. However, what the government has done in this bill is say that it would take the tools and the power away from Elections Canada. The idea of putting it in the Office of the Prosecutor is an interesting parlour trick. We saw what the government did with the Parliamentary Budget Officer. The government tried to put the Parliamentary Budget Officer away so that no one could actually get the accountability we needed. Despite that, the PBO was able to do the job.

The government would try to shut those things down. Make no mistake, at the end of the day, this bill is not about opening the franchise to more people or increasing the opportunity for more people to vote. In fact, what this bill is about is the Conservative Party trying to deal with all of the challenges it has had in the last number of years. I will not go through the list with the in-and-out and the other issues around how its databases were abused for nefarious purposes.

At the end of the day, the NDP is saying a couple of clear things: Give Elections Canada the power it needs; give Elections Canada the resources it needs; and, finally, let us make sure every single Canadian who is eligible to vote has an opportunity to vote by bringing in and re-establishing universal enumeration for all Canadians.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague's speech, which covered a lot of terrain. One of the things she was concerned about was young people voting.

Having just had a youth forum in my constituency, one of the things that came up was that they wanted to be able to access their franchise through enumeration.

In parliament in 2006-08, Bill C-31 came forward. The member would remember that it was the bill where the government wanted to put birth dates on the register. That was incredible, and I do not have to tell the member that we opposed that, but that the Conservatives were supportive of it. We finally got the Privacy Commissioner to get rid of it, and I am sure she applauded us for doing so.

My question is this. To get more people to vote, we have a very simple solution. I put it to the minister and he nodded just minutes ago and said it was a good idea. Why do we not have universal enumeration for universal suffrage? It is something we have proposed. I wonder if the member would support that.

Strengthening Aviation Security Act

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join my colleagues in opposition to Bill C-42. It is clearly an important bill when we look at what is at stake.

There used to be a solid core of supporters and even members within the Conservative Party who prided themselves on the issue of privacy protection. That seems to have been lost recently. It has been pawned off at times, and I give the example of the bizarre and unusual case of the census conundrum.

The government has said that it wants to make sure that the privacy of citizens is protected. It has said that citizens should not feel obligated to tell the government how many bathrooms they have in their domain and other personal information. When asked how many people had actually complained about this, the government said one was enough. We are still not sure who that one person is. Some people think it might have been someone in the minister's backyard.

The point is this is not about the census and people know that. We in this Parliament are bound by the provisions for protection. We have the oversight. The problem with this bill is that we would be handing over Canadians' right to privacy to another government.

The government has talked about not being able to pony up the money for the database for the collection of this information. Not only will information be handed over to another government but that information will be held by that government and we will not be able to get to it.

I really want to underline the importance of the intervention made by my colleague from Windsor. I have had case after case right here in the nation's capital involving people who have been denied entry into the United States. When our government is asked what can be done, we are pointed to homeland security in the United States.

I do not know if the same situation exists in Saskatchewan, but I do know that people right across this country have been faced with it. If a constituent is on a no-fly list, his or her member of Parliament will probably talk to the minister or someone in his department. They are told that this is something that the department cannot handle. This is under the oversight of homeland security in the United States. After a very long route through voice mail, we can bring forward the case but that is the end of it. We will not be heard again.

Right now we have problems with regard to Canadians being able to freely travel abroad, particularly south of the border, and we have not figured that out yet. The government has been very silent on this during this debate. The government is going to oblige the United States when asked for this information, but we have not even figured out how to get someone's name off a no-fly list.

Constituents are scratching their heads and wondering why they cannot cross the border into the United States. They cannot figure out a way to get their name off the no-fly list. The government is about to open this up even further by sharing data through Bill C-42. It does not make sense.

Where is the consistency within the Conservative Party that used to stand up for privacy? This is not about the census. This is not about how many bathrooms there are in somebody's house. This is about a person's ability to travel abroad without the fear of being put on a no-fly list or without the sharing of personal information. That is what we are talking about here. We are talking about providing credit card information. We are talking about providing the date of birth of a Canadian citizen.

This reminds me of the debate in the House on Bill C-31 to reform the Canada Elections Act, when Liberals and the Bloc wanted to support an amendment to that bill and to streamline electoral practices by putting birth dates on the list.

Members may remember this. There was a strong debate in committee. I asked Ms. Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner, to come before committee to get her opinion on whether she thought having birth date information on an electoral list was a good idea. At the time I was not supported by the Liberals, Conservatives and the Bloc, who said that we had already heard from Ms. Stoddart. The problem was we had heard from Ms. Stoddart before the amendment was put forward.

I wrote to Ms. Stoddart and asked her opinion, as Privacy Commissioner, about having one's birth date on the electoral list.

Mr. Speaker, you will know, having been in a couple of campaigns, that the electoral list is shared widely. To have that kind of private information, with people's dates of birth, on a list that is circulated so widely is asking for trouble. Allowing others to take people's information from the electoral list to apply for a credit card or to do the other things that data miners do opens up many doors.

At the time, Ms. Stoddart got back to me and the House and said she had grave concerns about this compromising Canadians' privacy. Eventually, thankfully, that bill was dropped, but it was about to go through the House. It is the NDP Party that stood against that flagrant abuse of Canadians' privacy.

Again, I go back to the Conservatives and ask what happened. They used to be the ones who talked about protecting privacy. Now it is only about whether people have to say how many bathrooms they have in their homes. That is the line in the sand now.

What about when someone travels abroad? What about when someone's data is collected and captured by another country? Does that not matter any more to the Conservatives? Is it simply a matter of shrugging and saying this is the way we do things now? I want to underline that because this is a government bill.

To my friends in the Bloc and the Liberal Party, reviewing things after five years is not going to do what is needed, or even within two years or a year. If it is bad legislation now, do not pass it. When they vote for this bill, they are blessing this process. It is too late a year later, when a constituent asks how his or her information got into a database in the United States, to say we were told that it would not happen, that we trusted this would be a process our officials would keep their eye on. That is not good enough.

Today opposition members have an opportunity to say no to this bill. It is not about saying we do not want to negotiate with our friends south of the border. It is in fact saying that we should negotiate with our friends south of the border, which we did not do.

I am surprised that both the Liberals and the Bloc have decided this bill is okay. I say this because I know many of them and know that their constituents will be concerned about privacy. I am sure many of their constituents have been on the no-fly list and have not been able to get their names off it. I am sure many members have had to deal with those cases.

At the end of the day, I return to the issue of whether this is a good deal for Canadians. I say it is not: it puts our privacy in peril. If that is the case, then we as New Democrats say no to this bill. We need a better deal and we say no to Bill C-42.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, our party's concern with Bill C-42 is not news to other members. I should correct the record. I mentioned a moment ago that other parties had not put forward amendments. They have. I would consider them minor. A review of a process that is flawed should be addressed at the beginning, not after three years.

I want to go back to a debate we had in the House on Bill C-31. It addressed concerns around the electoral process in our country. I remember well the debates around the bill at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs The bill looked at how we could streamline the electoral process in this country. Our party was the only one to push against the provision for the government to allow birthdates of Canadians to be put on the voters' list. It had never been utilized before. It was fascinating to watch. People I thought were libertarians, people who believed in the protection of Canadians' privacy, simply caved on the issue of whether or not birthdates should be on the electoral list. It was the two other opposition parties at committee who welcomed this change.

Their colleagues were not aware that we would have birthdates on the electoral list. Thankfully, the Privacy Commissioner intervened, at my request, which was not initially allowed at committee. The committee thought we had heard enough from Ms. Stoddart, however, she had not been able to intervene on this new provision for electoral lists. She provided her opinion that this was a sellout of privacy of Canadians, that they should not have their birthdate on the electoral list.

It was astonishing to see the two other opposition parties allow this to go through. The provision was killed but not because of opposition from the government or the other two opposition parties. Our party fought against it. Why? It is a very basic principle that the privacy of Canadians is paramount. There are times when there is a need for authorities to have information on Canadians, but imagine having one's birthdate and address on a list for all to see.

At the time, we called it a theft kit for identification fraud brought about by the Government of Canada. That is really what it was. For those who want to steal an identity, whether it be for false credit cards or whatever, all that is needed is a birthdate and an address.

We fought against it. Thankfully, we were able to get a clear opinion from the Privacy Commissioner. That made a huge difference, to the point where that provision was eventually dropped. We relied on her office and her opinion to do that. The government fought against having her evidence brought forward at committee. Members sitting on that committee know of what I speak.

Here we are again looking at a bill that would compromise Canadians' privacy. I am astonished that instead of getting this right to ensure that Canadians' privacy will not be compromised, we are going ahead full bore.

The government has recycled countless bills through prorogation, elections, et cetera, simply so it can reintroduce them and claim it is moving ahead, usually on crime legislation. It is all politics, all the time. A bill as important as this gets very little debate, very little attention from the government and not a lot from my friends down the way in the opposition. In one case an opposition party thinks the bill is great and would push it through as quickly as possible.

Someone has to stand up for privacy in this country and in this Parliament. If we do not do that, we have to go to our constituents when the bill is passed and tell them we looked at this in Parliament and we are sorry their names were compromised and ended up on a no-fly list. We were told it would not happen on flights from Windsor to Vancouver.

It is not good enough. We have to be thorough. We have to be careful when we are talking about issues of privacy. This is very different from the Canada Elections Act. The elections act was an abuse of privacy. Ms. Stoddart talked about it in her testimony and we debated that in the House and at committee. This is about another government having access. It is one thing to have Parliament acquiesce and provide that information to Elections Canada that ends up being in the hands of anyone who has access to those lists, but it is another thing to provide that information to another government. With all due respect, it matters not which government. This is a question about our sovereignty. This is a question about who gets to decide the privacy of Canadians.

As mentioned by my colleague from the north, we are putting into law provisions that would allow, in this case, the United States, access to information that normally would not be given to it when a flight is just going from A to B within our own country. It is astonishing that we would go through the process so quickly with a government that makes no bones about the politics of keeping bills going for Parliament after Parliament. When it comes to an issue as important as the sovereignty of Canadians, it wants to get it through as quickly as possible.

We need to understand what is at stake here. We are not talking about being “soft” on terrorism. That should be thrown out immediately. If we are going to talk about provisions around security, let us look at where investments are being made. Let us look at border security. Let us look at shared information with regard to law enforcement. We have been very critical of the lack of investment in that area. Let us look at cargo inspection. If we really want to get at the issue of security, then we should put our investments in the right place. This is the veneer of security, at a cost. The cost is the vulnerability of Canadians' privacy.

In the first part of Bill C-42 the government did not do its usual play on language and nomenclature. I usually do not read the exact text because it sometimes is not as engaging as one might want to have in debate, but this is important. Proposed subsection 4.83(1) states:

Despite section 5 of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, to the extent that that section relates to obligations set out in Schedule 1 to that Act relating to the disclosure of information, and despite subsection 7(3) of that Act, an operator of an aircraft departing from Canada that is due to land in a foreign state or fly over a foreign state and land outside Canada or of a Canadian aircraft departing from any place outside Canada that is due to land in or fly over a foreign state may, in accordance with the regulations, provide to a competent authority--

Those are the other guys.

--in that foreign state any information that is in the operator’s control....

Let me be clear about the first part. It means that we have to amend our privacy rights for the bill to go through and it compromises Canadians. That is wrong.

[Marc Mayrand]

It did not take into consideration the Bill C-31 new responsibilities that they have.

[Marc Mayrand]

It didn't reflect the additional responsibilities that were given under Bill C-31.

[Marc Mayrand]

A number of things have been done that I can explain without providing all the details.

First, information is received more quickly from the vital statistics centres—the offices that report on deaths. Amendments made to Bill C-31 now enable those that make declarations for deceased persons to authorize the Canada Revenue Agency to transmit the information to us, which should somewhat offset the fact that certain deceased persons sometimes wind up on the lists.

Second, we have the phenomenon of business addresses that is being monitored very closely. Targeted address revisions are made, for example, when it is felt that the address given in the information that we receive may be a business address.

There's the “pile-up” phenomenon, or— how to say it, pardon me—the multiplicity of voters at a single address. That's also being reviewed systematically. As soon as we realize that more than five voters are at the same address, we ask the returning officer to go to the address in question to confirm that five voters are there, since it may happen that these are people who have already moved. This is systematically done on the occasion of an election, and we will be doing it as well, under Bill C-31, between elections. Now we can use the returning officers to improve the electoral list.

That said, you will be receiving the annual list in November with a quality study. You'll be able to see that nearly 94% of voters are registered on the list and that the accuracy of the information for all electors, including those who are not on it, reaches approximately 85%. I know it means nothing to you when a specific case is cited. On that subject, I invite you to inform us of incidents that you witness and of inaccuracies that you see on the list. It is important that the errors be brought to our attention so that we can take action and continue to improve the list.

[Marc Mayrand, Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada]

Thank you.

Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

I am accompanied today, as the chair indicated, by Mr. François Bernier, the legal services director at Elections Canada.

I was requested by the chair of this committee to assist members in the study of the review and treatment of election financial returns and the key considerations involved in the review of these returns. In discussions prior to my appearance, the chair requested that I provide a detailed explanation of the aspects of the legislative and administrative framework that relate to political financing under the Canada Elections Act and, more specifically, of the treatment of election expenses.

This will be the subject of the first part of the presentation. I hope it will provide the committee with a better understanding of the operating context in which decisions are made regarding reimbursement of electoral expenses. I will then turn to the subject of particular decisions of interest to the committee and explain how they relate to the legislative and administrative framework.

The mandate of Elections Canada is to administer the Canada Elections Act in a fair, consistent, transparent and impartial manner. As an officer of Parliament, my first duty is to serve Parliament and Canadians. While the committee is reviewing the activities of public office holders, I trust it will understand that in my capacity as Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, I can only speak to electoral matters. I will not comment on ongoing investigations of the Commissioner of Elections Canada, or the specifics of the case currently before the Federal Court. As well, I will not deal with any individual cases.

Mr. Chairman, with your concurrence, I will now proceed with the first part of my presentation. The committee has already received a presentation that extends to a number of pages—42 pages, I believe. So I won't read each of those pages, but I will simply make the main comments on the essential aspects of the presentation.

The presentation will contain four parts: first, the objective itself, as well as a part dealing with the key principles underlying the legislation and the administration of that legislation, the key aspects of the legislation, and, lastly, the aspects of the administration of that legislation. I will also provide a brief conclusion.

I think it's fair to say that the first hundred years of federal democracy in Canada have been focused almost exclusively on the conduct of elections and on progressively expanding the franchise--the right to vote--to all Canadian citizens. In fact, the right to vote became a fundamental right protected by the Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982.

This focus continues today, as the agenda of the 39th Parliament attests. For example, Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act, dealt with the appointment of returning officers, who are now the responsibility of the Chief Electoral Officer. It also dealt, under Bill C-31, with the integrity of voting. It also dealt with the issue of proof of residence, under Bill C-18. And it is considering, currently, Bill C-6, which deals with visual ID; Bill C-16, which deals with advanced polling; and Bill C-20, an important piece of legislation that deals with the appointment of senators. This is all to show that there is still a focus on the electoral process and the conduct of elections.

However, over the last 40 years, growing concerns have been expressed with regard to the influence of money in the electoral process. These concerns have led Parliament to incrementally design a regulatory regime to govern the use of money during electoral campaigns. We are now at the point at which Canada is at the forefront among mature democracies in how it regulates the influence of money in election campaigns. This regulatory regime of political financing was initially built in the seventies, and it has since witnessed repeated legislative reform that continues today. Again, this Parliament passed Bill C-2, which deals with contributions and gifts and which banned contributions from corporations and unions. It is also considering another important aspect of the financial regime, under Bill C-29, with regard to loans.

My purpose today will be to deal with a particular and key aspect of our political financing regime, that of election expenses and their treatment by Elections Canada under the Canada Elections Act. More specifically, I will touch on the legislative framework, the administrative framework, and the compliance and enforcement program.

There are certain principles underlying the legislative and administrative framework. First, to maintain public trust, are transparency and fairness. These principles are expressed through various provisions in the act that deal with public disclosure, expense limits, public funding, compliance and enforcement, and, something that is often forgotten, the distinctiveness of political entities. Each has its own regime, with distinct rights and obligations.

Transparency is about disclosure. It's about providing information to electors on candidates, parties, and other entities. It involves, with regard to financial matters, reporting revenues and expenses and the sources of those.

Fairness is the key principle of a healthy democracy. In our democracy, fairness is about allowing political parties' candidates to have an opportunity to present their visions, their policies, and their values to electors. What those are and how they are communicated to electors is the exclusive domain of political parties and candidates. However, legislation seeks to ensure that the competition among political parties and candidates to secure the vote of electors be conducted within certain rules designed to create and maintain a level playing field. One area of legislation, again, over the last 40 years, has been the adoption of rules that will foster this level playing field. These rules deal specifically with how money can be raised and how it can be spent in order for them to present ideas and reach out to electors.

The Canada Elections Act passed it to the CEO to administer these complex rules, with a view to ensuring that key principles are maintained at all times. In doing so, Elections Canada must act fairly and impartially and exercise due diligence at all times. When it finds evidence of non-compliance and possible offences, it must exercise the authorities provided by the legislation in accordance with all the requirements of fairness and due process, within the strict limits of the law. To do otherwise would undermine not only Elections Canada as an institution but also the democratic process itself.

Let me turn now to the key aspect of the legislative framework as it relates to the treatment of election expenses and the role these key principles play in the electoral law.

The relevant aspects of the legislative framework involve key definitions, a brief discussion of duties of official agents, the notion and concept of election expense limits, the concept of transfers among political entities, reporting requirements for those political entities, entitlement to reimbursement, and key differences between parties and candidates. Note that some misunderstand the system and tend to view parties and their candidates as a single entity, yet the law makes clear distinctions and establishes distinct responsibilities, benefits, and obligations for parties and candidates. For the most part, these are treated independently of one another. This is particularly true in disclosure and reporting requirements, which are different for parties and candidates. Access to public funding is different. Spending limits are set differently for candidates and parties. To some extent, rules governing the raising of contributions are different for candidates and parties.

Let's first look at key definitions. Under candidate electoral campaign expenses, there are three key definitions that need to be considered: candidate electoral campaign expenses; candidate election expenses; and candidate personal expenses.

Electoral campaign expenses are expenses reasonably incurred in the election and include election expenses themselves and personal expenses. There are electoral campaign expenses that are neither election expenses nor personal expenses. An example is the audit expense in excess of the subsidy. It is an electoral expense, but it is not an election expense. There is also the rent of an office outside the rent period. For example, when a candidate rents an office before the writ is dropped or carries the office after the polling date, these are electoral campaign expenses, but they are not election expenses.

An election expense includes any cost incurred or non-monetary contribution received to the extent that the property or service for which the cost was incurred or non-money contribution received is used to directly promote or oppose a candidate during an election period. The expression “directly promote” does not refer only to expenses incurred to expressly urge voters to vote for or against a particular candidate. It has a much broader meaning that encompasses all expenses that directly assist in getting a candidate elected. For example, it includes the rental of office space, equipment in that office, the computers, the supplies, and the remuneration of campaign workers during the election period. All such expenses directly promote the candidate and are thus election expenses for the purpose of the act.

The third definition has to do with personal expenses. Personal expenses of a candidate are his or her electoral campaign expenses other than election expenses reasonably incurred in relation to his or her campaign. Personal expenses include travel and living expenses, child care, and similar expenses.

It's important to note that there are three categories of expenses, each with its own definition and standards. Election expenses must generally be disclosed. They are subject to a reimbursement, and they are subject to spending limits. Personal expenses must be disclosed, and they are subject to a reimbursement. Residual expenses that are neither personal nor for an election must be disclosed, but they are not subject to a reimbursement. Again, I mentioned previously the subsidy for audit.

Another key concept in looking at election expenses is the notion of transfer. The act allows specific political entities of the same political affiliation to move resources amongst themselves without being subject to the restriction on the source and amounts of contributions set out in the act. A contribution is the amount of money received that is not repayable; otherwise it would be a loan. It is the amount of money received that is not repayable, or the commercial value of a service or a property, or the use of property or money to the extent that it is provided without charge or at less than commercial value.

Again, this is a new, essential concept--commercial value. How is commercial value defined? It's the lowest amount charged for a property or service by the person who is in the business of providing that good or service. Alternatively, it's what another commercial provider charges for the property or service who is not in that business.

At the end of the electoral campaign, candidates must file an electoral campaign return. That return is an account of all financial transactions for an election. It consists of a form that has 15 pages and is divided into four parts. It's a bit longer than even a tax return, so there's a level of complexity attached to filing those returns.

Let me give you an example of how these concepts can come together. Let's assume that a party pools the purchase of lawn signs for its candidates and offers those lawn signs to candidates. They have the option of accepting the package or turning it down. Let's say one candidate agrees to purchase 1,000 signs for his campaign and that those signs have a value of $10,000; however, the candidate can only afford $2,000. Provided the signs are used during the campaign to promote the candidate, the return will have to show the transaction as follows. First of all, the election expense will be $10,000 for the candidate, because he received those 1,000 signs and used them during the campaign. That's the amount shown as the expense. Within that he will show the paid expense as $2,000. He will show a non-monetary transfer of $8,000, which is the commercial value of the signs that were transferred from the party to the candidate. The amount shown as the expense will be counted against the spending limit and it will be eligible for reimbursement. The amount shown as non-monetary will count against the spending limit, but it will not be reimbursed since nothing was paid for that amount.

This is a very simple example of how those transactions have to be reflected in the return.

To emphasize the critical role of money and the need to rigorously control inflows and outflows and ensure that financial activities are strictly within the constraints of the legislation, the legislation provides or requires that each candidate appoint an official agent. In fact, a candidate cannot officially run as a candidate without having appointed an official agent. This is a must under the legislation.

An official agent is much more than a bookkeeper. In fact, if we can do an analogy, he or she could be seen as a treasurer or a financial comptroller. You have on slide 9 the key duties of an official agent.

Generally, the official agent is responsible for controlling all electoral campaign expenses; that is, for a candidate's campaign, only the official agent or the candidate or someone authorized in writing can incur an electoral campaign expense. So you will understand that to fulfill his or her duties, the official agent must of course be familiar with all the concepts and the definitions I mentioned earlier and must develop a good understanding of the underlying principles of the legislation.

Let me talk briefly about expense limits. The first point to note is that there are separate limits for parties and candidates and that those limits apply to election expenses, whether paid or unpaid, and include the commercial value of non-monetary contributions or transfers.

Elections Canada calculates those limits for each in accordance with a formula set out in the act. I will not go through the specifics of the formula, except to say that, for candidates, that formula takes account of the number of electors, the population density in the riding, and the geography of the riding, and provides an adjustment for inflation.

Spending limits for parties are a little bit simpler to calculate. It's the number of electors in the ridings for which candidates are presented by the party.

For the 39th election—that's slide 13—the average expense limit for candidates per electoral district was a bit over $81,000, and for a registered party that endorsed a candidate in all 308 ridings, the limit was set at a bit over $18 million. What does that mean? One may be tempted to say that in total a party having 308 candidates could spend altogether up to $18 million for the party and up to $24 million, almost $25 million, given the limits of each and every candidate, for a total of $43 million. However, to look at it in this manner would be mistaken, as the law does not consider the political family as one entity but rather, in this case and this example, as 308 distinct, separate entities with their own rights and obligations.

Let me talk briefly about transfers. The Canada Elections Act recognizes the organic link that exists in the family of political entities, allowing them to move funds, goods, and services among themselves without treating those movements of resources as contributions. The provision of resources from one political party to another, which is not specifically provided for under the act, constitutes a contribution and is subject to the eligibility and limits set out in the act.

Transfer of expenses is not permitted, as this would render the distinct limit of parties and candidates meaningless. As you can see, it is absolutely essential to keep all those definitions and concepts as we look through various returns provided at the end of electoral campaigns.

You will find on slide 15 a table showing the transfers, what is allowed and what is not allowed. Clearly, you will see that transfers between parties and candidates are perfectly allowed by the Canada Elections Act. It has some standards, but they can move resources freely between entities.

You will note that for candidates, these movements of resources can start only after they've been officially declared candidates, meaning that their candidacy has been registered with the returning officer. You will also note that transfers to candidates after polling day are allowed only to pay for unpaid claims and for nothing else.

You will find again at slide 16 another way of looking at it. There is a triangle on that slide that shows the relationship between the party, the candidates, and the EDAs, and the respective rights and obligations for each. You will see clearly that the transfer of money, goods, and services among all three entities is allowed. You will also note that the transfer of expenses is not allowed, and you will see that Elections Canada is overseeing, through various programs, how the money flows among entities.

I should point out that for the 39th election, Elections Canada dealt with 15 registered parties that had over 1,200 electoral district associations, and with over 1,600 candidates, each with their respective agents.

On page 17 you will find a table of the transfers reported in Canada through returns for the 39th election. You will see that all parties represented in the House have transferred resources with their affiliated entities. These have taken place between candidates and parties, between candidates and EDAs, and between parties and EDAs.

Canada Elections Act

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Timmins—James Bay for the incredible work that he did at the committee in trying to correct the serious flaws in the bill.

Bill C-18 has a bad history. It started with Bill C-31 when the government moved on legislation that was supposedly based on incidents of voter fraud. I was at some of those committee meetings where we asked questions on whether there was voter fraud going on across the country. Elections Canada told us that there were only isolated incidents and yet that original bill was brought in to a crushing effect. Hundreds of thousands of people, including in my own community of East Vancouver, are now disenfranchised as a result of the original bill and would still be disenfranchised as a result of Bill C-18 that is before us today.

I want to thank the hon. member for the valiant efforts that he made in committee to ensure that some witnesses were allowed to point out the serious flaws in this process and in this bill. However, it seems that this has fallen on deaf ears. Not only has the government been in denial about the impact of this bill, but so has the official opposition and the BQ.

It is quite stunning to see that other parties in this House have refused to acknowledge the disastrous impact of this bill and the impact it will have on people in urban areas, as well as rural areas, but because the issue in urban areas was never addressed we are now disenfranchising people.

I would like to ask the hon. member to comment from the point of view of what he heard from the witnesses and what he will see as the impact of this bill on people in urban areas.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I normally preface all my speeches by saying that I am very proud to rise in the House and speak to a bill; however, I am not very proud to rise and speak to this bill, because we are speaking about the increasingly dismal trade of politics as it is practised in Ottawa.

When someone does a job badly, and it is found out that the person has done it badly, it is incumbent upon the person to fix it. I have done many different jobs over the years and I have been proud of all of them.

When I was a dishwasher, if the cook did not like the way I washed the dishes, they came back to me right away and I would do them again, otherwise I was not going to hold that job.

A house builder would not get away with putting up a wall wrong. The foreman would come in and determine whether the wall was built right or wrong. If it was built wrong, it would be torn down and rebuilt.

As a musician, boy oh boy, musicians know what would happen if they did not satisfy the crowd on a Saturday night. They would hear about it right then and there and if they were going to keep those gigs, they had to improve.

What is our job here in Ottawa? Our job is to bring forth legislation. We have to do due diligence on legislation. It is incumbent upon all of us at a certain point to check our partisan hats. We need to examine proposed legislation and bring perspectives from our regions. Each of us represents different areas of the country. There are many different political and cultural points of view. We have to look at legislation and determine its efficacy, because at the end of the day, it will become the law of the land. That is our foremost job in the House, and it has to be undertaken with the utmost seriousness.

When we deliver a law that has failed badly, it is incumbent upon all of us in the House to see what went wrong, to step back and see how the mistake happened in order that we can rectify it and take pride in our work.

Unfortunately, as I said, this is becoming an increasingly dismal trade because it seems that when a mistake is made, we do not look at what went wrong. We turn it over to our spin-meisters and our wedge issue people to try to re-write history and what happened. The path to understand how the mistake was made becomes deliberately obscured. When it becomes deliberately obscured, we are doing a disservice, because our fundamental job is to represent the best interests of this country in terms of bringing forward legislation that is applicable, that is just, and that in the field will actually help our citizens.

With respect to Bill C-18, I set out with some high hopes that we would rectify the problems of a badly flawed bill, BillC-31. My colleagues from the Bloc say that Bill C-31 was brought in to escape issues of widespread fraud. The committee examined issues of fraud because fraud is a very serious threat to the health of democracy. Fraud has to be sought out wherever it exists. It cannot be sought out with vague old wives' tales or writing on the bathroom wall. It has to be proven. It is incumbent upon the Chief Electoral Officer to hunt down any cases of fraud.

The committee looked at the issue of fraud and found one case which occurred in 2006. There were no cases in 2004. There were three cases in 2000. That is not to make light of electoral fraud. We trusted the Chief Electoral Officer to investigate and study any allegations out there. We came back with Bill C-31.

At the time, New Democrats were concerned that people would be disenfranchised. At the end of the day, regardless of what my colleagues in the Bloc say, the right to vote is an inalienable right in Canada. It is enshrined in the charter as one of our fundamental rights. We have to ensure that when people have the right to vote, they are not blocked from voting.

When Bill C-31 came out, lo and behold, we found there were not one but two major problems with it. A million rural residents were not going to be able to vote, thanks to a lack of due diligence in the committee's work. Then there was the issue of the wearing of veils when voting. Now we have Bill C-6. We have a bill that became law and within a few months we already have to have two other band-aid laws to repair the fundamental flaws in the first bill. When we look at Bill C-18, we have to ask ourselves whether it will fix the problem and if it will do it right. That is our obligation at the end of the day.

As referred to many times, the discussion on Bill C-18, is to fix a problem for rural residents. When anyone raises the issue of homeless people, there seems to be a fundamental balancing act. Do we worry about a few thousand homeless people in Vancouver or do we worry about a million residents in rural Canada?

However, nowhere in Bill C-18 does it speak to the issue of rural residents. It speaks to an act to amend the Canada Elections Act, the verification of residents. The verification of residents is the key element that leads to the potential disenfranchisement, as the electoral officer said in one case, of a million rural Canadians, including urban Canadians, first nations Canadians and then homeless people.

I will not to focus too much on Bill C-31, but we need to know where we came from in order to know why we still have a fundamental problem. I know members of the House who were on the committee voted for it, but after questioned how this happened, that they must have missed a translation at third reading.

They did not miss it. They were not interested. We spoke about it. We brought forward witnesses who said that there would be problems with the ability of people to meet the onerous requirements of Bill C-31.

I spoke to Bill C-31. I am not patting myself on the back, but perhaps I was just too lazy to get the records of what everyone else said. However, I know what I said, so I will bring it up, and it is fairly straightforward.

When we discussed Bill C-31, I spoke of the problems we had in the rural parts of my riding and in other communities with mailboxes and the difficulties people would have in voting. That was on the record for many people. I spoke of the issues of photo IDs and the fact that on the James Bay coast, an area I represent, up to 30% of the communities did not even have health cards.

We help them fill out the health cards. The Ontario government does not even bother to do photographs for first nations people. It sends them little trillium stickers because it is cheaper than getting photo IDs. Therefore, we had raised the issue of the problems of identification in these isolated areas.

I had said at that time that I would invite anybody to go into Fort Albany and ask people their addresses. People do not have street addresses and that is how they get by. We find in many of our communities, they simply do not even have the most basic registration that is being required.

We were bringing forward the perspective of our regions and our constituents to bring a sense of reality to the debate. At the time, I remember it was ignored and overlooked. In fact, there was a fair amount of snickering. The old NDP was standing in the way of progress again.

I will refer to evidence at committee at the time from the Nishnawbe-Aski Nation, which was ignored. Witnesses said that the voting changes to Bill C-31 were:

—based on the assumption that the majority of Canadian electors live in urban centres. Until government services are made available in an equitable manner to our people living in remote communities and the amendments to the act reflect the realities of the lives of our people...I suggest that the committee, if possible, visit some of our communities to better understand the challenges we face in our role as Canadian citizens.

They were ignored.

Suddenly now we have a situation where there is an embarrassment that the bill has failed. Therefore, we were all called together to try to fix it. The issue of fixing it is paramount, but again we have to do due diligence. How do we do due diligence? We have to bring forward witnesses. This is not stalling. This is ensuring that we do not fall into the same mistakes that were made.

The process we went through with the bill was a very dismal, petty process. The Liberal whip tried to push the vote through without any witnesses. How can we go through with no witnesses when 80% of the people in Nunavut have been told they are not enfranchised to vote? Would we not think it would be incumbent upon us in the House, after having made such a colossal error, to at least have a witness who can speak to the bill and say whether or not it addresses the problem? However, no, it was a desire to get this thing done and out of the road by Christmas.

I brought forward four witnesses to speak to the bill because I felt the issue was whether the vouching system would work with what we had to address. There is no problem with the rest of the amendments to Bill C-18. We support the need to get this thing fixed, but the issue is whether vouching, in the way it is laid out, will be a practical, realistic solution to the problem.

We had four credible witnesses. There was a fifth witness, and I do not know where he had come from, but he was allowed to speak as well. They were given two minutes each to give their perspective on the bill. They were interrupted many times. They were cut off at the end. At the end of the day the chair basically told them they did not know what they were talking about.

I found that quite a shocking and sad testimony. Whether we agree with witnesses in committee or not, they come forward so they can given us a perspective and we can test their points of view. We are legislators, so when a witnesses come, whether they represent what we think is the most far out solution, our role is to test them, to ask them the fundamental questions to see if what they have brought forward to us stands the test of reason. That is how we make legislation.

Ian Boyko, from the Canadian Federation of Students, came forward. In his testimony, he said that to have only two minutes to address the problems with the bill and the vouching for ten of thousands of students who would be disenfranchised, he could not even begin to do it. He said that he would take questions, but nobody asked him a one.

I have never seen anything like this. I have never seen such a lack of interest. The head of the Canadian Federal of Students came to a committee and stated that tens of thousands of university students would be ineligible to vote because Bill C-18 would not address the issues they faced and nobody asked questions.

It is a funny situation when we sit in our committee and talk about encouraging young people to vote and how we can find ways to do that. Yet when they came to speak to us, nobody even had a question for them. They wanted it through.

Another astounding statement was from Jim Quail from the British Columbia Public Interest Advocacy Centre. He said that even if the changes went in, the changes that will address some of the issues we face, 700,000 urban residents would still not possibly meet the test. This is based on what the electoral officer had provided previously, and this does not include the other million people. That is based on 5% who would not meet those requirements because they have moved or whatever.

We heard in our committee on a previous bill that 12% to 15% of the voters in Australia now voted by declaration because of the continual movement in urban areas of people moving in and out or people who do not know anyone. Anyone who has an urban riding is well used to this. Even in the urban part of some of my communities, when I go into a neighbourhood six months after an election, it is almost like a completely different group of people in there. Sometimes I wonder if I am walking down the wrong street. However, a major mobility is happening across the western world.

Australia has identified that 15% of the people now vote by declaration. In declaration voting they swear and oath. There is no way to get them on the voters list. We do not have the old style days when we went out and updated the voting list so we ensured people were on there.

Even when we have the voting list, it is not up to date. Some people have tried to do a mail-out and have received calls from people, cranky as all heck, because the person no longer lives at that address or they have been divorced for years so why would a Christmas card be sent that address. We know the problems with the electoral list.

I saw that recently in Ontario. My wife and I went to vote and, lo and behold, she was not on the electoral list, and the house is in her name. I do not know how that happened, but people who trusts the computers that generate the Elections Canada lists put themselves in much higher hands than I would.

What we see is a problem of people who go to vote and are suddenly not on the list, or people who have moved to places where they do not know people. At the end of the day, they have a right to vote.

Jim Quail said that there would be 700,000 based on what the Elections Canada officer said. He could have been blowing smoke with these claims, but our job as legislators is to test him, question him and engage him. If we think these numbers are wrong, we have to test them. That is the only way we can bring forward legislation. Nobody was interested in what he had to say because members wanted the vote to be over.

This is the same pattern that happened with the previous bill. We end up in a situation where we have not done the due diligence, where we have not answered the fundamental question of whether this will work. That is what the legislation has to be able to prove. It has to prove it will work and ensure that the people, who have a right to vote, are able to vote. If we have not answered those questions satisfactorily, then we have failed in our jobs.

We certainly failed the job on Bill C-31. The problem with Bill C-18 is this. Having not answered the questions of why students will be disenfranchised, or will 700,000 urban residents be affected and how many of the 150,000 homeless people may not be able to vote, we have a serious problem.

The solution being offered is a one voucher system. At face value, it seems a reasonable solution to have someone vouch for another person. I do not have a problem with the concept, but when we make legislation, we have to establish laws that are applicable in the field.

They always say that the camel was a horse designed by a committee. We have had three and four hump camels coming out of our committees because there is such a distinct lack of reality between what we talk about in committee, which is the reality of politics, and what we see in the field. We are all in this business of politics, so we know what the reality is when we go to the voting booths and how the individual poll clerks identify what is acceptable and what is not.

I know a man in Ontario who has lived in the same rural route his whole life. When he went to vote, he was told he was not on the list. He produced his passport and was told a passport was not an acceptable piece of identification. It would get him into Saudi Arabia, but it would not allow him to vote in Ontario. Is this part of the Ontario elections act or is this how they interpret the act? We see the problems in each of these areas.

At the end of the day, the question is whether it works as a piece of legislation. Say I am a student who leaves Timmins—James Bay to go school at the University of Ottawa. After arriving there, I want to vote because the election is on September 15. When I go to vote, I am told I have to have a person vouch for me. What if my neighbour is not there that day or has already voted, then I have to wait on him or I cannot vote.

The example in a rural area is what if I know two people who moved in, but I am only allowed to vouch for one of them? Vouching, at the end of the day, is not practical so we have to go back to the issue of a declaration. Otherwise, people will continue to be disenfranchised. That is why I believe we have failed to do our job with this bill.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-18 on behalf of the Bloc Québécois. The Bloc supports the principle underlying the bill. The House of Commons passed Bill C-31, which modified the Canada Elections Act. The bill was needed to try to address all questions that Quebeckers and Canadians might have about eligibility to vote.

For the past several years, the federal government's way of holding elections made it practically impossible to guarantee beyond a reasonable doubt that voters were who they claimed to be. That is why we needed Bill C-31, which was passed in February 2007. I will summarize the bill because that is what gave rise to Bill C-18. Sometimes, the government comes up with solutions to problems that have been around for decades. Sometimes there are little problems with those solutions. The problem we are trying to fix with Bill C-18 is one of the little problems caused by Bill C-31.

Why did we want to adopt Bill C-31, and what was its purpose? From now on, people wishing to vote in a federal election will have to show government-issued photo identification, such as a driver's license, that shows their name and home address. Voters who do not have photo identification will have to provide two acceptable pieces of identification to establish their identity and their home address. The Chief Electoral Officer is responsible for publishing a list of acceptable pieces of identification that voters can show at the polling station.

I will read that list out shortly. The Chief Electoral Officer released it for the byelections that took place this fall in a number of places, including Quebec. Several types of identification may be used by individuals who do not have government-issued photo identification, such as a driver's license. As I said, voters can present two pieces of identification that appear on the published list.

Potential voters who do not have two acceptable pieces of identification will be required to declare under oath that they are the person they claim to be. They must also be vouched for by a registered elector. The objective of Bill C-31 was simple. It required a government-issued piece of photo ID, such as a driver's licence. Failing that, it required two pieces of ID from the list supplied by the chief electoral officer—I discussed this earlier—which was published during the byelections in Quebec this fall. If a person could not establish his identity, he had to take an oath in the presence of a person who was eligible to vote, who had a piece of ID and who knew the potential voter.

We thought this seemed appropriate and perfectly enforceable. We did not see a problem with doing things this way. Once again, I will provide the list of original pieces of identification that could be presented:

Health card, social insurance number card, birth certificate, driver’s licence, Canadian passport, certificate of Indian status, certificate of Canadian citizenship or citizenship card, credit/debit card with elector name, Canadian Forces identity card, Veterans Affairs Canada health card, employee card issued by employer, old age security identification card, public transportation card, student ID card, library card, liquor identification card, Canadian Blood Services/Héma-Québec card, hospital card, fishing licence, wildlife identification card, hunting licence, firearm acquisition card/firearm possession card, outdoors card and licences, provincial/territorial identification card, Local Community Service Centre card (CLSC).

Other original documents can also be produced, for example, a credit card statement or bank statement, a utility bill such as a residential telephone or cable television bill or an electricity, gas or water bill, a local property tax assessment, a school, college or university report card or transcript, a residential lease, a residential mortgage statement or agreement, a Canada Child Tax Benefit statement, an income statement or income tax assessment notice, an insurance policy, a government cheque or government cheque stub with the elector’s name, a T4E statement of employment insurance benefits, a Canada Pension Plan statement of contributions or old age security statement, a statement of benefits from a provincial workplace health and safety board, a statement of direct deposit for a provincial occupational injury or disability support program, a vehicle ownership or vehicle insurance card, or an attestation of residence issued by the responsible authorities such as shelters, soup kitchens, student or senior residences, long-term care facilities, aboriginal reserves or work camps.

The list of pieces of identification is very long, therefore, and a person must produce two of them if he does not have a government-issued piece of photo ID. It enables electors to find supporting documents almost anywhere, but if they still cannot, they can go to a polling station and take an oath in the presence of someone who knows the person, has met the requirements and already voted.

We thought, therefore, that we had covered everything when Bill C-31 passed. However, there was one little problem. The pieces of identification had to contain the elector’s residential address, and that was the problem. Almost all of us have addresses with a street name and number. However, there is still one situation that I myself saw when I was the mayor of a small town. It was only in the late 1990s that my town, Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix, got street names in order to have numbers. This was a requirement of the Government of Quebec, which was forcing most of the towns and small communities to have street names. It was expensive because we had to get names through the Commission de toponymie, prepare announcements, make poles and signs and so forth. That is why it had never been done.

So the municipalities of Quebec all entered the modern age. However, in a few of them and in some other regions of Canada, there are still no street names. As a result, the residential address of some people is just Rural Route 1, for example, without any street number or anything because there is none.

It was at the time of the byelections in Quebec, if not before, that we noticed that some electors had this kind of address. Although there were not very many, there could be a problem because they did not have a residential address in the prescribed form.

The purpose of Bill C-18, which we are debating today, is simply to allow a person to vote if he or she has two pieces of identification with the same information on them, such as Rural Route 1 or Rural Route 2. The purpose of the bill is simply to take this reality in a number of communities all across Canada into account.

I have some figures here. Elections Canada tells us that there are about 1,012,989 electors who do not have a residential address that meets the requirements of the Canada Elections Act as set forth in Bill C-31.

The list of electors is compiled by the Chief Electoral Officer, who is certainly well aware that some people have always provided an address that consists of a rural route. When the census is taken, people provide addresses which indicate “rural route 1” or “rural route 2,” and the name of municipality. The chief electoral officer has reported that some 1,012,989 electors have such an address.

In Nunavut, for example, 80% of residents do not have a personal address that conforms to the provisions of Bill C-31 that was adopted in February 2007. In Saskatchewan, some 189,000 electors are in that position, which is 27% of all electors; a significant proportion. In Ontario, this condition affects about 150,000 electors. In Newfoundland and Labrador, it amounts to 23% of the electors. In Quebec, the number is 15,836 electors, or 0.27% of the population, who could be faced with this same problem.

When the chief electoral officer recognized this problem, he drew it to attention of the various political parties. The purpose of Bill C-18 is to correct this anomaly. In doing so, those people who live on rural routes or who only have access to postal boxes—whose address might be “post office box 36” or “post office box 267” and the name of the municipality—which is not a residential address under the requirements of Bill C-31, that is to say, including a street number and street name and the rest, may in future present to Elections Canada workers two pieces of identification that prove their address is the same as the address that appears on the list of electors.

That will finally correct the situation of those 1,012,989 electors and it will conform to the new Bill C-31.

What is difficult to understand is the position of the other parties. I say the other parties but there is one party that is opposed to Bill C-18, the New Democratic Party, which was also opposed to Bill C-31. The argument advanced by the NDP is that we should preserve the traditional practice where there was practically no requirement for any piece of identification. In fact, a person did not need any identification in order to vote. It was enough to make a declaration under oath.

Obviously, there have been complaints for decades. Among others, in Quebec, for a long time there has been an angry outcry over this manner of voting in federal elections. In Quebec—I am referring to the province—a bill almost identical in every detail to Bill C-31 was introduced in the National Assembly in February 2007. Quebec had already decided to deal with this voting issue in order to ensure that the people who vote are the people who are entitled to vote. That is simply what it amounts to. It is a case of avoiding electoral fraud and underhanded practices.

It is difficult to understand how the parties of this House did not see this. Indeed, it is possible some people might have some minor problems. We talked about homeless people. We would like to work with all parties to resolve the problem facing people with no address. This is one way of proceeding. One way of resolving this for such individuals involves having them go to vote with another eligible voter, someone who knows them and can vouch for them. We would like to work to resolve this problem, but we cannot throw away an entire system that has been established to prevent fraud, toss it all away and return to archaic voting procedures that made it nearly impossible to confirm the identity of most voters.

Why not tackle a specific problem that affects perhaps a few thousand voters, without returning to the previous system, which, after all, does not guarantee any security, provides many opportunities for fraud against a vast majority of voters, and focus instead on solving a problem that affects a small number of voters?

Today, with Bill C-31, we are resolving a problem that affects a million voters. That is a significant number. We do not understand why the NDP will not support this.

When Bill C-31 was drafted, no one, not even the legislative staff who prepared it for the government, saw the problem posed by rural addresses and post office boxes. It only became apparent in practice. At that time, a bill was introduced to resolve the problem facing people who do not have a residential address that complies with the provisions of Bill C-31.

First of all, I would like those citizens listening to us to realize that their address is not the issue. They all have a residential address, whether it is a post office box, rural route or other, even though they may not have a street number. In Bill C-31, for the purposes of the Election Act, the residential address had to indicate a street number with a street name, rural route, or concession for it to be recognized as a personal address. When we refer to number 2 or 200 or 2250 on a street or concession, we are speaking of a personal address. When we refer to rural route 2 or a post office box, then it is much more difficult to locate the individual. It is not a personal address. In the case of a post office box, the mail is addressed directly to the post office or to a post office box, which is not necessarily located at the property address. The purpose of Bill C-18 was to correct that.

The Bloc Québécois will support this bill. We are on the eve of a federal election, which will probably take place in the spring. We do not want citizens to be denied the right to vote. When voters arrive with their identification, election workers may not allow them to vote because the address on their identification—even if the same as the address recorded on the electoral lists—would not be recognized as a personal address since it does not contain a street number. They could be refused the right to vote under the pretext that the election workers are not sure that they are who they say they are and they would be asked to swear an oath.

There is a problem, however, and the Chief Electoral Officer has pointed it out very clearly. It is all very well that someone who has a residential address can vouch for them. However, when someone lives in an area, such as Nunavut, where 80% of the territory has no addresses in the required format, even our neighbour cannot vouch for us, because our neighbour also cannot vote because his or her address does not meet the requirements of Bill C-31.

This is a fairly significant problem for part of Quebec, where It affects 15,836 electors, but even more so, for 1,019,000 electors across Canada. That is quite a large number. We hope that this bill will pass as quickly as possible. That should be done before the end of this session, if possible, so that the Senate can give it royal assent. That will allow the bill to come into force for the next federal election, which, as I was saying, will not be called much later than the spring budget, in my opinion.

Obviously, given that situation, there is some real urgency. Our electors should not have to face problems when they go to vote. We saw this to a very small extent, and forgive me for repeating myself, in the byelections in Quebec. As I said, those 15,000 electors throughout Quebec who were affected in the byelections held in Quebec this fall, do not amount to very many people. In a general election, however, the problem would affect a million electors, or nearly 4% of the population. That could cause a bit of anxiety in some communities.

We would not want things to be difficult for election workers. It is already not easy to find election workers. They are often people who are donating their time. Although the government may view the remuneration as generous, when we look at the number of hours they spend getting training and working on election day, the money the Chief Electoral Officer pays does not amount to a lot.

As well, if the voters are putting additional pressure on the election workers because they are unhappy that their address, the one they have always had and use every day, does not let them vote because it does not comply with Bill C-31, their wrath is going to be directed at the entire voting system and the entire electoral system, but in particular the election workers. Those workers do not deserve to have problems with electors who might—quite justifiably—complain. They have all their pieces of identification and their bills. We heard the list that I read out earlier. They have always received their hydro bills, their public utility bills or whatever at that address. But when an elector goes to the polling station, they are told that they do not have a individual street number, no personal address, and that, therefore, they have to find some other way of proving that they are in fact the right person. Everyone understands the issue and can probably imagine what this will look like on the ground. I would not want election workers to be put into this situation.

Consequently, I hope that all the parties, including the NDP, will appreciate the urgency, given that a federal election could be triggered as soon as the next budget is brought down. We need to act fast and call on Parliament to pass this bill by the end of the session, so that the Senate can give it royal assent. Then, this bill will be in effect when the next election campaign takes place.

To those who may be wondering whether the Chief Electoral Officer will have enough time to act, I say that there will be no problem, because the addresses are already on the voters lists. These addresses consist of a post office box number in a municipality or a rural route without a house number. Consequently, the Chief Electoral Officer simply has to tell election officials that when someone provides photo identification or two other pieces of identification with an address that matches the address on the voters list, the officials can assume it is the right person.

This will prevent 1,019,000 voters from having problems, causing congestion at some polling stations and making scenes for election officials. I repeat, these election officials are not paid well enough for what they do. Some will say people are never paid well enough. We have to consider the number of hours they put in, all the time they spend on site. They have to arrive early, before the polls open. Now, the polls are open for 12 hours. When the polls close, they have to put in as much time as is needed, because in some places, the election results are close.

Obviously, this will not be the case in Quebec, because the Bloc Québécois is going to sweep the province. But I hope the other areas of Canada do not have to deal with close results.

[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 in the House and speak to this bill at the third reading stage.

Bill C-18, quite frankly, fixes a problem incurred with voting. To provide a bit of context and a brief history of the reason for Bill C-18 coming before the House, it was because the House originally passed Bill C-31 which basically dealt with voter identification.

The intent of Bill C-31 was so that individuals who wished to cast ballots in federal elections would be required to produce identification showing their name and residency. This seemed to me to be a common sense provision because, as we all know, though Canadians have the right to vote, they have to be, number one, Canadian citizens and, number two, reside in the riding in which they wish to cast their ballot.

We wanted to put provisions in place that required individuals to produce identification, verifying that they lived in the ridings in which they wished to cast ballots. That was the genesis of Bill C-31. However, there was a problem. Bill C-31 stated that in determining proof of residency, voters had to prove their residential addresses.

This, of course, was debated in committee. The Chief Electoral Officer of Canada came before committee to analyze the bill. No one in the committee nor the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada recognized the fact that the term “residential address” or “civic address” would in fact exclude a great many Canadians.

Approximately one million Canadians, in fact, do not have residential or civic addresses. These are primarily rural Canadians living in ridings in Canada who would normally be allowed to vote, but instead of having residential addresses have post office boxes or rural route numbers or a land description, which would be their identification of residency.

Bill C-31 inadvertently excluded everyone who did not have a residential address. As I said just a few moments ago, approximately one million rural Canadians were in that category. If people lived in rural Canada, whether it be Saskatchewan, Ontario, British Columbia or Quebec, and had rural route numbers or post office box numbers instead of street addresses, with the passage of Bill C-31 they would be denied their right or ability to vote.

This flaw in Bill C-31 was first discovered in late September, early October, by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer. Following three byelections held in September in Quebec, the Chief Electoral Officer did a review of the voting practices in Quebec during those three byelections and during that examination discovered this flaw in Bill C-31 dealing with residential addresses.

He immediately informed the government, which, in turn, immediately took corrective action and the result is what we have before us today, Bill C-18. It very simply remedies the glitch found in Bill C-31 by stating that any individual who produces proper identification and whose residency information on that identification is consistent with the information on the electoral lists will then be eligible to vote.

In other words, to put it very clearly and graphically, if an individual has a driver's licence that says he or she resides at post office box 123 anywhere in Canada and the electoral list confirms that this individual resides at post office box 123 anywhere in Canada, or to put it another way, if the driver's licence information and the information on the electoral list are consistent, that individual can then vote and that remedied the situation.

That is why we introduced the bill, that is why the bill is before us today and that is why we wish, as a government, to ensure the bill passes and is delivered to the Senate today. We hope then that our friends in the Senate will pass it quickly and give it royal assent before the end of this calendar year.

The urgency is that there may be byelections or a general election very soon in the new year. No one knows the certainty of a general election, but we do know byelections will have to be called before the end of this month. We want to ensure that all Canadians in rural Canada, who had been disenfranchised inadvertently, are now back on the voters list, that they have the eligibility requirements correct and that they will be able to cast ballots.

I know almost all parties in the House, almost all members in the House, support this legislation. The exception being some members of the New Democratic Party. I find it interesting that their opposition is not really with Bill C-18, but with Bill C-31.

During debate and during committee examination of Bill C-31, the NDP primarily was concerned that many Canadians could potentially be disenfranchised because of the identification requirements contained in the bill. Specifically, the NDP was concerned because of the homeless. Many homeless people, perhaps the vast majority of them, do not possess identification. This was a legitimate concern raised by the members of the NDP. Their solution to that was quite simply that identification requirements contained in Bill C-31 should be eliminated, that people who did not possess proper identification as to proof of identity and residence should still be allowed to vote if they signed an oath or some kind of a declaration at a various polling station on voting day.

While I recognize there will be some individuals in the category of the homeless or maybe other transient individuals who do not have proper identification, the committee determined in its wisdom, and I supported this decision, that the public interest was best served if individuals were required to produce identification.

I believe it is a common sense approach. After all, if people cannot identify themselves, if they cannot prove they actually live in a particular riding, why then should they be allowed to vote? We were concerned about voter fraud. In fact, Bill C-31 was called the voter integrity bill. It was merely intended to ensure the integrity of the voting system, so everyone who wished to vote in a particular riding across Canada would have to demonstrate they actually resided in that riding. I think that is a reasonable approach to take. Hence, Bill C-31 was passed.

The opposition to Bill C-18 from my colleagues in the NDP has really nothing to do with Bill C-18. It goes back to their opposition to Bill C-31. Up to this point, they have been trying to, in my opinion, unduly delay passage of Bill C-18 because of their opposition to the provisions contained in Bill C-31.

However, I am very pleased to see Bill C-18 before us today. I believe we will see passage of this very important bill later today. I also hope, as I mentioned a few moments ago, that our friends and colleagues in the Senate, in their wisdom, will give speedy passage to Bill C-18.

I will reiterate that the bill was brought forward as a corrective measure to ensure that rural Canadians, who had been inadvertently disenfranchised by the provisions contained in Bill C-31, were dealt with in an appropriate manner to ensure they would have the ability to vote in the next general election.

There is nothing more complicated than that. There is nothing more detailed than that. It is merely a simple bill designed to correct an inequity that occurred.

In dealing with the bill in an expeditious manner, as we have, we have demonstrated that Parliament and the committee system within Parliament can work when all members determine that partisan interests should be set aside and the greater good be addressed. Even though there have been disagreements at committee, and I am sure we will still see disagreements to some extent in the debate today, at the end of the day objections will have been duly noted but the bill will pass and for good reason.

I do not want to stand in the House and say that a wrong was not corrected. We have the ability to correct, but we chose not to for whatever reasons. I believe most Canadians would vehemently disagree with that.

While Bill C-18 perhaps should not have been necessary, it was done so to correct an unintended consequence as a result of the passage of Bill C-31.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Continuing on, I believe it is incumbent upon us as legislators to bring forward laws that actually work and that are not simply quick fixes because everybody's rushing out to get elected in February. We have identified numerous problems with this bill, just as we identified problems with Bill C-31. We have to refer back to Bill C-31 strictly because this is the latest band-aid for a bill that was embarrassingly botched, and it appears our committee hasn't learned from that mistake and is going to continue on.

I must state that the issue of vouching is a problem. It has been identified as a problem. It isn't practical, so I move that clause 4 be amended by replacing the lines 20 to 36 on page 3 with the following:

(b) provides as proof of his or her identity and residence a sworn declaration in a prescribed form, which is present at all polling places and may be administered by the local deputy returning officer.

[James (Jim) Quail]

If I might speak to that, just to be a little more precise, what the amendment deals with is the following scenario. Here's a typical situation: someone lives in a rural area and there isn't a street address; the municipal authority hasn't given them a number on the street they live on, but they have their postal address, say P.O. Box 18, at some post office. They get all their mail and official documents there, so their tax assessment, for example, has that address. That, under Bill C-31, would not have complied; they would not have identification for the purpose of voting.

What this says is if the address information—post office box, whatever—on the voters list coincides with the document you bring in to identify yourself, you are deemed to have complied. So the thing it fixes is--as you say, if people are on the voters list who have identification that indicates a post office box, or, as I said, general delivery or some other designation other than a civic address, they are deemed to have ID that has a civic address. And you're correct, that's all it fixes, and that's why I'm saying it does an incomplete job of fixing the problem.

[James (Jim) Quail]

Yes. This bill, C-18, and actually I thought I was addressing it in my comments, deals with fixing one of the problems that was created by Bill C-31, and that is the rural voters. That's a very serious problem, and as I said, it's good to see that Parliament is doing something to fix that bit. It's like a coat full of tatters and there's one big patch being put on it.

This does nothing, though, for the people whose problem is not that their address isn't a civic address; it doesn't deal with the problem of people who don't have an address. It doesn't deal with the problem of people who don't have documentation. I'm assuming that Parliament introduced this bill in order to fix the problems created by Bill C-31, and my advice to the committee is it fixes a part of the problem, but there's still a lot of work to do.

If the real concern is that there be adequate identification of voters, there's a simple solution that doesn't require 700,000 people. A whole host of circumstances are going to disenfranchise people: people who are homeless, seniors who no longer have driver's licences or other necessary identification, people who have moved recently and their identification doesn't square with their address.

We filed a very large body of evidence with our petition to the court, and I commend that to anybody who wants to study it in detail. There's a big problem still left behind in spite of this bill.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Thank you.

Well, I find this a fascinating example of how dysfunctional this committee and this Parliament has been. Bill C-31 was a flawed bill; it was an embarrassing bill. This government has had to bring it back twice now to fix it. So C-18 is not simply a rural issue; it is a bill to address residential addresses.

We find we had this committee try to get this bill through without even asking any witnesses. They didn't want any recommendations as to why they had blown the bill so badly in the first place. So now we see this morning we have three parties that aren't even interested in asking any questions. I find this amazing, given the fact that one million rural voters were disenfranchised by this bill. Now we hear that 700,000 urban voters might not be able to vote, but that doesn't seem to have been an issue for anybody around this table.

I would like to say, for the record, that what I found in the pettiness and the myopic partisanship of this committee really speaks to what has happened with the voting bill. Bill C-31 was set up as a problem looking for a solution, a solution looking for a problem. Bill C-18 is an attempt to fix the mistakes that were made.

The other day, just to show you the extent of myopic views that we have on this committee, they wanted unanimous consent to get Bill C-18 through without any witnesses, without any discussion. I said we have to do due diligence. As legislators, our job is to do due diligence.

At the time, my good friend Mr. Lukiwski thanked me for not putting it through because he said it would give his party the opportunity to run 10% attack ads in Saskatchewan against the NDP. For what, I'm not sure. I suppose it's because we're doing our job.

So I'd like to begin my questioning.

Mr. Quail, you say that 700,000 urban residents will potentially not be able to vote because of this bill. Could you elaborate on that, because you are saying this is different from the one million voters whom this government has already booted out the door with their mistake?

[Murray Mollard, Executive Director, B.C. Civil Liberties Association]

Thank you.

My name is Murray Mollard. I'm a lawyer and the executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association in Vancouver.

We don't have very much time, and I'm going to keep my remarks very short. I have had the opportunity of appearing before a variety of committees in the time I've worked at the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, which is over 12 or 13 years now, and I've never had such short notice to be called as a witness as on this bill.

I am very concerned that this bill appears to be a very quick job, whereby Parliament is attempting to rectify a problem that was created by Bill C-31. We testified over a year ago, and we've been asked to testify again. I think the things we're wanting to say today, along with some of the other witnesses, are really about problems that we identified with Bill C-31 in the first place. There are various groups of voters who wish to vote and would like to vote but aren't going to be able to effectively vote because of the combination of Bill C-31...which really hasn't been rectified by Bill C-18.

I think for you as a parliamentary committee concerned with the issue of voting, the big question or the big concern we have heard with respect to the amendments to the Canada Elections Act is that there's a real concern about fraud. We still have to see any real evidence as to whether this fraud is a real problem or not, and certainly that is going to be an issue for us.

[James, Jim) Quail (Executive Director, British Columbia Public Interest Advocacy Centre]

Last winter Mr. Kingsley predicted that some 5% of voters would have difficulty casting ballots because of Bill C-31. That estimate was extrapolated from the experience of urban voters in Toronto municipal elections. Some 14 million Canadians voted in the last general parliamentary election, so 5% of that number is about 700,000.

Bill C-18 addresses a different problem, that of rural voters without assigned civic street addresses. In the public discussion accompanying the introduction of Bill C-18, we heard estimates that about one million rural voters could be affected by this problem. That million voters is a different group from the 700,000 urban voters Mr. Kingsley has warned us about.

Bill C-18 would fix a part of the problem created by Bill C-31, but only a part of it. If a voter without a street address or a post office box collects mail from general delivery in the Spuzzum post office and brings a hydro bill to the polls as one of their documents, according to Bill C-18 they will now be able to vote. An identically situated voter who does not use general delivery will not be allowed to vote.

If anyone can explain how it furthers the cause of confirming voters' qualification to have people prove that they use a post office box or a general delivery slot in a post office, I would be fascinated to hear about it. There is a word for a rule that makes a distinction in voting rights based on that kind of scenario. In my respectful submission, that word is “silly”.

After Bill C-18 there would remain distinctions that are a lot worse than silly. Parliament will still have disenfranchised homeless people. It is a result akin to reintroducing the concept of a property qualification for elections. Bill C-18 does nothing to resolve any of the problems created by Bill C-31, except to assist some rural voters who would otherwise lose the ability to vote. They would still have to jump through all of the other hurdles put in place by Bill C-31.

The most sensible solution is to repeal all of the new voter documentation rules that were introduced by Bill C-31.

By the way, I filed a petition in the B.C. Supreme Court seeking that the court do that, but I would suggest that Parliament undertake it itself.

Alternatively, Parliament should provide for a declaration and a prescribed form, which would be available in all polling places, rural and urban, for voters to attest who they are. That would be a far better proof of entitlement to vote than the production of a utility bill or a driver's licence.

It is gratifying to see that Parliament has recognized that Bill C-31 was off target and is taking steps to resolve at least part of the problem. I hope you will complete that job and ensure that every Canadian citizen has an opportunity to exercise their democratic rights in the next election.

Thank you.

[Ian Boyko, Government Relations Coordinator, Canadian Federation of Students]

My name is Ian Boyko. I'm the government relations coordinator for the Canadian Federation of Students, which unites approximately half a million students at colleges and universities from coast to coast in all 10 provinces.

I'm going to abandon my remarks today, because two minutes isn't enough to even touch on some of the things we have concerns with.

What I will flag for the committee is that my members are having great difficulty understanding the rush that was involved with Bill C-31 in the spring and now the rush that's involved with Bill C-18 today, when there are so many flaws in the Elections Act that prevent students and those with transient addresses from registering to vote.

I welcome your questions, specifically with respect to proof of identity and residence and the provisions for vouching, which will ensure that tens of thousands of students won't be able to meet the Elections Act requirements in the upcoming federal election.

As I said, we have serious concerns about the way students are being alienated from this process and why there is the rush on rural voters and not the rush on other very important voting populations who were ignored in Bill C-31 and are also ignored in Bill C-18.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, 2007 has been a great year for Canada and a great year for the House of Commons.

Next week is the last week of the fall sitting and the last week before the new year. The sitting and the year have been extremely successful for the federal government, as we have introduced legislation in all of our priority areas and have delivered results for Canadians.

However, since we have only a few sitting days remaining this year to address important tax cuts, security issues and other priority bills still pending, Canadians are expecting us to work very hard in the coming days to produce results for them.

We want to see our priority bills passed in this House and sent to the Senate so that they may become law before Christmas. As a result, next week will be 2007, a year of results week.

We plan to build on our past achievements by debating and passing the budget implementation bill, which would lower taxes for all Canadians by reducing the GST to 5%, as well as by bringing in tax cuts for individuals and corporations.

We will debate Bill S-2, An Act to amend the Canada-United States Tax Convention Act, 1984, which must be passed by Parliament before January 1 to ensure that it is implemented and we can benefit from that.

We will also debate our railway transportation bill, Bill C-8, and our bill on the settlement of international investment disputes, Bill C-9. Both bills will help create jobs and provide economic certainty for Canadians.

Our government will continue to show Canadians that we are serious about tackling crime and strengthening the security of Canadians. Next week, we expect that our security certificates bill, Bill C-3, will be reported back from committee. The bill will then be debated at report stage and third reading. We hope the hon. members of the House understand the importance of passing this legislation so that it may be considered and passed by the Senate before the deadline imposed by the Supreme Court.

We will debate any amendments made to our Bill C-13 on criminal procedure, currently being examined by the Senate.

Speaking of the Senate, the government hopes that the tackling violent crime act will pass the Senate so Canadians can feel safer over the Christmas holidays knowing that the bill has been enacted into law.

Canadians also expect their institutions to be more accountable and democratic. We have built a record of results on this file as well, with the passage of the Federal Accountability Act and Bill C-31 to improve the integrity of the voting process. Next week we will continue with our plans in this area by debating Bill C-29, which closes a loophole in our campaign financing laws that Liberal leadership candidates used to bypass campaign contribution limits last year.

We would also like Bill C-6, on the visual identification of voters, and Bill C-18, on the verification of residence, to be sent back by committee. It is important for these bills to become law, so that they can be implemented in time for the next byelections.

Tomorrow I will also seek consent to send Bill C-30, the specific land claims bill, to committee. This bill to create certainty and allow land claims to be resolved more quickly is a welcome addition and the country will be better off the sooner its process is put in place.

This year, 2007, has been an excellent year for Canada. Our economy is booming, the country is united and there is integrity in government.

We have achieved a lot this year. Our government has delivered real results for Canadians in 2007 and will continue to do so next week and in the new year.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

I have some concerns with this clause. This is Bloc-11. I have some concerns I want to make members aware of, and that is there are some parts of Bill C-31 that are not in place; particularly, the bingo cards issues are not up and running. I wanted to mention that to you.

The amendment is on the floor, and now I'll take discussions.

Mr. Reid and then Mr. Paquette.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I am in favour of adopting this bill as quickly as possible. If elections were called soon and if royal assent had not yet been given, there are people in my riding who could not vote.

Clearly, this is an error. We had not seen, in Bill C-31, the problem created by the changes. I know that everyone is in agreement with this change. The Chief Electoral Officer has brought a solution and will ensure that all of the voters of Quebec and Canada are able to vote.

I do not see why we should waste more time with something else. If we are all in agreement, then let us refer this as quickly as possible to the Senate.

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

If Madam Redman doesn't see it as friendly, then that's fine.

But in underscoring much of what Mr. Epp has said, hopefully Bill C-18 is one we all agree with. We've heard from Monsieur Mayrand. He suggests that Bill C-18, as presented, will fix whatever problems and unintended consequences came out of the old Bill C-31. It appears we have unanimity around this committee, so I think we could dispense with that fairly quickly.

I will add that we've all agreed that legislation should take priority. This is legislation, so let's deal with this and get this out of the way.

There will obviously be some debate on Madam Redman's motion. We also have two subamendments to that motion, so that could take a bit of time. Let's dispense with the legislation first and get it to the House as quickly as possible. That shouldn't take more than a few moments. Then we can go back to Madam Redman's motion. We have plenty of time. We have 35 minutes. We can do that very quickly.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you.

The question of establishing people's residence relates to the ID they have with them and the way in which the ID is written, but I'm wondering to what extent it also relates to the question of enumeration. We've had extensive discussions in this committee--a bit today, and also on days when you weren't here as witnesses--regarding the merits of more widespread enumeration. Sometimes they are in terms of enumeration in areas of high turnover, or in areas where people are unlikely to have the kind of normal residential identification that others would have.

In one case, in fact, when we were debating Bill C-31, an amendment was put forward to take this into account with regard to aboriginals on reserve by allowing a wider use of ID. The subject also came up in the context of students and the homeless in particular. It strikes me that perhaps persons who are rural voters might--or perhaps might not--fall under this category in which it would be beneficial to assist them with this type of problem.

Given that we are facing a situation in which we could be going into an election or byelections without having this bill fully passed, would more extended enumerations--either full enumerations in the case of byelections, or just more extended partial enumerations--assist in dealing with the problem you've identified?

[Marc Mayrand]

I would say yes, because I think this is an unintended consequence of Bill C-31, and I don't think Parliament ever intended to disenfranchise such a large number of electors.

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

I don't want to put words in your mouth, and I understand your reluctance, perhaps, to make an unequivocal commitment to use your power of adaptation, but do we have your commitment--again, so it's on the record--that you would do whatever was available within your purview to ensure that there would be no disenfranchised voters as a result of the gaps contained in the original Bill C-31?

[Marc Mayrand]

One of the difficulties identified during the course of the study of Bill C-31 was the absence of a national identification card. Because of this, the only cards that truly fill the requirements of Bill C-31 are cards delivered by provincial authorities. However, even these cards are not provided universally to all voters. There was a need to include in Bill C-31 a list of identification documents that could be used as an alternative, and most of them do not bear a photo.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I've just gone through a series of questions noting that up until recently that hadn't been a problem.

I guess my question—and maybe I should leave it with you to respond back to the committee—is whether there are other ways, perhaps, than legislation. I mentioned regulation. There are requirements to give electoral officers the power to discern whether or not someone is complying other than through legislation.

I again underline this, Chair, because we have a piece of legislation making up for a flawed piece of legislation. I certainly don't want to be back here in two months, or whenever, after an election to find out this is a problem as well. For the record, we'll state that's why our party did not support Bill C-31. It was a problem, and it remains a problem.

I will just leave it with our guests to respond if there are other ways—perhaps through regulation—that we can look at this.

The other thing—and we've already heard from our guest on this—is that I understand Mr. Mayrand can't give us a legal opinion on this legislation; that's not his job. So I'm just wondering if the clerk or the chair has had any request to departmental officials, say, from Justice, on the legal aspects of this bill. In other words, are there legal concerns—so we don't end up back here again in a couple months saying we have to have another bill to make up for this bill?

I leave that question for you, and I thank our guests for being here today.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I say that, Mr. Chair, because I'm concerned about the politics of this bill. The concept is fairly sound: have visual identification. The problem is the politics of this bill. And the problem with Bill C-31 was that we were given a flawed bill that we didn't necessarily need; so here we are....

My question to you, Mr. Mayrand, is whether there any other means, through regulation or giving discretion to election officials, by which we can confirm the identity of voters other than through legislation.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

I wasn't a member of this committee when it did the report that went into Bill C-31. I don't know whether that approach was examined at the time or not. It might be a worthy subject of study for this committee, if you want to bring it forward.

The broader question of electoral lists is one that certainly has interested me. The move from regular enumeration to a permanent voters list, it was hoped, would solve a lot of the problems. In the early years, people began to wonder if it didn't create a worse problem, and anybody who, in practical terms, whether in running campaigns or as a candidate, has had to work with electors lists saw a lot of those problems. On both sides of the ledger, as a guy running campaigns and as a guy being a candidate, I certainly saw some of those.

I should say, though, that I have been favourably impressed with how the system is getting better. I think the permanent electoral registry is improving. There are still all kinds of problems with it, and mobility is huge. It's fine, if people are interested and motivated to get themselves on the list and have the changes registered, but a lot of people aren't. If you don't have a driver's licence and are not interested in being on the list and don't check off the box on your tax return, it's pretty tough for the list to be up to date.

If you want to examine the notion of whether returning to enumeration is a better idea, that's fine. If you want to study the idea of declaration, that's fine, too. I think at the end of the day, people who are motivated seem, within our system, to be able to vote.

We should note, though, that returning officers are able to provide for enumeration in areas where they believe there has been particularly high mobility, or where they believe—in a new subdivision, for example, where there are new residents who wouldn't be on the permanent voters list because they're all just moving in, in areas of new and rapid growth.... One would hope those are used judiciously.

It's certainly open to all parties and all candidates, in discussing this with their local returning officer, to encourage that this kind of spotty enumeration be undertaken.

So there are mechanisms in place. I don't think we will ever come up with a perfect system. I was initially skeptical of the permanent voters list and thought enumeration was a better way to go, but I'm beginning to be sold on the permanent list as it gets better over time.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

The Australian system is very different, of course, as you know. In Australia, there are legal consequences if you do not vote. There is a mandatory requirement for voting, so people are voting for a very different reason. They are voting to avoid a penalty. They are voting to avoid a fine, in many cases. So I would not be surprised that you would find a different pattern of behaviour there.

That being said, I haven't particularly analyzed it. I'm not sure how much wisdom that would provide us, because it is such a different context.

I look at this first trial run—the results that I spoke of that were provided by Elections Canada—that showed a very favourable response in terms of people being able to vote. Most used photo ID, the first preferred option. It was 80% who used a photo identification to vote. Most often that was a driver's licence; 73% of that 80% were using a driver's licence, 73% overall of the 100% who voted. Of those who used option two, 19% used things like hospital cards, utility bills, the attestation letters I referred to, leases, and some of the other ones. I'm sure you've seen the lengthy list of identification that the Chief Electoral Officer has considered to be acceptable, and 1% were vouched for.

In terms of the need for vouching, it appears that we have a roughly comparable number using the attestation letters as being vouched. So in terms of the analysis, there we have it from the first set of elections or by-elections under Bill C-31. And from what I see here, and I'll use this summary from Environics who did the work for Elections Canada--so it's an independent group, independent from Elections Canada. They're not a group interested in showing that it worked; they're a group that was simply looking to analyze it--and I quote here. It says:

The vast majority of voters found the identification requirements easy to meet and were quite satisfied with the ID verification and voting process. Most have a favourable view of the new ID provisions.

So my response would be to compliment the members of this committee for the original initiative and the parliamentary committee report that led to Bill C-31, and as well for their work on C-31. Yes, we found subsequently that it's not perfect, and that's why we're here today to correct these glitches. But I think that--

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

I asked Elections Canada to canvass my riding, and I was told that some 10,900 people use post-office boxes or live on rural routes. Only 18 people were an exception to this, and they would not have been able to vote if amendments had not been made.

I fully support these amendments, which enable as many people as possible to exercise their right to vote and correct the error made in Bill C-31.

I just wanted to make that comment.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Well, if a student or a homeless person is in a similar situation where they were...they'd be in a position to deal with it.

I know this committee canvassed those issues extensively at the time they dealt with Bill C-31. That's not the content of the bill before us, so I don't want to spend too much time plowing old turf. I think what we're trying to do here is to deal with the specific problem of voters in the rural context for whom identification normally has an address but not a civic address. It's a consequence of the identification problems.

I know there were provisions put in place. The Chief Electoral Officer has included attestation letters from people who run homeless shelters, for example, to deal with the homeless information, and student information from the residence that they live there. These things are all available to protect their interests, so I believe they are more than adequately protected under the bill, which you originally dealt with, C-31, and the Chief Electoral Officer's application to it.

Something that might be of interest to all of you, and this is probably not a bad thing to know about, is that there was a study done by Elections Canada dealing with the application of Bill C-31 in the by-elections in Outremont, Roberval-Lac-St-Jean, and St-Hyacinthe-Bagot. The results are very, very positive. The new requirements worked. The vast majority of voters found the identification requirements easy to meet, and they were quite satisfied with the ID verification and voting process. Most people have a favourable view of the new identification provisions.

The one I thought was most surprising and positive is that 83% of voters said it didn't take any longer to vote using the identification provisions. So from the voters' perception, it was very positive. Overwhelmingly, people had no difficulty providing the identification. For a first-time run in a by-election, that's pretty remarkable. As we indicated, this is the first time that requirement has existed.

I know they did the same in the provincial elections in Ontario. I don't have any statistics for how they worked there, though in the polling station where I was a scrutineer on election day there appeared to be no difficulties with their identification requirements.

It looks like the reforms that this committee brought forward on Bill C-31 are working very well.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Minister, I just want to again get something on the record here. Let's face it, we all have our partisan interests that we represent aggressively at times. I note, with some interest and much amusement, that over the course of the last few weeks, since Bill C-31 was first discussed and subsequent to that, when we found out there was this gap in the legislation that inadvertently potentially disenfranchised up to a million people, there have been members of opposition parties who have been claiming that this was a fault of the government, pure and simple, nothing more than that, when in fact—and you were quite correct in your assessment, Minister—this was a shared responsibility.

All members of this committee, quite frankly, just missed that one portion of the bill that talked about residential or civic addresses, because rural residents—and I'm one of them—don't technically or legally have a civic address; we have a post office box or a rural route. So it was an honest mistake and a responsibility shared not only by members of this committee but by the elections office officials themselves, because they appeared before this committee on two occasions and at neither time during those discussions were there any indications that this could be a potential problem.

I want to get that on the record, because I know, whether it be the member from Timmins—James Bay or the member from Regina—Wascana or Thunder Bay—Rainy River, they have from time to time made statements publicly that the problem was solely the fault of the government, and again it was not. It was a shared responsibility.

But beyond that partisan politics, I think we need to have assurances—and you've given them, I believe—that this bill, in the consideration of both you and the Chief Electoral Officer, will fix the problem we had. And perhaps more importantly than that, in the event of an early election, whether it be a by-election or a federal election, prior to this bill coming into effect, what assurances do you have, if any, from the Chief Electoral Officer that he would use his power of adaptation to ensure that no rural voter is disenfranchised?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Bill C-18, the verification of residence bill, is one designed to ensure that legitimate voters will be able to exercise their fundamental democratic right to vote.

I think everybody recalls how we got to where we are. Bill C-31 was passed by this Parliament to improve the integrity of the voting process and prevent voter fraud. The bill was made based on recommendations that came out of this committee in a report that was dated June 20, 2006, and it was a report that was supported by all political parties.

For the first time ever, and many voters comment to me positively about this, the bill required voters to demonstrate their identity and residence before being allowed to vote.

To establish identity and residence, voters must either show one government-issued piece of identification containing a photograph, as well as the name and residential address of the voter; or show two pieces of identification approved by the Chief Electoral Officer, both of which contain the name of the elector, and one of which contains his or her residential address.

Or, the voter must have another registered voter in the same polling division vouch for the elector, after having shown the pieces of identification required to prove his or her own identity and residence.

These new requirements were designed to ensure that those who vote during elections are actually legitimate voters.

With the new requirements, people will no longer be able to pick up voter information cards abandoned at apartment building entrances, and vote under the name of a different voter.

There will also be no way to vote in a riding where the voter works, rather than in the riding where the voter lives, in order to support a particular candidate in a particularly tight race.

Since the bill received royal assent in June, Elections Canada has identified a problem with the requirement for voters to demonstrate their residence before voting.

In defence of this committee, which dealt with the bill originally, it should be said that the problem had not been identified by the Chief Electoral Officer when he originally came to testify before you.

To that extent, while everyone here shares an ownership in the problem, that ownership in the problem is in part because the ownership was spread out and the Chief Electoral Officer did not communicate the problem to you at the time you were originally dealing with the bill.

This problem is that many voters do not have a piece of identification with a civic address that can prove their residence on polling day.

For some voters, the problem lies in that the full municipal address is not provided. Others have one, but it does not appear on their pieces of identity.

It's a problem that arises most often in rural areas across the country. It's most often in these areas that individuals may only have a postal address, such as a post office box, a rural route number attached to a post office, or simply a mailing address that provides for general delivery to a particular post office.

These individuals will be unable to produce identification with a civic address that can establish their residence.

Moreover, because the problem affects particular regions, the voters in question would have trouble finding someone to vouch for them, because their neighbours will probably not have a home address on their piece of identity either.

Now, once the government was informed of this problem by Elections Canada, we moved very quickly to solve it, with the assistance of Elections Canada and in consultation with all the other political parties.

The solution proposed in the bill provides for an address on a piece of identification to prove residence, even a non-civic address if the address is consistent with information about the voter on the list of voters.

When registering to vote--that would be registering for the first time--the voter would have to prove they lived in the polling division where they intend to vote. Since this is the case, we can now use the mailing address that appears on the voters list to corroborate that it is the same voter who has already proven that they reside in this polling division.

The same would apply to someone who vouches for another voter. If the mailing address on his or her pieces of identity corresponds to the information on the voters' list, that will be considered sufficient proof of residence.

An election official or a candidate's representative who has reasonable doubt about a voter's residence will still be able to challenge this voter. In such a case, in order to vote a person would have to take an oath as well.

It's important to note that for individuals not on the voters list, who are seeking to register at an advance poll or on a polling date, to be on the voters list they will still have to show a piece of identification that contains a residential address, or otherwise be vouched for. This is to ensure the integrity of the information in the register and to ensure that those who are registered to vote in the polling division really do reside in that polling division.

Mr. Chair, our verification of residence bill solves the problem of verifying the residence of voters who do not have a civic address on their identification. Now that the government has acted quickly, with the assistance of Elections Canada and in consultation with the other political parties, it's incumbent, I believe, on Parliament to act quickly so that Elections Canada can apply these rules at the earliest possible opportunity.

I'd like to thank you for your attention and answer any questions you may have.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to come back to what you said a little earlier regarding the Chief Electoral Officer's flexibility under bill C-6. You indicated that similar flexibility existed in airports, at customs, etc. I don't exactly agree with you. Being asked to vote with an uncovered face is quite different from having one's clothes taken off or being subjected to a search to determine whether or not you're hiding something illegal. As far as I'm concerned, it's not the same thing.

I also believe that this flexibility is discriminatory insofar as we don't all live in big cities where, at a particular polling station, there may be 20 polling booths and both female and male staff. There are places, in some small municipalities in my riding for example, where there's only a single polling booth, and where the deputy returning officer and poll clerk are all men.

What's a person supposed to do in such a situation? Should you call the returning officer and ask him to send a woman because a veiled female does not want to uncover her face?

In some countries, such as Morocco, where the majority of women are veiled, they are required to take off their veils, whether they are men or women, and there's no problem with that. And yet here, this flexibility is given. It makes me a little uncomfortable. What would happen if groups of women decided by way of protest to go and vote veiled and ask for someone to identify them in a polling booth by showing their faces? This flexibility makes me uncomfortable.

Moreover, have any groups of Muslim women been demanding the right to vote while veiled? You've organized a lot of consultations, so you can tell me what those consultative groups were and whether, among those groups, there were any Muslim women asking to vote while veiled.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

But in the past, prior to bill C-31, there were recognized cases of fraud, weren't there? Is that acknowledged?

Under bill C-31, for example, electoral workers are prevented from testifying that the same individual is attempting to vote. I don't think that if you vote in the morning at a particular polling station, that you're going to be recognized at that same polling station in the afternoon. These employees see thousands of people. If somebody shows two pieces of ID and his or her face, does that really prevent that individual from committing fraud?

And what's more, I'm wondering if there were actually cases of fraud?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Obviously, under that, you don't. I gather that this committee debated previously the notion of national voter registration cards, which came out, I believe, in the discussions in the report that went into the recommendations that led to Bill C-31, and using that kind of approach was rejected. So short of a national voting card with identification, you have to deal with the fact that many Canadians don't have photo ID. That's why the current regime was chosen.

What I can tell you, however, is that when somebody does show their face at a polling station, if they then come to vote again half an hour later, because they have shown their face--even if they have someone else's identification--it will be possible for the scrutineers, the election officials working at that polling station, to notice that it's the same person again trying to vote fraudulently using someone else's identification.

When you're talking about maintaining the integrity of the electoral process to prevent voter fraud, even without photo identification, even when other pieces of identification are used, you have a positive and salutary effect on enhancing the integrity of the electoral process. That's what this is all about, fundamentally.

The two bills we're dealing with today are both building on Bill C-31. They're dealing with unanticipated consequences or interpretations that came out of Bill C-31. In that sense, if we're looking for our original intent, which comes from Bill C-31, to increase the integrity of the voter process, to reduce voter fraud, this will go some distance to advancing that.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

No, I don't think it gets you around visual identification. Everyone is going to have to show their face. There will obviously not always be a match to identification, because as this committee learned when it examined the issue originally under Bill C-31, there's a significant part of the population that doesn't have government-issued identification with photographs. Hence, there's a more flexible regime, and the Chief Electoral Officer has come up with a very lengthy list of acceptable identification—some people say too lengthy a list—but everybody showing up at a polling station will be required to show their face. That will allow political party scrutineers to ensure that the same person doesn't show up at three polling stations to vote, or vote three times at same polling station, or to keep showing up for every family member who happens not to be interested in coming to exercise their vote.

Certainly that's always been one of the concerns about processes where the ballots all get mailed to the people's homes and then they vote for everybody in their family, mailing in the ballots. I once had a property where there was a municipal referendum, and although there was nobody actually resident at the household at that time, seven ballots for previous residents showed up there for people to vote. Anybody who wanted could have, in similar situations, voted many times. We don't want that kind of situation.

The rules on the books here are very different. If somebody is voting, for example, by mail-in ballot, the other option, we have the two exceptions. One is for the medical condition and the other one is by the mail-in ballot, and obviously you don't have to show it. But there, as I've indicated earlier, you have the application form, the requirements for identification being provided, the lengthy scrutinizing opportunity for the Elections Canada officials, the requirement for birthdate and for gender, and the requirement for the signature on the application form, which has to be compared to the signature on the identification that's provided. None of these are requirements for the day of voting where the visual identification is required.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

It's obviously our hope that the bill we are looking at will provide sufficient direction. He was looking for explicit, clear direction, rather than applying an interpretation. I think he also acknowledged he could have equally interpreted the law on the books, Bill C-31, in the other direction to require people to show their identification. We simply encouraged him to do that.

I think here it will not be equally open to him to interpret it either way, but to interpret it in the way we are clearly...it's really now a very clear statutory intent to require visual identification.

The unfortunate thing about it, and I hope the Chief Electoral Officer has learned from this, is that, as far as I know, nobody was asking, no cultural communities in Canada were asking for the right to vote without showing their faces. The major Muslim organizations that appeared on this issue made clear they didn't seek special treatment, they sought equal treatment. They want to be treated the same as everybody else.

The unfortunate consequence of his decision was to thrust, as Marlene Jennings said, these folks into the spotlight, to cause them to be the centre of a controversy that was not of their making, a controversy that only occurred because of an interpretation of the Chief Electoral Officer to provide a special treatment to a group in society that was not seeking any special treatment. I think some of the negative social impacts of that were unfortunate. I hope the Chief Electoral Officer has taken note of those and has learned from the experience.

I know, when the matter in Bill C-31 was before the committee originally there was a suggestion that he would consult extensively with communities before dealing with the bill and finding out the mechanics of how to make it work. I gather that if there was consultation, it was not that extensive, because certainly those major groups came here saying this was an interpretation they didn't seek and did not want, and they didn't appreciate being targeted.

It's my hope that by this legislation we'll be able to restore that kind of social peace, that people will see that everyone is getting equal treatment. There won't be an artificial controversy that targets anybody. I think all the individuals affected, the affected communities, will be better off for it and all Canadian society will be stronger for it.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Thank you very much, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's always a pleasure to be here in this room, notwithstanding the terrible acoustics under the portrait of the fathers of Confederation and Sir John A. Macdonald done by Rex Woods, especially after a weekend of enjoying that great national cultural event, the Grey Cup, in which people from all across our country come together to share what they have in common in a way that Sir John A. Macdonald would have wanted them to, by enjoying the odd beverage and having a good time. Tom is, of course, very proud of his Saskatchewan Roughriders and the result.

I want to start by thanking all the members of the committee, including you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to discuss the government's visual identification of voters bill. The government introduced Bill C-31 in the last session of Parliament. It was a bill to improve the integrity of the voting process and to prevent voter fraud, and while the legislation made many changes, the one we are dealing with today responds to how that bill was interpreted by the Chief Electoral Officer in the conduct of applying the voter identification requirements.

Before Bill C-31 was enacted, voters could simply turn up at a polling station, give their name and their address, and vote.

Since then, and for the first time, voters will have to establish their identity and indicate their place of residence before being able to vote.

After Bill C-31 received royal assent on June 22, 2007, Canada's Chief Electoral Officer decided that the changes would be implemented in time for the September 17, 2007, by-elections in Quebec.

Later, the Chief Electoral Officer publicly stated that contrary to what I believe Parliament's intent was—namely, that voters would have to demonstrate their identity before voting—people would be permitted to vote while concealing their face.

Beside the fact that it's not logical for someone to demonstrate their identity while concealing their face, the decision went against what I think most people saw as common sense, and it left many people shaking their heads. All of us, as parliamentarians, probably heard about it from our constituents.

The government was of the opinion that this interpretation of the act did not take into account Parliament's clear will and intentions, and called on the Chief Electoral Officer to review his decision.

The government was not alone in asking for this. All four political parties in the House of Commons expressed disagreement with the Chief Electoral Officer's interpretation, and in September this committee, on a recorded motion, unanimously passed the following motion:

That the committee call on the Electoral Officer to use his powers of adaptation to require electors to show their faces before being permitted to vote at voting stations across the country.

Moreover, many other members of Parliament from all political parties expressed their support for the requirement to demonstrate visual identity. For example, on September 7, 2007, Stéphane Dion, the leader of the Liberal Party, issued a statement that said the following:

...we do believe that when they are casting a vote in elections, Canadian citizens have a responsibility to fully reveal their identities. For this reason, we would ask Elections Canada to reconsider its decision, and to require veiled women to unveil their faces to confirm their identities.

Later, on September 10, 2007, he told the Canadian press, “We disagree with Elections Canada's decision and we ask them to revisit their decision”, and then again later the same day, “At the end of the day, you must be able to identify yourself when you vote.”

On October 24, 2007, Liberal MP Marlene Jennings told the Montreal Gazette, “I think that people showing their faces for identification purposes to vote is fine.” She went on to say:

“Most of the Muslim community say so as well. They didn't ask for the ruling that the chief electoral officer made. Nobody had asked for the right to vote with their faces covered. It was a unilateral decision on the part of the chief electoral officer.”

I think that Madam Jennings hit the nail on the head when she said that, and that is in fact why we are here. It is not because of any decision or action taken by parliamentarians in adopting Bill C-31, but rather in consequence of the interpretation of the Chief Electoral Officer and his reluctance to accede to the advice of this committee when the matter was discussed in September.

The Canadian Press reported that “NDP Leader Jack Layton said he continues to hold out hope that Mayrand”—that's the Chief Electoral Officer—“will change his position before the byelections, but is prepared to support a legislative move. 'If not, it appears it will be necessary to change the law to make it clear.'” During committee hearings in September, Mr. Dewar said the following: “...the position from our party has been clear. ...that you show your face; the veil has to be removed to get your ballot.”

However, despite the overwhelming support from the party leaders and members of Parliament for voters to show their faces before voting, the Chief Electoral Officer refused to heed that expressed intent of Parliament and of the committee, and on election day we saw the consequences of that decision. In several places in the ridings in Quebec where the by-elections were occurring, people voted while purposefully concealing their faces for no justifiable reason. I think we recall seeing on television one even wearing a pumpkin on their head.

Throughout Canada, these actions and the fact that these folks were permitted to vote in that fashion caused a lot of Canadians to question the credibility and the integrity of our voting process—exactly the opposite of what we were seeking to do with Bill C-31. When people start to ridicule the rules that are in place for an election, that starts to erode public confidence in our system.

I don't believe we as parliamentarians can stand by and allow this to continue; certainly we in the government don't believe we can. We have to ensure that public confidence in our electoral system is maintained.

To maintain that confidence and ensure that the will of Parliament is respected, the government has committed to making the necessary legislative changes, which are in the bill we are discussing with you today. That bill flows directly from the commitment in the October 2000 throne speech.

The legislation sets out a simple requirement for a voter to show their face before voting. It will assist in voter identification, reduce the potential for voter fraud, and enhance the integrity and credibility of the voting process. In short, our bill will prevent someone from, if you will, putting a bed sheet over their head and then going to vote first for themselves and then, using the identification of someone else in their family, voting again somewhere else with someone else's identification—a friend's identification, or bills they've picked up in the mail room of the apartment building, or what not.

The bill also makes Parliament's intent explicit in law, preventing any future disagreements on what the intent of this act is.

There is one exception: an individual may vote with a concealed face if he or she has valid medical reasons to do so.

For example, if a person was severely burned and her face is covered in bandages, she can still vote on the provision that she swear an oath attesting to the fact that uncovering her face would be dangerous to her health.

The bill also takes into consideration the fact that some, because of their cultural customs, cover their faces in public. The bill allows--in fact I argue that they already have this--an additional administrative flexibility for Elections Canada to establish the processes they may need to require visual identification while respecting cultural practices, but the bottom line of equal treatment will be maintained.

It's a position that was supported by NDP Quebec lieutenant Thomas Mulcair. Stéphane Dion felt the same way. He said the following in a statement on September 7, 2007: “We would also propose that female Elections Canada officials be available to confirm the identities of veiled women, thus ensuring their values and privacy are respected.”

The Canadian Islamic Congress agrees as well. The Montreal Gazette reported on September 8 that Mohamed Elmasry of the Canadian Islamic Congress said the solution is as simple as having women who wear a niqab show their faces to female elections officials.

The government believes our bill is a sensible compromise between respecting cultural customs and maintaining the integrity and credibility of the voting process.

Some critics have claimed our bill is unnecessary because there is no evidence of a problem. Even if this were true, that's surely not a reason for doing nothing, but in fact there is, as we've seen, a problem. Certainly we don't want to wait until we see many documented cases of electoral fraud before we put in processes to prevent that fraud from occurring. The government isn't going to wait for that, and that's why we're taking action now, I think as all parties want us to do.

Nevertheless, it's important for this committee and for Canadians to know that the government did not want to go down this road. We don't believe every single detail of how elections are run and how electoral officers do their work should be made explicit in law. We don't need to sit there and prescribe which pencil or pen or ruler electoral officials use when they check people off the list. However, the Chief Electoral Officer continues to interpret the law in this way, which we know is contrary to what was the expressed will and intent of Parliament and of this committee. That makes it necessary for us in this case to act. The result is our visual identification of voters bill.

The bill requires electors to show their face at the polling station before being able to vote, with the stipulation that an exception be made for medical reasons and accommodation made for persons who normally cover their face in public.

The bill will protect and maintain the integrity and credibility of the voting process and ensure that the will and intent of Parliament are respected.

I hope all members of the committee will work with the government to ensure successful passage of this bill. I'd be happy, along with Ms. Kim, to take any questions you have on the subject.

[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 to stand and respond to the question by my hon. colleague from Rainy River.

First, let us set the record straight. Bill C-31, which is the genesis of Bill C-18, was debated at the procedure and House affairs committee and ultimately ratified by the entire committee.

I am the first one to admit, since I am a member of that committee, that we all share responsibility in missing the one element of that bill, which, in turn, disenfranchised or potentially disenfranchised a million rural voters because of the term “residential address”

The point I am making is that every one of us on that committee missed it. We all share that responsibility. In fact, the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, who appeared twice before that committee to discuss Bill C-31, did not notice in the legislation itself that there would be anything that had the potential to disenfranchise rural voters because they did not have a residential address.

When it was first discovered, which was about two weeks after the recent Quebec byelections that were held in September of this year, the Chief Electoral Officer, in examining how the ramifications of Bill C-31 affected that byelection process, noticed for the first time that there was an element that could potentially cause the disenfranchisement of voters in rural Canada.

We took immediate steps to correct the situation and introduced Bill C-18 to rectify the situation. We are hoping for speedy passage in committee and by members of the House to take care of that situation.

However, even if there were an election call before that bill became law, the Chief Electoral Officer has assured us that he would use his powers of adaptation to ensure not one rural Canadian would be disenfranchised if we had to go to a vote, whether it be a general election or a byelection.

However, I want to concentrate my remarks for the last few moments that I have to point out the absolute hypocrisy of the Liberal Party of Canada. Not only has the member from Rainy River suggested that this was a problem created by our government, but other members of his party have done the same. The member for Wascana has done several interviews in which he has suggested that this was a government problem, that this was something that was created by the government, that it missed it and that it was sloppy legislation.

The entire Liberal caucus voted in favour of Bill C-31. The sheer hypocrisy of their statement suggesting that it was only the government's problem because it made the mistake is staggering. Everyone shares some culpability. We all share the responsibility. We are willing to admit it. Members of his own party who were on the procedure and House affairs committee said nothing about the possibility of disenfranchisement of voters because they missed it as well.

While I am here to say that we will take immediate action and, hopefully, we will have some compliance with members opposite when the bill gets to committee so we can deal with this quickly and expeditiously, it is just so irritating to stand here and listen to members with the sanctimony and the hypocrisy to suggest that it was someone else's problem and that it was not part of their own doing.

For the record, we all share responsibility. I wish the member from Rainy River would stand up and admit that.

Canada Elections Act

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, on this side of the House we want an electoral system that is as impeccable as possible. My colleague has explained very clearly why we so strongly objected to Bill C-31 in the first place, and which now has to be cleaned up.

It seemed that the government wanted to fix a non-problem when there are so many real problems, such as the prosperity gap, the environment, an Americanized foreign policy, but no. The government chose to fixate on a non-problem and thereby created real problems, and as my colleague has pointed out, both the Liberals and the Conservatives supported the bill. Now they agree that there are perhaps some problems that we pointed out during the debate on Bill C-31.

I wonder, when I go back to some of the solutions that my colleague pointed out, why not have a clearer, stronger enumeration process that would give us real lists? Why not accept a statutory declaration that would address some of these problems? Could he explain what the government might have been thinking in choosing such an obtuse solution, whereas we could be dealing with very clear and simple solutions?

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great attention to the member's point of view. I realize that he is a veteran of the Bill C-31 committee and I respect that. I will take him at his word that his Cassandra-like calls of the problem that Bill C-18 is attempting to solve were in fact made and that they were not simply the remarks of Mr. Mayrand with respect to attestation for the people in the homeless shelters, student foyers and seniors homes. That is what I saw on the record so far as the Cassandra call. If my friend says that he brought up the exact problem that is being addressed in Bill C-18, I will take him at his word.

I do recognize that he, like I, probably has not been faced with a lot of problems in his riding regarding this very aspect. This is primarily a rural issue with respect to addresses not being civic addresses as mandated by the act.

I realize he has a philosophy and a point of view and I respect that, but I do not necessarily agree with it. I agree that Bill C-18 is a big government band-aid from a government that does not seem to care about the details that it should as a government.

Would the member agree with me, is this not a partial solution to a problem affecting one million rural voters in this country to whom we owe a duty before the next election to give them the right to vote? Is that not what we are trying to do by sending this bill to committee? We must show the government that it has a duty and a responsibility to be more responsible in the field of democratic reform.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, here we go again trying to deal with the problems of Bill C-31. I know that might not be the kind of comment that the government wants to hear but it has to look reality in the face. The only reason this bill is in front of us is because of what I said Bill C-31 was from the beginning, which is a solution looking for a problem.

We have found a couple of bills to date. We have Bill C-18, which is what we are debating today, and we have Bill C-6. I suppose we will have a couple more bills before it is all over.

If we go through the bill, one clause states that when swearing an oath to prove someone's identity, the person who vouches for another individual does not necessarily need a civic address on his or her ID if the information on the voters list matches up with the information on the ID.

The committee heard from groups of advocates, people representing the homeless, people representing aboriginal people and people representing students. The people representing the aboriginal people were very clear on this issue of civic address and all members of the committee heard it. They said that we would have problems identifying voters because some people do not have a civic address. I invite all members of the House, including members who may have been on the committee, to look at the blues and read the witnesses' comments where they invited us to look at this concern.

What they were saying is that if we were to go ahead and do this, we would be disenfranchising people, and did we disenfranchise people. We disenfranchised not a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand, but probably millions of people. Why? It is because the House, in its infinite wisdom, passed a bill that was not sufficient. It was not sufficient because the committee, I would submit, did not do its homework.

I asked the committee for more time to hear from witnesses beyond the list that we had in front of us and I was told, in the instance of the privacy commissioner, no because it had already heard from her. I had to take it upon myself to write to her and obtain a response about the whole issue of privacy and birthdate information. She readily supplied me with an opinion of the bill contrary to what members of the committee had believed, which was that there were concerns about privacy in the bill.

I would submit that we have in front of us a bill that is trying to mop up the mess that was created by a bill from the government. I would like members, perhaps during questions and comments or to seek me out afterward, to provide me with an explanation or an instance where Parliament has passed a bill and, within months of it coming into force, has had to come up with further bills to deal with the problems in the initial bill. We are now up to two bills, and counting, based on the flaws and problems in Bill C-31.

I know members of the government will say that I did not raise these problems in committee and that I did not have the wisdom of knowing that these things would come up. I would suggest that I did not foresee all of the problems but I certainly saw the problem, which was the way Bill C-31 was crafted.

The crafting of the bill was taken from a committee report. What seems to be the Conservative Party playbook is that committees are used to put forward one's agenda. A fairly lengthy report was written by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, there was a government response and within a week a bill was in front of us called Bill C-31.

Bill C-31 was introduced because there was a concern about potential voter fraud, and I triple underline “potential”. When this was put in front of parliamentarians, they said that it had to be dealt with right away and cleaned up. In fact, that is what the committee did by way of hearing from a limited, in my opinion, number of witnesses.

It heard from witnesses like the Chief Electoral Officer who was asked if voter fraud was a major problem. They all heard quite clearly that it was not and that there had been approximately four cases of potential voter fraud in the last three elections.

We spent a large amount of time on it and we are spending more now trying to deal with this outrageous problem of voter fraud, but I have to give the government credit because it was clear in saying that it was potential voter fraud.

I have to submit that the concerns of my constituents are around cleaning up politics, ethics in politics, and integrity in the system. There is much more concern about candidate fraud, when candidates say they are with one party one day but wake up the next and lo and behold they are not a Liberal candidate anymore but rather a Conservative cabinet minister. Constituents are more concerned about how to deal with that kind of lack of integrity, where people can run for a party, cross the floor, and virtually within minutes it seems jump into government or into cabinet.

How about going from the backroom of the Conservative Party into the Senate and then vaulting into cabinet? Those are the concerns that my constituents have around the integrity of our electoral system. They are not concerned about potential voter fraud other than not to make matters worse.

Excluding my party, what Parliament has done is pass a bill that disenfranchised so many people. In committee we talk about this often and say we should always be vigilant for the unintended consequences of legislation. We all know this. We heard from people who were advocates of the homeless and from aboriginal people.

We are talking about people who are living in rural areas. We identified that what we have now in front of us is a concern about actual addresses. We heard from people who were representing students. The surprising fact is that when we were at committee they told us quite clearly this would be a problem.

What did we do? We did not consider it to be that big a problem and that it would all be fine because we knew better. Well, we did not know better and here we are with a bill to prove it. It is Bill C-18.

What we did not do is consult. I have said it before, that our job is to consult and after we have consulted, consult some more until we are absolutely sure we have done our homework. That is not the case in the instance of Bill C-31. We in fact had worse than that. It was not unintended consequences but some intended consequences with birth date information. It bears repeating that in Bill C-31 there were unintended consequences.

We did not hear this from witnesses and everyday people at all, this need to have birth dates on the voters list as an oversight requirement. However, what was really strange and quite disturbing was that we had intended consequences at committee. Not only would the bill have one's birth date information on the voters list but it would be shared with political parties.

In this instance it was not unintended consequences but very intentional. Our friends from the Bloc brought forward a motion at committee supported by the Liberals. The government joined me in opposing the amendment but lo and behold by the time it got to the House for third reading, it lost its courage to fight for the privacy of Canadians and it collapsed.

As my friend from Winnipeg Centre said the other day, the government folded like a cheap suit. It just said, oh well, for the interest of getting the bill through it needed to ensure that it let the amendment go through. My goodness, we had the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, in a letter that I gave to the committee, ask:

Is the problem of voter fraud so serious and sufficiently widespread to require the use of additional personal information? If it is a serious problem, is it necessary to provide polling clerks with the date of birth or can the same objective be achieved using less detailed information?

She was clear in saying that we should not, but again we had the government and the opposition parties saying that it was okay, that they would let date of birth information go through and share it with political parties.

This kind of information is analogous to giving people, who would like to use this information for fraud purposes, a little kit. I was calling it a government sponsored identity theft kit. That is what we are giving people.

Members know that there have been recent reports about concerns regarding credit card theft and people who are able to access bank accounts. What do they need? They need a date of birth and an address, and a lot of harm can be done. We were going to give this not only to poll clerks where, with all due respect to them, that information might get lost, but also to political parties.

I know the Liberal Party wanted it because it needed to do a little more in terms of fundraising. The Bloc said that is how it does it and that it had done it before in Quebec. I have no idea what the government was going to do with it. I guess one day it will tell me or it will be written in one of its member's memoirs.

In the meantime, what we have is a privacy problem within this bill. Then we have a problem with leaving hundreds of thousands of people off the voters lists, and now we have Bill C-18 in front of us. I submit that not only did the government not get the job done and did not do its homework on this bill but that we also opened it up to having the unintended consequence of invading people's privacy.

We really have to question why, at a time when all politicians and all parties are saying we want more people to vote and we want to get young people interested in politics, we put up these barriers.

I have to give the example of Ontario, where Ontario has made some changes to the requirements to vote. It did not do a very good job at all in telling people that when they go to the voting stations now they have to provide some ID. Voters have to tell the poll clerks their names, their postal codes, et cetera. Having taken part in the most recent provincial election, I know of a senior in my riding who, when I knocked on her door to ask her if she was going to vote, said “I tried to vote but they would not let me”.

That is exactly what is going to happen in the next federal election and I am not sure that this bill is going to solve that problem. The reason she said that is because she did not have the required ID and she had no one to vouch for her.

I can guarantee members that that will be the situation for hundreds and thousands, if not more, Canadians if we do not change the law. The law needs to be changed for people who do not have the requisite identification, in this case a senior who had lived in this particular domicile for more than a decade and did not have the requisite ID. We are going to see people disenfranchised like never before.

In fact, what we will see unless we change the law, with something like a statutory declaration, is people who are disenfranchised in the rural areas, in the north, in the urban areas, as well as homeless and transient people.

What we need to do is take a good look at this bill and at what the poison pills are in this bill. We saw the poison pills in Bill C-31. Are there any in here? I would submit there are a couple and I would just ask the government to do a very simple thing and look at enumeration. Why in heaven's name is it not going to engage in universal enumeration at every election for the universal suffrage of all of our citizens that we so obviously respect?

The other thing is not only to have universal enumeration and spend money there, but to make sure we train people properly. Those are nuts and bolts things, common sense things that we put forward at committee. The statutory declaration was another thing.

Finally, regarding the voting cards that everyone is so concerned about, and I am one of them, that are ubiquitous in some of these lobbies, put them in envelopes for goodness' sakes, address them to the voters, and if the voters are not present at those domiciles, they would be returned.

Presently, these cards are left around and open to potential voter fraud, I agree, but for goodness' sake, use this terrific new technology called an envelope, address it to the elector, and if the person does not live there anymore, it will be returned to sender, in this case to Elections Canada.

That is yet another way we can improve the system. It is another suggestion the NDP had. We should clean up the voters list, make sure we have actual human beings going door to door to clean it up, put the voters cards in envelopes, and ensure that there is a safety gap with the statutory declaration.

I must say that some of the critiques about statutory declarations are ridiculous. It suggests to me that there is mistrust among some members of everyday people, of citizens of Canada. As I said, there should be more scrutiny of people who cross the floor than citizens who are trying to engage in their franchise.

We will have to go to committee and try to fix yet another government bill, a mess that was made with the mélange of the three parties to ensure that Canadians will not be left out.

Members should read the blues of the committee. We were told by the Chief Electoral Officer that the way Bill C-31 was written and the way this bill is written now, goodness knows the way this bill was put through without us trying to fix it, people will show up at polling stations and will be sent away. They will not return.

That is what will happen at five minutes to eight or five minutes to nine, just before the poll closes, if people have to go get more ID because they do not have sufficient ID or they have to find another person to vouch for them. I can guarantee that people who have been voting all their lives, particularly people like the senior referenced in the Ontario election who had voted all her life, will just plain give up, and that is pathetic. It says that we have not done our job here.

I am not willing to do that, to allow our government to provide legislation that will disenfranchise. My party will not and I will not. We will make sure this bill, from our perspective, will make sure that Canadians, every day people, will not be disenfranchised. Then we will have some semblance of common sense in our electoral system.

I sincerely hope that the government will engage us this time in some of the ideas I have put forward, three straightforward ideas, and that it will take a look at it with honesty and sincerity, and say that maybe this is not a bad idea.

When we are talking about our democracy, the foundation and the franchise, people fought for it, as we just celebrated on Remembrance Day. To just let it fray away, to watch it be torn apart because of either ill-conceived notions or worse, as I said before, conceived notions, is not something we in this party will stand by and see happen.

I will just wrap up with a couple of comments about what can be done to ensure, through witnesses at committee, that we not have the fiasco and the mess we had with Bill C-31 yet again.

I would ask that parliamentarians go to their ridings. I have done this already. I have talked to people about the proposition of not only Bill C-31, but further to Bill C-31, Bill C-6 and Bill C-18. I am not sure as many people were engaged with Bill C-31. There has been a wake-up call, clearly, because of the mess of Bill C-31, and the fact that we have disenfranchised in a blink hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Canadians.

However, hon. members should talk to everyday people in their constituencies and ask them what would happen tomorrow if they had to follow the requirements of the present legislation before us. Would they be able to vote? Would they have a problem finding someone to vouch for them? Would they have the requisite ID? Hon. members should go to a seniors residence, go to a homeless shelter, talk to some students, and then find out from them if there are problems, because that is the business of consultation.

That is what I did last week vis-à-vis Bill C-6, and I heard a lot of concerns. I would plead, almost beg, with members of Parliament to talk to their constituents on this bill because we did not consult enough last time. Let that not happen again.

Let us engage our citizens on this. It is their right. We are making up the rules here for them. We made a mess of it with Bill C-31. We need not do that again. Hon. members should talk to their constituents and then bring witnesses forward to committee through their respective representatives on committee, so we can hear from everyday people about how this would affect them. That did not happen last time.

The people who did come forward warned us that there would be problems, but sadly, members did not listen to them. Our party did. That is why we voted against Bill C-31.

We now have two bills which are trying to clean up Bill C-31. I am not sure if this is a record. I will have to look it up. We need to clean this up.

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

Mr. Speaker, there is the saying “Heavy is the head that wears the crown”. I will go this far with my hon. friend from Western Arctic in saying that the government has the responsibility to bring forward legislation in various areas, including, in this case, democratic reform. However, it has missed the boat substantially. It did not take heed of loopholes or gaps in the legislation as it was reviewed by the Senate. Now the government is playing the game that everyone is to blame.

It seems to me that the Conservatives are still stuck in the opposition ways and Lord knows they were there so long that it may be a form that they cannot get out of, but let us hope they get back into it soon.

However, I differ from my friend from Western Arctic, although I deeply respect his comments. He represents a riding that is among the most affected ridings due to the deficiency in Bill C-31 as it relates to the actual issue which is the civic address on the list of electors versus the address or domicile that one presents through identification at the polling booth.

I respect his philosophical point of view but will he and his party not be blamed if thousands--in fact we know it is millions in the affected ridings--of people in his riding show up and cannot vote because his party did not act to do the band-aid approach, which is what this is, but will, nevertheless, put more voters back on the list by pushing it along and improving it in the committee and bringing forward the concerns that are deficiencies in Bill C-31 that my friend has raised?

Will the member not agree that we should at least move this along to committee, to put this band-aid on it, which is all the government can do, and we know that, in order to put back on the voting list the people who in his riding will be most affected?

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

I can assure my hon. colleague that through this process I have always said that this photo ID requirement for voting is wrong. I have never changed my position on that. I voted against Bill C-31. I did not even want to look at the provisions within it because I felt it was wrong from the beginning.

When it comes to fixing Bill C-31, which is what we are doing now, we are fixing a bill that was only in front of us six months ago. We have two bills in front of Parliament right now that are trying to fix Bill C-31. What a mess we have.

Who is responsible for that mess? Is it the opposition parties? Is it the government that brought it forward? I would say that it is the government's responsibility to bring forward bills that it has scrutinized and that it understands the implications of the bills. They should not be put forward in such a quick fashion that the government does not understand how they will affect hundreds of thousands and millions of Canadians.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, this is not the only problem we have seen with Bill C-31. We just had another with Bill C-6.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my friend gloomy-and-doomy down there as he spoke about social engineering. I want to assure him that there are no black helicopters circling his riding, or anybody else's, taking away Canadians' human rights. One would think the sky had fallen because all parties in this House made an honest error when Bill C-31 came through in the first place. That has been acknowledged by everyone except, apparently, the NDP. They voted against Bill C-31 for entirely different reasons. To suggest they saw this, of course, is completely false and disingenuous.

Credit should go to all parties that have said we need to fix this right away. The government responded. We have Bill C-18. It will fix the problem of rural voters right away. That is what was asked for and that is what is being done.

Therefore, the gloom and doom from down the way is just silly, frankly. The government has taken action. I would like to ask my hon. colleague a simple question. Is he going to support this bill or not? All parties, including his, asked for action to be taken and it is being taken. Is he supporting it or not?

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, it is not with great pleasure that I stand today to debate Bill C-18.

As a member from a northern riding, I am debating a bill that may solve some of the issues within our riding, but it does not really get at the essential nature of the change in the voting system that will disenfranchise many people and will create great confusion and hardship in voting, at least in the next election, if not many other elections into the future.

When I stand today to speak to Bill C-18, I truly want to speak to Bill C-31. I want to speak to a bill that, in its nature, I cannot support. Its nature will change the way Canadians view their essential political rights in our country. It is a bill that I do not understand and I do not see where the direction is. I have to go back in some ways to Bill C-31 to look at some of the reasons given by our government members in putting forward the bill.

The member for Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre spoke to the bill on June 18. He 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 because.

To say that by creating these types of conditions that need to be in place for the voter to vote, we will increase the voter turnout in this country is, by any stretch of the imagination, patently absurd.

He went on to say, which is something more personal:

I think there is no greater fraud that could be perpetrated on Canadians than that of an individual voting in a federal or provincial election who pretends to be someone that he or she is not.

That is quite a significant fraud. We have seen greater fraud in the House over the past two years with the member for Vancouver Kingsway. He did not even take the time for the House to open up before he jumped across the floor and demonstrated his utter contempt for the voters who elected him. That is a greater fraud by far than a single voter who may misinterpret where he or she is supposed to vote or may make a mistake in the location of his polling station.

At the same time, the Minister for Democratic Reform spoke. He said:

As I have mentioned on other occasions, this bill makes a number of changes to the electoral process that will reduce the opportunity for electoral fraud, improve the accuracy of the national register and the lists of electors, facilitate communication with the electorate and improve the administration of elections.

Let us look at some of those statements. He said “Improve the accuracy of the national registry”. Where, in any of the discussions we have had over the past while, do we see a better enumeration system? Clearly, that is one thing we need. Many of the problems we have in the voting system in Canada come from the attempts of the current government and previous governments to reduce the work and the effort that is put into the enumeration system across the country. That is one of the serious problems we have with voting.

This bill and Bill C-31 will not change that. They will not make the system more complete. They will not ensure that people are carefully enumerated and that we have the kind of system that our parents and grandparents built up over many years.

Will it facilitate communication with the electorate? I do not see how that will happen with these two bills. What we are going to see is a situation in which many people will find, for one reason or another, that they do not have the proper identification or the proper address or that the address does not match. They are going to be turned off voting.

That is going to happen with a lot of very young voters. That is going to happen with voters who are in disadvantaged situations across this country, the homeless, the poor and the people who have to work long hours and do not have the opportunities that others do.

I know that federal employees have consecutive hours off work in order to vote. The people who are less advantaged across this country will find it more difficult to vote. They are going to have to ensure that on voting day they carry their identification and make even more of an effort than they are accustomed to in many cases to carry out what is their fundamental, democratic right in this country.

The government is responsible for the bills that it brings forward and for the accuracy and the scrutiny that should go into every piece of legislation that is as important as this one, as important as this legislation that goes to the fundamental nature of our democratic system, which is the right and the ability to vote and the certainty that a voter has when he goes into the voting booth.

The government has completely failed Canadians here. It has brought forward another piece of legislation wherein they are attempting to fix their mistakes yet it does not go far enough. Our party says that if the government wants to fix the mistakes in Bill C-31 then it should go back to what the NDP said previously.

What we proposed previously was to allow the voters to swear that they are who they say they are at the polling station. Then, if there is doubt about the identity of the voter, the voter would put forth sworn testimony that they are who they are and they have the eligibility to vote in that riding. That is trust in Canadians and Canadians deserve our trust.

In the last four elections, where probably in excess of 60 million votes were cast, there have been four cases of voter fraud. All this work that we have been doing in Parliament is taking a big sledgehammer and knocking down a tiny gnat. That is voter fraud in Canada. This bill is a huge sledgehammer.

Then, as for improving the administration of elections, Bill C-31 is going to turn the next election day into a fiasco. We are going to have hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people, standing at polling stations across the country, people who do not understand the rules, who do not have the proper identification and who do not have everything lined up. Canadians are used to voting one way and they will come out to vote and find that the rules have been completely changed. The administration of elections in this next period will be a mess. It will reflect badly on this country and on the voting process of many citizens.

I find these reasons to be bogus at best.

Let us look at what is going on here. We are taking the time now to bring a bill forward that will assist Bill C-31 and some of the errors that were made in that bill in terms of the layout. I heard the comments today from the Conservative government that the opposition did not pick up on these mistakes in committee and therefore it is the fault of the opposition that the bill is not correct.

Why are we doing this? The most cynical bone in my body says that this is a social conditioning exercise.

It will be followed by other social conditioning exercises to ensure that Canadians slowly give up their individual freedoms and slowly find that they have to show identification for whatever they are doing at every step of the way in this country. I do not like that. I still feel that Canadians are trustworthy and that we should encourage trust among Canadians. The concept of continually asking Canadians for their identification at every possible opportunity is the wrong road to go down. Those are my views on dealing with those issues.

I would like to move on now to issues that concern my riding.

Last month I had the opportunity to attend a meeting at Paulatuk, a community high on the Arctic coast. We talked about photo ID and identification. There is no place in Paulatuk to get identification. The residents have to go to Inuvik, which requires a plane flight, to get any kind of identification. Quite obviously, many of the residents do not have current identification. They do not need it in Paulatuk because everybody knows everybody.

When people in Paulatuk go to the polls on election day, the returning officer is going to ask for verification for all kinds of people and they will not have the required identification. They do not have the opportunity to go to Inuvik. They do not have the opportunity to get that set up. That will make a travesty out of a community's life. People who have known each other throughout their whole lives will have to show identification to each other.

That is a difficulty. That is a fundamental problem within this legislation. It does not deal with the honest and trustworthy nature of Canadians. It does not consider that. Unless someone proves who they are, says this legislation, they must not be who they say they are.

In fact, even if an elector has identification but it is not quite what is wanted, as I have said, what happens is that under proposed subsection 3.2, “a deputy returning officer, poll clerk, candidate or a candidate's representative who has reasonable doubts concerning the residence of an elector” appearing in front of them “may request that the elector take the prescribed oath”. We are putting it in the hands of all those people to decide the trustworthiness of that Canadian, but we are not allowing the Canadian himself to say that he is trustworthy and give his oath that he is a citizen and is legally within the jurisdiction and has the right to vote. To me, that is the solution we should be going forward with.

The changes that are going to be made with this bill will help a problem that has been created by Bill C-31, but will not help the problems inherent within it. They will also discourage Canadians from voting. They will reduce the already pathetic voter turnout in this country. They will probably reduce it among those who should vote, those who are disenfranchised from the system, those who need to express their opinions on politicians and the people who run this country.

This is a difficult situation for anyone who did not support Bill C-31. We are being asked to repair some damage that the bill caused, not nearly all of it, but we are still going to leave our electoral system in chaos in the next election. The government is still not providing a decent rationale for its actions. It is not coming clean with Canadians about what it is trying to accomplish here.

To me, Bill C-18 is totally inappropriate because it does not go far enough toward fixing the problems that have been created with the other bill. Until the government realizes the fundamental mistakes it made in the previous legislation, how is it going to fix them with this patchwork? How is the government going to make the changes that are going to make this work for Canadians in the next election and elections in the future? It is not. That is the problem.

We can send this bill to committee. We can try to work with other parties in Parliament to fix errors in a bill that is not appropriate, but that is not good enough. For Canadians, one of the only hopes we have now is what is happening with the charter challenge on Bill C-31. It is being challenged in our courts for its unreasonable nature in terms of our fundamental rights as Canadian citizens.

We will have to wait and see. Perhaps this problem will be solved for us by the courts, but that is a crying shame when we look at what has happened here in Parliament with this kind of legislation and the direction the government has taken. It is a real shame.

I am disappointed in the government. I am disappointed for my constituents. I do not want any of my constituents not to be able to vote, whether they are students travelling from one community to the other or transient people who have changed their address but have not changed it on their identification. Whatever the problem is, we will see problems with this bill that are hard to judge today, but they definitely will show up on election day. It will cast the whole system into some considerable doubt and will create a lot of pressure for change after the next election.

I do not know what we were doing when we brought forward Bill C-31 or what the thinking was there, but as a Canadian, as someone who prizes my right to vote and the right of every other citizen to vote comfortably and cleanly without any conditions put on that right, I am not happy with this. I do not think the bill is appropriate. I certainly hope that the courts will adjudge the same. That will solve the problem for us and bring it back to the reality of our electoral system, our voting system, which has worked well for us.

If there were examples of large scale fraud that came before the courts, we might have a case to say that we needed to be more vigilant here. We should have opened up the whole act and looked at how to review it to ensure that deputy returning officers and poll clerks all have the proper authority to deal with the issues that come in front of them. Instead, we took this course. Is it a course that is going to work for us? I do not think so. I think we have taken the wrong course and we need to right it.

If this Parliament does not do it, perhaps the courts will. I hope the voters realize this when they go into the voting booth in the next election and realize which parties caused the problems that they see in front of them, when they see the lineups and the people rejected from voting. I hope they think about it when they are going in to vote and I hope they cast their votes accordingly, realizing what the government has done to the system that was working well and was in place, a system that needed more work on the enumeration side and that needed the electoral act to be looked at in certain ways to ensure that the performance of the officers involved in conducting the elections is proper in this day and age.

Those are the things we should have looked at. We can attempt to fix this in a small fashion with this bill. We can fix the problems we have created with Bill C-31, but it is not good enough. It is not good enough and it should not be taking place in this Parliament.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was not going to rise, but I have to after that explanation.

I was at the committee when Bill C-31 was discussed. We heard testimony from people from first nations. We heard from students and advocates for the homeless. They were very clear that there needed to be a process in place that would allow the people they advocated for to vote and that if Bill C-31 went ahead the way it did, they would not be able to.

What did we do? We ignored them. We did not listen to them, because apparently we knew better. Well apparently we did not. Apparently they knew better because here we are trying to clean up the mess that we were told would happen.

Therefore, was the hon. member aware that at committee we heard from witnesses, from everyday Canadians, from the homeless, from first nations and from students. They said to us that if we did this, we would disenfranchise them. They asked us not to do it. Why in heaven's name did his party support that bill at the time?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was particularly struck by the member's focus on his province, and his own constituents, particularly those who have been disenfranchised.

The member will know that the NDP voted against the original Bill C-31 because of the very issue of disenfranchisement. Our concerns are that those issues still remain unresolved. There still will be literally thousands, if not tens of thousands, of homeless individuals who will have no means of being able to vote.

Despite the hon. member's concern for his constituents, he suggested that this bill would kind of make everything okay. From the NDP perspective, it still leaves unresolved all the key issues, in particular the matter of a statutory declaration, which we believe would go a long way to resolving that issue. The bill before us now will not address that and it will still to leave a number of my constituents and a number of his disenfranchised. They will be unable to participate.

Perhaps he could help close that gap for me in terms of understanding the Bloc members original support for Bill C-31, their support of this bill and his personal concern raised here today about those who will be disenfranchised. The disenfranchisement will still continue even after Bill C-18 is passed, which in effect amends Bill C-31. Would the member be good enough to help me understand and close the gap between the two trains of thought?

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise today on Bill C-18, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (verification of residence). I would like to provide a bit of background on why we are seized today with this bill. In February 2007, the House of Commons passed Bill C-31, which changed the Elections Act to reduce the chances of fraud or error by strengthening the requirements around the identification of electors.

As a result of these changes, Bill C-31 became more like the Quebec Election Act. It was nothing new, therefore, for us in the Bloc Québécois. Bill C-31 will be in effect in the next election campaign and came into force at the time of the last byelections in Quebec. Voters now have to present a piece of government-issued identification containing their name, photograph and home address, for example a driver’s licence. Voters who do not have identification containing a photograph must supply two pieces of acceptable identification in order to establish their identity and home address.

The Chief Electoral Officer will issue a list of the acceptable pieces of identification that electors can present at polling stations. We had one during the last byelection in Quebec. The identification can range from a credit card or credit card statement to a telephone bill or any other document that makes it possible to quickly identify the elector.

Potential electors who go to a polling station without two pieces of identification will be required by law to take an oath that they are who they say they are. In addition, a person who has already met the voting requirements can vouch for them. So it is very simple. If a person does not have two pieces of identification, someone who has already voted and met the requirements and who has his or her identification can vouch for that person.

This seemed very acceptable to us. Of course, there are always exceptions to any good rule. We had to review the situation in light of the recommendations by the Chief Electoral Officer, who told us that more than 1 million Canadians do not have a home address in due form.

We can understand that in Quebec. Until 2000, I was the mayor of a small town. I was given the opportunity to be the warden of the MRC and one day the president of the Union des municipalités du Québec. I can say that in the 1980s, a number of the smallest communities in Quebec did not have street numbers, door numbers, etc. The Government of Quebec asked all these municipalities to have addresses with street numbers and door numbers. This required a major investment. People had to go through the Commission de toponymie to get street names and so forth. The effort was made in Quebec, in areas that had municipalities.

However, there are still some areas not organized in municipalities. In Quebec, there are thought to be about 15,000 people who are affected. This figure also includes people with no fixed address, the homeless and so on. According to the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, there are about 15,800 electors who do not have an address consistent with Bill C-31, passed last February.

When we look at what happened in the other provinces, such as Newfoundland and Labrador, we see that approximately 23% of voters would not be able to vote because they do not have a home address with street number. This means that they have rural addresses with only P.O. box or rural route numbers. This was the case 20 years ago in Quebec. So we can understand why other communities decided not to invest in this. In Ontario, 150,000 voters are affected and in Saskatchewan, there are 189,000. In Nunavut, approximately 80% of residences do not have individual addresses. So we can understand why this bill aims to regularize the situation and enable these people to vote.

Obviously, the proposals in Bill C-18 seem acceptable to us. In short, the bill amends the Canada Elections Act to make the rules more flexible, making it possible to verify the residence of voters living in areas where the municipal address on ID cards is a P.O. box, general delivery or rural route.

The bill states that if the address on the ID card provided does not establish the voter's residence, but corresponds to the information found on the voter's list, the voter's residence would be deemed established.

For example, a voter whose ID card shows only a rural route address would be able to establish his residence if that address corresponds to the information on the voter's list.

Obviously, if the voter's list shows that a person lives on rural route #2 in a particular place, and the identification shows the same address, it would be possible to make the connection and the bill would not require a street name and number as it did before. There would be enough information to make the connection.

There is also the case where one voter vouches for another. I gave an example of this earlier. Under the current act, someone who has an address and knows someone who does not have an address with a street number or does not have two pieces of identification can vouch for that person. People without addresses cannot be vouchers under the current act. Now, people who have proven to scrutineers, Elections Canada workers or the people responsible for supervising the vote that their general delivery address is the same as the address on the voter's list—and who therefore have previously exercised their right to vote—may vouch for another voter.

Clearly, these people can be allowed to vouch for voters who have no identification. The current bill keeps the references to pieces of identification, but allows rural routes in lieu of addresses with street numbers as addresses that match what appears on the voters list.

In my opinion, it is good that this bill can make things better for 15,800 voters in Quebec with no fixed address. The same problem exists in the other provinces, so the bill makes things better for the million voters the Chief Electoral Officer mentioned.

However, we have heard from members of other parties in this House. This measure must not nullify the whole principle of Bill C-31, which was introduced in the last session. We want to be able to avoid fraud by requiring two pieces of identification. We must not allow statutory declarations. What some members are trying to say is that we should go back to statutory declarations. A person simply has to take an oath to be entitled to vote. What we want is evidence, identification or someone who can vouch for someone else. Otherwise, this bill would call into question or have the opposite effect of Bill C-31, which was passed in February 2007.

I want Quebeckers who are watching us to know that Bill C-31 of February, 2007, is identical to the Election Act of Quebec. In Quebec, when we vote, we have to show identification. The federal legislation was much more lax. In the past, this resulted in mistakes and possibility for fraud. Quebec has always been a leader. Since René Lévesque, who overhauled the entire electoral system, political party financing and so forth, Quebec has always led the way in electoral legislation. We must applaud the Government of Canada for yet again modelling its legislation on legislation in force in Quebec and for the decisions it makes here in this House, with tremendous support from the Bloc Québécois. We are always proud to help the rest of Canada benefit from the good things in Quebec. Often, the best things come from Quebec. I am sure that the hon. member for Roberval—Lac-Saint-Jean can attest to that. As a former mayor, he knows quite well that we are always leaders in Quebec, but lately with the Conservative government, we have been falling behind in forestry and the development of the manufacturing sector.

If the federal government would agree to invest in its jurisdictions in economic development, if it would agree to listen to the recommendations of the Government of Quebec, of Premier Jean Charest, who is not a sovereignist, things would be better. Premier Charest asked the federal government to intervene and help the manufacturing and forestry sectors.

We saw that the Conservative government's recent policy statement, its mini-budget, offered absolutely nothing to deal with the crisis in forestry and manufacturing.

Bill C-18, which follows on Bill C-31, is a good piece of legislation. It modernizes the Elections Act and is based on legislation that has been in force in Quebec for almost a decade.

It would be nice if, in other matters such as aid programs for the forestry and industrial sectors, the Conservative government reacted to and relied on the good advice it is being given by the Bloc Québécois MPs and the Government of Quebec.

Once again, it is sad to see our colleagues from Quebec who agree to sit here, to sit at the same table as the hon. members from the rest of Canada, who do not have the same interests as Quebeckers. What can I say? They might understand, one day. There are seats available here on this side of the House for them.

That is why we always have to pay attention and be alert. After all, we are here to stand up for citizens. Bill C-18 was introduced in response to a complaint from Canada's Chief Electoral Officer, who wanted voters with no fixed street address to be allowed to vote.

The Bloc Québécois intends to stand up for their interests and supports the government in helping the Chief Electoral Officer.

When it comes to the Chief Electoral Officer, however, we always have to be very careful. When he asks for something, that is one thing, but when we do, that is another thing entirely. Let us not forget what happened during the last election campaign in Quebec, for the byelections. All of the parties in this House asked the Chief Electoral Officer not to allow people to vote with their faces covered. He did not comply with the unanimous decision of the members of this House who asked him to act in a timely and efficient manner like Quebec's chief electoral officer did.

I want to make sure this message reaches Canada's Chief Electoral Officer. This bill can help him. However, when all of the parties decide to recommend something, he should comply with that. After all, he is a public official. We want him to be neutral, but the position is a political appointment. That raises some questions. The Conservatives appointed him. They were very upset when he allowed people to vote with their faces covered. But since they were the ones who appointed him, they played it down later.

Obviously, by introducing a voter identification bill in this House, they are trying to correct one problem by creating another. The Conservatives are often conflicted like that. They want to solve the problem of veiled voters, but that means staff at polling stations will have to be women. Clearly, by solving one problem, they are creating another. That is often the case with the Conservatives. That is why they are languishing in the polls. In my opinion, they will continue to languish for some time.

Nevertheless, we hope here today to help those who do not have a fixed address. I explained this at the beginning. Something like this happened in Quebec in the 1980s. The tiniest communities did not have street names or civic numbers. That is understandable. Now, out of seven million residents in Quebec, there are only 15,000 people who do not have one. We understand that not all provinces have invested in this way. We can respect that reality, and help those people, while respecting the fact that they must produce identification.

Bill C-18 states that, even if a voter does not have a civic address, he or she must bring identification. If that identification indicates rural route number 1, without a house number, and if the voter registration indicates the same information, that is, rural route number 1, that is considered a match.

Thus, this bill would allow these people to vote. That is the aim of the bill, and we support it.

I can give an example of the identification required. A list, which can be updated for every election, was drawn up by the Chief Electoral Officer.

That is why it was not included directly in the bill. However, concerning ID cards, for all the voters listening here today, it could happen sooner than one might think. One never knows. There could be a federal election any time. With a minority government, any little slip up could trigger an election.

They need to know that the identity cards that will be accepted must include a photo and address, like a driver’s licence. Otherwise, it will be necessary to produce two other pieces of identification; in particular, those with a photo but without the address, such as a health insurance card in Quebec. It could be a matter of a health insurance card, a social insurance card, a birth certificate, a driver’s licence, obviously, a Canadian passport, a certificate of Indian status, Canadian citizenship certificate or citizenship card, a credit or debit card in the voter’s name, a Canadian Forces identity card, a health care card, an employee identification card produced by an employer, the old age security card, a bus pass, a student card, a library card, a liquor store identity card, a card from Canadian Blood Services or Héma-Québec, a hospital card, a fishing permit, a wildlife identification card, a hunting licence, a firearms acquisition certificate, an outdoors card or permit, a provincial or territorial identity card, or even a card from a local community services centre.

Obviously, these pieces of identification are accepted. Original documents with a name and residential address are also accepted; credit card statements, bank account statements, public utility bills, municipal property tax evaluations, school report cards, residential leases, statements of benefits, as well as income tax notices of assessment.

It should be understood that there is no shortage of pieces of identification. Obviously, the easiest is to present an identification card with photo and address, like a driver’s licence; however, not everybody has one and we are well aware of that. Next, there is a whole list of documents with name and address, two of which could be presented in order to vote, whether they have a photo or not.

The residents of Quebec should recognize that it is the same thing for the provincial elections: they must always bring their pieces of identification when they go to vote. As for the people who are responsible for applying the law, they should know that it is done out of respect for the institution; that is to say to ensure that the right people are voting. The procedure is very respectful. It will help election workers prevent fraud and error.

Above all, we are not falling into the trap where we allow the famous declaration under oath, without requiring any piece of identification, as was previously allowed. A voter could declare that he or she was the proper person without those who were working at the polling station really knowing that person’s identity. It was enough just to make a declaration. From now on, that will not be tolerated. An eligible voter will have to vouch for someone who does not have the proper identification.

If you do not have identification, you must be accompanied by someone who fulfills all the conditions—an individual who has identification, who was able to vote and who can vouch for you because they personally know you. This is allowed but you have to be accompanied by someone who knows you. Therefore, if there was fraud or whatever, the person who vouched for you would be responsible and liable to legal proceedings.

The Bloc Québécois is pleased to support Bill C-18 at second reading. We hope that amendments will be made quickly because elections can be called earlier than anticipated when a minority government is in power, particularly when the government acts like a majority government, as is the case at present, and is very arrogant towards the other parties. As the chief organizer of the Bloc Québécois, I am in a position to say that we will be pleased to go head to head with the Conservatives anywhere and anytime.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member will know that yesterday in northern Canada a major report on women and homelessness was released, it is entitled, “You Just Blink and It Can Happen”. It talked about the very serious situation that faces women who are homeless in Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

One of the problems that we know existed with the legislation that was passed in the first session of this Parliament, Bill C-31, was that it did not go out of its way to assist people who were homeless to register and vote in elections.

Since the bill that we are currently debating tries to fix one of the glaring problems created by the previous legislation, which is the disenfranchisement of rural voters, I wonder if the member might comment on how the legislation that we are debating now does anything to ensure that homeless people will be able to vote in federal elections. For instance, it does not allow for statutory declarations. It does not allow for someone to vouch for more than one person at a poll.

For example, if a woman finds herself in a transition shelter, it would not allow the person who operates that shelter to vouch for all the women who happen to be living at that place at the time of a federal election. The person who vouches also has to be someone who is on the voters list in that poll, so it is a very limited possibility for ensuring that those people who are homeless or in some kind of a transition at that moment are able to vote.

I wonder if the member might comment in light of this very disturbing report that came out yesterday on women's homelessness in the north.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Vancouver Island North for her intervention in the debate today and pointing out the great irony of Bill C-31, a bill that purportedly was intended to deal with the question of voter fraud, even though there is not a high level of voter fraud. No one claimed that voter fraud was rampant in Canada. Again, it seemed like an issue that was not really high on the list of issues.

Although we all want a voting system that has integrity, the question of voter fraud was not something that seemed to be rampant in Canada. We had this legislation in the last session of Parliament to purportedly deal with this problem. What it did cause was the disenfranchisement of almost a million Canadians. I really appreciate that she has taken the time to outline how that affects people, particularly in the small and rural communities in her riding on the north part of Vancouver Island.

I know this has been an area of particular concern to my colleague because she has been very active on the whole question of democratic reform and proposing significant measures. While I appreciate her comments directly on this legislation, I wonder if she could elaborate on some of her broader concerns about democratic and electoral reform in Canada, those which are not dealt with in this legislation but would be important issues for Parliament to deal with and look at in the future.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am not quite sure what the hon. member was suggesting with his last comment but I will try to answer some of his questions. If he had listened carefully to my remarks, he would not have heard me say that the NDP raised the issue of rural addresses.

I mentioned that because, from what I understand, it was the first nations people who raised that issue at the committee. However, it does not really matter at the end of the day who raised it. I do not know why we need to play a blame game. We are raising it now and it is before this House. Suffice it to say that the NDP voted against Bill C-31 and we were the only party to do so, for many reasons.

The NDP did provide solutions, such as providing a statutory declaration for voters so that they could declare themselves when voting.

With regard to the member's point on more voting days, I do not hear too many people asking for more days to vote. We have advance polls that have been extended over the years, and that is great.

I do hear from a lot of my constituents and Canadians all across this country, through petitions and other things, that they want their vote to actually count at the end of the day. They are looking for changes to our electoral system and what they really want is for their vote to count at the end of the day.

[Catherine Bell, NDP, Vancouver Island North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure today to speak to Bill C-18 recently introduced into the House of Commons in an effort to fix a hastily adopted bill, Bill C-31, from the last session of Parliament.

I say hastily because I know the committee heard from many witnesses. They heard from Elections Canada, first nations, students, homeless advocates and the members of the committee, including the NDP member for Ottawa Centre, who was the critic at the time.

I know a lot of issues were raised on Bill C-31. Unfortunately, some of the flaws that were pointed out were not addressed. They were overruled by the members of the committee.

Today we are trying to fix a problem created by the Conservative government. The problem is the new stringent regulations, as set out in Bill C-31, on the cards to prove one's identity ultimately will lead to the disenfranchisement of over a million voters, as we have heard. This was pointed out by Elections Canada after the fact. Basically that has forced the government to come up with this new bill to try to undo the damage.

Under the new regulations of Bill C-18 being considered today, voting will still be more difficult for many cross-sections of Canadians, including people with rural addresses.

That is why I am here today to speak to the bill. I represent a riding that is probably 50% rural. We have a lot of small towns and a couple of large centres that get home delivery, but most of our communities get rural mail delivery. It is for them that I am worried.

I also have to include myself in that group of people because I live in a small town. I have a box number. Fortunately for me, my residential address is also on my driver's licence, as well as my box number. If that were not the case, I might find myself on election day unable to vote, or having to prove who I am.

In areas of Courtenay, where there is rural mail delivery, many people living on small farms and on lots outside of the city limits. They do not have home delivery. These people get their mail at the side of the road in a box, and it is an RR number. It has been like that for many years and a lot of the people have lived there for many years. This includes the area of Royston, which is just south of Courtenay where my aunt lives.

She has been in that place for over 50 years. She just turned 80 years old. She has always lived in the same place. She may find herself at the polling station unable to vote because she does not drive. She does not have a driver's licence with a picture ID on it and probably could not prove who she was. All her neighbours and the people who she knows would be unable to vouch for her because they might find themselves in the same predicament without the ability to verify who they are.

Also areas of Comox and outer areas of that town do not get home delivery. Up in the Lazo area, many people living in the little communities of Merville, Black Creek and Oyster River may be disenfranchised from their vote. Again, these people do not get their mail delivered to a box in a central post office. Because of what happened with Canada Post over a number of years, we have found that our mail is delivered to small community grocery stores, gas stations or other places where people have to pick up their mail. The mail does not come to their residences, so they usually have a rural mail delivery address or a box number in those places. Many people are going to find they have a problem.

I spoke a little about box numbers. Most of the communities in my riding, for example, Cumberland, Gold River, Sayward, Tahsis, Port McNeil, Port Hardy and Port Alice, Zeballos, have very small post offices. They are a long way from Ottawa and the larger geographical centres of British Columbia. People in these small towns rely on the post offices as the place to get their mail. Pretty well everyone's mail is delivered to a post office box. Many people live on roads that may not even have a name or a sign and their residence address would not be listed.

The other interesting thing is that there are a lot of little islands, Hornby, Denman, Quadra, Cortes, Alert Bay and Sointula, all those little islands we travel to and from. The people who live on those islands also get their mail delivered to a box at the local post office which in many instances is in the local community grocery store. These people may also find themselves disenfranchised.

That is a lot of communities, in fact most of the communities in my riding. There are only two main communities where people would get their mail delivered to their home and their home address would be on their card. We are concerned about what might happen with the people in the small communities.

The other thing I have to highlight is all the first nations communities in my riding and there are a lot of them, including places like Owikeno, Kingcome Inlet and up in Simoom Sound. These places are very remote. People do not get their mail delivered to a post office box or to their home. Their addresses are bag number such and such in the closest town and the mail is flown in on small airplanes or taken in by boat whenever the weather is good. That is how they get their mail. If they were issued a card that said bag number such and such, or whatever, obviously they do not live in a bag, they live in a beautiful community up the coast, but they could find themselves disenfranchised.

It is already hard enough for some people in our smaller communities and especially first nations because until recently they did not even have polling places on reserve, so they were feeling disenfranchised that way as well.

We are trying to find more opportunities to increase the vote among first nations people in our communities. I know in the last election we worked very hard with Elections Canada to make sure that there were polls on reserves so that people would have an opportunity to vote where they live. That is so important.

Some people in our rural communities have to travel quite a distance to exercise their franchise. We take it for granted when we live in a larger centre, in that we can just take a few minutes to go to our polling station and vote. We need to make sure there are more opportunities to do that, not less.

Also, I talked about homeless people and transient populations. My colleague, the member for Vancouver East, spoke passionately about how we would be disenfranchising many of those people in the inner cities who live in shelters or who are homeless. There were some provisions made to identify them and to make sure that they were not left out.

In my community we do not have big shelters. We have a couple of small ones, but we also have many homeless people in my riding. Many of these people are couch surfing. They are living in cars. There are families who are living at campsites. There are people who are double bunking, a couple of different families living together trying to make ends meet, trying to find suitable housing.

I do not know what will happen to those people if they have no address at all and they cannot prove where they are living. It is going to be really difficult for them at voting time. It is something that we should have addressed before.

At committee we also heard from students who were living away from home. Aboriginal representatives who came to committee brought up some of the flaws that were ignored at the time. As I said, here we are debating a bill that fixes another bill that was rushed through the House.

The NDP critic at the time who worked on the committee made presentations to our caucus. We understood the problems. We were the only party to vote against Bill C-31 at the time.

It is very unfair that all the groups that I just mentioned, aboriginals, students, rural residents, people who live in small towns, will have to jump through hoops in order to carry out their democratic right and civic duty to cast a ballot.

Constituents have called me to ask what is going on with respect to paragraph 3, proof of identity, in Bill C-18. They will have to provide proof of identity and residence. If a person cannot prove his or her residence, then the person may lose his or her franchise to vote. That is a problem. That is basically what brings us here today.

The provisions were introduced in order to combat voter fraud that allegedly was taking place in Canada. However, no meaningful evidence has been put forth to prove that fraud was occurring in any systematic or widespread way.

My colleague from Ottawa Centre mentioned that candidate fraud is a bigger problem than voter fraud, with the floor crossing that goes on. A candidate representing a certain party will get elected. People commit to a certain candidate. They work hard for that candidate to make sure that the candidate is elected and when that person gets to the House of Commons, that person might cross the floor to another party. That act in itself is what turns off a lot of voters. It is a shame that these things are allowed to happen in this House.

I also believe that the objective of stamping out voter fraud is an honourable one, but unfortunately, it is being pursued at too high a price under these bills. It basically alienates many honest Canadians and disenfranchises them from their opportunity to vote. It is too high a price to pay for something that really is not a huge problem in the first place. The most important thing is for Canadians to have easy and open access to the ballot.

I put forward a motion on electoral reform because I wanted to hear from more Canadians. More Canadians deserve an opportunity to vote and their vote should count. I wanted to hear from Canadians to find out how we could change and enhance our electoral system with proportional representation, but unfortunately that motion was hijacked by the procedure and House affairs committee. It basically turned into a process where the government could hear about Senate reform. I heard from people who attended the focus groups that came out of that procedure. The whole agenda was pretty much taken up with talk about Senate reform. There was very little talk about electoral reform.

That is sad because I know that in the province of British Columbia where I come from, electoral reform is something that a lot of people wanted. When we had our referendum in 2005, it did not pass, but it did not lose by much either. We had over 50%. Unfortunately, the way it was set out it had to have 60%, but 57% is more than 50% plus one. That is what we need to have a majority in this House. I think a majority of British Columbians did want some sort of change in our electoral process.

Back to the bill at hand, the NDP critic for democratic reform, the member for Timmins—James Bay, is taking an active role at the committee. Other NDP MPs are rising in this House to ensure that the rights of all Canadians are protected at the ballot box.

My colleague from Timmins—James Bay also is in jeopardy of losing his vote. There was an article a number of weeks ago in the paper about that. His driver's licence has a very strange address. That is how things are done in his riding. It does not list his residence, but only lists the number of a road. He is willing, as I and others are, to jump through the procedural hoops that the government has placed before us to make sure that we get to vote on election day.

I do not have to ask how many of my constituents would be willing to find someone to go to the polling station with them to declare that they are who they say they are. Seniors, people with disabilities, young people who are voting for the first time, are they going to show up at the ballot box with the people necessary to prove who they are, or will they walk away? I think most people would say, “Forget it. This is too much trouble. Why bother”. Such a procedure is going to turn people away from the voting process. This is something that we ought not to do. We should be encouraging people to get out and vote, not making it more difficult for them. We should not be setting up roadblocks.

Already voter turnout is too low. I think that voter turnout hovers at around 65%. That is quite shameful. It means that members were elected to the House with the support of 65% of the population, and the percentage of the vote that we received makes it even smaller. That is something we need to address in this country. Again, that could be addressed through changing our electoral system.

I am proud to say that only the NDP caucus stood up in opposition to the original bill when it was being expedited through the House last spring. The Conservative Party introduced this troubling legislation and both the Bloc and the Liberals got on board on the condition that all voters' birthdates would be included in the voters list that is provided to the political parties. My colleague from Ottawa Centre fought hard against these provisions, but he was ultimately outnumbered at the committee where these amendments were made.

It is unfortunate that we are here speaking to Bill C-18. Both it and Bill C-31 threaten the very foundation of democracy and the rights of citizens that Canadians hold so dear.

I know that the NDP democratic reform critic will do all he can to ensure that fair amendments to this bill are adopted so that the right of all Canadians on election day will be protected.

I thank the House for the opportunity to speak to Bill C-18 and to put my party's point of view forward.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this bill to amend the Canada Elections Act with regard to verification of residence.

Here is the problem, more or less. Elections Canada recently revealed that 1 million Canadians do not have a proper residential address under the terms of the original legislation. In other words, they do not have an address with a street number and a street name.

This is a reality both in Quebec and Canada. We have big cities, but we also have, numerically speaking, a large number of rural communities. Rural addresses quite often consist of post office box numbers or rural route numbers. For example, an address might include the name of the person, “Rural Route 1”, and the name of the municipality. We know that in most cases in rural areas, mail carriers deliver the mail to mailboxes along the roadside. Such is the case in my riding on Île d'Orléans, in Côte-de-Beaupré and in Charlevoix, where farms are very large. This makes mail delivery quite challenging.

In addition, Elections Canada realized that the addresses of residents of aboriginal reserves often consist of nothing but the name of the reserve. In my riding, there is a very dynamic aboriginal community, the Innu of Essipit. I am proud to salute the leadership of grand chief Denis Ross, as well as all of the band council and the negotiating team. In some aboriginal communities, then, the address consists solely of the name of the person and the name of the reserve. We can imagine that makes the process of identification somewhat complicated.

Worse still, those people could not appeal to another voter in the same polling division to vouch for them because most of the voters would not have the documents required to prove the address of their residence.

The problem is as follows. If you live in a township and your address is just “Rural Route 1”, it is very likely that the people who know you best or most intimately are your neighbours, and it could well be that those neighbours are your relatives. So, if your sister, your brother or sister-in-law lives on the same rural route as you, they have the same problem of identification. Their own address is incomplete for the purposes of Elections Canada. This measure has the same goal of improving the conditions for identification of voters.

According to Elections Canada, there are 1,012,989 voters, that is 4.4% of eligible voters in Canada, who do not have a residential address that meets the requirements of the Elections Act as amended. The situation is very disquieting. What is more, Elections Canada tells us that 80% of the residents of an area such as Nunavut do not have a personal address.

There are statistics for Saskatchewan, Ontario and for Newfoundland and Labrador. In Quebec, it is a matter of 15,836 voters or 27/100 of 1%, or more than 0.25% who could be facing the same problem.

Through Bill C-18, which are now debating, the government is amending the Canada Elections Act to provide more flexibility in the regulations concerning the verification of residence in the case of voters who live in areas where the municipal address appearing on a piece of identification consists of a postal box, general delivery or rural route.

This bill provides that where the address indicated on the items of identification presented does not establish the residence of the voter but is consistent with the corresponding information on the voters list, the residence of the voter is deemed to have been established.

For example, a voter whose piece of identity contains an address consisting only of the rural route could establish his residence if that postal address matches the information recorded on the voters list.

The bill also provides that in case of doubt the deputy returning officer, the poll clerk, a candidate or candidate's representative could ask the voter to take the prescribed oath if there is any doubt in the opinion of the election officials.

The Bloc Québécois supports the principle of the bill because we believe it is necessary to correct the law to avoid having 1 million Canadians deprived of their right to vote. Even though, numerically speaking, we are talking about a smaller number compared to other communities and other provinces, I believe that those 15,836 voters in Quebec also have the right to exercise their right to vote. Not amending the act would amount to depriving them of their right to vote, and voting is a democratic exercise in which we elect the representatives who will speak for us in Ottawa.

We are of the opinion that the NDP proposal to grant the right to vote to every voter who swears an oath is unacceptable. This proposal was already rejected by the three other political parties when Bill C-31 was studied in the previous session of this Parliament.

We believe that it is reasonable to require at least one piece of photo ID, if available, to verify the identity of voters and to ensure the integrity of the electoral system. There must not be any ambiguity: the NDP proposal could result in some fraud. The NDP proposal runs counter to the principles of identification required to vote in a general election or a byelection.

We know that the NDP is criticizing this bill because it believes it will not resolve all the problems created last spring by Bill C-31. We recall the discussions of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs where the NDP pointed out the situation of homeless people. I wish to reiterate what I said at that time: our party is not oblivious to the situation of the homeless. On the contrary, it is proof that despite economic prosperity, despite the fact that the dollar has reached its highest value in 30 years, there is the reality that there are poor people and homeless people in Canada and Quebec.

The problem for the homeless is that they do not always have an identification card. Yet, they must be able find someone to vouch for them and prove their identity. To adopt the NDP position would be to ensure that anyone at all could vote. We cannot support that position.

On the Liberal side, the member for Wascana, also the House leader of the official opposition, a Liberal member from Saskatchewan, is calling for this problem to be solved as quickly as possible.

In closing, I want to reiterate that the Bloc Québécois is in favour of this bill and that this problem is not new to us, even though it has received a lot of media attention lately. On December 7, 2006, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, former Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, appeared before our Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs and warned parliamentarians about the address problem.

I will close my presentation by citing Mr. Kingsley:

The requirement to prove residence presents a significant challenge. It is worth noting that in Quebec, which is the only province requiring ID at the polls, electors only need to prove their identity, not their residence. ... As well, the chief electoral officers of other Canadian jurisdictions have pointed out that in many rural and northern areas of the country, especially west of Ontario, the address on the driver's licence is not the residential address but the postal address.

In closing, we believe that this bill will be carefully examined by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. I will say again that the Bloc Québécois is in favour of the principle of this bill.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I understand completely. This is going to be a very important question period.

It is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-18, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (verification of residence). A few minutes ago, my colleague from Drummond discussed this and stated that the Bloc Québécois supports Bill C-18 in principle.

The purpose of the bill is to close some of the loopholes in Bill C-31. All of our colleagues who have spoken to Bill C-18 talked about problems that resulted from the adoption of Bill C-31. People did not pass it in bad faith to cause problems, but, as is frequently the case, they realized after the fact that there were some problems. That is what happened with Bill C-31, which attempted to minimize opportunities for fraud or error by strengthening requirements related to voter identification. People were asked to produce identification that included their home address. That was when a pretty serious problem surfaced.

Elections Canada revealed that at least one million Canadians do not have a proper residential address, that is, an address with a civic number and street name, as required by Bill C-31. This might seem strange or unusual to someone who lives in the city and has always had a civic address with a street name. This does not mean, however, that these other people have nowhere to live. We are familiar with the plight of the homeless. However, there are also people who live in a rural setting who do not have that kind of address. It is not the same thing. They do not have a civic number and street name. They may simply have a rural route number. For instance, in the case of first nations peoples, their address might simply be the name of the reserve and nothing else. The address is just as valid, but it is not the kind of address that city dwellers tend to have.

One million voters represent 4.4% of all eligible voters in Canada. As I was saying, in rural settings, addresses often consist of post office boxes or rural routes. On first nations reserves, residential addresses often consist only of the name of the reserve. In order to ensure a healthy democratic process, everyone must, if possible, have the right to vote, which is an inalienable right.

Those who have a rural route as their address, for instance, cannot call upon a vouching elector from the same polling division, because he or she will have a similar address. If a voter brings along their neighbour or their roommate because they do not have all the documentation required by the law, the problem is that the other person will have more or less exactly the same address. They will have the same problem, that is, no civic number or street name. Therein lies the problem in Bill C-31.

This situation affects about one million people in Canada. Fortunately, the number is much smaller in Quebec, but there are people who do have that problem. Indeed, 15,836 voters, or 0.27% of all electors in Quebec were found to have an address that can be described as incomplete. They find themselves in the situation that I described earlier, in that they do not necessarily have a civic number or a street name. So, a solution had to be found to allow the greatest possible number of people to exercise their right to vote, a right—and I am saying it again, because it is important—that is unalienable.

So, Bill C-18 was drafted. However, the democratic process must be conducted while trying to prevent fraud as much as possible. Now, we joke about the days when people used to say that political parties would sometimes make dead people vote. We laugh, but it is not funny, because it was the reality. Some people did use that ploy at one time. Whenever the possibility exists, dishonest people will try to use all sorts of schemes to win elections in a fraudulent and illegal manner. That was done in the past. People would go to the cemetery, write down the name of a dead person, find his old address, and then go and vote while using the dead person's identity. This really happened.

In more recent times—unfortunately, this may still be happening, but it definitely did in the rather recent past—some people would vote by doing nothing less than to steal another voter's identity.

I do not believe I am mistaken in saying that this happened in the borough of Anjou, in Quebec. In the very recent past, it was proven that people were engaging in this fraudulent practice. Someone was elected because people—called floating voters—had been paid to vote for that person by stealing other voters' identities. This is a serious problem that must be prevented. That is why the NDP's suggestion that people simply take an oath in order to have the right to vote is highly problematic. It is not enough.

Bill C-18 amends the Canada Elections Act to relax the rules on verifying residence for voters who live in areas where the municipal address on pieces of identification consists of a post office box, general delivery or a rural route. The bill provides that if the mailing address on the pieces of identification provided does not prove the voter's residence, but is consistent with the information related to that voter on the voters list, the voter's residence is deemed to have been proven. For example, a voter whose identification shows an address limited to a rural route can prove his residence if that mailing address matches the information on the voters list.

In the case of someone who is vouching for another voter, the bill requires that the voucher first prove his or her own identity and residence. If the address on the voucher's identification matches the information related to the voucher on the voters list, that address can be used to prove the voucher's residence.

I will conclude by saying that if there is any doubt, the deputy returning officer, poll clerk, candidate or candidate's representative can ask the voter to take the prescribed oath. This is what is proposed in Bill C-18. As I said earlier, the Bloc Québécois supports this bill in principle.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has put forward many good arguments. Over the past while in Parliament, before the summer break, we worked diligently on this issue trying to understand what was driving the government agenda in actually developing Bill C-31 in the first place.

Is it a question of voter fraud? We had four cases of voter fraud in the last four elections. That is not sufficient to bring forward an act to this Parliament.

Is it a question that somehow our system of voting is under scrutiny, that the elaborate system of returning officers, scrutineers and the complete system of Canadian voting, which is probably one of the best in the world, is somehow under suspicion? Are we letting too many people through the gate? Is it because some people walking into the polls are unable to identify themselves in many instances?

Yes, there are some problems but did it require this kind of authoritarian hammer that came down in terms of Bill C-31? Or, is this something else? Is this really about social conditioning? Is the bill one of the steps that is leading us toward a more authoritarian state where everything we do must be qualified with some form of identification, where we are moving toward government identity cards and where we are taking the steps that will lead us to a society that Canadians will not like? Or, are the steps being taken small ones so that Canadians will be conditioned to accept this kind of burden?

What does my hon. colleague think was the motive behind the government moving ahead with this legislation, wasting our time in Parliament and creating a situation where, in the next election, we will have massive confusion at the polls, which will turn many people off voting? What was the government's purpose in all of this?

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

Mr. Speaker, many people who live in urban environments are transient. I spoke earlier about the UN special rapporteur's report on housing and homelessness in Canada, and it is no wonder. People are facing a crisis. Many people who live in cities simply do not have an ID or a residence address but they can be vouched for under a statutory declaration. It is a fairly widespread problem.

I want to quote from a blog on the CTV website. It is from someone in the Gulf Islands who said, “Well, I guess I won't be voting in the next election. I live on a small Gulf Island off the B.C. coast. We were recently assigned house numbers for this island but pick up mail on a different island and our voting stations are on a third island. A few years ago I was turned away at the polls because my driver's licence address (place I live) didn't match my voters card address (mailing address). Here we go again....”

That kind of thing happens all over Canada.

In one of the advance polls in the last election, a person who lived on one Gulf Island had to travel to Vancouver Island to cross over to another Gulf Island to vote in the advance poll.

If we are going to talk about how we actually ensure voters legitimately vote in this country, we need to fix some of the problems that are in the system that have been clearly identified, instead of doing the kinds of things in Bill C-31, which actually made sure voters could not vote.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan for giving such a good overview of the current legislation before us, Bill C-18, as well as its predecessor, Bill C-31 which was approved by this House.

I want to emphasize the points she made. The original bill, Bill C-31, was actually a bill that did not need to come forward. It was a bill that was manufactured by the government based on alleged voter fraud that really does not exist.

There are isolated cases from time to time but the chief electoral officer and Elections Canada have a very good system for following that up and actually zeroing in on where there may be potential fraud.

Therefore, this bill, in its previous form, was never required in the first place. What it did was it disenfranchised millions of rural voters, as well as those who live in an urban environment who may not have the necessary ID. There was nothing wrong with the way people in my riding of Vancouver East voted but they were suddenly disenfranchised by Bill C-31, as they will be by this new bill.

It is quite astounding that a problem that never existed has now become a problem because of legislation that has been created by the government.

We know about the rural voters and the fact that is why this new version of the bill has come forward, but is it also not the case that there are other voters who will be disenfranchised? Unfortunately, there is nothing in this bill that will correct the situation for those people. They are mostly people in inner cities, homeless people, people without ID and who have every right to vote. As a result of this legislation, they will still find it difficult to vote, if not impossible. They will, in effect, be disenfranchised.

I know I and my colleagues have pressed very hard to get this message through. It is quite alarming that not only did the government not listen, but the Liberal Party and the Bloc Québécois rejected those arguments as well and went along with this bill. Now we have the second version of the bill back and it is still a flawed bill.

I would ask the member to comment on how this impacts people in the urban environment as well.

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

An infestation, as the member for Winnipeg Centre points out.

This is all about democratic reform and accountability in our voting system.

We also had an opportunity in this House to put forward proportional representation and members of this House folded like a stack of cards. We had an opportunity to ensure every vote counted so that we did not end up with a government that sometimes ended up with a majority when it only had 35% of the vote. Now that truly is a democratic reform initiative.

The member for Vancouver Island North brought forward a motion proposing electoral reform that would have substantially impacted on the way this House operates. Instead, members chose to disregard that very good motion. Canada is one of the few western democracies left that does not have some form of proportional representation.

I think New Democrats have a very proud history of fighting for democratic reform, electoral reform and for standing up for working class and middle class families to ensure their vote actually counts for something in this House. We are proud to be in the forefront in that area.

To get back to Bill C-18, I want to emphasize how broad the scope is of this problem. In a CTV news story on November 2, it stated:

Elections Canada last week disclosed that one million rural Canadians do not have a proper residential or civic address--complete with street name and number--as envisaged by the original legislation.

--that is Bill C-31--

Rural addresses are more often post office boxes or rural route numbers. On native reserves, a resident's address is sometimes simply the name of the reserve. The problem is particularly acute in the North, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Under this bill, many communities in our province simply would not have the right to have their votes registered. Our member for Timmins—James Bay is one of those. The member for Timmins—James Bay has called on this House to not only look at the disenfranchisement of rural voters, but also to look at the disenfranchisement of homeless people, transients, students, other rural people and aboriginal people. The list is very long.

When Elections Canada released its report, it gave some specific numbers, which I think are important. It released a report to Parliament saying that 4.4% of eligible voters do not have the proper address required by law. In Nunavut, 80.75% of the voters cannot offer a street name or address; 27.3% in Saskatchewan; and 23% in Newfoundland and Labrador. That is a serious problem.

I am hoping the House will look at the impact Bill C-18 would have on rural voters but I also hope the House expands its view and looks at all the other people who are disenfranchised.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-18. Of course, if all members of the House had done their job when Bill C-31 was before the committee, we would not be in this position.

The parliamentary secretary spoke about the fact that the NDP opposed Bill C-31 simply because it was concerned about homeless people. There are a couple of things I would like to say about that. I am sure the parliamentary secretary could not possibly be suggesting that homeless people should not vote. We know that homelessness is a rising crisis in this country and that there are increasing numbers of homeless people in Canada. I would be very surprised to hear members of the House say that homeless people should be disenfranchised.

I point to the preliminary report of the UN special rapporteur, Miloon Kothari, that was released on October 22. It talked about the fact that Canada has a crisis in housing. We have a national crisis that is in an emergency situation. We know that independent sources are talking about increasing homelessness. We know homeless people often do not have identification that would allow them to vote.

Members of the Bloc are suggesting that somehow the New Democrats are not in favour of integrity in the voting system and that is absolute nonsense. The member for Vancouver East had a very concrete suggestion, one that has been used in Vancouver East, which was the use of statutory declarations for people who showed up with no identification and were not on the voters list.

NDPers are certainly very conscious of maintaining the integrity of the voting system and of ensuring there is no fraud, but I am also very aware that the Chief Electoral Officer also indicated that fraud is by no means rampant in this country. One wonders, when we attempt to use a sledgehammer on a small isolated problem, what the overall intent is.

When the parliamentary secretary answered a question I asked him about what this particular bill before us was going to do for people who were going to be disenfranchised, living in transient shelters and homeless, he indicated that the quote I read was actually not a quote of his from Bill C-18 when in fact it was his response to Bill C-18 amendments proposed by the Senate.

When the former Bill C-31 came back to the House for further review and consideration, I want to point out to members that New Democrats not only identified problems with that bill, and I am going to talk about some of them, but they also proposed solutions. They were concerned about rural voters in small communities. We talked about them being in small isolated communities. Not all rural communities are small and isolated, but we were certainly conscious of the fact that other community members could be disenfranchised.

On June 18, in response to amendments to Bill C-31 proposed by the Senate, the parliamentary secretary 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.

What we actually did with Bill C-31, in effect, is disenfranchise nearly a million rural voters. When those kinds of comments are made, one wonders if homelessness was considered as well.

The parliamentary secretary went on to say again on June 18, 2007, regarding amendments to Bill C-31 from the Senate:

I think there is no greater fraud that could be perpetrated on Canadians than that of an individual voting in a federal or provincial election who pretends to be someone that he or she is not.

Surely, there is also a fraud in disenfranchising voters. People have talked about section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. When we pass legislation that says Canadians will not be allowed to vote because of where they live in rural Canada, surely that is perpetrating a fraud.

On that very same day of June 18, in response to Bill C-31 amendments from the Senate, the Minister for Democratic Reform said:

As I have mentioned on other occasions, this bill makes a number of changes to the electoral process that will reduce the opportunity for electoral fraud, improve the accuracy of the national register and the lists of electors, facilitate communication with the electorate and improve the administration of elections. These are changes that will be of benefit to all parties, to all candidates, and to all Canadians because it will make our electoral system, and in turn our democracy, stronger.

The Minister for Democratic Reform was supporting a piece of legislation that was actually going to make sure that some Canadians could not vote. How is that possibly in keeping with provisions for making our democracy stronger? In fact, in the government's rush to reduce a virtually non-existent fraud problem, it has actually made sure that well over a million Canadians will not be able to vote.

The bill attempts to correct that. If we are going to correct a piece of flawed legislation, I would argue that we need to correct all of the issues that were identified when Bill C-31 came forward initially.

Often in the House, we hear people talking about accountability, transparency, and fiscal responsibility. Bill C-31 was before the House and the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Bloc pushed it through despite some very strong reservations identified by New Democrats, and solutions suggested as well I might add. Now we are in the process of fixing a flawed piece of legislation at what cost to taxpayers.

We have a responsibility when legislation comes before the House. I have heard members say that not every piece of legislation is perfect and we have to do what we can do to get things through the House. However, when we do things hastily and without adequate consideration for broad ranging impact, we end up not only delaying the process, but we end up spending far more money than we needed to spend in the first place.

When the government brought in Bill C-18 to fix the problem of disenfranchised rural voters, it was not fixing the problems with respect to people who perhaps were homeless or living on low incomes. Does that mean we will have to bring another bill back before the House, at great expense to taxpayers, in order to fix a problem that should have been fixed when Bill C-31 was originally before the House?

I heard the parliamentary secretary speak about the fact that the primary reason that New Democrats opposed the original bill was because of our great concern for homeless people. We are absolutely concerned about people who are homeless. Whether it is their right to vote, their right to adequate shelter, and everything in between like health care, liveable wages, adequate education, we are concerned. I am very proud as a New Democrat to stand up and speak about these things in the House.

New Democrats identified a number of issues in Bill C-31 which are not being addressed in Bill C-18 and are still going to continue to be a problem.

We talked about the fact that the bill would result in thousands of individuals not being able to exercise their right to vote because of a lack of proper identification due to poverty, illness, disability or having no stable address. This also included people who were temporarily housed in transition shelters. We put forward a recommendation around the statutory declaration as an alternate means of identification for an elector to prove his or her identity.

We also talked about the fact that there were some serious problems with the vouching system. With the vouching system, one person can vouch only for one voter.

Sometimes, for example, there may be someone who lives in a riding and works a lot with people who are homeless, some of the street workers, who often have daily contact with people who are homeless. That person would only be able to vouch for one of those people who he or she works with on a regular basis. We were arguing that using that vouching system is a legitimate way to say that someone should be able to prove who they are and that one should be able to vouch for more than one person. That seems perfectly reasonable.

Surely, if one's credentials are good enough to vouch for one person, they should be good enough to vouch for five, six or ten people. What difference does it make?

I want to highlight the fact again that when New Democrats were speaking about the problems with Bill C-31, which have not been fixed in Bill C-18, they were identifying more than homelessness as an issue. The member for Vancouver East, in a very good speech that outlined a number of the problems and potential solutions, said:

What is being offered as the main solution to this problem is a voter identification system. In looking at the bill and knowing where this came from at committee, we want to express some of our concerns about what may be the unintended consequences of the ID system on voters. In particular, we are concerned about how this would impact low income people, people who live in small remote communities and aboriginal people who do not have the necessary ID outlined in the bill.

Clearly, the member for Vancouver East, who is a very experienced member of the House and has been a tireless advocate for homeless people, was also talking about people who are not only homeless but who lived in small and remote communities and aboriginal people.

Therefore, I think that is a very good example of how New Democrats talked about issues that included the homeless and others. Further on in her speech she talked about a solution. She said:

However, I have looked at this carefully and have talked to lawyers in my community who have been involved in providing assistance around statutory declarations for voters with no ID, and they are very concerned, as I am, about what this provision will mean. At present, it is acceptable for a voter to make a statutory declaration along with a person in the community who can identify the voter. In the downtown east side, it has often been a street worker, someone who knows many of the people in the community, who vouches for the individual. Under the new bill, [Bill C-31], this would no longer be allowed.

Bill C-18, which is before the House, does not take into account that provision that would have prevented the disenfranchisement of a number of people in our communities. The member went on to say:

We are prepared to see this bill go to committee. The government has said that it is willing to look at amendments--

We, of course, know that what happened is neither the government, nor the Liberals, nor the Bloc supported some of the amendments that the NDP put forward. This is the important part. The member also said:

--to ensure that by dealing with voter fraud, we are not at the same time unintentionally disenfranchising people who have a right to vote, who want to vote and who are voting legitimately, but would be precluded from doing so by these new provisions.

We have seen the first round of people who will be disenfranchised by Bill C-31.

I talked a bit about the vouching system and how extremely complicated it is in terms of the fact that we have one person who can vouch only for one person.

The member for Ottawa Centre, again a tireless defender of democratic reform and people's right to vote, in his speech against Bill C-31, and this is prescient, identified some problems that could occur. He said, “I would hate to see unintended consequences that would do the same here”. In this context he was referring to some problems that happened in the civil rights movement in the United States where people were, some would argue, intentionally disenfranchised and there were court challenges that resulted from that. He said:

We have seen laws in this country that have done that. I refer to B.C. and its so-called section 80, whereby people were not able to get on the voters list until the actual day of the election simply because of a flawed enumeration system. It is important to acknowledge, with the way the bill is presently written, that a charter challenge could happen.

The member for Ottawa Centre spoke about the fact that there could be unintended consequences of the bill and what do we see but over one million voters in Canada not able to vote because of this very deeply flawed bill.

The member goes on to talk about solutions. People in the House have said that New Democrats only oppose things, not propose things. That is wrong. We talked about the fact that enumeration, which has been cancelled, would have been a very good way to ensure that we had the best possible electoral list so that people would be accurately reflected on that voters list. It would certainly ease voting when it comes to voting day. That would have been one solution, along with the use of statutory declarations.

One of the members referred to the fact that New Democrats are not doing anything on democratic reform. Again, that is absolute utter nonsense because we know the previous member, Ed Broadbent, with whom I was very proud to serve as a member of the New Democrat caucus, presented a very detailed plan on democratic reform. Part of that plan dealt with corporate lobbyists. When we talk about democratic reform, we had the member for Winnipeg Centre yesterday pointing out the fact that measures to deal with corporate lobbyists under the Accountability Act still have not been put in place.

The member for Winnipeg Centre has been tireless in talking about ethics and accountability in this House.

We have a government that ran on a platform of accountability and so-called clean government and now we have a situation of Conservative corporate lobbyists who, because of the Conservatives' failure to enact certain provisions of Bill C-2, the Accountability Act, they have pretty much a free licence these days.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I think that the NDP's proposal, which would give voting rights to any person who swears an oath, is unacceptable. That proposal was rejected by the other three political parties last session during consideration of Bill C-31.

We believe it is reasonable to require photo identification, if available, to verify the identity of voters and ensure the integrity of the electoral system.

I would like to point out that there have been serious fraud cases. The time when someone could pile a bunch of people onto a bus and have a voter swear an oath to identify them is over.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-31 asks electors to bring a piece of photo ID when they go to the polling station. That does not present a problem in Quebec, because driver’s licences and health insurance cards have photographs. However, the Chief Electoral Officer has authorized two original pieces of identification, one of which can establish your name and the other your residential address.

The identification card can be a health insurance card, social insurance card, birth certificate, driver’s licence, Canadian passport, a credit card to identify the name, a Canadian Forces identity card, a health card, employer card or old age security card, or a public transportation card. There are also documents that can establish name and address, such as a credit card statement, a bank statement, a utility bill such as a telephone, cable, hydro, gas or water bill, or a bill from a public utilities commission. This can also be a local property tax assessment, a residential lease or, for students, a school report card or transcript; and the list goes on.

An older person will have no problem voting, and could even go in with another elector who will vouch for him or her, if that elector has all of the pieces of identification. Everything has been done in Bill C-18 to facilitate things and to remedy the mistake that was made in Bill C-31, which contained the restriction that prevented some people who have post office boxes from proving their address. This bill corrects the mistake that interfered with a million people in Canada voting.

I do not think this poses any problems of the kind suggested by my colleague in the NDP. I know the New Democrats do not support this. We have often seen this in committee, particularly when it comes to bills that require identification. They think this means that homeless people would not be allowed to exercise their right to vote. Everything is being done, however, in the present Bill C-18, to accommodate those people.

The right to vote is also a responsibility that rests on every citizen. Everyone must be informed about how that right can be exercised.

I have just come from a meeting of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, at which the Chief Electoral Officer spoke as a witness. He informed us that he is in the process of initiating a broad campaign to raise awareness everywhere in Canada, to genuinely inform the public about their rights and the methods available to them for exercising the responsible right that the right to vote represents.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on Bill C-18, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (verification of residence). First of all, I would like to say that the Bloc Québécois supports the principle of the bill.

In February 2007, the House of Commons adopted Bill C-31. This bill amended the Canada Elections Act primarily to reduce the possibility of fraud or error by strengthening requirements pertaining to the identification of voters. the Chief Electoral Officer had already expressed concerns about possible problems caused by the requirement to provide proof of identity and residence.

On December 7, 2006, when he appeared before the committee studying Bill C-31, he gave parliamentarians the following warning.

The requirement to prove residence presents a significant challenge. It is worth noting that in Quebec, which is the only province requiring ID at the polls, electors only need to prove their identity, not their residence.

As well, the chief electoral officers of other Canadian jurisdictions have pointed out that in many rural and northern areas of the country, especially west of Ontario, the address on the driver's licence is not the residential address but the postal address.

He got it right. According to Elections Canada, 1 012 989 electors, or 4.4% of qualified electors, do not have residential addresses meeting the requirements of the Elections Act as amended by Bill C-31.

In preparing this speech, I wondered how many voters in my riding might be affected. We inquired with the office of the Chief Electoral Officer. So far, all we were able to obtain was an acknowledgement of receipt, conforming that my inquiry had been referred to the appropriate branch. That takes some doing. Having been made aware of a problem, Elections Canada is unable to tell an elected member of the House of Commons how many voters in her riding might be affected.

But if an election were held today, nearly one million voters across Canada, including 15,000 in Quebec, would be prevented from casting a ballot.

These are the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of voters in the various provinces who do not meet the new requirements of the Elections Act. A journalist from La Presse also tried unsuccessfully to obtain an explanation from Elections Canada.

At various stages of the electoral process, electors are expected to provide undeniable proof of identity, particularly at the time of casting a ballot. Identification systems may also be used for registering voters or granting staff members access to their place of work or to a computer system. Some countries rely on the honesty of voters and do not require them to provide any documents as proof of identity. Other countries do require proof of identity, hence the need for personal identification systems.

In some countries, the use of ID cards is widespread, while in others, ID cards are not intended for everyday use. The public's response will determine whether or not this is an appropriate practice.

For electoral purposes, voters may produce ID cards when registering or at the polling station. Such cards may also be useful to give election officials access to their place of work or to other restricted access areas such as polling and ballot counting stations. They may also be used by the personnel responsible for voter registration or verification of voters lists.

Most ID cards used when voting do have the advantage of helping reduce opportunities for fraud. The ones that include a photo, a signature or a fingerprint ensure an even tighter control, but they must be used with caution, while taking into consideration the country's cultural context. Some security printing processes, such as holograms or coloured illustrations that are hard to copy, also reduce the risk of false ID cards, as do identification procedures that rely on biological information.

In its present form, the Canada Elections Act requires all electors to prove their identity and their residence before being allowed to vote. The new requirements on voter identification are based on a unanimous recommendation made by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

In order to prove his or her identity, an elector must: provide a government issued identity card with his or her photo, name and address—a Quebec driver's licence, for example; or provide two pieces of identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer, with both pieces showing his or her name, and one piece showing his or her residence; or ask another elector, whose name appears on the list of electors for the same polling division, to vouch for him or her, after having provided the above-mentioned pieces of identification.

The concern expressed by the Chief Electoral Officer, which we share, is that some electors may not be able to provide pieces of identification to prove their residence, as required by the law, because they live in an area where there are no municipal addresses, or in a region where such an address is not usually indicated on the driver's licence or other identification documents. This concern is the topic of the current debate, and we must find a solution.

The legislation needs to be corrected to ensure that a million citizens are not deprived of the right to vote. Bill C-18 will allow electors in regions where pieces of identification do not contain a civic address, just a post office box, general delivery or a rural route, to use identification with an address other than a street address to verify their residence on condition that it is consistent with the information on file in the National Register of Electors.

The same rule will apply to people who vouch for another elector. If the address on the voucher’s identification is consistent with the information in the list of electors, it will be deemed sufficient proof of residence. I would like to look a bit more closely at this bill.

It would allow electors to present identification with an address other than a civic address to verify their residence on condition that it is consistent with the information on file in the National Register of Electors. This is meant to cover people who live on rural routes, for example. The bill also authorizes an election officer, a candidate or a candidate’s representative to require the elector or the voucher to take an oath in order to prove his or her place of residence.

In these cases, the residence of the elector or voucher will not be deemed proven unless the person takes an oath. We believe that it is reasonable to require an ID card with a photograph, if available, in order to verify the identity of electors and ensure the integrity of the election system.

People whose names are not on the list of electors but who want to register on polling day or at an advance polling station will have to prove their residence by presenting identification with a civic address because the list of electors does not have any information in it that would make it possible to compare a mailing address or an incomplete civic address.

The government’s purpose here is to adjust our aim. The verification of residence bill makes the identification requirements more flexible for electors who do not have a piece of identification with a street address on it when they have to prove their residence in order to vote. We what we wanted to do with Bill C-31 was not to restrict the criteria for qualification as an elector but to change the way in which the elector exercises the right to vote.

We added an additional way of proving one’s place of residence by presenting pieces of identification which corroborate the elector’s declared identity.

We believe as legislators that we should do everything in our power to ensure that there are no more cases of impersonation at elections.

We believe that the integrity of the democratic process needs to be better protected in elections, something that is absolutely essential to recognize political rights.

We are also very aware of the fact that no bill should have the direct or indirect effect of depriving a person of his or her right to vote.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we all agree that we want to raise the level of voter turnout. One practice would raise the voter turnout, and that is door to door enumeration. We used to do that for many years. When the Liberal Party was in government, it got rid of door to door enumeration. Now tenants, students, young people who just turned age 18 and new immigrants who have just become citizens are no longer on the list. They have not been enumerated. Because they are not on the list, often they scramble to try to get to the polling station if they even know where their polling station is.

The key element that would help to increase the voter turnout is not in this bill, not in Bill C-18 and not in Bill C-31.

I remember a few months ago, in the spring, the Liberal Party said that there was all kinds of voter fraud and they suggested we ask Elections Canada to examine a few ridings in Toronto, for example. Therefore, a lot of money and time was spent to check whether there was fraud. Elections Canada said that there was no massive voter fraud. There was no fraud at all. A few people had made mistakes.

If we all agree there is no voter fraud, then why did the different parties pass Bill C-31? We said that it would not fix anything and it created other problems. Now we have another bill. I have no confidence it will fix all the problems or that voter turnout rate will go up. I know people will be disenfranchised because of the problems that are still inherent in this whole debate, which is the lack of door to door enumeration in the first place.

I cannot see how, after a lot of time, energy and money spent on these papers to study this bill and that bill causing embarrassment, the bill will fix these problems. It will fix the problem for those people from rural Canada who have been left off the list, but I guarantee we will encounter other problems.

I hope we return to door to door enumeration so people who need to be on the list will be on it and they can then have a chance to vote.

[Éric Hébert-Daly]

Obviously, the New Democratic Party of Canada will support all efforts to encourage greater voter turnout. This has always been an issue of the utmost importance for our party.

However, just like my colleague from the Liberal Party, we share Elections Canada's concerns, which were mentioned by Mr. Mayrand. We are concerned, for example, that ballot boxes may be moved about, by the time it's going to take to implement the proposed provisions, and about the cost involved. We are looking at a 12 % increase in the general election budget. There was consideration of the 35 days of polling, but at the end of the day, it is 30 days in total instead.

In any event, the current Elections Act provides for several polling possibilities. This is why the money should perhaps be used on awareness and to encourage people to use the other existing methods and polling days including the advance polling ballot and special ballots which may be sent at any point throughout the campaign right up to the Tuesday before polling day.

We also are concerned about staff recruitment. I'm not necessarily referring to recruiting people, because I think it will actually be easier to find people to work on Sunday than on Monday. Rather, the problem is with training. If the election staff all have different schedules, there may have to be ongoing training of a large number of people throughout the whole process.

On several occasions throughout any given polling day, local identification of people is a problem. Either people are poorly trained, or they've been trained but have their own personal spin on what they're supposed to do on polling day. The problem only gets bigger when different people turn up to do the same job.

Our job, as a political party, is to get people out to vote, and this is always going to be our goal. But the fact remains that some people are always going to be a little upset about getting calls on a Sunday morning or having to answer the door when people come and try and get them out to vote. As a political party, we're going to have to be very careful about that. So, with that in mind, I encourage you to not necessarily see Sunday as an ordinary polling day.

In closing, I think that Bill C-31, which was enacted during the last parliamentary session, could have included a focus on voter turnout. Had this been done, now that the act has been passed, we wouldn't be facing so many problems today.

Thank you.

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

Mr. Speaker, I almost rose on a question of privilege when my friend referred to me as the new democratic reform critic. I think what he meant was the new critic on democratic reform for my party. It is almost in the way things are said, not what is actually said.

With that in mind, I do want to congratulate the parliamentary secretary. I would have had many questions for him, but I will pose those questions hypothetically to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the public who may be listening.

If this is a housekeeping bill and will cure the problem of a vast number of rural voters being unable to vote now because of a gap in the legislation, and if it is that non-contentious, and if it means so much to enfranchise over a million voters in this country in Liberal, Conservative and other party ridings, then why was it not given higher priority than Bill C-6, which we just debated, which by and large seems to affect an extremely small number of people, which seems to respond to a problem that does not exist?

Why was this legislation not given priority over a number of other bills that have achieved headlines far and wide across the country? Perhaps the answer is in my question itself: because it is better politics to get more press than to do what is right for over a million voters in this country.

Briefly speaking of Bill C-18, it is true that the parliamentary secretary has worked very hard in trying to get all parties together to bridge the gap that exists with respect to so many voters. It is true that discussions were held. It is true that a number of people have been consulted with respect to drafting the bill. But it is equally true that the government has misrepresented the facts which underlie the reason that we are here today.

If everybody had listened intently to the parliamentary secretary and to the Minister for Democratic Reform himself, it would seem that the Conservative Party is riding forth like the knight on the white horse to cure this problem. The truth is they sat on it; they ignored advice that came to their attention, or I guess in a legal standard, should have come to their attention as government earlier on, and I will get to that in a minute.

In announcing that the bill would be introduced, the Minister for Democratic Reform said, “Once again our government is showing real leadership by taking quick, decisive action to strengthen our voting system by addressing the problem of verifying the residence of voters”. I agree with everything there except “real leadership“ and “taking quick, decisive action”. He also said, “The legislative solution introduced today will ensure that legitimate voters will be able to exercise their fundamental democratic right to vote”.

I might remind all members of the House and some on the other side of the lack of fanfare or even notice of the fact that we have a Charter of Rights, and that the Charter of Rights is celebrating its 25th anniversary. I, as a relatively young member of Parliament, am a child of the charter. The charter in section 3, and I bet if I had a quiz on the charter, people could not pick the section that guarantees this right, which is the basis upon which this debate should begin and end, the democratic right of citizens, states that every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein. It is a very short section. I actually counted the words. That section has the fewest words in the whole Charter of Rights, but it is so succinct.

I find it kind of interesting when we look at the democratic reform ethos of the Conservative government how it has been interpreted by the courts has largely been with respect to the rights of inmates and judges to vote. Who would have thought that those two groups would be put together in terms of rights?

There have been significant court cases on whether inmates have the right to vote. People convicted of serious crimes are now determined by our courts to have the right to vote. So fundamental is this right, yet it would seem that the government, in its wisdom, by forging ahead with Bill C-6, might in effect be depriving a few unconvicted, uncharged citizens of this country who profess their religious beliefs of the right to vote, but inmates have the right to vote. I find that a curious turn of events given the government's very strong and strident support of an anti-crime agenda. The irony, of course, is quite delicious.

The other irony in the theme of my discussion and how it is not a case where once again the government is showing real leadership on that white horse is that in fact the Senate of Canada, one of those institutions that the government does not seem to really support, did in fact during its deliberations on Bill C-31 raise questions with respect to the qualification of voters, which as I indicated is guaranteed in the Charter of Rights. A group of senators reviewed the legislation, and let us remind ourselves that the other place has a duty to review legislation passed by the Commons.

We heard the parliamentary secretary for democratic reform in this House stand up and say, “Everybody missed it. Everybody in the Commons, all parties, missed it. It is just a big old mistake and a million people might not be able to vote. We are sorry. We put a whole bunch of bills ahead of this one because we care so much about those million voters in rural Canada who cannot vote. We are going to put a whole bunch of other bills ahead of this one and we are going to blame everybody equally.”

Not so fast. Let us work backward. On June 27, the bill itself, Bill C-31, received royal assent. Prior to that, in the month of May and before that time, the Senate of Canada was wrapping up its hearings. A number of questions were had of the Chief Electoral Officer at that time. Those questions went to identifying individuals who did not have addresses. The Chief Electoral Officer is another person who seems to be on the government's hit list. If we add it up, there are Muslim women and minority communities, the Senate of Canada, and now the Chief Electoral Officer. These are targets of the new government and its parliamentary secretaries, who wield such great power.

My friend who spoke to this bill today should be very mindful that the Chief Electoral Officer offered solutions himself, which came up as a result of the Senate's verification and review of legislation. He wrote, “In light of comments that I have already received”--as a result of Senate hearings--“I am considering broadening the list”--and he referred to identification--“to include attestation letters that could be signed by a person of authority in homeless shelters and student residences. Such letters would establish the residence of the individual and constitute one of the two pieces of identification required under section 143(2)(b)”.

It was also suggested there were problems, generally speaking, in ethnic communities with respect to voter turnout and verification.

He wrote to the questioner:

You had also suggested that Elections Canada should advertise in ethnic media to communicate the requirements for voter identification to the electorate and, in particular, ethnocultural communities. As part of its commitment to communicate clearly with a variety of groups within the electorate, Elections Canada has sought to tailor the information provided to ethnocultural communities.

He went on to describe what Elections Canada in fact had done in the ethnocultural communities and he talked about the attestation letters. The attestation letters prove the point that the Elections Canada officials are doing their job. The attestation letters were an afterthought as a result of the Senate hearings.

What we have is the Chief Electoral Officer, mindful that this is the act under which he is empowered, attempting to accommodate the law as written as a result of a verification and review in the other place. As a result, attestation letters are now, in practice, what prevails for homeless people, people in student dorms and other such facilities.

Would we not think that the question might be that in its thorough review of this legislation the government ought to have addressed the issue of attestation letters and made it, rather than a practice, the law? And would we not think that, and we may get to this when we send this to committee and correct it, in a thorough review, having had the experience of the byelections, the government would make it a priority to fix whatever flaws it had seen in Bill C-31?

In effect, do members not think the minister responsible, who wanted quick and decisive action, and the parliamentary secretary, who lives in a semi-rural riding, might have thought it very important to review what was already on the books in terms of committee work, or does the world for the Conservative government and the officers of democratic reform for the government end when the bill is presented to the Senate?

I suggest, not. I suggest that whatever happens in the Senate in the review of a bill is very much within the purview of the Minister for Democratic Reform. If he were not so busy taking questions for the Prime Minister and other people who are ducking issues, he would probably have time to do that. It also falls within the purview of the parliamentary secretary. He should have reviewed the work done by the Senate.

However, I am not here to defend the Senate on this item. I am here to defend the Chief Electoral Officer, who responded to a Senate inquiry. It is almost as if the democratic reform team over there did not exist. The real work was being done in the trenches by the Chief Electoral Officer and by serious senators who were involved in the review of the legislation.

In summary, it is very important for us to remember that the bill will, when taken to committee and fixed in a number of ways with the leadership that other members of the committee will offer to the bill, attempt to fix a problem that was actually created when it was decided we all must have forms of identification to vote.

If I could be non-partisan for a minute, we have to realize that we made a change when we decided in Bill C-31 that everybody had to show identification to vote. We owe it to ourselves to understand that in some countries this is the case and in others it is not. Clearly with respect to the over million rural voters, it effectively disenfranchised them. One has to ask the question we asked throughout the Bill C-6 debate. What was the problem before? Was there widespread abuse or fraud, concealment of identity or multiple voting in the rural ridings of Canada? I do not recall complaints made to Elections Canada.

It is like Bill C-6 where we do not have a single complaint to Elections Canada about voter fraud. We have the hums and ha's of the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, who may have been driving by and saw people with pumpkins on their heads and somehow this became a very large issue.

What we have in this case is probably what will be the rub of the discussion. The serious rub of the discussion for members of Parliament is whether we will go to full identification, meaning photo identification. Countries in the democratic reform capacity not as sophisticated and not as developed as us have gone to that way. There are countries in west Africa that require photo identification to vote.

We have photo identification and a comparison against it, as said in legislation, to have a passport, which will allow us to enter other countries and to re-enter Canada. We have photo identification required by law by many provinces to have a driver's licence. We have photo identification requirements in many administrative and quasi-administrative instances in the country where government agencies are involved.

Do we want to take that bold grand leap toward photo identification for voting? It is a question with which we must all come to terms, be mature about and decide whether we want that. However, if we do not go there, if we do not jump in that large ocean, then we have to stay on the shore. There is no half-way on this.

It seems to me that whatever happened at Bill C-31, whatever happened in the Commons during the debate and in the Senate during its purview, with the poor Chief Electoral Officer trying to keep the middle ground, we have a situation where we are half wet. We have a situation where the first means of voting is to show one's picture ID, but the law does not say that the returning officer in charge has to compare one's face to the photo ID. It seems to be assumed that people would do that, but after all we are here to make law.

We are not here to just to recount our personal experiences. We are not here to talk about pumpkins at polling stations. We are not here to talk about multiple votes without proof. We are not here to talk about the anecdotes. This is a serious place where laws are made.

If we are to have a debate, the debate should be that if we say photo ID is one way of proving people's ability to exercise their charter right to vote, then we should also say that the photo ID should be compared to people's faces, which requires people to show their face. The law does not say that. Worse, the law goes on to say that the person only has to produce, as a second means of voting, two pieces of ID which have an address on it. As interpreted, those addresses have to concur with the list of electors. That is yet again a situation where no person's face is required to be shown. We are half wet on this issue. It is incongruous and very difficult for the Chief Electoral Officer to be sure that everyone who votes is voting.

Then we have to ask the question about our history. I would think that this particularly applies to rural Canada. In our history do we have such widespread voter fraud and multiple voting situations that we have to go that far? I would think not. What we have to rely on are the principles of trust, that when a Canadian citizen comes to the voting box, then in our heads, as lawmakers, as government officials and as the delegated responsible persons from Elections Canada, we should think of section 3 of the charter, “Every citizen in Canada has the right to vote”. It should be written large in both official languages at every polling station. We should do our utmost as parliamentarians to ensure that has been put into effect.

What has happened here is, in our rush to be half modern and half photogenic, we have said that one has to fit with the other.

On the positive side, the bill will go some way to cure a problem that exists because of our zealous pursuit of attempting to get rural people, our large rural population, to conform perhaps to a metropolitan view of how we identify ourselves. I think it is an identity issue. I think it is an issue that defines us as a nation.

In our country we have had periods in some cases of rapid urbanization and we have had periods of slow urbanization. I submit that in this history of our country, and what better place to do this than in the House, parts of western Canada were rapidly de-ruralized and rural Canada lost a lot of its character in the period which we now know as the dust bowl period.

We know that in periods of economic recession, parts of eastern Canada were denuded of its people. One only has to look at the outport situation in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador to know that people were pulled away from their rural roots.

The process of de-ruralization is occurring much slower in my province and in the rest of the Maritimes, but it is happening. We are becoming, as the last census showed, an urban nation.

What Bill C-31 did was it added insult to injury to rural Canadians by saying, “We are going to apply a city standard to rural Canadians. We are going to apply a metropolitan standard to rural Canadians. You shall be like us”.

What the good part of Bill C-18 suggests is that we are apologizing, as parliamentarians from all sides, to rural Canadians. We are saying that we were a little too hasty, a little too urban in our thought and we apologize. We are saying that rural Canadians have the same rights as we do as guaranteed by section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

Kudos to rural Canada and kudos to Bill C-18. We will fix and add to it, as we will at committee, and it will make good legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my hon. colleague on becoming the new democratic reform critic for the official opposition party. I look forward to working with him on these issues and many more in committee.

I know that the hon. member normally pays rapt attention when I speak in this place, so it is quite unusual that he did not quite get all of my comments in my main address. I did make mention of the fact that it was after the three September byelections held in Quebec that the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer conducted a review to see whether the new provisions contained in Bill C-31 were appropriate. In other words, were the identification requirements proper? Was the list of alternative identifications identified by the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer sufficient?

It was only at that time that the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer, Monsieur Mayrand, had discovered that there was this gap. It was upon that discovery that we decided to take decisive action.

In fact, I can assure my hon. colleague and my friend that the first time I heard of it personally was in a phone call when I was back in my home riding. They had just received information from the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer that this gap had occurred. They had identified it. Within days I contacted my hon. colleague and the other democratic reform critics from the other opposition parties asking them to get together for a meeting to see if we could come up with the proper wording. Literally within days of that we had introduced the legislation we see before us today.

[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?

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

Mr. Speaker, I should ask a rhetorical question here, but the first question is, where is the bill coming from? That is important to establish in order to help us answer some of the questions that will come up as we look into this bill.

The bill is not coming from Elections Canada. I have had the pleasure of a briefing from officials at Elections Canada, at my request, and it is quite clear that this bill emanates from the body politic, the government, and not from Elections Canada. That, I believe, is significant in the sense that the government therefore must answer the question that has already been put by my colleague as to whether or not this meets the charter test, whether the government has sought and obtained assurances that the proposed legislation in Bill C-6 does indeed meet the test of the charter. I believe that we might be surprised with that down the road, should Parliament decide to go much further with this legislation, because I am not convinced that it does meet the charter test.

I was also hoping to garner enough support in the House from members where there is goodwill to try to refer this bill to committee before second reading and therefore give ourselves more latitude in looking at the situation.

The representative of the Bloc Québécois who spoke said that his party would certainly consider that favourably. The member for Ottawa Centre indicated he thought the idea had merit and he would seek some direction from his own caucus.

I was hoping that if indeed the three opposition parties are in agreement here, the government would take that into consideration and would allow this bill to proceed to committee before second reading and therefore give our members who are representing each party there more latitude in dealing with a very difficult, complex and delicate situation.

I want to review how it is that Canadians can vote. There are different ways.

First, of course, they can show up at a polling station, and while at the polling station there are three different ways that Canadians can signify who they are and obtain a ballot.

The first way, as we mentioned, is by providing some sort of photo ID issued by government, one of which is a driver's licence. Another could be a passport. Another could be, in some jurisdictions, a health card. However, let it be known that 20% of Canadians do not have a driver's licence and do not necessarily have photo ID with them. Therefore, in its wisdom, Parliament, when it enacted this act in the past, recognized we had to have some flexibility for other ways of self-identification, because facial identification is not accessible to everyone.

The second way that any Canadian who is on the list of electors can use to obtain a ballot and vote is by providing non-photo ID that recognizes who they are and where they live. There is, I believe, a list of 50 or so such possibilities that they can use to identify themselves, not visually, not facially, not with a photo ID, but identify who they are and obtain a ballot.

The third way is go to the polling station, swear a note and be vouched for by another registered elector. All the person needs to provide is his or her name, address and signature. Again the person does not need to provide any photo ID.

There is a fourth way people can vote, which is really broken down into two. Both are called special ballots.

One of those two other ways is a mail-in ballot. At the start of or during a campaign, electors can ask that their ballots be sent to them and they can mail them in. It is usually people from overseas who will do that, but I have known citizens in the riding of Ottawa--Vanier who have exercised their right to vote by mail-in ballot. In those circumstances, they do not need to provide photo ID as well.

The other way is to obtain a special ballot from the returning officer of the riding. People do not even have to show up in person. Someone else can go to the returning officer's office up to six days before the actual polling day, obtain a ballot and go back to the person for whom they are doing that. The person, however, must sign and put the ballot in the sealed envelope and then return it by a specified time.

Essentially, we have created an environment where Canadians have five ways of voting and that is done to ensure Canadians can vote. Of those five ways, only one requires facial identification. The other four do not. That is how it is now and that is how it would remain should Bill C-6 be adopted. It is important that we take that into consideration.

Then we get into what Bill C-6 really does and we heard what it does tonight. It basically forces one very small, narrow category of Canadian citizens to unveil themselves should they be veiled for religious reasons.

Here is where I have a real problem. We have a situation where a Muslim woman, who has decided for religious reasons to wear a veil, goes into a polling station on election day, is forced to remove her veil and yet is not forced to facially identify. She can present two pieces of identification that recognize her name and her address or swear an oath and will not need to present photo ID.

What are we doing here? When my colleague from Ottawa Centre says that we have a solution looking for a problem, I would perhaps add a word to that. It is perhaps a non-solution looking for a problem because we are not changing anything here. However, we are going to force Muslim women to unveil themselves without having them photo identified. What is the point? That is a question that deserves an answer.

I do not have a problem with demanding that Muslim women identify visually. We do so as we do for every Canadian. If we want a passport we must have our picture taken and it must be in our passport. I do not have a problem with that and I do not think Canadians have a problem with that.

If we want a driver's licence, I believe in all jurisdictions in this country, we must have a photo. I know in Ontario we must have a photo if we want a driver's licence, and an unveiled photo if one happens to be a Muslim woman. I do not have a problem with that.

If we want to board a plane in this country we must provide photo ID, unveiled, and we must prove who we are as well. I do not have difficulty with that and I do not think anyone has. It is the same thing for the citizenship card. People must have a photo on it and Muslim women must be unveiled. I do not think anyone has difficulty with that because it is a universal application.

We have a situation here where we have said to all Canadians that they have five different ways of voting but for Muslim women we will be adding a special condition: they must remove their veil. At the same time, we are telling them that they do not need to provide facial proof of who they are. What is the point? That brings us to the questions of charter compliance. We heard comments about that earlier today.

We have had discussions concerning individual rights versus collective rights, and concerning freedom of religion and religious rights in relation to the fundamental right to vote. That is certainly the kind of debate that should take place in a House of Commons or Parliament. I am very interested in this question, and so are most of my hon. colleagues.

However, if the government were to ask me to express my opinion beforehand, without even knowing whether the bill before us meets the requirements of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, if the government were to ask me to state my position before I even had some answers to some of these questions, in my opinion, the government is going too far, too fast.

This bill involves potential fundamental conflicts between freedom of religion and the right to vote. This must be reconciled and it is up to Parliament to do so. Perhaps we will not be able to do so in this House. Furthermore, I find it rather ironic that, earlier, my hon. colleague from Ottawa Centre, who advocates abolishing the Senate, referred to that very chamber, in order to correct what he saw as a flaw in another bill, that is, Bill C-31, regarding the Canada Elections Act. We could very easily find ourselves in the same situation again.

I find it even more ironic that his party advocates abolishing the house that could in fact help us resolve this matter, if the government does not seem inclined to act appropriately, transparently and respectfully.

I want to use a very personal event. I was not sure I should but I will. I am thinking that what we are confronted with is very similar to an event, which the House may recall, that I was confronted with. In Ottawa at one point we had the merger of hospitals. The board, in its wisdom, hired someone who it believed to be the most competent person to help it navigate through the merger of a number of hospitals.

The board hired a gentleman who had essentially shepherded hospitals in the Montreal area in the same kind of environment, which is very difficult. People are suffering through a great deal of uncertainty. There are all kinds of questions. There may be people who fear for their jobs. Therefore, it is a tense environment to start with.

This gentleman happened to be David Levine who had been in the past a Parti Québécois candidate in the riding of D'Arcy McGee. He garnered, I gather, a very low number of votes, but that is neither here nor there.

However, we were confronted with a situation where a gentleman who had been hired was being threatened of being fired for political beliefs although he had accepted squarely to leave whatever political beliefs he held at the door. They were not germane to the job he was hired to do. It was a very heated debate in our community, so much so that the board thought it should hold a special meeting and it did. It chose the biggest hall it had at the hospital and still people spilled over to the street.

I chose to go and speak. Some of my friends told me that I was nuts and that I would be confronted. It was a bit mobbish but I felt it was important that the principle in this country that we do not hire and fire people based on their political beliefs if they leave those beliefs at the door. If we are hiring people for their competence and for their capacity, that is what they should be judged on, not because they may have run for a political party that we do not agree with.

I certainly have never shared the views of the Parti Québécois in terms of its basic tenet or the Bloc for that matter, but we cannot fire people. That was the slipperiest slope we could get on.

I have the feeling that the bill that is before us has such elements because of a rather volatile reaction to Mr. Myrand's decision to apply the law as he chose to. In the rush to condemn or criticize, perhaps some people have forgotten but what is at play here is the fundamental right of freedom of religion and the fundamental right of freedom to vote and people should be treated the same.

I know people tell me that all they are asking for is that all people who come to vote unveil themselves if they happen to wear a veil.

That is not quite true. One can vote by correspondence, vote by mail where one does not ever have to identify oneself visually. It is not quite true because one can vote by special ballot where someone else gets the ballot for the person and brings it back to the returning officer's office, so one ever needs to visually identity.

It is not quite true because right now someone else could show up and not have to prove who they are with visual identification, even the Muslim women whose veils we have forced them to remove because there are two other provisions that allow people to vote in this country without facial identification.

Do we want to go to that? Perhaps the country needs to look at that. I, too, have observed elections. I was in the Congo.

Last summer, I was in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where I noticed that something that contributed to the legitimate success of the electoral process was the voter's photo ID card. Everyone had one, so it was easy. Voters also had to dip their thumb in indelible ink. There were mechanisms to make sure the vote was legitimate, that people voted only once and that the person who was voting was the person on the voter's list. Do we want to move toward that sort of system? Perhaps. In my opinion, there is some merit to it.

However, we have to recognize that today, in Canada, we do not have a universal photo ID card. Moreover, 20% of Canadians do not have a driver's licence, and an even larger percentage do not have a passport.

Two jurisdictions have a photo on their health cards. The process is still under way in Ontario, but in some provinces, people do not have their photo on their health card. In addition, they do not have their address on their citizenship card or their photo on their social insurance card. Canadians therefore have no photo ID card they can use to exercise their right to vote. That is why voters are not required to visually identify themselves by showing a photo of their face.

Why require people to uncover their face when they are not required to identify themselves in this way? It is strikingly incongruous. We are entitled to ask what is behind this bill.

What motivates a government—because the bill comes from the government and not Elections Canada—to target a group and tell the members of that group that the government no longer believes in their right to religious freedom and is requiring women to uncover their faces?

The government can impose that requirement. I comply with that requirement for passports, for boarding planes and the like. However, there is an inconsistency. When we take a plane, we have to prove our identity. If we do not, we do not board. If we want a passport, we have to identify ourselves with our face uncovered or we do not get a passport. As far as voting is concerned, we are forcing these women to show their faces, but visual identification is not required. This is does not make sense. This is totally illogical. We are not being consistent.

I hope we will take a serious look at this bill because it was thrust into the heat of a possibly non-existent crisis. As the hon. member for Ottawa Centre said, it is a solution looking for a problem; in my opinion, it is a non-solution looking for a non-problem.

As legislators of a country like Canada, which espouses human rights and has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we have to be consistent and respect our social foundations, which are the envy of the entire world.

If we are inconsistent we will destroy those foundations and those rights. We must be very, very careful because the bill before us is inconsistent with those rights, it is inconsistent with the purpose of the Canada Elections Act. There is a lot to think about.

I may have used up all my time, but it was important to raise these arguments and questions. I know that I am not the only one who has these questions. We have seen these questions raised in the media. Good for them. We have seen that concerns have been raised within the targeted group. I think we need to pay attention to those concerns.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, anything that could improve a flawed bill, going back to Bill C-31 and this band-aid that we have, would be welcome. Any idea that could further consultations and recommendations for improvement would be welcome.

I would simply point out that we go to our respective caucuses to talk about processes like this. I will certainly not stand here and tell the member exactly how we will go forward on that. However, it is an idea and it is not a bad idea. I will leave it to our respective parties to look at that idea and to moving it forward.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to clarify. I believe this is a solution looking for a problem. When we look at Bill C-31 and go back in time to see how many instances there were of concerns around voter fraud, what was the evidence? It was minuscule. Would my friend be able to say to his constituents with a straight face that we came up with this great law, Bill C-31, because we had this horrible, huge problem we had to deal with?

We should look at all the other problems we have before us. As I have said many times, why do we not deal with enumeration? We should make sure that we have universal enumeration, clean up the voters list, get envelopes for those voter cards that the member's colleague was so concerned about, and do some common sense things.

When I talk to people, they ask why for goodness' sake are we debating these kinds of bills and not cleaning up the voters list and not ensuring that we have a proper registry. That is what they want to see.

I have to say on the issue of target, I am not saying that is what we are doing. I am saying that is how people feel, after consulting them. We need to do more of that. I say consult and consult, and after we have done that, consult a bit more, because this is too--

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have been clear about the whole bill. I am sad to say that the Liberal Party supported Bill C-31 at the beginning and I did not quite understand that, but it is never too late to show one's opposition.

If we look at how we got here, it was a solution looking for a problem from the very beginning. If we are making laws, they should be evidence based. As I said, there were more problems with candidate fraud than voter fraud. Instead of bringing in a law like this one, we should have had a law on floor crossing and people switching parties. That is more important to everyday people than this bill is, which has turned into a Frankenstein that the government is trying to put to rest and is having problems with it.

On the issue itself, I think that this is the government's latest attempt, and it has other bills coming forward on rural voting gone amok.

With regard to the charter, I mentioned that in my comments. If we looked at section 15, we might have some problems with the charter. I am hoping the government did its homework on that this time, but I guess it will be our job to hold the government to account, and quite frankly, that is what people pay us to do. That is what I will be doing.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, normally I rise and say it is an honour and pleasure to speak to a bill. Sad to say, it is not in this case and I will explain briefly why that is and then get into the essence of the bill.

The reason that I have problems with this bill is because of the politics behind the bill. What we see here is a bill, whether or not it is the intent of the government or for that matter members of the Bloc, that targets a specific group, that is certainly how it feels to a lot of people.

We have heard that from people most recently at the procedure and House affairs committee. I know that the government has referenced the committee hearings as having heard from members of the Muslim community. The fact that we are focusing on this issue, notwithstanding the government's premise that this is to deal with integrity in voting, is to deal with how people feel because they feel as if they are being targeted and I can understand why.

It is important to understand how we got here. The House should recall that this is really a band-aid for a problem that existed with Bill C-31 which is now legislation. At the time, our party voted against it. We tried to fix the bill at committee. Sadly it did not get the support of other parties.

However, let us go over the tenets of Bill C-31. The tenets of Bill C-31 came out of a committee report which I think was part of the Conservative Party playbook. It was to take a committee report, cherry-pick it, and bring forward legislation, swiftly I might add and not very well written, so that the Conservatives can get their agenda put forward using the committee as cover.

I invite anyone to read the debate on Bill C-31 at procedure and House affairs committee. This was a wide-ranging report by the committee, cherry-picked with a response for the government very quickly, and a bill following within a week or two to repair a problem. The best way to put this is that this was a solution looking for a problem and that is what has happened with Bill C-31.

I mentioned many times when speaking on Bill C-31 that there was a problem with privacy. We had the problem with birthdates being put on the voters lists which would be in the hands of DROs across the land. Think of 308 ridings with hundreds of polling stations with the birthdate information of voters. However, to make matters worse, we had an amendment at committee by the Bloc and the Liberals to have that information shared with all political parties, if one can imagine that.

This was at a time when I was asking for the committee to hear from the Privacy Commissioner because I thought this was obviously an issue of privacy that we should hear from her on this. At the committee stage, I voted against this strongly. There was support at the time by the government, but when it went to the House Conservatives lost their courage, supported the other parties, and the amendment to have birthdate information included in the bill was voted and supported by all parties except for ours.

It is interesting to note that during the debates on Bill C-31 I said many times we needed to hear from more witnesses. I asked that the Privacy Commissioner come before committee. I believed it was incredibly important that we hear from the Privacy Commissioner on the issue of birthdate information being shared. The premise of course was that Elections Canada would have the date and year of birth of everyday people, and that somehow this would be a measure to ensure that the voter who was presenting himself or herself was in fact that person.

The problem with that premise was the verification number in the bill for citizens to provide photo ID. If they do not have photo ID, they need other ID that is acceptable. If they do not have that, they have to swear an oath, et cetera. This says that the government, through the bill, does not trust Canadians. We have to ask ourselves, what is the premise of the bill?

If we believe the government, the premise of the bill was the possibility of voter fraud, and I underline possibility. I asked the Chief Electoral Officer at committee whether there was rampant voter fraud. There were four cases in the last three elections that might have potentially been voter fraud and these cases were being looked into.

I said at that time, and I want to submit here, that there were more problems with candidate fraud than voter fraud. Candidate fraud is when a candidate presents himself in an election as being with the Liberal Party and then after that election, transforms himself into a Conservative. We have seen floor crossings. We have seen candidate fraud. This is of more concern to my constituents than so-called voter fraud.

What we have here is a false premise. The government got itself into this muck based on a bill that we did not need. We had the problems around privacy with respect to birth date information. We heard testimony at committee from those who advocated for the homeless, for first nations and aboriginal people and for students. They asked us not to let the bill go through without amending it so the people they represented would not be disenfranchised.

Unfortunately, the government and some of the opposition did not support amendments that would have allowed people to have a statutory declaration swearing who they were and then be able to vote. I believe that would have been the sensible way to go. It would have been good public policy, but that did not happen.

The bill went through and now we have the problem with birth date information. It was dealt with somewhat at the other place. We now have the potential problem of people not presenting themselves in a way the government believes is proper comportment.

We of course have a problem with voters' lists. My friend from the Bloc said that voter registration cards were ubiquitous and all over the place. A proposal was made at committee, which would have employed the incredible new technology called an envelope. A voter card would be put in an addressed envelope and sent to the voter. If it was not taken by the household to which it was addressed, it would be returned to sender. I believe this is done now in Ontario. This should have been done first before we started tinkering with people's privacy and the likes of Bill C-31.

We see a huge concern with respect to folks in rural Canada and the voters' list. We proposed universal enumeration for universal suffrage. People would go door to door to ensure the accuracy of the voters' list. We all have encountered problems with centralized voters' lists. It requires an overhaul. It requires having men and women doing door to door enumeration so we can have a more accurate voters' list.

The envelopes and the enumeration should have been done first before we got into the likes of Bill C-31. I am sure members sitting around the cabinet table are asking themselves why in heaven's name they got involved in this. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time because they felt they could crack down on voter fraud. It is like cracking down on some other issues that the government likes to talk about, but in the end perhaps creates more problems.

On the bill itself, I think we have to look to the most recent committee testimony when we met in September. I was there. I have listened carefully to the Bloc talk about Morocco. The member was actually referencing my comments. I had just returned from Morocco and witnessed the elections there.

For the record, I want to clear up what he is interpreting happened in Morocco. He was quite right that the Moroccans do not have a problem. He should also know that laws such as this are not required. It is simple common sense. When women present themselves, they are able to vote. In a respectful manner they are asked to visually identify and then they are given ballots. I witnessed that. I believe it is something from which we can learn. He was wrong to interpret this and say that there was a law in place and that there was legislative oversight.

We do have to be careful that when we deal with legislation, it does not have unintended consequences. I have already outlined some of the unintended consequences, or hopefully they are unintended, that Bill C-31 presents. However, what we have to look at is does this legislation target a specific group and do we believe it is charter proof?

What I mean by that, and it was already mentioned by a member from the Liberal Party, is this. The first question we need to ask is, does this comply with the charter? This is incredibly important. I said this at committee regarding Bill C-31. I believe it will be struck down for reasons that I have mentioned about the homeless, aboriginal people and students being able to vote. I think it is being challenged as we speak. Presently the way this legislation is written, I believe there could be a charter challenge. We first need to ask if the bill will be charter proof.

We have agreed that electors under the Canada Elections Act should require voters to be identified. However, we will not give a blank cheque to the government to pass laws such as this that seemingly, maybe for unintended reasons, will target a group and will be challenged under the charter. That is very important.

I also need to underline the role of the Chief Electoral Officer. I was at the committee when the Chief Electoral Officer made his argument. He said that the way the legislation was written at the time he could not do what he was being asked to do, notwithstanding the motion. I was there and we all supported it that motion.

At that time, I said we could support the motion, but, and I said very this very clearly, it had absolutely no efficacy. It meant absolutely nothing. However, I said that if it made people feel like they were actually achieving something, good for them. It was clear at the end of the day that the Chief Electoral Officer would interpret the legislation the way he did, and that a committee would not tell an officer of Parliament how to direct himself. He had done his homework, but we had not done ours, and that is the problem with Bill C-31. The bill we have in front of us is an attempt to clean that up.

I underline the fact that the Chief Electoral Officer was doing his job. We need to do our job better. That means we have to be much more diligent, especially when we are changing the Canada Elections Act. In fact, it is the same for any legislation.

If we think about it, the foundation of our democracy is allowing people their franchise. What seems to be happening is we seem to be going backwards. As opposed to opening up ways for people to vote, we seem to be putting up barriers. As I said, maybe they are unintended, but the end result seems that we are putting up more barriers rather than opening up pathways.

At committee, the Chief Electoral Officer said:

I also wish to remind you that last Monday, I asked election officials to invite anyone whose face is concealed to uncover it in a manner that is respectful of their beliefs. If they decline to do so, voters must take an oath as to their qualification as an elector in order to be eligible to vote. However, I have not amended the Act to require them to uncover their face. Again, the choice continues to be up to the individual.

It was very clear how the Chief Electoral Officer interpreted the legislation.

We have in front of us now legislation that essentially tries to make up for the fact that we created a problem. We did not create a solution. As I said before, it is a solution looking for a problem.

If we look at the bill and how it is outlined right now, it requires a lot of oversight, but the most substantive thing it requires is actual consultation. In my questions to the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities I asked what kind of consultation had happened since we were in front of the procedure and House affairs committee in September and to the writing of legislation. He assured me there was a lot of consultation.

Last week I spent time consulting with Canadians who are affected and concerned by the bill. They are deeply concerned about the direction and the perception they have of the bill separating and targeting people.

I will share my question to the Chief Electoral Officer at committee when we met in September on this issue. The meeting was to be about election financing and it turned into a meeting about this issue.

When I asked Mr. Mayrand if he knew of any cases of voter fraud when women wore veils, he answered none, zero in the history of our country. I also asked members of the Muslim community at committee if they had any issues about complying with what Mr. Mayrand had already indicated, and that was when people presented themselves, they would be asked to give visual identification. None of them said that there was a problem.

I consulted people from the community last week. I asked them if there had been a problem of having to present themselves and give visual identification. Again, there was no problem.

Therefore, we have to ask ourselves what is the problem. I go back to this. It is a solution looking for a problem. Bill C-31 was. This bill seems, maybe unintended, to be going down a path that is going to divide people and perhaps be a charter challenge. There might be a problem constitutionally.

We need to do what was not done before, and that is for the government, and for that matter Parliament, to do their homework and consult with Canadians before we write bills like this and while we are in the midst of debating bills.

The bill was rushed through quickly. That is how I began my comments and I will end them on this note. We must take the time to write legislation well and consult often. When we believe we have consulted enough, we should consult more.

Canadians want to not only be seen to be heard, but to actually be heard. Parliament dropped the ball on Bill C-31. We believed it was a bad bill. That is why we voted against it and tried to change it, sadly without the support of other parties.

In this case, we need to ensure the ball is not dropped again by consulting widely. We need to ensure that voices are heard. Let us stop dividing people on an issue like the representation of people when they come to vote. Let us absolutely listen to the voices of the people who will be affected by this.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very sorry to be the cause of the member's frustration.

I would say to him that this is very bad legislation. I am not sure it can be cured by going to committee. I have looked at it. If it was amended, it might have so many holes in it, it might not be a bill. In legal terms, what that means is that amendments may be beyond the scope of the bill.

The point is that we will either have visual facial identification of every voter in this country who wants to vote, or we will have it for no voters. That is the issue. I do not know where or when that will be dealt with.

Bill C-31 has other issues. If a special committee is struck for the rural voters issue, I would be quite pleased to discuss that issue at committee because it can be saved. This bill does not reply to a problem.

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

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member may realize that sitting where I do in this place I do not speak for the party in general, but I will submit to him my view, which is that this bill is flawed. This bill may not stand up to a constitutional challenge. This bill has human rights implications. I would like to see satisfaction on all of those points. I would like to see an opinion, or even hear of an opinion, or hear whether there was even an opinion asked for from the Department of Justice lawyers with respect to charter compliance. That I would like to know.

I do not think the hon. member could supply me with that today, because I doubt that he in fact has it. It does not sound like the pumpkin-on-the-head response from the Minister of Transport, which would lead me to believe that the government is not taking this bill very seriously from a constitutional point of view. It seems to me that it is acting politically expediently. It is also, I suggest, being somewhat flippant in comparing the real issues of voter identification as canvassed at length by the Bill C-31 committee by making a comment from the frontbench that there was someone arriving with a pumpkin on his head during the recent byelections in Quebec.

I would sit through committees, as would all of us, to find out whether the Minister of Transport will make good on his complaint that people arrived with pumpkins on their heads during the recent byelections in Quebec. I would agree to sitting down and hearing from any minister in the front benches.

Charter compliance and human rights compliance: these are things we must know. Most of the time we are making serious laws in this place. This seems to be a knee-jerk reaction, politically targeted, for no good reason but politics.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise for this side of the House and discuss Bill C-6.

I was quite taken aback by the previous speaker's comment about a punitive voter arriving at the polls with a pumpkin on his head. I had not read that and I wondered if the hon. minister had made a complaint to Elections Canada about that or whether, in fact, any complaints were made to Elections Canada. I can only assume that the comment about the pumpkin on the head of the punitive voter was intended to make light of a very grave situation. It shocks me that the government and ministers of the government, people in the first rows, not even people in the back rows on the other side, would take such a very important issue so lightly.

I stand to be corrected if there actually was a voter who arrived at the polls with a pumpkin on his head, and I see that as a complaint from the hon. minister who may have witnessed it, then I will eat all of the words I just said, including the pumpkin.

Bill C-6 attempts to solve a problem that I submit does not exist. It is rather like that pumpkin on the head, which I presume is a problem that does not exist. What we have is a situation where a major political response is taking hold within the government benches.

The primary question that I hope in my brief remarks might be addressed is: Does Canada really have a problem identifying voters? I will get into the background about Bill C-31, which was studied indepth by a very capable committee of all parties and which, presumably, dealt with these issues and attempted to solve them.

The other issue that I want to keep in mind while discussing this issue is that voters who cast their ballots by mail do not, obviously, show their faces. Is there a different standard for someone who is an absentee ballot holder compared to someone who makes the effort to go to the polls to vote? This is a very important question when we discuss the overall scope of voter identification.

Bill C-31 was not perfect. It was the first stab at having people, who present themselves at the returning office, identify themselves in some manner, through some form of identification.

As we know from a sister bill, there are very serious problems being addressed with respect to addresses for rural voters. We have had information on our side that this may not only affect rural voters but that it affects many voters across Canada. That is a serious bill to address a serious problem.

This bill, on the other hand, does not seem to address an existing problem. The rural voters bill, which we will debate at another time in this place, addresses a real issue that has resulted from complaints from people who feel they will be disenfranchised and, upon examination, it seems pretty clear might very well be. The numbers are in the hundreds of thousands across the country and in some ridings it is particularly high, especially in rural ridings in western Canada. That seems to be a real problem.

In this case, we have a situation where no complaint was ever filed to Elections Canada about allegations that during recent byelections in the province of Quebec this was an issue.

I will get into much more substantive issues with respect to our Charter of Rights, which is enjoying its 25th anniversary. That is not spoken of very much by members on the government side. I wish I had a chance to ask the minister, although not the Minister of Justice responsible for charter compliance nor the Minister for Democratic Reform introducing the bill, whether Bill C-6 complies with the charter. All members of the House know that every bill that a responsible government, new or old, brings to the House must be certified as to pass charter compliance.

At first glance, members may think that a roads bill or a bridges bill might not have any charter implications, and they may well not, but when we are dealing with something as quintessential as one's right to vote, which the Canada Elections Act in general deals with, the first thing that should go off in any responsible government is whether it complies with the charter and whether we have an opinion to that effect.

I wish I had the chance to ask a minister whether an opinion was tabled. We do not need to see the opinion but we need assurance from the front benches or any bench in fact that the government has sought and received charter compliance with the bill.

Let us get back to the root of the complaint. From the time of Bill C-31 from the last session, there was a movement to improve the integrity of the voting system. That was the background and the intention of all the hearings on Bill C-31 and the subsequent amendments. What Bill C-31, as amended, did not do was require veiled women to remove their face coverings for voting.

The flap that occurred in practice was during the byelections in Quebec and it was over the strict interpretation by the chief electoral officer, Marc Mayrand, of the bill as amended. He said that the wording did not require veiled voters to reveal their faces at polling stations. Therefore, he said, which is the reason we are here I guess, that either we amend the act of Parliament or we should let him do his job.

The Conservative government is bent on attacking Elections Canada and it is doing so in the courts. It puts the Elections Canada official to an ultimatum of whether “you require an amendment or let me do my job”, the government does the amendment. There is no record of a complaint to Elections Canada about the issues arising or allegedly arising. The Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities was very clear in his remarks. He participated widely and energetically in the byelections in Quebec and apparently witnessed problems. However, I guess he did not have the follow-through courage to effect complaints through the official channels, which would be a complaint to Elections Canada. He did not do that. No one did that. There are no complaints arising from the incidents that were of such widespread and common occurrence according to the government so as to cause us to be sitting here as a priority debating Bill C-6.

I am not suggesting it directly but it may have been the work of the government to create at the time a political crisis to cover other issues involving election campaign financing that the government felt some heat about at the time.

The bill, as presented, is intended, as I understand it from the framers, to explicitly state what they thought Bill C-31 implicitly said.

Mr. Speaker, you are learned in the law and members of the House pass laws and should examine laws. Laws are meant to be interpreted for what they say and not to be guessed at about what they might say. What we have is a situation where the chief elector officer read the law very carefully and did not require people to show their faces. There were no complaints. The question remains: why are we here?

I think we are here because it is seen as politically efficacious for the government to support such a bill. It seems, however, that this bill is targeted at a very specific population. It seems that this bill is attempting to target a group of people who deserve, as much as anyone here, the protection of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It seems that this small group also needs the protection of human rights legislation, perhaps more than every member in this House.

Now, the anomaly, as I mentioned, is that a person who has been through a trauma and has his or her face bandaged, or a person, frankly, who wishes to have an absentee ballot, can vote without making visual, that is, facial, identification necessary. In fact, we do not even have to go that far. I submit that the effect of option two from Elections Canada's methods of voting puts into play the fact that one can show up at the ballot box or the place to vote and not show one's face.

That seems a little difficult for people to understand, but I will explain. Option one for voting is to provide one original piece of identification issued by a government or a government agency and containing the person's photo. It is one piece of identification. In the province of New Brunswick, that would be a driver's licence. The person shows up at the voting station, shows a picture ID driver's licence and is able to vote.

It is not written in the law. This is where we get into explicit and implicit. It is not written in the law, but it is the practice of Elections Canada, I assume--but it is not in the law--for officials to look at the photograph as submitted and compare it to the person who is before the officials. However, nothing is written in that respect. One presumes, then, that facial visual identification of the voter is required when a person submits the driver's licence with the photo on it.

However, option two is where I say a person does not necessarily have to be visually identified. In that situation, a person could show up with two original pieces of identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada. Both pieces must contain the person's name. One must also contain the person's residential address. There is a long list of what those cards might be, but let us say that they might be the hydro bill as the second piece and the first piece might be the person's social insurance card.

If a person submits those two pieces of information, which do not have the person's photo on them, I submit to members that no one is required under the second option to submit to visual identification. It does not matter what they look like or what colour their eyes are or whether they have eyelashes or not, or for that matter if they have a pumpkin on their head, they are not going to be examined against any standard because two pieces of identification do not have a photo.

The third option, which was sought as an improvement under Bill C-31, was for the potential voter to swear an oath and be vouched for by a registered elector who is on the list of electors. That seems to work very well.

However, we can see that the intention of the parties, the committees and the people who did all of this work on Bill C-31 does not seem to have been put into effect perfectly, specifically as we speak about rural addresses being at odds with the list and, I would submit, secondly, on how we find ourselves here discussing Bill C-6.

Bill C-31 received royal assent on June 22, 2007. It amended the Elections Act to require all voters to prove their identity and residence before voting, with no mention whatsoever of having to show one's face. It is not in the act. It seems to me that if we were to right things, if it is now a requirement that to vote, everyone, including members of this Parliament, would have to show his or her face to vote. and I have just indicated that by absentee ballots or by the submission of the two pieces of identification they do not have to. So why is it now that if I have two pieces of non-photo ID I can vote, but a person who wears a veil for religious reasons must show her face to vote?

Leading into the second arm of my argument, is that not then in violation of the basic right of being treated equally under the law? The charter of rights has a number of profound and entrenched articles respecting people's rights and one of them is to be treated equally under the law.

I submit that this is targeted legislation taking away that equality. That is why it is essential for us to know this, perhaps down the road at committee if this is where this bill ends up. That should be among the first round of questions for the Minister for Democratic Reform, or whoever he sends there that day, to satisfy the committee members as to whether in fact this bill is charter compliant.

What would be the political, social or societal basis for the government bringing forth such a bill? It might be because the government received news from certain community spokespersons that it is okay, that people who wear veils for religious reasons generally remove them for voting purposes anyway. That could be the spokesman on one day.

What we know is that there are people who say different things regarding the requirement for one small group in our community to do something different from what we--the majority, I might add, or just members of Parliament in general--do when we present ourselves to vote. There are political underpinnings for this bill. Frankly, everything that comes from this government is political. Everything is a knee-jerk reaction. Everything is targeted. Everything is intended to divide a country and a segment of a population. That is what the government does.

In that regard, this bill might be quite successful. The government should laud itself for promulgating yet another bill that divides, that targets groups and creates havoc, but what we should be concerned with here in this place is creating laws that are constitutional, legal and non-discriminatory.

The reason I say the government is politically and societally wrong is that it may have relied on the spokesman du jour when this was introduced and it may find that there are in fact other stakeholders who do not agree with its rationale. I might in fact quote items from the Montreal Gazette of September 10.

One comment is from Mr. Elmasry. The item states:

“We don't want to force anybody to change their religious inclination and beliefs”, he explained, pointing out that it is also important for women from religious minorities to vote. “At the same time, there is a certain level of integrity in the election process that we must maintain”.

Those are truisms. Those are things that we stand for.

Later in the Montreal Gazette article, there is a quote from Alia Hogben of the Canadian Council of Muslim Woman. If this is a targeted piece of legislation, and the target group are Muslim women, do we not take the high road in respecting those persons' rights? Do we not take the high road and stand up when it may not be politically expedient and say that this is bad, divisive, charter non-compliant and discriminatory legislation? Do we not take the high road in saying that?

The quote from Alia Hogben, which I will close with, is as follows:

For us, the sad thing is it's always focusing on Muslims and as far as I know it wasn't a request made by Muslims. It probably came up [from] Elections Canada--with good intentions, thinking they would try to accommodate people--but I don't think it's necessary.

Tempest, teapot: we can use the word we wish. We do not think this bill creates a solution, because there is no real problem.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we actually opposed Bill C-31 in committee because we did not see the problem that, I guess, the government and other parties saw. The remedy certainly was problematic. In fact, this is a solution that seems to be looking for a problem at this point.

Did the government consult, beyond what the committee heard most recently in September, any other stakeholders in the time period since the procedure and House affairs committee met? Has it consulted various diverse communities and, if it did, what was the feedback on this bill?

[Lawrence Cannon, Conservative, Minister of Transport]

moved that Bill C-6, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (visual identification of voters), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to lead off the debate on Bill C-6, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (visual identification of voters). Everywhere in the western world, governments are taking measures to improve the integrity of democratic processes by trying to prevent voter fraud. Canada is no exception.

After the tabling, in June 2006, of the 13th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, which was adopted by all parties, the government introduced Bill C-31, which followed through on several recommendations contained in that report. While a good number of changes were made thanks to that piece of legislation, the bill before us today deals with changes to the voter identification requirements.

Before Bill C-31 was passed, electors could simply go to a polling station with their voter card and vote. Today, for the first time, electors will have to prove their identity and residence before they can vote. They can do so in three different ways. First, they can present a valid identification card with their photo, name and address. Second, if an elector does not have photo identification they could present two other pieces of identification approved by the Chief Electoral Officer that verify their identity and residence. Third, if an elector does not have proof of identification, they could swear an oath and use a voucher.

After Bill C-31 received royal assent on June 22, 2007, the Chief Electoral Officer decided that these changes would be implemented in time for the byelection in Quebec on September 17, 2007. Albeit quick, this decision was not surprising. It was the Chief Electoral Officer's interpretation of the legislation that surprised the government. Even though the legislation clearly states that electors must prove their identity before they can vote, according to the Chief Electoral Officer, they can vote with their face covered.

Not only is it illogical for a person to be able to prove their identity if their face is covered, but this decision also makes no sense and has many people perplexed. The government was of the opinion that this interpretation of the legislation did not take into account the will and clear intentions of the Parliament of Canada and asked the Chief Electoral Officer to review his decision. The government was not alone in that view. The four political parties of the House of Commons disagreed with the Chief Electoral Officer's interpretation and, in September, unanimously passed a motion in the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs calling on him to review his decision.

Nonetheless, the Chief Electoral Officer has refused to respect the will and intentions of Parliament. On the day of the byelection on September 17, we saw the consequences of that decision. In several locations in Quebec, people deliberately covered their face for no reason. One person even voted with a pumpkin on his head. As a result, the public has called into question the credibility and integrity of the electoral process.

The government cannot stand by and let this happen. A democratic country must maintain public trust in the electoral system. In order to maintain this trust, to ensure that the government's will and intentions are respected and to prevent this from happening again, the government made a firm commitment to make the necessary legislative changes.

We reiterated this commitment in the Speech from the Throne in October 2007, when we stated “—the integrity of our federal voting system will be further strengthened through measures to confirm the visual identification of voters.”

I am pleased to say that we honoured this commitment on Friday, October 26, with the introduction of Bill C-6, which we are debating today.

The bill provides for the simple requirement that electors show their face before being allowed to vote. This legislation will strengthen the integrity of the electoral process: by improving voter identification by making it possible to compare voters' faces with the information on their identification card or on the voter's list; by helping to ensure that only people who are qualified electors, people 18 and older, vote; and by making it possible to identify anyone trying to commit an offence at the polling station, for example, someone who tries to vote more than once.

It is important to note that there is one exception in the bill: a person may vote with their face covered if there is a valid medical reason.

We realize that some customs require women to cover their face in public. We want to clearly state that this bill does not target them. It targets people who want to use those customs to commit electoral fraud.

While the government was compelled to take action to protect the integrity and the credibility of the voting process, it did so strictly and only because of the ruling made by the chief electoral officer.

If these women were dragged into this debate, it is because the chief electoral officer interpreted the act in a way that did not reflect the intent of our Parliament. Consequently, the government had to react.

However, it is important to point out that women who wear the veil never asked to be allowed to keep wearing it when they vote. In fact, these women readily show their face in numerous situations, when this is necessary. For example, they remove their veil when they get their picture taken for a driver's licence or a passport, or when they cross the border, and they never objected to having to show their face to vote.

This was confirmed during the committee's hearings on this issue, in September 2007, when a large number of people representing the Muslim community clearly said that women have no problem with showing their face if it is necessary.

The real question that we should ask ourselves is the following: why did the chief electoral officer make the decision that he made, and who did he consult before making that decision? Why did he drag these women into a debate that they did not want and that they had not requested?

Be that as it may, the government felt that it would be reasonable to allow these women to uncover their face in front of another woman.

While this decision ultimately belongs to Elections Canada, we gave that office the administrative flexibility to allow women to uncover their face before another woman.

Surprisingly, some people said that these measures jeopardize the equality between men and women under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That is totally absurd.

Does the fact that women at the border can only be searched by other women threaten the equality between men and women? Of course not, and our bill does not threaten it either.

Others have asked why we did not amend the special ballot process. Quite simply because this process is very different from the regular ballot process on election day.

The special ballot process requires some paperwork so as to create a paper trail.

Voters who vote by mail must register in advance. To obtain a special ballot, voters must provide proof of their identity and residence. They also need to fill out a special request.

Once registered, voters are removed from the voters list and are not allowed to vote at the polling station. With such a complex process, it takes considerable time to evaluate and confirm the integrity of the votes that have been cast. Advanced registration to obtain a special ballot has to be done before election day, not on election day, because of the close scrutiny required in these circumstances.

On election day, throughout the day, many people show up at the polling station asking to vote immediately, but the thorough process for giving out special ballots is not used that day.

That is why the rules regarding voter identification have been adopted in the first place, to prevent voter fraud in these circumstances.

Critics have argued that there was no evidence of voter fraud having occurred because of people having their face covered. Even if this were true, that is certainly no reason not to act. Following that logic, we would wait for our houses to be broken into before putting locks on our doors or wait for someone to drawn before posting deep water warnings. The government will not wait for evidence of voter fraud before taking steps to prevent it.

The government passed Bill C-31 to improve the integrity of the electoral process. Under the new act, electors are now required, and this is a first, to show identification before voting. However, because of a misinterpretation of the act by the Chief Electoral Officer, allowing people to vote with their face concealed, the integrity and credibility of the electoral process has been called into question. That is specifically contrary to the spirit and intent of the legislation.

Our government has therefore responded by introducing the bill on visual identification of voters. This bill requires electors to show their face at the polling station before voting, while providing for an exception for medical reasons and an accommodation for people who normally have their face covered in public.

I hope that all members will work with the government to ensure this bill is passed so that it can be enacted shortly.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, for the benefit of members of the House who may not be familiar with the situation, the issue is one of addresses that are post office boxes where there are no municipal addresses for individuals. In an effort to put through Bill C-31, all parties in this House supported amendments to tighten up the identification--

Resumption of Debate on Address in Reply

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I regret to inform you that the riding I represent is actually Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington. While I love Renfrew county very much, as I used to cottage there as a kid, I do not have the good fortune to represent it. For what it is worth, I have not had a Speaker yet who has not screwed up the name of my riding in some way or another, so I will add this to the list.

I am here to talk today about our very exciting democracy agenda. Since this government came to power about a year and nine months ago, it has engaged in the most assertive approach to improving Canada's democracy of any government in the country's history. It is exciting to be a part of such a government.

I want to list some of the democracy measures that we have put forward and then I will talk in a little more detail about them.

If there is time, and I hope there is, I will be dividing my time with the member for Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre.

We have had eight pieces of legislation that have dealt with democracy and I have divided them into three headings. It seems to me that there are three fundamental theme areas. We have dealt with greater accessibility to the polls for voters. We did that by putting forward legislation that created more advance poll days and more geographically dispersed advance polls allowing people, particularly in areas of the country where advance polls were not easily accessible, access to those advance polls thereby ensuring that we could help people to vote in greater numbers and with greater ease. Nunavut comes to mind as perhaps the best example of this.

We have put forward several pieces of legislation that deal with greater security of vote, greater transparency and honesty in our voting. Bill C-31, which essentially deals with electoral fraud, has put in new requirements for voter identification that will significantly reduce the potential for voter fraud in ridings. That passed with widespread support in the House of Commons. All parties, except the New Democratic Party, were enthusiastic in their support for it.

Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act, had provisions ending the role of corporate and union contributions in our electoral process. This is a very healthy thing for an open and transparent electoral process where money no longer plays a role.

Bill C-54, which dealt with election loans and the loophole that was exploited by so many Liberal leadership candidates in terms of getting loans and then finding ways to potentially get the terms of those loans rewritten after the fact, shut down that loophole. This is also a very important part of ensuring openness and transparency in our election financing laws.

The areas that I would like to concentrate on today are the four pieces of legislation that are working toward providing greater democracy in the most direct sense to our representative system: the legislation the government put forward dealing with the election of senators and with the creation of eight year terms for our senators, Bill S-4, which was presented in the Senate in the last term; the legislation, which was passed, creating four year terms and fixed election dates for the House of Commons, which removes the capacity of prime ministers to call elections when the polls are convenient, something that was used extensively by Mr. Chrétien when he was prime minister and had been used by other prime ministers in the past; and finally, Bill C-56, which introduces greater representation by population in the House of Commons.

I want to concentrate on greater democracy in the Senate and then greater democracy in the House of Commons, the two areas that are the most detailed proposals put forward by the government in this area of greater democracy.

Let me start with the Senate and the election of senators.

We talked about introducing in Bill S-4, the idea of eight year terms for senators. This was found to be constitutional in the upper House reference case of 1980 by the Supreme Court of Canada. The court indicated, in rough terms, the length of term would have to be fixed. There would have to be four senators in order to fulfill the constitutional obligation. Senators would be exempt from the kinds of pressures that re-election causes and that short terms could cause that might affect the voting patterns of an individual in either that House or this one.

I note that before the Liberals in the upper House decided to vote against this bill, the Leader of the Opposition indicated that he was perfectly happy with fixed terms. Therefore, we hope he can assert that love he had of democracy and bring his unruly senators into line when this bill is reintroduced.

The upper House was intended as a House of sober second thought, not of partisan second thought. The intention was not that the upper House become what it has become, a House of patronage.

In explaining the spirit of the bill, I wanted to make the point that the upper House has wandered very far from its original intention of being a House of sober second thought. Senators unfortunately are, as a rule, not appointed based upon their merits. They are appointed based upon their partisan affiliations.

Let me quote from former Senator Dan Hays in a presentation he made to a Senate committee on May 25 of this year. He made the following statement:

In the appointments made to the Senate by Prime Minister Mackenzie King, only two of the 103 were not Liberals. Under Prime Minister St. Laurent, only three of the 55 appointments were not Liberals. Under Prime Minister Diefenbaker, only one of the 37 appointments were not Progressive Conservatives. Under Prime Minister Pearson, only one of the 39 appointments was not Liberal. Under Prime Minister Trudeau, 11 of the 81 appointments were not Liberals. Prime Minister Clark made eleven appointments to the Senate and all were Progressive Conservatives. Under Prime Minister Mulroney, only two of the 51 appointments were not Progressive Conservatives. Under Prime Minster Chrétien only three of the 75 appointments were not Liberals. Under [the member for LaSalle—Émard], five of the 17 appointments were not Liberals.

The upper House has simply become a den of patronage and we are trying to break free from that. This is the point of Senate elections.

It is possible, I suppose, to consider abolishing the Senate. Our friends in the NDP have indicated that is their preferred approach. It is not my preferred approach. It is not the Prime Minister's preferred approach. Moreover it is a very difficult avenue to pursue because it requires the consent, depending upon which constitutional scholar one goes to, of either all the provinces, or at least seven provinces with half the population.

At any rate, it is a difficult avenue to pursue, but if it turns out that the other parties are unwilling to pursue elections to the Senate, it is clear that the abolition of the Senate is preferable to the approach of simply using it as a House of patronage, the pattern of course of previous governments, and in all fairness of both partisan stripes, in the past.

I want to talk for a moment about representation by population in the House of Commons. Bill C-56, introduced in the last session of Parliament, dealt with greater representation by population, a more equitable system in the lower House, and I am a great fan of this.

The representation by population formula that was incorporated in the original Constitution Act, 1867, has by reason of repeated amendment become less and less representation by population and more and more representation by population, with one exception after another. It was amended in 1915, again in the 1940s, in 1952, in the 1970s, in 1985, and each time it moved further and further from one person, one vote, the equality of voting, regardless of the riding or the province in which one lived.

This has produced the situation that there is now great disequilibrium. The bill attempts to bring back a measure of representation by population. It would introduce new seats for Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. In the cases of Alberta and B.C., they have been brought right up to equality with the level that Quebec is at, essentially at the national medium number in terms of electors per MP.

Ontario would be below that, but far further ahead than they are now, and this is a major step, for the first time, in the direction of returning to the spirit of rep by pop that was part of the original Confederation deal for the lower House.

Resumption of debate on Address in Reply

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to open the debate on today's theme from the throne speech: strengthening the federation and our democratic institutions.

We have a great, united country whose foundation is a solid federation and a living democracy. In fact, federalism and democracy have gone hand and hand throughout Canada's history.

Our country's history is one of people joining together to achieve great dreams thought impossible by the pessimists, but it is also a history of people who, through accommodation and respect, build practical, workable approaches allowing remarkable progress to unfold.

The project of Confederation was about bringing together the different regions into a strong and united country based on democratic practices and the rule of law. Sir John A. Macdonald, George-Étienne Cartier and the Fathers of Confederation, through strong leadership united Canadians in a federal union which would deliver a future of security and prosperity for the country as a whole. Their vision was strong and enduring, a firm foundation on which successive generations have built.

Our government is continuing this nation building project today with our commitments for strengthening the federation and our democratic institutions. Strong leadership and a better Canada: that is our objective.

I would like to spend my time today discussing the progress we have already made in this area and highlighting our plans for this new session of Parliament.

Our government made a commitment to practise open federalism, and it is taking steps to ensure that our country is prosperous and united.

Our approach is not new, but it is based on the very principles underlying Confederation.

The union was based on a simple concept: the division of powers between the federal and provincial governments. The objective was not to have a weak, passive federal government, but a government that would respect the provinces' areas of jurisdiction.

Provincial governments are closer to their citizens and are well positioned to determine local needs and aspirations. In contrast, the federal government is well placed to protect the national interest in pursuit of the common good of the country as a whole. As the project of our Confederation first became committed to paper in the Quebec Resolutions of 1864, this approach was clear:

In the Federation of the British North American Provinces, the system of Government best adapted under existing circumstances to protect the diversified interest of the several Provinces, and secure efficiency, harmony and permanency in the working of the Union, would be a general Government, charged with matters of a common interest to the whole country; and Local Governments...charged with the control of local matters in their respective sections.

The steps we have taken recently and the measures we plan to take to create a federalism of openness will produce unprecedented efficiency, harmony and stability in the union, as the Fathers of Confederation envisioned many years ago.

Our federalism of openness means respecting provincial areas of jurisdiction, and that, in turn, means two things. First, a federal government that shows leadership in its areas of jurisdiction. Second, a federal government that unites the country by introducing fair, respectful intergovernmental policies.

We have shown strong leadership in areas of federal jurisdiction, such as strengthening our economy by cutting taxes and helping families, in the process paying down billions on the debt and achieving the lowest national unemployment rate since I was a child; in international trade with the resolution of the softwood lumber dispute; in defence with our leadership in international aid efforts in Afghanistan; and in public safety and security with our agenda for making communities safer by tackling crime.

In the new session this leadership will continue with measures to strengthen Canada's economic union through internal free trade among the provinces; a commitment to action in protecting Canada's sovereignty, particularly in the Arctic; continued pursuit of a safer Canada beginning with the comprehensive criminal justice reforms in our Bill C-2, the tackling violent crime act.

We have treated the provincial and territorial governments with respect, which has strengthened national unity. To restore the fiscal balance within the Canadian federation, we have increased the main federal transfers and introduced a new stable, reliable, fair funding formula. We have helped build a better Canada with our historic recognition that Quebeckers form a nation within a united Canada.

Our 2007 budget contained an unprecedented long term commitment to rebuild Canada's infrastructure, amounting to a total of $33 billion over the next seven years, the largest federal investment in Canadian infrastructure in over half a century.

During this session, we will introduce a bill to place formal limits on the use of the federal spending power for new shared-cost programs in areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction. This bill will formalize the commitments our government made in the 2006 and 2007 budgets, because it will specify the limits on federal power.

In keeping with how we see open federalism, our bill will also allow the provinces and territories to opt out of new shared-cost programs with reasonable compensation if they offer compatible programs. In addition to recognizing the provinces' and territories' ability to provide programs in their specific areas of responsibility, our bill will enable Canadians, wherever they live, to receive services comparable to those available under national programs.

Our diversity as a country serves as a source both of strength and innovation. Through our actions in open federalism, including equitable and predictable funding and clarified roles and responsibilities in our federation, we are offering a principles based approach on which all orders of government can continue to work into the future.

The vision of Macdonald and Cartier of a country united from east to west, of new Canadians and old, French and English, country and city, together dreaming great dreams and building a brighter future is alive and well and has a place deep in the heart of our government in 2007.

However, our Confederation must be more than the sum of its parts. The federal government must act as a leader in keeping the country strong and united and as a model for democratic values. To perform this leadership role, the democratic underpinnings of our government must be solid in order to continue to meet the expectations of the Canadians we serve. Our initiatives in the area of democratic reform demonstrate our government's leadership in this area. Nowhere is this more evident than our efforts to modernize our central democratic institution, a federal Parliament where the representation of both popular and provincial interests are united within the federal legislative process.

Since Confederation, Canada's Parliament has served the democratic interests of Canadians well, but the government must take action to ensure that this institution, which is the cornerstone of our representative democracy, remains strong, vibrant and adapted to the needs of Canadians in the 21st century.

Our bicameral Parliament includes two houses, the lower house here which is comprised of elected representatives of the citizens of this great country originally founded on the fundamental principle of representation by population, and the upper house which was designed to represent the regions of the country to act as a chamber of sober second thought.

However, in the contemporary era, the Senate has been unable to credibly fulfill its role as an effective representative of the regions in the federal legislative process due to fundamental concerns with legitimacy and effectiveness of that appointed and unaccountable chamber. As for the other chamber, this one, the distribution of seats in the House of Commons has shifted too far away from the principle of representation by population, resulting in the unfair under-representation of the fast growing provinces.

Our government has already taken measures to address this situation as we promised during the last election with BillC-56 introduced in the last session to enhance the principle of representation by population in the House of Commons and give fast growing provinces the representation that their population merits, and by Bills S-4 and C-43 introduced in the last session to begin the long overdue project of Senate reform.

I would like to spend a few moments discussing Senate reform. It is a priority of our government that is urgently needed to modernize our federal Parliament. We put forward an agenda for the Senate reforms that is practical and achievable. As stated in the Speech from the Throne, we will continue to pursue this agenda with the reintroduction of two important bills.

The Senate tenure bill proposed a uniform fixed term for senators of eight years. Rather than leave the length of tenure as long as 45 years, as it is currently, our bill proposed that senators be appointed to a fixed term of eight years. This is a change that would bring renewal and relevance to the Senate. This change would improve the effectiveness of the Senate. It would ensure that senators' terms were long enough for them to gain the expertise and independence necessary to act as a chamber of sober second thought, but at the same time it would ensure that the terms would not be so long as to undermine the legitimacy and credibility of the Senate as a modern institution in what we seek to declare to be a democratic country.

Unfortunately, the current unelected unaccountable Liberal senators spent over a year delaying this legislation before they finally took a decision to not take a decision. This action alone, or inaction more accurately, demonstrates clearly that the Senate must change. Its current form does not function well on this issue, or at all.

As I stated, our government intends to reintroduce the Senate term limits bill this session. I hope that the summer recess gave opposition senators some time for that sober second thought in relation to their position of inaction on this bill where they have refused to exercise their constitutional obligation to vote on the bill.

Our second Senate reform, Bill C-43, offered a means for democratizing the Senate by providing Canadians an opportunity to choose and advise who they want representing them in the Senate. It would provide for the first time an opportunity for voters across this country to have a democratic say in who sits in their Senate. This should hardly be a difficult principle to embrace in a 21st century western democracy. It would provide greater legitimacy and credibility to the work of the Senate as a democratic institution.

I was extremely pleased to attend the swearing in of Senator Bert Brown last week. He of course was popularly elected by the people of his province. I hope that we can look forward to the day when the Senate appointment consultations bill becomes law and all senators arrive in Ottawa with a democratic mandate.

As the Prime Minister has indicated, when the Senate consultations bill is reintroduced, we will be sending it to committee before second reading so that collaboration can begin on this important step toward a democratic Senate.

There are some who have suggested that governing parties of the past could maintain the status quo in the Senate out of self-interest, that we could benefit from the patronage appointments to be made and stack the chamber with partisans who would serve for decades. Our government believes that the Senate should be a democratically elected body that represents Canadians. So far, we have taken concrete steps toward that vision and they are steps that are achievable in the short term. What is more, surveys show that our agenda for term limits in a democratized Senate is strongly supported by Canadians. Surely in a democracy this above all should be a key indicator of what constitutes a good democratic reform.

The Senate must change. If it cannot be changed, it should be abolished. In its current illegitimate form the Senate does nothing to enhance our democracy, even as we aim at the same time to promote democratic values abroad.

I would now like to address a second element of the democratic reform program that we will continue to implement during this new session of Parliament: strengthening the electoral system.

A strong democracy requires both modern democratic institutions and an electoral process with integrity that inspires confidence among voters.

We have already introduced a number of measures that were passed in the last session to improve elections, which were broadly supported.

For example, Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act—the first legislative measure we introduced—fulfilled our campaign commitment to clean up political funding. We levelled the playing field by banning donations from companies and unions, as well as large and secret donations, so that ordinary Canadians can contribute to the political process knowing that their donations will really count.

Bill C-4 was the first bill passed in the last session. We acted quickly to ensure that the party registration rules would not sunset and that those registration rules would remain in effect at all times.

With Bill C-16, setting dates for elections, we have established a four year electoral cycle, preventing snap elections from being called solely for the partisan advantage of the governing party.

As a result, after this House provides a mandate to govern when it approves the throne speech on Wednesday, we can look forward to the next election, now set in law to take place October 19, 2009.

In Bill C-31, we implemented wide-ranging recommendations of the procedure and House affairs committee for improving the electoral process, including important measures for reducing the opportunity for voter fraud, such as a voter identification procedure for federal elections.

In addition to these bills, which are now law, we introduced additional election reforms that did not have an opportunity to pass before we prorogued.

Building on our political financing reforms in the Federal Accountability Act, Bill C-54, our new bill to clean up campaign financing, proposed bringing accountability to political loans by eliminating loans as a means for circumventing contribution limits and establishing a transparent reporting regime for campaign finance.

Building on a number of measures for improving voter accessibility, Bill C-55, our expanded voting opportunities bill, proposed additional advanced polling days to enhance opportunities and encourage higher voter turnout.

During the second session of Parliament, our government will continue to strengthen the electoral process.

As stated in the Speech from the Throne, we will introduce measures that will enable us to confirm the identity of voters by requiring them to uncover their faces before voting. Like our other reforms, this concrete measure will improve the electoral process for all Canadians.

Public concerns raised about this issue during the September 17 byelections made it clear that we must act.

During meetings of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in September, all parties approved the decision to prioritize resolving this issue.

Our government will act quickly to resolve this issue, and I hope that I can count on the support of all members of Parliament to give Canadians the strong, fair electoral process they expect.

There is so much that makes Canada great. We are mindful of the valuable legacy bestowed upon us by the visionary leadership of Sir John A. Macdonald, George-Étienne Cartier and the Fathers of Confederation when they rendered the blueprint for what has proven to be the best country in the world. But it is our strong foundations that enable us to continue building a better Canada that is a leader in the world.

Those foundations are our federal state and our democratic spirit, but we also know, as did those Fathers of Confederation, that as the world modernizes, so must Canada. That is in fact the spirit of Confederation. It is that spirit that leads us to seek ways to strengthen our democracy and improve accountability to Canadians. We must be a democracy worthy of that name in a 21st century world.

Our government has already put forward a full agenda to fortify and modernize our federation and democracy, and we will continue to do so this session. We invite all parties in the House to join us as we build a stronger Canada with a brighter future for the generations that will follow.

[Marc Mayrand]

Prior to the enactment of Bill C-31, I'm not aware of any public consultation. There may have been, but I'm not aware of it.

[Marc Mayrand]

Not during the study of Bill C-31

[Marc Mayrand]

I would like to clarify that I never testified before this committee on Bill C-31.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Mayrand, you testified before the committee when it was examining Bill C-31. You contributed to our discussion of the proposed legislation. Do you recall having discussed the bill with us and having cautioned us—perhaps I should say warned us—that if the bill was adopted as tabled, you eventually intended to make and announce this decision?

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I would like to speak to it. Although I understand and I'm in favour of what the now amended motion says, we're only talking about one little nuance of Bill C-31. I believe Elections Canada got it wrong on this one issue. I want to be prepared in case they get it wrong on something else on it too. This committee will always be able to study Bill C-31, so I will agree with this.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Although I love the direction we're taking, I don't understand why we don't call Mr. Mayrand here to ask him that, instead of sending him a letter to that effect.

This committee had Mr. Mayrand come during the review of Bill C-31. We thought that what we were trying to say was very clearly understood then. I think he very clearly said at a news conference today the opposite of what we're going to try to ask him to do in another letter. I'd rather ask him to his face than in writing.

I suggest that we have Mr. Mayrand here at the earliest convenience. I'll ask him that question. I don't think it will take long to get the answer.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's great to have everybody back here in the middle of summer and to see that we are all anxious to get back to work.

I recognize that we're here to discuss the matter you have already mentioned, Mr. Chair, but I'd like to suggest that, since we have this august group together, we also look at studying another question that seems to be on the top of everybody's mind today, including that of the Chief Electoral Officer, who made a statement on television today about the study of veiled voters or voting while veiled. Because of the upcoming byelections and the need to help bring this to some sort of conclusion, I suggest it might be a topic of discussion for this committee too, and I'd like to move a motion to that effect--that we talk about it. And because of the timeliness of it, we might even want to discuss it first.

The Chief Electoral Officer today stated that he needs the help of this committee in making up his mind or in coming to a conclusion on the voting by veiled individuals. We thought we had covered this reasonably well, as this committee had discussed and passed Bill C-31. I thought we had brought it to a reasonably good conclusion. The interpretation of the new legislation seems to be not as clear to the Chief Electoral Officer, and I'd like us to discuss that, if we could.

Message from the Senate

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

I have the honour to inform the House that when the House did attend Her Excellency the Governor General in the Senate chamber Her Excellency was pleased to give, in Her Majesty's name, the royal assent to the following bills:

Bill C-12, An Act to provide for emergency management and to amend and repeal certain Acts--Chapter 15;

Bill C-294, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (sports and recreation programs)--Chapter 16;

Bill S-6, An Act to amend the First Nations Land Management Act--Chapter 17;

Bill C-40, An Act to amend the Excise Tax Act, the Excise Act, 2001 and the Air Travellers Security Charge Act and to make related amendments to other Acts--Chapter 18;

Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Canada Transportation Act and the Railway Safety Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts--Chapter 19;

Bill C-277, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (luring a child)--Chapter 20;

Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act--Chapter 21;

Bill C-18, An Act to amend certain Acts in relation to DNA identification--Chapter 22;

Bill C-60, An Act for granting to Her Majesty certain sums of money for the federal public administration for the financial year ending March 31, 2008--Chapter 23;

Bill C-14, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act (adoption)--Chapter 24;

Bill C-47, An Act respecting the protection of marks related to the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games and protection against certain misleading business associations and making a related amendment to the Trade-marks Act--Chapter 25;

Bill C-61, An Act to amend the Geneva Conventions Act, An Act to incorporate the Canadian Red Cross Society and the Trade-marks Act--Chapter 26;

Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Quarantine Act--Chapter 27;

Bill C-59, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (unauthorized recording of a movie)--Chapter 28;

Bill C-52, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 19, 2007--Chapter 29;

Bill C-288, An Act to ensure Canada meets its global climate change obligations under the Kyoto Protocol--Chapter 30.

It being 12:23 p.m., the House stands adjourned until Monday, September 17, 2007, at 11 a.m., pursuant to Standing Orders 28(2) and 24(1).

The first session of the 39th Parliament was prorogued by royal proclamation on September 14, 2007.

Aboriginal Women

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

Mr. Speaker, Sharon McIvor has won her case in the B.C. Supreme Court, arguing that it was wrong for the federal government to arbitrarily say that women could not pass Indian status on to their children. This is a long overdue decision to reverse decades of discrimination against first nations women.

Along with difficulties accessing programs available to status Indians, the effects of Bill C-31 were felt throughout the community, where children faced acceptance or rejection based on their different status.

The government knows it will lose this case if it goes forward. Its own internal documents show that. However, the minister has told the media that this judgment may not be enough and he is contemplating spending more taxpayer dollars to fight this decision at a higher court, this from the minister who insists the Conservatives are working to bring human rights to first nations.

Human rights are inalienable and Sharon McIvor has proven through her long battle that those rights should be recognized.

The minister should accept this ruling and start making the necessary changes in his department to deal with the influx of people applying for status.

[Nancy Karetak-Lindell, Liberal, Nunavut, NU]

Thank you.

Just to comment on what you said about how we'll never know all the implications of any policy or legislation, that doesn't mean that we don't go with what we know. We've heard from enough witnesses using Bill C-31 as an example of what can happen when you don't try to mitigate some of the consequences that are going to definitely come about, and you know that hasn't been done.

Going back to some of the comments that Mr. Storseth made about being procedurally correct, I'm not a lawyer and I don't follow court cases, but sometimes a case can go exactly by the book, all the right procedures, the people in the courtroom following everything. But is justice done at the end of the day when you don't take into consideration the people who are involved?

Let's use child custody cases as an example. I sat on a special committee on child custody cases. Talk about hearing painful witnesses' stories. It's never easy when parents are fighting over children. But if the court just said parent A gets the child without any conditions whatsoever, do you then feel justice is done, because it was a very simple statement—parent A gets the child? That's as simple as you can get. Mr. Bruinooge talked about the very simple—This is just stating a fact. Well, just stating a fact like that does not take into consideration all the conditions you should apply, whether it's visitation, whether there's money for child support, whether the grandparents can visit, whether the children can travel outside the province or state they live in. There are so many other situations that you have to take care of that making just a simple statement like that does not take care of the people who are affected by that decision.

This is the same. You can't just say this very short bill is going to take care, if you don't look at how it's going to impact the people. Again, as Ms. Crowder said, how can you as a member, including myself, not listen to 99% of the people who said there have to be other considerations? There have to be resources. There has to be a longer time to implement this. You can't take any of those and just disregard them and say this will solve everything, because that is being irresponsible.

I go back to what I used to say when I used to be chair of this committee. Don't do things for the wrong reasons, because the consequences are too high. If the members opposite want to be able to say over the summer that they took care of human rights for people on reserve as far as the Indian Act is concerned, then they should want to be able to do it feeling good that they did everything possible to make sure that it did not result in dire consequences for people who are affected by it, not because they just want to be able to say they passed Bill C-44.

Let's not do it for cheap political points, because that is going to have such serious consequences, as we've already seen with our history. Why add more to the list of things that have caused aboriginal people grief and despair? Why add to that? This is what passing Bill C-44 will do, because we don't know what the consequences are going to be. We don't have any resources to go with it. I just can't see how we can not listen to all these people saying that Bill C-44 does not take care of them because it doesn't take care of all the possible consequences after that.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

A twofold response. First, I think most of us know that within the parameters that currently exist, most returning officers are, in their ridings, expanding the number of advance poll opportunities for the next election. Bill C-31 will give them further ambit to do that.

Now, here, of course, in our proposal under Bill C-55, the Sunday before election day, every polling station that would be open on election day will also be open on an advance polling day, which is the Sunday. So you will have significantly expanded opportunities exactly in the direction you're seeking.

Canada Elections Act

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion concerning the Senate amendments to Bill C-31.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

It being 6:30 p.m., pursuant to order made earlier today, all questions necessary to dispose of the motion relating to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-31 are deemed put and a recorded division deemed requested and deferred to 6:30 p.m. today.

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

Mr. Speaker, when I last spoke to this issue, slightly more than three hours ago, I was talking about the five general categories of amendments that the Senate brought forward on Bill C-31. I dealt with the one amendment that we wish to oppose and we will be sending it back to the Senate for its consideration. That dealt with the timing of the coming into force provisions of the bingo cards.

The Senate had suggested a 10 month period of time be given to Elections Canada to develop these bingo cards for the use of all parties and candidates. We are suggesting that it should be done and could be done in six months.

There are two other general areas of amendments that the Senate had suggested. One deals with the use of birthdates on the election lists themselves. This was a hotly debated point of contention in committee. Members of the New Democratic Party and members of the Conservative Party opposed this but it was an amendment brought forward by a member from the Bloc Québécois, supported by the Liberals.

That amendment was to put not just the birth year but the birthdate, day and month, as well as the birth year on the election documents in an attempt to better determine whether or not someone purporting to be a voter actually was the voter. The thinking behind this amendment was simply to say that if someone came into a voting station saying that he was, for example, John Smith, age 51, but that he clearly looked 20 or 30 years old, the deputy returning officer and the scrutineers would be able to challenge the right of that voter to exercise his vote because they would be able to point to the fact that he was clearly not the age that was specified on the forms.

However, as well-intentioned as that might have been, there were some really serious concerns about privacy laws. Therefore, when it got to the Senate, members of the Senate, and I will name one in particular, Senator George Baker, a Liberal senator, said that they had to fix the mess because it was a travesty of privacy considerations. He blamed members of the government for bringing this amendment forward to the Senate and he stated quite unequivocally that they had to fix the mess.

I would like it to be put on the record, as several of my colleagues have already done, that it was not the Conservative Party in committee that recommended this change. It was the Bloc and Liberal members who recommended that birth years and birthdates be placed on election documents. It was one of those amendments that we quite vociferously opposed, as well as members of the New Democratic Party.

I think it is quite disingenuous for Senator Baker to start blaming the government for an amendment which we had no part in crafting. I think Senator Baker would be well advised to check with his own colleagues on that side of the House, for whom he seems to not have much respect since he does not really listen to any of their advice or instructions. However, he should check with members of his own party before he starts making claims and allegations dealing with amendments to this particular bill.

Finally, the last provision of the amendments brought forward by the Liberal senators deals with penalties for misuse of election documents or personal information. This is something we wholeheartedly agree with because, if anyone, whether it be a member of one political party or whether it be an election official, chose to give some of the confidential information contained in election documents to anyone outside of the election confines, they should be penalized and punished.

Originally, we had proposed in the bill that penalties of either one month in jail or a fine of $3,000 or both would be a satisfactory and an appropriate punishment for people who misused personal information. The Senate examined this provision and came back with an even stronger provision stating that it should be one year or $5,000 or both if anyone were caught misusing personal information during the election process.

We wholeheartedly agree with that amendment, as we agree with 10 other amendments. It is only the one, the time for coming into effect of the bingo cards, that we disagree with.

In conclusion, let me say that once again Bill C-31 deals with integrity of the voting process, something that all people in Canada should applaud. I hope this House tonight will approve that bill.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

When we were last discussing Bill C-31 there were six minutes left in debate for the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons. Unfortunately, there are only five minutes left in debate and he has the floor.

Business of the House

[Rick Casson, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe that if you were to seek it, you would find unanimous consent for the following motion. I move:

That, notwithstanding any Standing or Special Order, the normal hour of daily adjournment today shall be 6:30 p.m. and when no member rises to speak today to Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, or at 6:30 p.m., whichever comes first, the question on the motion relating to the amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-31 be deemed put, a recorded division deemed requested, and the vote deferred to 6:30 p.m. today.

Canada Elections Act

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

It is with regret that I interrupt the hon. the parliamentary secretary, but the time provided for the study of government bills has now expired. When we return to the study of Bill C-31, there will be six minutes left for the hon. the parliamentary secretary to make his presentation and 10 minutes for questions and comments.

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

Mr. Speaker, I stand to speak in support of not only Bill C-31 but the majority of the amendments that we have seen coming back from the Senate.

First, I would say that while Bill C-31 is important, it is only one in a suite of democratic reform initiatives that the government has brought in. We have seen, for an example, very important democratic reform initiatives such as fixed election dates which is Bill C-16. It passed and has come into force. It states that the third Monday of October 2009 will be the date for the next general election unless of course by some strange occurrence the combined opposition determines that it wants to have an election before that date.

That was the first initiative that we brought in to try to ensure Canadians that there would be some consistency and regularity in the timing of federal elections. Far too often we saw political parties in power manipulate the voting system to their advantage. In other words, we saw parties in previous years take a look at the polling numbers and if they determined that it would be to their advantage to have an election earlier rather than later, because the polls happened to be advantageous for them, they would call an election at that time.

Subsequently, we saw both federally and provincially from time to time governments of the day go well beyond a traditional four year voting window because the polls were not quite a favourable for them during that four year cycle. What we are doing with Bill C-16 is ensuring that all Canadians will have some certainty as to the timing of federal elections and I think that is a good thing for democracy. I think it is a good thing for Canadian voters.

Also, however, we saw several other initiatives with respect to democratic reform. We saw bills come forward dealing with expanded voting opportunities in an attempt to get more and more voters to turn out at the polls. As I said in that debate, we have seen over the course of the last two decades or so a decline in voter turnout year after year, or at least election after election.

I think that is a reflection of many factors, the overall probably being the cynicism that most Canadian voters have with the political process per se. 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 because.

I think that we all agree, regardless of our political affiliations, that it is incumbent upon all Canadians to express either their opinions come election day or at least exercise their franchise because if we ever got to the point where we had less than 50% of the people in the country who were eligible to vote electing a government of the day, that would be truly a sad day for the democratic process.

We have also seen other examples of our democratic reform initiatives. Just today in committee we dealt with Bill C-54 on political loans and how we can ensure that all loans given to candidates over the course of an election are done in such a manner that we can ensure accountability and transparency. I think that is a very important initiative, again, one of a suite of initiatives we brought in.

There will be further democratic reform initiatives as we go forward in the course of the government's life cycle. Today I want to speak specifically to Bill C-31, the voter integrity bill. I think there is no greater fraud that could be perpetrated on Canadians than that of an individual voting in a federal or provincial election who pretends to be someone that he or she is not. In other words, I think there could be no greater fraud than someone trying to influence the election results by fraudulent manners. That is what the bill deals with.

In committee, we dealt with many of the things that we felt needed to be corrected to ensure that there was greater accountability, transparency and greater integrity in the voting system. Primarily we talked about things around identification where all voters now, once the bill becomes a law of the land, will be required to show sufficient identification at the polling station to ensure that they are who they purport to be because we have heard on many occasions many examples of individuals fraudulently voting in individual elections.

Anything that we can do, as a House and as individual members of Parliament, to stop that abuse of the voting system is extremely well intentioned and I think will be well received by the voting public. We dealt with that and many other issues of which my hon. colleagues who proceeded me in this debate spoke about.

Primarily, we came up with what we thought was a bill that would accurately reflect the intention of the committee. The committee worked long and hard on the bill and at the end of day when we reported back to this House, we felt that we had a bill which would capture all of the suggestions and recommendations of committee members who dealt with the bill over a period of several months.

However, as is normally the case, and it seems at least these days it is normally the case, when our bill went from our place to the Senate there were additional discussions and additional amendments. While some of the amendments from the Senate are ones that we have some question about, I am pleased to report that the vast majority of the amendments that were made in the Senate will be agreed to, at least by this government.

We are doing so in a manner which we believe we can get the bill passed into law before we rise for the summer because in a minority situation, the length of a minority government is tenuous at best. If we happen to have an election within the next six months or so, we want to ensure that we have a bill that deals with these very important issues, so that we can ensure that voter integrity is at the utmost, that we dispel and dispense with any kind of attempted fraud in the next election that will be held, whenever that may be.

I want to speak for a few moments on the amendments brought back from our colleagues in the Senate. There were about 12 amendments in total but they fit into about five broad categories. The first one deals with what is generally known as bingo cards. Most of us in this House and any politician who has ever run for elected office is familiar with the concept of bingo cards. For those Canadians who may be somewhat confused about what a bingo card has to do with an election, let me explain.

Every political party, certainly every candidate, wants to track their supporters and whether or not they are supporters that they have identified during the preceding number of months leading up to the election and actually come out to the polls and vote. From time to time there are very close election races throughout Canada. When I was first elected in 2004, I was elected by a whopping majority of 122 votes.

One of the elements that really helped my election in that very stressful time was the fact that we had a very good voter identification program within my riding association and within my campaign team. On election day we had a very good “get out the vote” team which tracked people who came into the polling station, find out which of my supporters had not yet made it to the polls, and we brought those people for the most part to come in to vote. Close to 80% of my identified vote actually cast ballots in that election of 2004.

The use of bingo cards is a mechanism by which we can track the voter turnout. As the name suggests and anyone who has every gone to a bingo hall and played a game knows there are cards with numbers from 1 through 400. When scrutineers go into an election or polling station they are able to mark off on the bingo card the number of the voter assigned to them on the electoral list to ensure that everyone in our campaign team, or get out the vote team, understands who has, and more importantly, who has not voted.

From time to time during the day our scrutineers would go in and pick up these bingo cards from the inside scrutineers, take them back to GOTV headquarters, and phone voters who had not yet made it out to the polls in an attempt to make sure that all of our supporters understood the importance of their vote in that election.

What we are saying in this provision, at least what Bill C-31 purports, is that the bingo card concept be formalized and that Elections Canada be tasked with the responsibility of developing a standardized bingo card that would be available for all political parties and all candidates, so they could use the same get out the vote techniques that most candidates and most political parties have been doing informally over the course of the last number of years.

We see this being an asset to the political process because it helps engage all or potential voters by getting them out to vote. Yes, some of them might need a slight kick in the rear end from some of the GOTV members, but if we can at least increase the voter turnout we will have done a great service for the democratic process. So the amendments that the Senate brought back in with respect to bingo cards are ones that we agree with.

What are those amendments? Primarily, they say that in the original report coming from this place bingo cards should be available and updated every 30 minutes, so that candidates and political parties would be able to go into polling stations every 30 minutes to pick up the bingo cards and take it back to their GOTV headquarters and start their phone backs.

What the Senate has amended is that during advance polls these bingo cards need only be picked up once a day. That makes perfect sense to me. The time a candidate wants to know is on election day what the voter turnout is like. So that every 30 minutes during an advance poll is almost a bit of overkill. It is certainly not required. Therefore, I think it was a very useful, a very serviceable amendment to suggest that bingo cards during those four or five days that advance polls are open need only be picked up once a day and we agree with that.

That segues nicely into the second major classification of amendments and that deals with coming into force provisions. Primarily, we only have one problem with any of the coming into force provisions as amended by our colleagues in the Senate. That again deals with bingo cards.

What it suggests is that electoral offices be given 10 months to develop these bingo cards themselves and come up with a standardized format that would then be available for use by all parties and all candidates.

We feel that 10 months is too long. We believe that this bingo card format can be structured, developed and printed within a six month period. Therefore, we will be putting our new amendment that we will send back to our colleagues in the Senate, and we hope that they support it, suggesting that the only amendment we wish to make on its amended bill is that the coming into force provision for bingo cards would be six rather than 10 months.

I think that is a very legitimate and reasonable amendment for us to be making. We say that because again in a minority government one never knows how long such a government will last. In other words, if this bill is given royal assent before we rise for the summer, that means if we have an election before December bingo cards would not be available, but if any election is held from 2008 on we will have bingo cards available for all candidates. We think that is reasonable.

Again, the only change to the amendments that the Liberal dominated Senate has made is that we will have a six month window rather than a 10 month window for the bingo cards.

The third provision that is captured by amendments in the Senate deals with casual election workers. Again, as we know in a minority government situation we need a lot of casual workers who work from election to election to election on standby because there can be an election held at any time.

Currently, the Public Service Employment Act contemplates that casual workers and the broad category of casual government workers could only be classified as such if they work 90 days or less in any calendar year.

We felt that was too tight of a time line because if there happened to be two elections in one year, clearly 90 days would not be enough time for a casual worker to do both elections. Thereby, they would fall outside of that 90 day classification.

What the Senate committee had discussed and amended was that the provision now read that 165 days be the length of time that casual workers would be classified still as a casual worker within the Public Service Employment Act. We think that is reasonable and we are certainly willing to agree to that amendment and recommend that the amendment be passed in this House.

The fourth provision is one that I know will take a fair amount of time. I see that the time—

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to the bill.

I want to start by referring to the comments made by my friend from the Bloc. His answer in response to my question underlined the problem with the bill. Opening up people's privacy has nothing to do with voter participation. He established that with his non-answer to my question.

More people do not vote because their birth date is on the electoral list or shared with political parties. I made it very clear that many people who have contacted me about this big brother bill have said the reason they would not vote in the next election would be because of this bill. It is counterintuitive to have people's privacy put on the altar and say that it will somehow increase voter participation.

It is important to look at the origins and the trajectory of Bill C-31. This bill is the result of a report by the procedure and House affairs committee, which I have in my hand. The report was very general in nature. The committee looked at the previous election to see if voter participation could be improved, how the machinery of government could be improved to allow elections to run more smoothly and to ensure that as parliamentarians we could improve elections by design to increase the number of people participating in elections.

It was interesting that after the committee report was tabled, very quickly there was a response from the government. That is not unusual, but the part that was strange was that the government cherry-picked from the Commons committee report. It came up with suggestions and lo and behold, after the response from the government, Bill C-31 was before us.

I point this out because Bill C-31 was not part of the Conservative Party platform. It was not a suggestion that had been made by grassroots organizations. It was not something that had been on the radar in general for people who are looking at how elections are conducted.

It was very interesting when I heard at committee the witnesses' concerns around the bill. They had concerns regarding the privacy issue. For anyone who is watching, listening or reading the transcripts, what the bill would do is it would require when voters presented themselves to vote, to have voter identification, government issued photo ID. When a voter did not have photo ID, there was a series of conditions regarding other documentation that would be allowed. Finally, if a voter did not have identification, there would be a process by which another person could vouch for the voter.

We heard from people who deal with the homeless, first nations, aboriginal peoples and people who represent students. They have said that this was a bad bill. Notwithstanding, and I am sure we will hear this from the government in response, there is a method for people who do not have proper ID to be vouched for.

The problem heard at committee was that the government is proposing in the bill that one person can vouch for another person as long as they are on the voters list. I underline this because people who are advocates for the homeless, first nations and students said that this is not necessarily an option for the people they represent, because they might not be able to find someone who is on the voters list or who resides in the riding, which is required in the bill.

The other critical issue, of course, is the privacy issue. I raised it at committee. It is worth noting that according to the bill every voter's date of birth will be published on the voters list for Elections Canada to verify that the person before an elections official is the person who is eligible to vote. That sounds fine, except when we look closer at the bill, there is also a verification number for every voter.

Photo ID is required. There is a verification number for every voter. The birthdate of every voter is on the electoral list. I opposed the inclusion of the birthdate and the NDP opposed the inclusion of birthdate information on the electoral list because of its dissemination. Every riding has hundreds of polls. There are 308 ridings. That is a lot of information being floated around. This is not anything against the good people who work as poll clerks during elections; it is just obvious that this information could fall into the wrong hands.

What has shocked me the most was the amendment by the Bloc, supported at committee by the Liberals and eventually by the Conservatives in the House, that birthdate information would actually be shared with political parties. I want to underline that all political parties, not just the ones in this House, but every single registered political party would have the day and year of birth of every single voter.

It is important to underline that because the Senate wants to make an amendment. While I welcome that, it does not go far enough. This bill at its foundation is flawed for reasons I have already mentioned about those people who might not normally have access to proper identification.

I brought forward these concerns at committee. At the time the Bloc and the Liberals got together to pass this amendment to share the date of birth information with political parties. Members should try to explain that to their constituents. I could not, I would not and I refused. I fought it at the committee. The Conservatives at the committee opposed this amendment, but when the bill came to the House, we heard from the government House leader that in the spirit of cooperation to get the bill through, the Conservatives would not fight this amendment.

I am sorry, but when it comes to issues of privacy, protection and integrity we do not just look the other way. That is exactly what members of the Conservative Party did. They looked the other way on privacy. I have a letter in my hand from Ms. Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. The letter suggests that this is a problem for her as well.

There are two parties, the Liberals and the Bloc, that got together to benefit themselves to give birthdate information to their political organizations. Clearly, the political parties see this as a bonanza. They can target voters. For the Liberals I am sure it is helpful because they can do some fundraising. The Liberals have to look to new sources for their fundraising. They will have to fill the void after having relied for so long on big donors. With this information, they will now focus their attention on citizens. It is very tempting for political parties to have this information.

People should not buy the idea that somehow this is going to help with verification of voters. There is already in the bill a verification number and photo ID is required. The idea that we would actually sell out privacy and the government would look the other way in order to get the bill through does not wash.

The amendments from the Senate are in front of us. I will establish that not only do I have a problem with the inherent contradiction with the Senate sending us amendments on elections legislation, but also the Senate amendments do not go far enough. They do not deal with those who, we heard at committee, will be disenfranchised, the homeless, aboriginal people and students.

There is a Globe and Mail editorial that talks about the whole issue of privacy. It says:

As Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart explained in a recent letter to [myself] whose party was the only one to oppose the bill, “One of the basic rules of data protection is that personal information should be collected and used sparingly and in proportion to the problem it is intended to address.” But the bill, which sailed through final reading in the House of Commons last evening, pays no heed to her legitimate objections.

Not only is the Privacy Commissioner against the bill, but from this editorial it would seem that Globe and Mail editors are against it as well. They underline the importance of why is the bill in front of us, what is the issue, what is the problem?

The government has put forward a notion that there is a huge problem with voter fraud. To be fair, it has been careful to underline it as potential voter fraud. If that is the issue, then I have no idea why the government did not look at other common sense solutions to deal with potential voter fraud. We put forward ideas at committee, at amendment stage, and made suggestions as to what the government could do.

We all know that voter cards are ubiquitous and often are left lying around in many apartment buildings. There is the potential for voter fraud. The NDP suggested in committee, and received the nod from the Chief Electoral Officer, that those voter cards should be in a sealed envelope. That would make sense. It is not exactly a high tech solution, but it would ensure that voter cards were not left lying around and instead would be sent directly to the voters. That was our first common sense solution.

The second common sense solution we put forward was to have universal enumeration at every election. When the Liberal government brought in voters lists, it was not to make the list more accurate, but rather to save money. In our democracy, if there is one thing we should invest in over anything else, it is the integrity of our voting system, and that means the voters list. That means having universal enumeration.

There used to be enumeration. People would go door to door to make sure that everyone had a chance to get on the voters list. Verification was done and the voters list was more accurate. I do not know a person in this House or in this country who would say that since we have had the centralized computer voters list that we have had more accurate representation.

Those two common sense solutions should have been adopted before we sold out people's privacy, before we put up barriers to the franchise to the most vulnerable, and before we got into this taffy pull between the Senate and the House. I agree with the Bloc and the government that it is passing strange we are waiting on the Senate to tell us how to run elections.

The bottom line is that this is a flawed bill. It is a big brother bill. The fact that it sailed through committee should not pass it off as being a valid bill. In fact, it is vapid in terms of what it is trying to do.

I want to underline what this bill claims to do and what the results will be if it passes. Not only will there be problems with privacy, but I believe the bill will be challenged on two fronts.

In testimony before the committee, the Chief Electoral Officer said that because of the new requirement for photo ID, more than 5% of eligible voters will not be able to vote. They will show up at the polling station perhaps five or 10 minutes before the polls close without their ID and will be told to go home. Therefore, they will not have the opportunity to vote. Others have mentioned this. I think of Duff Conacher, who has written about this extensively.

We might end up with a situation akin to what happened in Florida in one of the U.S. elections. This is not my submission. It is the submission of others. Others will call into question the validity of the election because people will not have been able to exercise their franchise. There will be situations where there are close votes. Those votes will be challenged. In a minority Parliament, that might decide which party did or did not form government.

Elections Canada will do a good job in promoting the required changes, but if we do not have a safety valve like the statutory declaration that the NDP put forward, which works in provinces with high voter turnout, then people will challenge the outcome of the election. That could lead to some unintended consequences.

I am putting everyone on notice that others have looked at this and they are saying that they will need to challenge this bill in court, some for civil libertarian reasons, some because of the private aspects and others because they believe that this kind of legislation is inherently wrong.

In summary, what we have in this bill is a Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs report that looked at elections in general and how to improve things. The report was tabled in Parliament soon after and, this is the part about the Conservative play book, the Conservatives used the committee report to cherry-pick and back a bill they had intended to put forward because that is exactly what happened. There was a response to this committee report very soon after and, more quickly than I have ever seen, a bill was in front of us based on the government's response to a committee report.

In that report we had the requirement for photo ID and then a cascading requirement, for those who did not have photo ID, to use other forms of ID. At the end of the day, people who are most disadvantaged, be it the homeless, aboriginal people or students, would be vulnerable.

It is interesting that a couple of weeks ago the government announced, with great fanfare, democratic reform week. If we were to believe the advertising, the government was doing everything it could to ensure that more people had access to the franchise. They need to look at this bill because what I have just outlined are barriers to franchise.

The Conservatives talked recently about having more young people vote by having an extra day to vote, which they had no scientific proof for. They had a nice photo op with some people in front of the Centre Block and somehow we were to believe that because of this extra day of voting we would have higher voter participation.

What they need to do is examine Bill C-31 and tell me honestly, when they look at the privacy provisions for allowing one's birthdate to be included both on the voters list and shared with political parties, notwithstanding the amendments, the fact that more young people will be required to show ID that they might not have access to, people concerned about privacy telling me they will ask to be taken off the voters list because they do not want big brother and the government, which is kind of strange coming from what used to be a party of libertarian dimensions, they do not want that to happen. They will take their names off the voters list and at the end of the day what we have is a bill that would undermine voter participation and not buttress it.

When we put this all together, we should keep in mind that the government did not want to listen to common sense, which was to have voter ID cards put into envelopes to prevent the concerns around voter fraud because people are using these cards or could, and the fact that there were four cases of voter fraud during the last three elections. In fact, there was more candidate fraud than voter fraud when members crossed the floor, which we remember, after they advertised that they would run for the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party.

Everyday people are more concerned about that fraud than the potential for voter fraud. They are more concerned about their privacy rights being trashed than they are about having these kinds of provisions put in. At the end of the day, they see that this bill would not improve our democracy. It would undermine it.

I would ask all members to keep in mind that when they go to their constituents or when this becomes a court case, because I believe it challenges the franchise, and many lawyers have said it, that the Conservatives were the ones who sat by and rubber stamped this process.

I urge all members to stand up against this bill, stand for democracy and more voter participation, and ensure we have a democracy we can all be proud of. I urge all members to vote against this bill and send it back. The Senate has made some minor improvements on the birthdate information but at the end of the day this is a flawed bill, a big brother bill and does not deserve to be passed.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will start with the points on which I am in agreement with my friend from the Bloc. I agree with the fact that having this come from the Senate is passing strange. I would challenge him on one point, though, in that some senators have gone through elections, some as candidates and many as backroom employees. They raised money and did good services for their party and were rewarded with a seat in the other place.

I would agree with him that it is passing strange to have amendments coming from the Senate on something that affects elections and potential concerns around voter fraud, but my concern, however, relates to the comment the member made, and I want to get this right, that because the Bloc has shown how it is done and has a good machine, and because its members have used some of the facets that are in Bill C-31, this is reason enough for us to adopt it here.

My concern is that when we look at things like sharing birthdate information, I could not disagree with him more.

When I talk to my constituents about this, and I wrote about it in one of my householders, people are shocked to learn that we actually would share birthdate information not only with Elections Canada, which means throughout the ridings and throughout the country--and that paper could fall off the table and into in the wrong hands--but with political parties. The fact that political parties would have this information shocks people. This came about through the amendment from the Liberals and the Bloc at committee.

People are extremely shocked. They do not want their birthdate information shared with Elections Canada in a public way, and they sure do not want it shared with a political party. They were shocked to learn that the Bloc and the Liberals had joined together on this and then the icing on the cake was having the Conservative Party allow this amendment to go through. People just do not understand.

That is what my question is about. I have a letter from the Privacy Commissioner, who did not have the luxury of presenting her case before committee. I had to write to her after it was fiated through committee. She argues against doing what the member suggests would be helping the system. How can he argue that sharing birthdate information has anything to do with increasing voter participation?

In fact, what increases voter participation is trust in the system. There seems to be a disconnect. People see this as what I call a big brother bill. What we are doing here is making citizens' privacy vulnerable in legislation. Some of the people who have called have said they would remove their names from the voters' lists because this is an invasion of privacy. Then the effect will be that we will have fewer people voting.

I would like the member's comments on this birthdate information and how he connects it with a higher rate of voter participation.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak following my hon. colleague from Joliette, our House leader, who explained the Bloc Québécois' position very well.

First of all, I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Bloc Québécois. As the chief organizer, I would like address my comments to my hon. colleagues from all political parties in this House. As all hon. members know, but perhaps not all Canadians know this, the Bloc Québécois only has representatives in Quebec. We defend the interests of only one group in this House, that is, the interests of Quebeckers. We also defend their values. That is what we have been doing, primarily within Quebec's borders, since 1993.

This is why I would suggest that my colleagues from all the other political parties would do well to listen to the Bloc Québécois' recommendations. Indeed, the Bloc Québécois' political machinery is the most formidable of all the political parties, and this goes for elections in Quebec and at the federal level. We have the most organized political machinery.

We participated in the debate on Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act in a spirit of openness. We wanted to share with our colleagues our knowledge, our experience and the strength of our political organization. That is why the Bloc Québécois put forward amendments, which, oddly enough, were derailed by the Senate.

That is why I find it very difficult to discuss changes to electoral legislation proposed by a Senate that is not even elected. I really have a hard time accepting that. Senators do not have to face the same situations that hon. members and the political organizations for every party in this House do.

I want to get that message across. I also want to discuss again two very important amendments that the Senate has proposed with respect to this reform of the Canada Elections Act, amendments we do not agree with. In his speech, the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons said that the Conservatives were against the date of birth measure, but that out of respect and integrity, they ended up agreeing on this. They voted against it, but they agreed to defend the birthdate amendments in the Senate.

The main purpose of including date of birth on the list of electors is to allow election workers and the political parties present at the voting tables to conduct an initial verification. Of course this is not perfect. A person's date of birth is not stamped on their forehead. Nonetheless, if people arrive to vote in someone else's place and they are not in the same age group, this allows for an initial verification. It is a first step to determining whether people are cheating and voting by assuming someone else's identity. This is the first step and all we have to do is add the date of birth to the list of electors.

This received support from the majority in the committee and was included in the bill. Now the Senate is saying that this list with dates of birth will be allowed, but that it will only be used by the election workers, meaning the poll clerk and the deputy returning officer who are employees of the Chief Electoral Officer. The list will not be available to the political parties.

So they are abandoning any concern for transparency, integrity and respect by not trying to detect people committing fraud. The political parties, the ones that have representatives, that being the privilege that the law provides for political parties, will not have access to the date of birth. The Bloc Québécois can boast of having representatives in every polling station and in the all polling divisions during an election.

Then today the Senate has decided that the representatives of the political parties will not be entitled to see the dates of birth. And the government tells us that even though it agreed when the bill was introduced, it now supports the Senate's amendments. Once again, the senators are not even elected. They have never been through an election.

There is still time for the government to realize that this is progress. This amendment was introduced by the Liberals and supported by the Bloc Québécois to improve the way elections are held in Canada.

This is an example inspired by Quebec. This is how it is done in Quebec. The voter turnout rate is 7% to 8% higher in Quebec elections than it is in federal elections. Why are we not using the approaches that have been tested and proved in other democracies, so that we can more forward? I find it hard to understand the parties that do not support this approach, which has the advantage of being more transparent.

The second amendment concerns the coming into force of the whoe polling management system: allowing representatives to provide the political parties with a list of electors who have exercised their right to vote. That list will be available every 30 minutes. That is good. Under the bill, that section of the act was to be brought into force two months after the bill was given royal assent. In a virtually authoritarian move, the Senate has now told us that it will be 10 months after it comes into force.

Once again, I find it very hard to understand how a Senate that is not even elected could tell us that part of the work done by the committee was for nothing. The bill was introduced and agreed to by a majority in this House. Nevertheless, the Senate is deciding when that part of the act will come into force. Once again, this is to facilitate voting. The point is that having this list of electors who have exercised their right to vote available every 30 minutes is useful to the various political parties. The sheet is available to all parties, and only the voter numbers are released. And there is nothing on that sheet. There is no date of birth. The sheet shows only who has voted in the preceding half hour. Using the voter numbers for each polling station, the parties' representatives who are getting the vote out can bring in people who have not yet voted.

Once again, this already happens in Quebec, and it is one reason why voter turnout in Quebec for provincial elections is higher than the turnout for federal elections. When this House had decided that this measure would take effect two months after royal assent, in time for the next election campaign, why has the Senate taken the liberty of deciding that it will take effect in 10 months, at the risk that this measure will not be in effect in time for the next election campaign? I have a problem with the fact that the unelected Senate is interfering in our election campaigns. What gives it the right? It has no right at all to make such a decision. This is none of its business. Its job is to approve this bill to amend the Canada Elections Act. The bill was adopted by the majority of members of this House and would come into effect in time for the next election campaign. Why did it do that? Maybe it is because, one day, the senators hope to be elected by universal suffrage. I hope we will get rid of the Senate before that day comes. That will save us a lot of money and give us a true, uncomplicated democracy centred on the House of Commons.

Obviously, the goal of the Bloc Québécois was to take part without political partisanship in order to improve Canada's democratic system and the system in our own nation, Quebec. It is as simple as that, and that is what we have tried to do with our strong political organization. We have told our colleagues that they must never forget that in Quebec, the Bloc Québécois has the best political organization, one that has proven itself time and again since 1993 and has sent more members from Quebec to this House than any other party.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel.

We are presently discussing amendments made by the Senate to Bill C-31. I would like to start off by reminding members that although we agree with Bill C-31, we feel that the Senate amendments have scuttled the efforts made by all parties, in committee particularly, to find consensus. Therefore, the Bloc will oppose the government motion that includes the amendments made by the Senate, along with some welcome changes.

We were and we still are in favour of Bill C-31 as adopted here in the House, at all stages. For the Bloc, it is extremely important to ensure that we have as many means as possible available to prevent electoral fraud and the errors that can be made in electoral lists. According to the Bloc, it is quite appropriate and desirable that electors to be able to identify themselves when required, in order to ensure that the right elector is voting and that one elector does not take the place of another.

In the past, individuals have arrived at the polling station and found that someone else had voted in their place already. That was just too bad for them; the vote had been cast. A certain complacency had set in, particularly with regard to procedures for federal elections, and especially in Quebec.

Over the years, more tools have been introduced to minimize, if not completely eliminate, electoral fraud. As I mentioned previously, we find it quite desirable that potential voters identify themselves to ensure that the right person is voting. We believe that it is reasonable for the date of birth of electors to be made available on the electoral lists in order to verify firsthand that the person voting is who they are believed to be and whose name appears on the electoral list.

It was proposed that Bill C-31 be amended to ensure that electoral lists given not only to the officials—the deputy returning officers and poll clerks—but also to the political parties, contain this information, as is the custom in Quebec. We believe that this is an additional tool to help prevent electoral fraud.

On election day, if they wish, the political parties are allowed to have representatives at the polls who follow the progress of voting and who can, if necessary, make some telephone calls. Most Bloc Québécois candidates take advantage of that opportunity. Supporters can then get out and exercise their right to vote. Perhaps they had forgotten or did not feel like it at the time, especially if they had any obstacles to deal with, such as transportation and so on.

We think it is entirely reasonable to add the date of birth to the various information needed to authenticate the identity of voters. The Senate decided to amend that, making the date of birth available to government employees, returning officers and poll clerks, but not to political parties. We feel this would eliminate an important tool in preventing voter fraud. I would remind the House that this was, and still is, one of the main objectives of Bill C-31.

In the spirit of compromise, the Bloc Québécois proposed that at least the year of birth be made available, so that party representatives at the polls could have a rather simple indication of the validity of the identity of voters. If the year of birth is 1955, for example, we know right away that this is not a young adult, nor is it an older senior. The age of 52 does not exactly make someone a spring chicken, and I should know. In any case, we thought this was a reasonable compromise.

As far as the political parties are concerned, personally, I felt during the discussions and conversations we had that there was some openness. It seems that, if Bill C-31 were sent back to the Senate with a different amendment—so that the date of birth would no longer be available to the political parties, but just the year of birth—the government was afraid that it would turn into a ping-pong match between the Senate and the House of Commons.

In my opinion, if that is the reason it is a bad reason. Indeed, the government and the majority of members in this House agree that the representatives of the political parties should have access to this information, namely, the year of birth. It is not a case of elements of confidentiality and personal information that are not available. Usually, it is rather easy to guess a person’s age.

In order to avoid this game of ping-pong between the House of Commons and the Senate, we must remind the hon. senators—as the Leader of the Opposition did concerning the budget—that once a bill has been adopted here in this House, the job of the Senate is to ensure that the members have dotted the i's and crossed the t's. However, to poke around in the very content of the bill seems to me to go beyond the responsibilities that belong to an unelected Senate.

So, we very much regret this decision by the government not to insist that the year of birth be included, at least for the benefit of the political parties. That is the reason why we will vote against the government motion, which accepts the Senate's amendments as its own.

As we know, the other amendment is the one that extended from two months to eight months the deadline for the coming into force of the register with a unique and permanent identification number.

In our view, the arguments made by the Chief Electoral Officer, which led the Senate to extend the deadline for implementing a unique and permanent identification number from two months to eight months do not hold water. In that sense, we believe that we could have asked the Chief Electoral Officer—perhaps in the space of four months—to ensure that a unique and permanent identification number be used for each voter in the next election. In that regard, the six month timeframe is not suitable to us but nevertheless it could be considered an improvement over the amendment made by the Senate.

This also has a definite impact on the work that political parties could do. If there is no unique and permanent identification number, Bill C-31 will make it possible to have cards that will let political parties follow the progress of voting on election day and know who has voted and who has not.

As long as most of us know who our supporters are, we can be sure that they will vote. So this measure will be a major incentive for parties to “get out the vote”, as we say.

This can only increase overall voter turnout in the next election and in future ones. We know that the higher the voter turnout, the better the democratic health of a society. The opposite shows that there are problems. We participated in a debate on this topic in connection with Bill C-31.

Taking six months to implement this procedure is the lesser of two evils. We can hope that we will have these tools for the next election. However, we are very disappointed that the government is not pushing to keep the year of birth of voters on the electoral list, so it is available to all political parties. We succeeded in convincing the government, but unfortunately the Senate—I will not say destroyed, because that would be a bit too strong—contravened the agreements between the different parties, in a way which I think was completely inappropriate.

[Blair Wilson, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, definitely voting is a right. Many of our grandfathers have died fighting for that right and maintaining it. As parliamentarians, we have to ensure we maintain the integrity of that right as Canadian citizens to vote in elections.

At the same time, we have to be cognizant of the fact that our society is evolving and things are changing. One of the ways it is changing, and we have yet to address it in Bill C-31, is we are becoming much more of a technological age now. This is something we have to be cognizant of when we discuss the future.

People are on the Internet on a daily basis. Other organizations are using the Internet to electronically vote. We have to be thinking ahead right ow at a time when possibly elections in Canada will be held electronically. We have to ensure we have systems in place to deal with that. One item in the bill, which anticipates that coming into phase, is having the unique identification number granted to each individual in Canada.

I am going out into the future here and thinking outside the box, but someday Parliament may decide that Canadian elections can be done over the Internet, if that is the will of the Canadian people and if it is something that will enhance the integrity of our system and help to increase voter turnout.

One of the things we notice right now is young people vote in a disproportionately lower number than those who are over 60 for example. We have to do whatever we can as parliamentarians to ensure we cast a big enough net to have everybody participate in the electoral system. Some of the things the bill would offer is anticipating the future of the Canadian electoral system.

[Blair Wilson, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to stand in the House to debate the bill before us, Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

I believe the central issue of the bill hinges upon two points of view. One is the protection of privacy of the individual Canadian and the other is an increase the integrity and efficiency of our electoral system.

I believe the amendments from the Senate are appropriate and measured. We are dealing in the minority government situation, but we have a consensus around the amendments to the bill, which I believe will adequately protect the right of individuals privacy and at the same time will go a long way to improve the efficiency of our electoral system by enhancing the voter identification process.

The amendments will remove from the original bill references to the year of birth and to the date of birth, but will include the creation of a unique, randomly generated identifier for each electoral person, which will then be assigned to the Chief Electoral Officer to monitor.

The amendment will allow parties and Canadians to feel confident in our system. They will know that our process will allow for enough transparency in the system. At the same time we will have a reasonable and balanced approach to ensure we have a system about which Canadians can be confident.

During the last election, some issues and concerns were raised in the urban areas in Toronto, I believe it was Trinity—Spadina. Allegations were made that there may have been voter fraud. Some 10,000 Canadians signed up on the day of the election, through a process of serial vouching. People would vouch that the other people were who they believed them to be, then those people could vouch for other people and then those other people could vouch for other people. As this string of serial vouching went along, from a reasonable individual's point of view, there had to be some lapse in the integrity of that string.

I believe the bill tries to deal with those concerns in such a way that one Canadian can vouch for somebody else, but it eliminates the serial process of vouching, which I believe is a good thing.

One of the hon. members earlier in the discussion today raised a concern with respect to the proof of identification. I remember I stood in the House when we originally debated the bill and I talked about the requirement of the acceptability of first nations status cards as proof of who an individual was to allow the person to vote.

The issue we have is a delicate one. We are walking a fine line trying to ensure we are improving the integrity of the system by requiring valid identification from Canadians before they can vote. At the same time, we ensure we open up the process to enough Canadians so we have broad participation in the system.

We have a unique situation. Because we have a minority government, we have parties from both sides of the House agreeing on the amendments to the bill, on the balanced and reasonable nature of the bill and on the enhancement and the transparency of the process. It is a good thing for Canadians that Parliament agree, like we have on this. I look forward to the bill being carried and put into law.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, none of the amendments that we are responding to today in dealing with this message from the Senate are related to the issue that has been raised by my friend from Parkdale--High Park. Her concerns were thoroughly canvassed at second reading, at committee, at report stage and third reading.

We have gone there and now we are dealing with some other amendments, none of which relate to the issues she has raised. However, I am happy to address the issue of ensuring the integrity of our electoral process, which is the underlying purpose of Bill C-31.

Society has changed a lot. There used to be a time, and we can still see evidence in some of our old election rules, when people grew up and lived in the same neighbourhood all their lives. They knew all their neighbours, so the ability to commit any kind of electoral fraud was very difficult. People in the neighbourhood would know if someone showed up and said they were so and so. They would know that the individual was someone else. That was the way it was in the olden days. Nowadays, with the mobility of population as high as it is and people not knowing their neighbours as much, the opportunity to succeed in committing that kind of electoral fraud is much higher.

All of the political parties shared a concern about that. At least three out of the four political parties felt strongly enough about that concern to support this bill and its major provisions through the key stages here in the House of Commons.

It is a question of ensuring that we have an electoral process in place that people can trust, so that we do not have these problems and end up trying to resolve them after we have a hung Parliament that has been decided by two constituencies where there has been clear electoral fraud and our entire political system grinds to a halt. This bill is to keep that from ever happening, to protect the electoral integrity that we have, to ensure that electoral fraud does not occur, and to put in place reasonable and balanced measures.

Asking for people's identification is not outrageous. Every election dozens of voters tell me they are shocked that nobody asked for their identification when they went to vote. They said anybody could have said they were them and they would have been able to vote. More and more people are beginning to figure that out.

If we do not bring this provision into place, it will not be long before we see that kind of electoral fraud and the harm that could do to our democratic parliamentary system would be very dangerous.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think that the member made some good points. This approach is conceivable as long as the rules governing voters lists are respected.

Certainly, we would like to see this information out there. Our concern, when we first approached it in government, when the inclusion of birthdates on the list distributed to the parties was first proposed by the opposition at committee, was that we cannot necessarily expect that people will respect these lists. These lists do get into other hands and there is a possibility that they would get into hands where we would not want them, and that would produce an increased risk of identify theft.

On the other hand, obviously it would make it easier for political parties because, beyond Elections Canada, they are a very important part of the process of scrutinizing the vote. That is why they are called scrutineers, to ensure that electoral fraud does not take place. That is why we provide for each party to have oversight at each polling station.

From that perspective, it would add something to the system. What we have to do is balance these two very legitimate and competing objectives.

In our case, we thought that balancing those two was a very close call. At the end of the day, the approach that we have adopted is one of seeking consensus and seeking the compromise here in the House in order to have this bill become law.

Our main objective is to see Bill C-31 become law in Canada.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

moved:

That a message be sent to the Senate to acquaint their Honours that this House agrees with amendments numbered 1 to 11 made by the Senate to Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act;

And that this House agrees with the principles set out in amendment 12 but would propose the following amendment:

Senate amendment 12 be amended as follows:

Clause 42, page 17:

(a) Replace line 23 with the following:

“17 to 19 and 34 come into force 10 months”

(b) Add after line 31 the following:

“(3) Paragraphs 162(i.1) and (i.2) of the Canada Elections Act, as enacted by section 28, come into force six months after the day on which this Act receives royal assent unless, before that day, the Chief Electoral Officer publishes a notice in the Canada Gazette that the necessary preparations have been made for the bringing into operation of the provisions set out in the notice and that they may come into force on the day set out in the notice.”

Mr. Speaker, it will surprise nobody that I take great pleasure in having the opportunity to speak to the matter of sending a message to the Senate, but today it is to only send a message with regard to a bill to improve the integrity of the electoral process, Bill C-31.

This bill is part of our agenda to strengthen accountability through democratic reform. While it is by no means headline grabbing, the bill proposes a host of necessary changes and timely operational improvements to the Canada Elections Act that many of us welcome. These are aimed at, among other things, reducing voter fraud, because whenever a person votes who should not, that act diminishes a legitimate vote that has been cast.

The genesis of the bill was the 13th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs which was tabled in this place almost a year ago on June 22, 2006. Over the summer of 2006 the government studied the committee's recommendations and on October 24, 2006 implemented virtually all of them with the introduction of Bill C-31. We have introduced this bill because we, along with the committee, want to ensure that the democratic process continues to hold the confidence of Canadians.

The procedure and House affairs committee reviewed Bill C-31 in detail and reported the bill back with some amendments. In the spirit of cooperation and compromise, the government agreed to those amendments that had been supported at committee by the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois in opposition, even though we had voted against those at committee.

There is a key amendment in them. The bulk of the debate when it came to the amendments was about whether or not to include the birthdates of electors on the voters lists that are distributed to political parties and not just those that Elections Canada officials have. As I said, in committee the Conservatives opposed it, but when it came to the House we felt on election legislation of this type it was important to maintain a spirit of non-partisan interest and support across parties, so we gave up our opposition at that point to support it through report stage and third reading and send it to the Senate.

Then, to our surprise, since this was an amendment advanced and promoted by the Liberal Party, the Liberal senators were aghast and horrified that had been included. They chose to return to the original Conservative Party position of not including birthdates. Irony has no bounds when it comes to the Senate and Liberal Senator George Baker actually praised the senators for amending the legislation to take out the birthdate provision because it could have increased identity theft and allowed telemarketers to prey on senior citizens. Then he had the temerity to say that without the Senate, we would have had a bill that would have been a disaster. I guess what he was saying was if it were not for the Liberal Party, we would have had a bill that would have been a disaster, and that comment was from a Liberal senator.

I find that amusing because now we are in the circumstance of undoing what the Liberals in the House encouraged us to do. We went along with it in the spirit of non-partisanship to a point where we are responding to these amendments dealing with the birthdate provision. As I said, when we did it in a non-partisan fashion it was to ensure the bill passed to maintain, when it comes to electoral provisions, the spirit of non-partisanship. The Senate obviously felt differently.

The Senate amendments go beyond that. There are five categories. The first category deals with amendments related to bingo cards, which is what they are called. They are a way of helping scrutineers know who has voted. The second category deals with the coming into force provisions of the act. The third category deals with casual election workers. The fourth category deals with the use of birthdates, which I spoke about already. The fifth category is regarding penalties for the misuse of voters lists. I will address each of these in turn. Before I do that, I will say that this government is proposing that the House accept nearly all of the Senate amendments. However, we are proposing a small change to one of the amendments relating to the coming into force of the bill.

First, there are the “bingo cards”. The first group of amendments makes technical changes to clause 28 in the bill, which provides for so-called “bingo-card” updating of lists of who has voted on polling day. Essentially, this provision allows lists of those who have voted to be given to candidates' representatives periodically on polling day.

These lists can be used by candidates to assist in getting out the vote among their supporters. Candidates and their supporters are already entitled to keep their own lists of who has voted, but this mechanism will make the process more efficient and reduce the burden on candidate representatives at the polls.

Quebec has had a similar system for quite some time, and the name “bingo cards“ comes from the forms used there for this purpose. These forms include numbers corresponding to electors registered in the polling division. These numbers can be easily checked off when someone votes. In this way, the forms resemble bingo cards.

The bingo card provision was not in the bill when it was introduced, but was added by opposition members of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs when they studied the bill. The government agreed to this amendment in the interests of passing the bill as a whole. The Chief Electoral Officer appeared before the Senate committee studying the bill and asked that the provision be refined for operational reasons.

The senators agreed, and so the provision was amended in two respects: first, to exclude polling day registrants from being added to these lists. Polling day registrants do not have an assigned number and would need to be added to the lists manually, which would be cumbersome for poll clerks.

In addition, the purpose of bingo card updating is to facilitate the process of getting out the vote, which is targeted at registered voters that candidates have already identified through their lists of electors. Therefore, transmitting the names of polling day registrants would not advance this purpose.

Poll clerks will only be required to provide a list of those who have voted once on each advance polling day, after the close of advance polls. This measure will help reduce the administrative burden of the provision without hindering the effectiveness of the process.

The government agrees with these changes, as they will improve the operation of this provision. I therefore support passage of this amendment by the House.

Second, on the coming into force amendments, the provision in clause 42 was modified when the House committee reviewed the bill. Originally the bill was set to come into force within six months following royal assent, unless the Chief Electoral Officer was ready to implement it at an earlier time. This is the conventional approach for coming into force provisions for Canada Elections Act amendments.

After hearing from the Chief Electoral Officer, the House committee amended clause 42 to extend to eight months the coming into force of the provisions dealing with the national register and list of electors due to the need for updating computer systems at Elections Canada.

In addition, the House committee amended the bill to provide that the other provisions not related to the register, such as the voter identification provisions, would come into force within two months after royal assent. That is fairly easy because those are things that the elections officials already have to be trained to do in the cases where they now have to apply a reasonableness test for requiring identification. They will have to require it all the time. We are actually taking out a step, and therefore, it should not be hard to implement that.

Before the Senate committee the Chief Electoral Officer advised the implementation of the provisions related to the register would actually require 10 months rather than 8 months for implementation to allow time for thorough testing of computer systems. Therefore, the Senate amended clause 42 to allow 10 months for the coming into force of these provisions.

In addition the Senate made an amendment to clause 42 to clarify that the other provisions, such as the voter identification provisions, must come into force within two months of royal assent despite section 554 of the Canada Elections Act, which is the section that says that the six month implementation applies. This would clearly be contrary to the intent of the House committee in requiring that certain provisions of Bill C-31 should come into force within two months of royal assent. That is why we are going with it. The technical amendment ensures that this intent is realized.

The government agrees with these two amendments from the Senate relating to the coming into force provisions. I propose that the House accept these Senate amendments.

However, I should make clear that there is one we have problems with. The Senate also amended clause 42 to include the bingo card provisions I mentioned earlier within the group of provisions coming into force within 10 months from royal assent.

The rationale was that this change is affected by the register and it needs the same amount of time to implement as the other changes to the register. However, as we all know, there are already line numbers included on the list which are used by campaign volunteers to monitor voting and get out the vote on election day.

In light of the other amendments that we have accepted for facilitating the operation of the bingo card system, we do not see why it would take months to implement these new provisions. Therefore, I am proposing that this amendment by the Senate be amended by the House to require that it come into force within six months from royal assent. Assuming the bill received royal assent some time this month, that would be in place for any election that would occur within the year 2008.

The third set of amendments is related to casual election workers. The government in the Senate proposed this third set of amendments. The amendments deal with the issue of the maximum period of employment for casual workers in Elections Canada.

When introduced, Bill C-31 amended the Public Service Employment Act to permit the Public Service Commission to extend the terms of casual workers beyond the 90 day per year maximum period that is currently set out in the act.

As was very cogently explained by the president of the Public Service Commission before the Senate committee that studied Bill C-31, it is her opinion that the Public Service Employment Act does not provide the necessary authority to allow the terms of casual workers to be extended.

The situation of elections particularly in a minority parliament context clearly demonstrates that it is sometimes necessary. Personnel at Elections Canada nearly doubles during an election and the organization depends heavily on casual workers with previous election experience. In the context of successive minority parliaments, Elections Canada must be prepared for a potential election call with little advance notice. As well, there is the potential of running more than one general election in a year.

Bill C-31 as passed by the House of Commons would have addressed this issue. As well, it would have permitted the Public Service Commission to respond on a case by case basis to other situations where casual workers may need extended terms such as the running of a census by Statistics Canada.

However, senators raised concerns in committee with the scope of the regulatory power because it was not confined solely to the elections context. As a result the committee defeated these provisions.

Given the importance of this matter to the effective administration of elections, the government responded with the introduction of amendments at report stage in the Senate to restore the amendment to the Public Service Employment Act, but to circumscribe it so it would apply only to election workers whose maximum term would be set out in the statute at 165 days. This amendment was then passed by the Senate.

It is vital to our democratic process that Elections Canada has the personnel and resources it needs to administer elections effectively and efficiently. This amendment would facilitate that objective and I urge all members to support me in passing it.

The fourth issue and fourth set of amendments deal with the issue of birthdates on the lists of electors.

As hon. members will recall, when Bill C-31 was first introduced it provided that the dates of birth of voters should be added to the lists used at advance and regular polls by poll workers only. These poll workers could use the date of birth as another tool to ensure the integrity of the vote. For example, they could use it to confirm the identity of voters or to differentiate between voters with the same name. In accordance with the recommendation of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in its 13th report, Bill C-31 did not provide for the dates of birth to be included on the lists distributed to candidates, MPs and parties.

When the bill was sent to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs after second reading, the Bloc and Liberal members of the committee passed an amendment to add dates of birth to lists distributed to candidates, MPs and parties. The Conservative members voted against this amendment in committee. However, we supported the bill as a whole when it returned to the House for passage because we recognized that sometimes compromise is needed.

When Bill C-31 was in the Senate, senators disagreed with those opposition amendments and effectively restored Bill C-31 to how it was when introduced—in other words, by having the date of birth on lists used by poll officials, but not on lists distributed to candidates, MPs and parties.

Obviously, the government is amendable to this change. It was never our intention to distribute birthdates more broadly to political participants.

Therefore, we propose supporting these Senate amendments as well. That said, in a minority Parliament, this is not our choice alone and it will be up to opposition members to decide.

I must say it is remarkable because I personally had to go to that Senate committee and defend the Liberal amendment to put the birthdates on the lists from Liberal senators who said it was shocking and abhorrent. Again, Senator Baker said that “Without the Senate, in this particular instance, we would have had a bill that would have been a disaster”. The Liberal amendment would have made the bill a disaster, so the Liberals in the Senate have changed it.

We just want to get along with everybody. We are trying to make things work. We have been trying to seek consensus on this one and I know we keep going back and forth, and I keep going to the Liberal House leader seeking consensus. I think we now have a consensus, or a partial consensus, but at least one that the Senate will accept.

I know members from the Bloc are not happy with it and I know it restores our original position which we were willing to give up in the spirit of compromise because that is indeed the spirit I and this government have always tried to pursue in the House. That is what we will be doing and I am pleased that eventually that game of ping-pong between the Liberals in the House of Commons and the Liberals in the Senate, on this issue at least, will change.

I hope that it can change on Bill S-4, the Senate term limits bill, and hopefully the Liberal senators will listen to their leader and actually make the decision to move forward with that. I also hope in regard to the budget that they would respect the will of the House of Commons, but that remains to be seen.

The fifth issue relates to the higher penalty for misuse of voters' lists. The fifth last and last group of amendments arose out of the Senate's discussion on the distribution of electoral lists generally. Currently, the Canada Elections Act provides that anyone who knowingly misuses personal information on the lists of electors is guilty of an offence. The penalty for that offence is set at a maximum fine of $1,000 or up to three months imprisonment, or both. The Senate proposes that this be increased to a maximum punishment of a $5,000 fine and one year imprisonment.

In an era of increasing identity theft there should be serious penalties for the misuse of personal information, particularly when obtained through the electoral process. The proposed amendments would provide a better deterrent to those who may be tempted to misuse personal information on the lists for financial gain. Therefore, I am in agreement with those amendments and I propose that they be accepted by this House.

I proposed that many messages be sent to the Senate, but on this occasion I am proposing we send a message advising that the House accepts amendments 1 through 11, but that amendment 12 be amended further to provide that the bingo cards come into force within 6 months from royal assent rather than 10. It is my hope that this important bill with these changes can be given royal assent before the summer recess.

As I have mentioned on other occasions, this bill makes a number of changes to the electoral process that will reduce the opportunity for electoral fraud, improve the accuracy of the national register and the lists of electors, facilitate communication with the electorate and improve the administration of elections.

These are changes that will be of benefit to all parties, to all candidates, and to all Canadians because it will make our electoral system, and in turn our democracy, stronger.

These amendments before us today propose refinements to the bill and I hope they can be dealt with quickly, so this bill can be passed into law. It is our responsibility as parliamentarians to ensure that the electoral process is updated so that it operates with the integrity that Canadians expect. The sooner that we pass this bill, the sooner its provisions can be implemented and our democratic system strengthened.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

It will be. In fact, just to warn everybody, what you're concerned with actually affects most of the amendments. So you'll see that we do have a conflict, and I'll explain that to everybody as we hit that clause.

Colleagues, I should remind everybody of just one more thing before we get going. Bill C-31, which this committee took great pains to review and question witnesses on, is actually up for debate in the House at 12 o'clock today. It's a bit of a time conflict, since most of the experts on that bill are right here at this table. So I just wanted to let you know. It's not a push to get this done in any way, but let's see if we can get this done, and the members should know that we're debating all the good work that we did up in the House at noon today.

(Clauses 1 and 2 agreed to)

(On clause 3)

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, I will be happy to address that in the affirmative in a moment but there is more that we should know about in terms of the business we are doing.

We will continue today with Bill C-42, the quarantine act, Bill C-58, the railway transportation bill and Bill C-21, An Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act (non-registration of firearms that are neither prohibited nor restricted).

Tonight we have the emergency debate pursuant to Standing Order 52 that the Speaker has determined should proceed.

On Friday we will call Bill C-33, the income tax bill and Bill C-6, the aeronautics bill.

Next week is got the job done week when the House has completed the nation's business for this spring's session. During the got the job done week we will continue and hopefully complete the business from this week, as well as some new legislation and legislation that will be out of committee or the Senate.

The list of bills that are currently on the order paper, in addition to those I have identified for this week that I would like to see completed by the House before the summer recess are: Senate amendments to Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

There are also the following bills: Bill C-32, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (impaired driving) and to make consequential amendments to other Acts; Bill C-44, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and Bill C-53, An Act to implement the Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States (ICSID Convention).

Another bill includes Bill C-54, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (accountability with respect to loans).

By the end of next week, Canadians expect that the Senate will have completed its consideration of budget Bill C-52 without any amendments so that they can relax for the summer with the knowledge that $4.3 billion in the 2006-07 year end measures will be in play.

If there are amendments, we will have to be here in the House to respond and protect measures that might otherwise be lost, such as a $1.5 billion for the Canada ecotrust for clean air and climate change; $600 million for patient wait times guarantees; $400 million for the Canada infoway; $100 million for the CANARIE project to maintain the research broadband network linking Canadian universities and research hospitals; $200 million for protection of endangered spaces; and much more.

[Gilbert Gardner]

Unless I misinterpreted Bill C-54, and unfortunately for Ms. Dion, there is no proactive measure to encourage women to enter politics. Bill C-54 has no bearing on this very laudable objective.

The bill states that from now on, loans will not be granted by financial institutions, period. It does not deal with limits on expenses, or limits on expenses relating to leadership races. Such measures may have been included in Bills C-2 or C-31.

I don't want to give anyone false hopes. There are no proactive measures for women in this bill, and nothing that would ensure a more equitable treatment. We must not be under any illusion that C-54 will provide that type of advantage. Personally, I will have no hand in that.

[Chief Phil Fontaine]

I will very quickly on one point, and then I'm going to call on Candice Metallic here to speak to the more technical aspects of your question.

Remember Bill C-31. We were told when Bill C-31 was introduced that no first nation community would be worse off as a result of the bill. As good as the intentions were when it was introduced, the immediate impact of bringing this bill into force was to completely undermine the ability of first nations governments to deal fairly and justly with the effects of Bill C-31. We're really very concerned that the bill, as it is presently constituted, would bring about the same kinds of results, or even worse.

[Richard Jock, Chief Executive Officer, Assembly of First Nations]

I just want to add that regardless of the final shape of the bill, the operational considerations would remain. We feel that undertaking a review of any preparations would be prudent and would be really just good sense, in terms of then assessing whether there have in fact been preparations made, whether the resource issues have been properly rolled out as anticipated. It's a way to deal with those issues in a way that moves forward.

We feel our amendments would strengthen any approach that's taken and thus would also provide a stronger focus and maybe a more pointed focus for any consultation. We think this is a way to proceed, and also to do so in a way that would reduce any unintended negative impacts on communities that we have experienced from other legislation, such as Bill C-31, and from some of the other approaches. It has been assumed that these have had no impact, but in fact and in reality they have. They're not negative reflections on the content of that bill; they're just unintended and unplanned for consequences of legislative actions.

Extension of Sitting Hours

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, I move:

That, pursuant to Standing Order 27(1), commencing on Wednesday June 13, 2007, and concluding on June 21, 2007, the House shall continue to sit until 10 p.m.

He said: Mr. Speaker, this is a motion that can be made one day a year, not on Christmas Day or Ground Hog Day, but this day, the 10th sitting day before June 23. It is a motion that can be made to allow the House to sit late into the evening.

I know that many members, when they look at that portion of the calendar and they see possible extension of sitting hours, they think that means we get to leave early for summer vacation, but that is not what it means. What it means is that under the Standing Orders of the House we can potentially sit and work late to get as much of the people's business done as possible because there are very important priorities for Canadians.

I will bear my soul here and say that it was not always my intention to move this motion. It was my hope that it would not be necessary. I was hoping that we would be making good progress.

For example, Bill C-52 in particular, the budget implementation bill was a bill which we believed we had an understanding with the other parties; in fact it had been shaken on by the member for St. Catharines, the member of the Liberal Party for Scarborough and others that it would be over to the Senate by June 6. Somewhere along the way the Liberal Party sought to treat it a little bit differently and as a result we are still debating it here almost a week later than the date we thought it would be over at the Senate. As a result of course we have lost considerable time to deal with other priorities for Canadians.

I want to talk about what those other priorities for Canadians might be, but first I want to focus on that number one priority which is Bill C-52, the budget implementation bill. As we have heard from many people in the House today, if that bill does not pass by the time the House rises for the summer, if that bill has not been dealt with, there are a number of financial priorities on issues that are very important to Canadians that will be lost, because it is a bill that reaches back to the previous fiscal year to spend funds. Those funds have to be allocated. The bill has to be passed and receive royal assent in order for those funds to be available in that fashion. If not, they are lost.

Some of those examples are ones which we have heard about today. The one that is at the top of my personal list is the $620 million in the budget for the patient wait times guarantee trust. This is money that is allocated to assist provinces in addressing what is one of our number one priorities—actually one of our top five priorities; I should put it that way—from the last election. That priority is to achieve a patient wait times guarantee, to help people get the kind of health care they need on a basis that is reasonable, that is practical, that is clinically sound.

For too long we saw patient wait times under the previous government actually double in length. We have this much vaunted Canadian health care system that we all purport to believe in, but if we really believe in it, we have to see that it works. An important part of it working is that Canadians should receive the health care that they need on a timely basis. That is what the $612 million is specifically aimed at.

The provinces are very anxious to receive these funds. It means a great deal for a lot of provinces. In my own province of Ontario that means $200 million plus of real money that Ontario needs for its health care system. The same thing, together with other elements, will mean for the province of Nova Scotia for health care $639 million including the transfer there. There is similar money throughout the country.

We are talking of significant funds. There are other elements in the budget. Much of that transfer will not be lost, as I said, because it is in the main budget funds, but the patient wait times guarantee money, that $612 million, is money that will be lost if we do not deal with that on a timely basis.

Another one that is very important is the $1.5 billion for the clean air and climate change trust. That is to help the provinces implement their plans to reduce greenhouse gases. It is very important.

On January 4 of this year, the Prime Minister addressed Canadians and identified what our priorities would be in government this year. One of those major priorities was to take real action on the environment. We have just seen that at the G-8 summit. In the summit declaration Canada's approach is an approach that is drastically different than it was for 13 years under the previous government when greenhouse gas emissions rose dramatically regardless of the commitments it took on. Now we have a national plan that results in real reductions, an actual plan that does that in both the short and medium term but also very importantly in the long term.

It is that approach by the Canadian government that was hailed as an example not just by world leaders, by other G-8 leaders, but by journalists from around the world, by special interest groups. The World Wildlife Fund, for example, issued a statement heralding Canada's approach as a model. The reason it is held out as a model and an example is it is an approach that can be used regardless of how lousy one's track record may be. This is important for a lot of the major emitters that had not been part of the arrangements up until now or did not have obligations under Kyoto to implement, major emitters like China, India, Brazil and the United States, to get them to the table and realize that if we are going to take on the challenges of addressing greenhouse gas emissions and turning around the risk of climate change and what it can potentially do to our world, we are going to have to take action in the long term. That is the approach of Canada that is being held as a model.

An important critical component of that approach is to engage and involve the provinces and ensure that they have in their hands the resources they need to be able to deliver. A big part of that is that $1.5 billion of ecotrust money, the clean air and climate change trust money. I underline that if we do not get Bill C-52 passed in time, that money will be lost.

This is where the delay and obstruction that the Liberal Party in particular has been conducting has been very harmful to the interests of Canadians who care about the environment, and in fact even those who do not care about the environment, because even if people do not care about it, it does affect them. It is important for all Canadians that they have that healthy environment.

Another example of the money that could be lost if Bill C-52 is not approved, if the Liberal obstruction is successful, is the $400 million for the Canada Health Infoway project. This is state of the art technology so that people can have better health care, taking advantage of technology to improve our health care system. This is something that is very important for the provinces to be able to deliver on the health care for Canadians, for their residents. Again if the Liberals are successful in their delay and obstruction plan this is something that will be lost if the bill is not dealt with and does not receive royal assent in the near future.

There is another one that is of particular of interest to me because it does affect residents in my part of Ontario. In fact the announcement was made in York region where I live and where my constituency is. That is the $225 million to protect endangered spaces, working in conjunction with groups like the Nature Conservancy of Canada to acquire sensitive lands that otherwise might be lost to development, or if not to acquire them, to put in place the kinds of conservation easements to ensure that they will be protected in their natural state for the foreseeable future, for as long as our legal regime remains in place, which is basically for as long as life continues as we know it. That money is very important but that money and the potential to protect those endangered lands will be lost if we cannot get the budget implementation bill passed in the appropriate time.

I also want to talk about the $30 million going to the Rick Hansen Foundation. Rick Hansen is the man in motion, a great Canadian who rolled his wheelchair around the world. He is a very strong personality and a great activist for his cause of spinal cord research. He suffered an injury but he showed that it did not hold him back and he did his around the world tour. I think it was in 1984 when he started his tour, which was an inspiration to all of us. The ongoing work of the foundation from the money he raised then is important. There is $30 million that we would like to see dedicated to that foundation. That $30 million would be lost if the Liberals have their way and they delay and obstruct this bill past the deadline we are dealing with.

For all of those reasons, the budget implementation bill is very important, not just because we want to see it passed, and that is a good reason, but there are actual, real consequences with a ticking clock, because of the fact that a significant amount of the funds are anchored in the previous fiscal year before March 31. That means we have to pass it before the books are closed. Basically we have to get royal assent. We have to get it all the way through before the folks here on Parliament Hill go home to their ridings for the summer. In order to do that, we want to see the potential to deal with this bill for as long as we need to.

I might add that we had hoped to be debating many other bills but the Liberals have chosen to delay this budget implementation bill in every way possible and for as long as they can, as we have seen in the House today and as we saw last Friday and so on. We have tried other measures to speed things along but they have stepped in to block them every time.

The other important bill that we need to deal with is Bill C-23, a Criminal Code amendment. Our justice agenda is very important, and Bill C-23 is a bill to update the Criminal Code provisions. It has come back to the House from committee and it is now at report stage. We would like to deal with that quickly but we will need some time in the House.

Similarly, we are expecting to see Bill C-11 on transport come back from the Senate with amendments. We will need to see whether this House agrees with those amendments or not. Bill C-11 is an important bill that has been around a long time, as members can see by the number, and we have been waiting for about a year to deal with it.

We also have Bill C-31, the election integrity bill. It is in the Senate and the Senate has indicated a desire to make some amendments to the bill. We and, I think, all parties would like to see that bill in this place, or at least three of the parties in the House would. The bill was amended at committee and we, as the government, accepted the amendments proposed by the Liberals and the Bloc.

Unfortunately, the Liberals in the Senate had a very different view of how the bill should work from the Liberals in the House of Commons. The Liberals in the Senate are actually getting rid of the House of Commons Liberal amendment on how to deal with the lists and the disclosure of information to political parties. They actually changed it to a position that was identical to what the Conservatives had originally proposed at committee.

As a result of the Liberals in the Senate deciding that they do not agree with the Liberals in the House of Commons, it means that we as the House of Commons need to deal with that bill one more time once the Senate has dealt with it.

We are waiting for that little ping-pong game between the Liberals in the Senate and the Liberals in the House of Commons to come to an end. When it does end, hopefully we can achieve a resolution on which we can all agree to ensure that future elections will proceed with a greater degree of integrity and probity, something that is very important to all parties and all members of this House.

Another bill that has come back after a long stay at committee is Bill C-42, the Quarantine Act, a very important bill on health matters and something we would like to deal with.

I know of one bill that the opposition House leader, the member for Wascana, has been very generous in showing a willingness to fast track and deal with very quickly and we are hoping to have it at report stage in the House very soon. I think we are in a position where we can do that very soon. I know other parties want some level of scrutiny so the very generous offer of the opposition House leader was one that we took up, but not everybody did. We can seek to get it passed through as many stages as possible in the House as quickly as possible. The bill I am talking about is the one dealing with Olympic symbols. I would like to see it dealt with on the House of Commons side and then go to the Senate.

That is an important bill for the folks who are putting together the 2010 Olympic Games in Whistler and Vancouver. It is important because it deals with copyright, trademarks and the like. We all know how challenging it is to put on these kind of games in this day and age and the ability to protect copyrights, to deal with merchandise and to generate that revenue to support the athletes, the games and the legacy venues that will be constructed as a result of that is important to the people who are involved, whether it be the athletes, the organizers or the people in those communities who will benefit from the legacies.

We are also waiting on other bills, such as Bill C-51, the Nunavik Inuit land claims, and Bill C-59 on video piracy. Bill C-59 was just introduced but the newspapers are saying that it is an important bill because it would create some meaningful consequences for people who engage in the illegal video taping of major films with the ultimate objective of putting them on the black market to sell them illegally without the copyright rights to it. That is something that has been hurting the film industry.

In places like Vancouver and Toronto, in fact all across the country, the film industry has become very important, but those places in particular. It is important that Canada maintains its credibility within that industry and that we support our artists and the people who give value to that intellectual property and that we show leadership as a country in protecting it.

In the future, as we move away from manufactured goods and products to the kinds of services that have more to do with intellectual property, we need to be seen as real leaders in that regard. As I said, media reports are suggesting that all parties actually support Bill C-59, which is why we would like to move it quickly.

Another bill that we recently introduced would support the Red Cross/Red Crescent in the adoption of a new symbol. We need to do that here in Canada through legislation because of a charter that exists. The bill would create an additional non-denominational symbol, which is the Red Crystal, that can be used through ratification of a treaty. If the Red Crescent symbol or the Red Cross symbol creates some discomfort with the local population, the Red Cross/Red Crescent Society would be able to use the Red Crystal symbol as an alternate symbol, which is why as a country we need to recognize and ratify that it would have all the protections under the Geneva convention so that anyone would respect it. However, there would be consequences if people misused the symbol in trying to conduct an offensive military operation. The symbol would need to be used for the purpose intended, which is to protect and save lives in difficult scenes around the world.

All of the bills I have spoken about are on the House calendar. Some are in front of us and we would like to deal with them but others are still at committee.

I did not even speak to the first nations land management, which is a bill that was launched in the Senate.

We would like to see the passage of some bills that are still in committee and which we would like to see back from committee. We thought some would come back a little bit sooner, such as Bill C-6, the amendments to the Aeronautics Act. The committee has been doing clause by clause on Bill C-6 for almost a month now. I am glad to see that the committee is being that attentive but it is a bill that is important and we would like to see it.

The bill that I hope the committee deals with soon is Bill C-32 on impaired driving. I have spoken about the importance of justice and making our streets and communities safer. It was one of the five cornerstone priorities of the Conservatives when we ran in the last election. It was restated on January 4 by the Prime Minister as another priority.

I should acknowledge that we have had some good progress on getting some of those justice bills through the House but it was not easy. Some of them, like Bill C-10 dealing with mandatory penalties for gun crimes, stayed at committee. If one were to listen to politicians speak, one would think there is a consensus on the importance of mandatory penalties for gun crimes. Even the Liberal Party in the last election had that as one of its key elements in its platform.

However, when it came to committee, things were a little bit different. The Liberal Party actually gutted the meaningful parts of the legislation and it held up the legislation at committee for 252 days. Fortunately, that time is past and, thanks to the support of the New Democratic Party, we were able to put some teeth back into that legislation and make it meaningful. The legislation now contains some meaningful mandatory penalties for those gang members and crooks who want to terrorize our communities with guns and commit violent acts. They will face real consequences. When they commit an offence like that they will go to jail. There will be no more “get out of jail free” card and no more house arrest as a solution. They will actually serve real jail time for some of those offences. Where there already were mandatory penalties, they will be tougher and stronger mandatory penalities so that we can take real action.

I know these are important justice issues for Canadians, and that the gun legislation is a part of it, but the other bill that we are waiting for from committee is Bill C-32 on impaired driving. It is very easy to deal with impaired driving on alcohol right now because we have breathalyzers and standards. However, a much more difficult element is driving impaired through the use of other illegal substances, such as controlled or narcotic substances, or, in simple terms, drugs. People who use and abuse drugs and then proceed to drive a vehicle are just as impaired, if not more impaired, as someone who has consumed excessive alcohol. The consequences in terms of the risk to other drivers on the road are just as great. It can change the lives of a family if someone were to die or become injured. The lives of a family could be absolutely shattered when an accident occurs because of that kind of behaviour.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, today we will be continuing with the business of supply.

Tomorrow we hope to conclude third reading of Bill C-52. In answer to the question on priorities, I would point out that Bill C-52, the budget implement bill, is the number one priority of this government. We can talk about other priorities after we see an indication that it will be heading for royal assent. If we do not have it, it will result in the loss of $4.3 billion in 2006-07 year end measures which include: $1.5 billion for the Canada ecotrust for the provinces; $600 million for patient wait times guarantees; $400 million for Canada Health Infoway; $200 million for protection of endangered species; $30 million for the Great Bear rain forest; $600 million for labour market agreements for the provinces; $30 million for the Rick Hansen Foundation; $100 million in aid for Afghanistan; $100 million to Genome Canada; and so on. It is a long list of important priorities financing that will be lost if the bill is not passed by the end of this session in June. That is obviously our number one priority.

Next week will be getting things done for all of us week when we consider a number of bills that are in their final stages of the legislative process.

The following bills will be placed under Government Orders for debate: Bill C-11, An Act to amend the Canada Transportation Act and the Railway Safety Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, which the Senate reported with amendments and which is now back before the House to receive the approval of the members, and Bill C-23, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (criminal procedure, language of the accused, sentencing and other amendments).

We are awaiting the Senate's report with amendments on Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

Bill C-33, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act, including amendments in relation to foreign investment entities and non-resident trusts, and to provide for the bijural expression of the provisions of that Act, Bill C-42, An Act to amend the Quarantine Act and Bill C-47, An Act respecting the protection of marks related to the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games and protection against certain misleading business associations and making a related amendment to the Trade-marks Act, will probably be passed by the House at third reading.

Discussions have taken place with the opposition parties, and there may be consent to fast-track some or all of the following bills: Bill C-59, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (unauthorized recording of a movie), Bill S-6, An Act to amend the First Nations Land Management Act and Bill C-51, An Act to give effect to the Nunavik Inuit Land Claims Agreement and to make a consequential amendment to another Act.

There is also a possibility of quick passage of a new bill entitled “An act to amend the Geneva Conventions Act, an act to incorporate the Canadian Red Cross Society and the Trademarks Act”, which appears on today's notice paper.

There are a number of other bills I am still hoping we could get included in getting things done for all of us week, provided that they get reported back from committee, in particular, Bill C-6 aeronautics; Bill C-27 dangerous offenders; Bill C-32 impaired driving; and Bill C-44, the bill to grant first nations people the human rights that every other Canadian enjoys. First nations people expect the House to get things done for them as well, so I urge the aboriginal affairs committee to stop delaying Bill C-44 and report it back to the House early next week. It is a priority for this government.

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

Concerning the record on duty to consult, it appears to me that the government has in most serious cases only undertaken its duty to consult when it has been pushed into it by the Supreme Court.

I would argue that this is an opportunity to actually do the appropriate consultation in advance of the legislation, to pre-empt unintended consequences like those we've heard of many times about Bill C-31.

I know the department itself has done an analysis on Bill C-31 and the potential impacts and is saying that there could be up to 250,000 cases that could come forward.

In light of previous circumstances where that duty to consult was not undertaken and the consequences we are now seeing as a result of that legislation, I wonder why the department wouldn't encourage the minister to undertake that duty to consult.

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

I want to come back then to status of membership provisions. Mr. Slavik, when you talked about status of membership, were you talking about outside of Bill C-31? Could you expand on that?

[Jerome Slavik]

This is a “without prejudice” flyer.

It strikes me, as I followed the politics of this issue, that a lot of the drivers behind amending this act have to do with the implications of the Indian Act. In particular, I was looking at some of the other submissions. It seems to me that without getting into the politics of it too much, all parties have an interest in that. Having the act apply immediately to the federal government and removing the exemption of the Indian Act as it relates to the operation of the federal government from this protection would provoke the government to reconsider the status and membership provision of the act, just like the passage of the charter in 1982 provoked the government to reconsider the discriminatory clauses in paragraph 12(1)(b) of the Indian Act that then existed and then provoked an amendment to the Indian Act that we now know as Bill C-31.

That whole change, which was the last major change to the Indian Act, was provoked by the adoption of the charter by Parliament and the legislatures of the provinces. I can see the repeal of section 67 provoking a similar review of these provisions by Canada and the first nations, which in my mind is long overdue. As counsel for first nations—to be frank, we have an interest here—we're concerned about the impact of this on our clients. That's my knowledge. That's my experience. They understand broadly about human rights. People think it's gender inequality. I can tell you that many of our clients are led by women chiefs, women councillors, and women CEOs out there in the last 15 or 20 years and that you wouldn't have seen 20 years ago. I work for one organization that's almost entirely run by aboriginal women leaders.

Nevertheless, the impacts of how this may play out need to be cushioned. There needs to be time to accommodate to this, to reconcile this. There may be a need to make changes to avoid unnecessary complaints and necessary hardships and to think about, more importantly, how remedies to human rights complaints are going to play out in the communities

There has been very little thought given, in my mind, to how actual remedies to this legislation can play out. If someone is discriminated against and not getting a house where there are 20 applications for one house, and there's an act of discrimination, does that person get the house? I don't think so. I'm not too sure what the remedy is, but it's not getting the house. When the Human Rights Commission made an award against Canada for sexual discrimination in wage matters, Canada had to pony up over $1 billion. First nations don't have the resources to pony up money or other remedies that may be anticipated in some of these circumstances. That's another area that I think needs to be given a little thought.

To summarize, by all means, I think there's interest in removing the prohibition vis-à-vis the federal government, but I would really urge you to consider 24 to 36 months to do a thorough reconciliation consultation initiative with the first nations, information capacity-building. I think that could be a win-win.

Canada Elections Act

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

Mr. Speaker, the question put by the hon. member for Western Arctic had two points to it but the first had nothing to do with Bill C-55, which is not unusual coming from an NDP member.

However, he did say that he did not believe that our Bill C-31, which deals with voter fraud, would in fact be effective because it would disenfranchise voters. I absolutely reject that premise and I think we will find out, in years to come and elections to come, that this bill will increase the security of voters, ensuring that all voters eligible to vote have an opportunity to do so.

However, he did make one comment about Bill C-55 concerning the advance polling date, the Sunday immediately preceding election day. He said that was tantamount to having a two day election and in fact that would be wrong. For the life of me, I cannot understand why any member of this place would want to see fewer opportunities for voters to exercise their franchise rather than more.

He also pointed out that one of the reasons he felt this would be wrong was that advertising by political parties would continue on the day prior to the election and that this would be something that would unduly influence the voter outcome. I must point out that advertising is already allowed during regular advance polling days, days 10, 9 and 8, prior to an election. In other jurisdictions, including my province of Saskatchewan, political parties can advertise on voting day.

Therefore, the point made by the hon. member for Western Arctic is weak at best.

Bill C-55 is intended to increase the level of voter turnout. If we can do that, in any way, shape or form, no matter how small or how large, it will be a good day and a good bill for democracy.

[Marc Mayrand, Chief Electoral Officer, Office of the Chief Electoral Officer]

Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

With me today are Mrs. Diane Davidson, who is the deputy chief electoral officer and senior legal counsel at Elections Canada; Mrs. Janice Vézina, who is the executive director of political financing and corporate services; and Mr. Stéphane Perrault, who is the senior general counsel at Elections Canada.

Thank you again.

As the chairman just said, it was only on Tuesday that we were invited to appear before your committee regarding this bill, which is very important for the political financing system. At that time, we were very busy preparing our appearance before the Senate regarding Bill C-31, which greatly hindered our ability to prepare a detailed and adequate analysis of the bill at hand.

Nevertheless, I think that it is important to share some comments with you today. I did not have the opportunity to prepare type-written notes. However, I would like to speak to you about certain issues that are raised by this bill. First, let me note that this bill responds to a recommendation my predecessor made and that it reflects his suggestions very well. Nonetheless, I must say that we were not consulted about drafting the bill. Therefore, we were informed about it only when it was tabled before the House.

The bill adds an important piece to the financial framework as regards the inflow of moneys to regulated entities under the Canada Elections Act. While the bill certainly responds to recommendations made by Elections Canada last January, it only touches one aspect of these recommendations, which is the loan aspect.

One observation I have in reviewing the piece of legislation is that loans should not be looked at in isolation from other rules regarding access to money, such as the one regarding stricter contribution limits, the existence or absence of spending limits for various entities governed by the act—mainly leadership contests—the rules governing transfers among various entities, and the availability of tax credits for certain entities during or outside the writ period, as well as other subsidies, such as the allowance offered to parties. The interaction of those evolving rules may have significant implications for candidates, lenders, and parties who have different financial needs and borrowing capabilities.

The proposed restrictions on loans, in conjunction with the recent contribution limit, will require entities to rely more heavily on loans from financial institutions to fund their activities. That's one likely outcome of Bill C-54.

The question arises as to whether financial institutions will be willing to play this role, and if so, to what extent, and how they will adjust their lending practices under the rules set out by Bill C-54. For example, a guarantor may not guarantee a loan for more than $1,100, except for parties and district associations. As parties are the only ones allowed to guarantee substantial loans, this may have an impact on the relationship between parties and candidates or between independent candidates and those supported by political parties. Will candidates or small parties be able to find sufficient financing to support their campaigns?

These are some of the questions that come to mind when we look more comprehensively at the financial framework for financial entities. I must admit that I have no answers at this time to those questions. It will require much more analysis.

Following our study which, I repeat, was only preliminary, I can say that this bill has some problems with implementation. Let me mention a few of them. For instance, the bill states that loans to candidates must be paid back 18 months after the date on which they were made rather than 18 months after the date of the election. In this way, a loan might have to be paid back even before the election is held. In our opinion, this is an operational problem.

Secondly, although the bill allows candidates to borrow from financial institutions, a candidate cannot use more than $1,100 worth of his personal resources or goods, for example his house, as collateral. We want to know whether a candidate can be exempted from these restrictions on loans or collateral, without violating the spirit of the bill.

A third example, which has more to do with the operations of Elections Canada, would be a situation in which a candidate tells us that the bank, following its usual accounting practice, considers a loan to be unrecoverable or written off. According to this bill, the Chief Electoral Officer must determine whether the loan has really been written off following the usual practice of the financial institution. However, nothing in the bill provides that the Chief Electoral Officer should have access to the documents of the financial institutions and that he will be able to verify their practices in such cases.

If a loan is written off, the riding association becomes responsible for the debt as if it had put up collateral. As we interpret the bill, this is more or less an automatic process triggered by writing off the debt. If this occurs, the association might not have agreed to collaterize the loan. Perhaps this is the intention of the bill, but I must draw it to your attention. Of course, these are only examples. A closer study would probably come up with more such examples.

In conclusion, Mr. Chair, I was--

[Gary Merasty, Liberal, Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, SK]

I want to pick up on your comment on openness and honesty.

Having come from this community and having been a chief myself and seen the struggles of our community people--women, children, everybody--the openness and the reality is that the government policies, Indian Affairs policies in particular, force human rights violations to occur on the reserves every day, period.

Then we have a government trying to deflect the blame or, maybe even worse yet, assign that blame to the first nations communities. When you peel it back, is it the fault of a mother who under Bill C-31 falls within subsection 6(2) and has a child and does not disclose who the father is, and the child is no longer status? Is that the fault of the band? No, it's government policy.

A disabled child can't get any services, unless they perhaps get apprehended by the state. What is happening to address those issues today by this government?

To me, when you peel it back, if the media were to understand where these violations start, if Canadians were to understand where these violations start, then we would have much more fruitful dialogue, because then Canadians would tell us to consult extensively. They would say we should reconcile these rights, which are real, because 30 years of Supreme Court and Federal Court cases have established them as being real. They would say we should reconcile them in a modern context.

They'd say we should analyze consequential impacts on the Indian Act, because the Indian Act is a racist document. We want to get rid of it, but I don't think the trust is there for this government to actually replace it with something adequate. That's what I hear from the communities.

Then they would say we should design something that's fair, reasonable, with the proper consultation and accommodations made. But I guess instead we have this government exaggerating the sins of first nations administration on this issue.

I guess I ask whether that's a fair assessment, because that's what I've heard from witnesses over the last little while.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

And I'm Peter Van Loan.

I'm pleased to appear today to assist the committee in its scrutiny of Bill C-54, the accountability with respect to loans bill. The bill is another important part of our agenda to strengthen accountability in Canada through democratic reform.

Our agenda in this respect is extensive and ambitious. It has three main components: strengthening our electoral system to make it more responsive, fair, and effective; second, modernizing the Senate; and third, reforming the financing of political parties to eliminate the undue influence of rich and powerful individuals.

To start, we are strengthening our electoral system by, firstly, ensuring our democracy remains fair to Canadians across the country through Bill C-31, which seeks to reduce voter fraud, and Bill C-56, which ensures fairness and representation in the House of Commons by restoring the principle of representation by population.

Secondly, we are taking steps to improve voter turnout through Bill C-55, which adds two additional days of advanced polling on the two Sundays prior to election day.

Lastly, we are also providing a level of certainty and transparency to the public by establishing fix date elections. Under legislation that was recently enacted into law, the date of the next general election will be October 19, 2009.

Through another piece of legislation currently before Parliament, we hope that October 19, 2009, is the date of the first national consultations process for choosing senators.

For the first time, Bill C-43 provides Canadians with the opportunity to have a say in who represents them in the Senate. This legislation, which represents a realistic and practical way of modernizing the Senate, is one part of our plan to do so. The other part is our bill to limit the terms of senators to 8 years from the current maximum of 45.

The last major component of our agenda to strengthen accountability through democratic reform is our legislation to reform the financing of political parties, candidates, and associations to eliminate the undue influence of rich, powerful individuals in the political process.

We committed to doing this in the last campaign, when we introduced, as our first piece of legislation, the Federal Accountability Act. On April 11, 2006 we fulfilled that commitment and on December 12 of the same year, the Federal Accountability Act became law.

The act banned corporate and union contributions, imposed tighter rules on gifts and trust funds and limited annual donations to a political party to $1,100 in 2007.

The bill being studied by this committee today builds on the Federal Accountability Act and on our commitment to eliminate the influence of rich, powerful individuals from the political process.

The bill would amend the Canada Elections Act to establish stronger rules and better transparency for loans made to political parties, candidates, and associations. These amendments would enhance accountability and increase transparency around the use of loans as a political financing tool, which is vital to ensuring the confidence of Canadians in the integrity of the political process.

Along with the Federal Accountability Act, the changes proposed in Bill C-54 will ensure that the financing of political parties, candidates, and associations is fully transparent with straightforward rules that are easy to enforce.

The amendments proposed for the treatment of loans in Bill C-54 would extend to loans the same standards of transparency that are now in place for contributions. By removing chapter 3, which allows for the use of loans to circumvent the restrictions on the source or limit of contributions, the amendments will ensure that the reforms enacted in C-2 cannot be undermined through the misuse of loans.

Specifically, the amendments would make the following changes to the treatment of loans.

First, the bill would establish a uniform and transparent way of treating loans made to political parties, candidates, and associations. It would require mandatory disclosure of terms and the identity of all lenders and loan guarantors. It would achieve greater transparency and ensure that political parties, candidates, and associations are treated uniformly, which is, believe it or not, not now the case.

Second, total loans, loan guarantees, and contributions by individuals could not exceed the annual contribution limit for individuals established in the Federal Accountability Act, which is set at $1,100 for 2007. Since loans from individuals would be treated as contributions from the time they were made, loans could not be used to circumvent the limit on individual contributions.

Third, only financial institutions and other political entities could make loans beyond that $1,100 limit. Unions and corporations would now be unable to make loans, consistent with their inability to make contributions. They could not disguise contributions as loans. Since financial institutions would have to charge commercial rates of interest, neither borrowers nor lenders could exchange favourable rates for favourable treatment.

Finally, the rules for the treatment of unpaid loans would be tightened to ensure that candidates cannot walk away from unpaid loans. Riding associations will be held responsible for unpaid loans taken out by their candidates. Those would succeed to the associations.

At this point I want to pay some tribute—and I don't want to say I'm disappointed that Monsieur Godin is here, but I am disappointed that Mr. Martin is not—because Pat Martin deserves some credit for having kept this issue on the radar screen and pressing us to move forward with this legislation. I wanted to give him due credit for having done that.

In January 2007, the Chief Electoral Officer presented recommendations to Parliament for changing the rules on loans. This was the first examination of the rules for loans since 2000.

The CEO recommended that Parliament impose additional controls on loans, make loans more transparent, and establish consistency in the treatment of loans for all classes of political entities. Specifically, he recommended the kinds of changes we are including in Bill C-54: the amendments in Bill C-54 implement the recommendations of the Chief Electoral Officer with respect to loans.

At second reading, several members expressed an interest in having the bill come into force earlier than six months after royal assent, which is the current wording in the bill. The government would like to see the changes in force as soon as possible. l would encourage the committee to discuss the matter with the Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Mayrand, when he is here next hour—how quickly the changes could be put into operation—and to feel free to encourage him and challenge him to do it as quickly as possible.

In conclusion, accountability with respect to loans is an important part of our new government's agenda to strengthen accountability through democratic reform. By adopting this bill, which updates the rules for loans and expands transparency, Parliament would demonstrate to Canadians that it remains serious in its commitment to clean up all aspects of federal political financing.

It will show that we will not allow rich, powerful individuals to influence the political process. It will show that we will continue to build upon the reforms made in the historic Federal Accountability Act.

Today, I am seeking your support for these measures and will be pleased to attempt to answer your questions.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak in the House to this bill. I want to outline a number of things the government has said about this bill. I want to look at what, I believe, is the motivation for this bill. I also want to talk about some of the concerns about the bill that have been brought to my attention. I will then underline the void left by the government on the whole issue of fairness and voting on democratic reform that the bill does not really substantively deal with.

I will begin with the bill itself in terms of when we first heard about it. As I mentioned in questions and comments earlier, it was with much fanfare on the front lawn of the House of Commons that the announcement was made. As I previously said, we were told there was a big announcement coming on democratic reform and, in fact, the government even titled the week democratic reform week. We were all wondering with great anticipation what the announcement would be.

There was a great photo op with all the interns together to make it look good on camera. The minister came out and announced that there would be what we thought would be democratic reform, like the mixed member system or some other substantive proposal, but, lo and behold, he announced that the government would be expanding advance polling. People in the crowd made some comments and even the media asked, “They brought us out here for this”.

In fact, the page from the press release that I have in front of me on the bill itself is pretty small. It contains the main parts of the bill but it is what we call piecemeal. I say that because the government is trying to brand itself, as it says now, as getting things done on democratic reform, which is a laudable goal. Some would say that is the way to do it, one piece at a time, but the problem is that there was absolutely no consultation on this bill.

This idea came from what looks like the back room of the Conservative Party to cover for the fact that it had not done some things on democratic reform, like the triple E Senate that many in the party had gotten involved in politics on. In fact, we are hearing now from the backbench that the Conservatives have not been able to deliver on the triple E Senate. The government had to come up with something so it came up with Bill C-55 and Bill C-56. That is the background, the trajectory of how we got this bill.

The claims that the government has made are very interesting. When the minister spoke on this bill today he said things like, “We want more people to vote”, “Elections Canada has indeed identified that people need more time to vote”, “Canadians need more opportunity to vote”, et cetera. Of course no one will disagree with that. The problem is that the Conservatives make assertions that this bill will be the grandiose architecture for changing our democratic system so that we will see more voter participation and that it somehow will deal with all the ills that exist in our present system.

However, there is a cost to this. As the minister said today, it will cost somewhere around $38 million for this initiative, an initiative that the government has not consulted on but just dreamed up and brought forward. I say that because it is important to underline.

This is not a bill that was discussed at committee nor was it discussed during the election. It also was not discussed in the House. This is not a bill that Canadians were clamouring the government to act on. That is important to note. In my opinion, this is the piecemeal approach of the Conservative Party to cover for the fact that it has not delivered on its triple E Senate promise.

The minister also stated that there was more advance voting in 2006. I see some smiles from my friends so I must be hitting a nerve. Therefore, this will be a continuation of that and there will be more voting if we do that. That might be but 2006 was a very different election. Many people who were going south took advantage of the fact they could vote in the advance poll. Therefore, I do not think it is a good benchmark to look at 2006.

The government talks about France having had 85% voter participation in the last election and that they vote on a Sunday and, therefore, that is a meritorious argument for this bill. I think it is a bit of a stretch to say that because they vote on Sundays in France and that they had an 85% voter turnout that somehow is the rationale for this bill. The reason is that it is a different political culture.

One of the things they have in France is a proportional system as well. We have spoken consistently from this side of the House, from the NDP's perspective, on the need, not just to have piecemeal change but to ensure that we change our voting structure so that it actually makes the system fair. Just to provide more time for people to vote, in and of itself, is not what really ails us right now. What really ails the body politic in Canada right now is having a fair vote so that someone's vote in Calgary counts as much as someone's vote in Prince Edward Island, in Toronto or in Timmins.

We know that a person, shall we say, wanting to vote Conservative in downtown Montreal, as we learned this past election, finds that their vote really is meaningless, other than the $1.75 that might go to the Conservative Party. That was illustrated clearly after the last election when the government could not find a cabinet minister so it had to pluck one from the back room of the Conservative Party, pop him into the Senate and then hoist him into the cabinet. It was a sad day for democracy.

What we need instead of these piecemeal solutions that have been put forward by the government is substantive democratic reform. What we and the Citizens Assembly here in Ontario have proposed is to have a mixed member system, which is what the system the government is lauding in France has, and that is some proportionality. If the Conservative Party had won the election fair and square with a mixed member system, Mr. Fortier may have been a nominated candidate on its list and he could have been legitimately appointed to cabinet.

The same goes for the minister who crossed the floor from the Liberal Party and ended up in the cabinet of the Conservative Party. It was simply that the Prime Minister had no one from Vancouver. I do not know when the actual conversation took place but I suspect it was either right after the election or soon thereafter.

I underline those examples because what is wrong with our system right now are the floor crossings and the appointments to the Senate and then into cabinet, which deepens the cynicism of the population. I would submit that is more problematic and more of a challenge to us as parliamentarians to increase voter participation, not these piecemeal approaches, as populace as they might be, if I may use that word, because young people, for instance, are not voting because they do not see their vote counting. It is not that they cannot find the time.

I should turn to the province of Manitoba where recently the people of Manitoba increased their voter participation. I think it was because the government opened up the opportunities to vote, as well as, hopefully, they had something to vote for. That should be looked at. Manitoba made voting polls more available to people. They did not do what the government is proposing. They actually made the advance polls very accessible. They were in shopping malls and in everyday places where people go. That is the kind of thing we should look at.

I do not think this idea of having an advance polling day on a Sunday will find favour with people from our faith communities. I have talked to people in my constituency and some of them, not all, believe that Sunday should not be a voting day. I think some people in other faiths would have the same concern if were on their Sabbath. That needs to be addressed as well.

What are the costs? The government has estimated it at $37 million. How will we do this if the voting booths or the advanced polling booths are in churches? Will that affect the services of any given church? Has that been thought through? I would think not. Has the government consulted with people in the faith communities about this? I think not. It is obviously something that can be addressed at committee.

The last thing I want to talk a little bit about is what the government's agenda is on democratic reform. I have already mentioned the fact that the government has had some democratic reform ideas but, in many ways, they are a cover for its democratic deficits that it suffered from in the first days of government. I am speaking of the floor-crossing and the appointment of the public works minister to the Senate and into cabinet.

On the surface, one would think that a government that claims to want substantive democratic reform would actually consult.

I guess we will debate Bill C-56 at some time. It fell off the calendar recently. It was on the calendar, then I gather the Conservative leader from Ontario said a couple of things about it and then it disappeared off the calendar, but I will leave the government to respond to that. It is another bill on democratic reform.

What the government is trying to do with that bill is to change the formula on how seats are assigned after a census. Do members know who the government consulted on this? Did it consult the provinces? It consulted no one other than itself. The problem with that is that this has consequences for every province. The way the government has done it, in terms of the lack of consultation, it will divide people as opposed to bringing them together. What democratic reform should be is bringing people together to have more faith in the democratic system and the democratic institutions we have built.

The government is offside on its consultation on this bill and on Bill C-56. I saw this on Bill C-31 when we saw that our privacy would be compromised. Bill C-31 is in the Senate now but Canadians are surprised to find out that a bill that is supposed to deal with so-called voter fraud gives up their privacy by having their birthdates published on the voters' list and given to political parties for their benefit.

The government says one thing and does the other. It has some pieces that we can say are fine, but the government does not consult. It has missed, not only the boat on the practise of democratic reform in terms of accepting floor-crossers and putting people from the back room into the Senate and into cabinet, but it has not dealt with the one issue that Canadians want it to deal with, be they young, middle aged or older, and that is the fairness of our system so that when someone votes their vote counts.

The fundamental question for our party has to do with voter fairness and until we deal with voter fairness, all these other tinkerings and piecemeal approaches are really secondary. They do not deal with the fundamental question.

When the minister talks about comparisons to Europe and other jurisdictions, he should look at the whole picture and not cherry-pick but, sadly, that is what the minister has done.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

moved that Bill C-55, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (expanded voting opportunities) and to make a consequential amendment to the Referendum Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to open debate today on the expanded voting opportunities bill.

The right to vote is our most precious and fundamental right. Each year about 150,000 people become new Canadian citizens. Most have come to our nation in search of freedom and they find that when they achieve Canadian citizenship, the right to vote, among the many rights and privileges they are conferred, is the most treasured privilege and duty that they do acquire.

Public participation in the political process, by exercising one's right to vote, is the cornerstone of our democracy. Voting validates the position of a responsible and accountable government. Of all forms of civic engagement, voting is perhaps the simplest and most important. By deciding to vote, Canadians have a say in what happens to their country.

By the very act of voting, they are playing an active role in the future of their country and their community, first by reflecting on the decision they must make and then by the decision itself. It is precisely for this undertaking that many people become citizens.

A deeper community and civic commitment is built on this foundation. It may lead to the creation of a minor hockey league for children, the organization of a tree-planting project or the cleaning of a ravine.

Unfortunately, voter participation in elections has been in decline over the years. In 1958, 79.4% of Canadians voted in that year's general election. However, that fell to 69% of eligible voters by 1993 and by 2004 only 60.5% of eligible voters cast a ballot.

Unfortunately, young people voted at even lower rates than previous generations. In fact, in the 2000 election, only about 25% of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 24 bothered to vote.

It is undeniable that fewer people are going to the polls in Canada, yet we know that the one true method for citizens to hold their governments to account is through the ballot box. When voter turnout declines, it means that fewer people are holding their governments to account. The result is that our democratic system suffers.

We on this side of the House want to change the current situation. We want to see more people engaged in the political process and we want more people to vote.

A study led by Elections Canada indicates that many Canadians have trouble finding the time to go vote. Generally speaking, between work, studies and family, they do not have enough time to make it to the polls. I know that, on voting day, many people get up in the morning with the intention of voting, but because they have to work extra hours or because their kids have a minor hockey game that night, they do not find the time to exercise their right to vote.

At the same time, Canadians indicated that they appreciate the convenience of advance voting, and more and more voters are taking advantage of the opportunity to vote at advance polling stations. Indeed, voter turnout at advance polling stations nearly doubled between the 1997 election and the 2006 election.

Furthermore, the European example has shown that opening polling stations on Sundays leads to greater voter turnout. For instance, in the French presidential election held Sunday, May 6, voter turnout was 85%.

Therefore on May 9, 2007, we introduced the bill that we are debating today, Bill C-55, to increase voter turnout by giving Canadians more opportunities to vote.

The bill, which is part of our agenda to strengthen accountability and democracy in Canada, adds two advanced polling dates. One is on Sunday, the eighth day before election day, and the other is on Sunday, the day before election day.

The Sunday before election day will be a special advance poll. All polling stations used for the general voting day will be open on the last advanced polling day, not just a limited number of stations used for any other advanced polling days.

That means that Canadians will now have the choice of voting on election day, which is a Monday, or on Sunday, the day before election day or earlier at four other advanced polls.

This will mean all Canadians will have an opportunity to vote at an advanced poll right in their own neighbourhood on a Sunday which for many is a day without work or school commitments. This will make it easier for Canadians to vote.

With this increased convenience, we hope that families will bring their children with them when they go to vote, helping them to appreciate from an early age the civic duty and opportunity to cast a vote and to understand what it means to be a citizen in a free and democratic country.

These are lessons that if well taught last a lifetime, build stronger communities and make a brighter future for Canada. We know that engaging more Canadians in the electoral process through increasing voter turnout is good for our democracy and good for our country.

It is not just the government who is saying this. The expanded voting opportunities bill has also received the endorsement of academics and interested groups across Canada. For example, a group called Apathy is Boring, which aims at increasing youth voter participation, welcomes the bill. It said:

Apathy is Boring applauds the Expanded Voting Opportunities Bill, which makes a small but critical change to polling days. Accessibility is key to voter participation, and this bill will help ensure accessibility especially among young people.

Keith Archer, a professor of political science at the University of Calgary, said, “My view is that this legislation is a thoughtful and constructive response to the decline in voter participation in Canadian federal elections, and is aligned with the evident growth in the desire of Canadians to avail themselves of the opportunity to vote in advanced polls...the government is to be applauded for introducing this legislation”.

Leslie Seidle, a senior research associate at the Institute for Research on Public Policy, said, “It ought to encourage more people to go to the polls by offering them additional time on what is a non-working day for most.

These comments show that the expanded voting opportunities bill is a modern, realistic and effective way to increase voter turnout in Canada. However, the bill is just one piece of our agenda to strengthen accountability and democracy in Canada.

Since coming into power, this government has made many efforts to develop concrete measures for democratic reform. One of these legislative measures, tabled in Parliament by this government, was Bill C-4 which led to a review of the rules governing the registration of a political party. And just before Christmas, we passed the Federal Accountability Act, which provides for new strict rules governing campaign financing. Loans by unions and businesses will be prohibited as will be anonymous contributions and trust funds, and the maximum annual donation to a political party is now $1,100.

These two legislative initiatives will help restore the confidence of citizens in the democratic process.

Next we introduced Bill C-16 to establish fixed dates for elections. The bill sets the third Monday in October, four calendar years after each election, as the date of the next general election. Under the legislation, which is now law, the date of the next general election will be October 19, 2009.

Fixed date elections take the guesswork out of the electoral process and level the playing field for the Chief Electoral Officer, for political parties and, most importantly, for voters. They also encourage participation in the democratic process by allowing Canadians to plan to participate in their nation's electoral process.

I am very proud to announce that Bill C-16 has received royal assent despite all the efforts of the unelected Liberal senators to block implementation of the democratic reform proposed by our government.

Next we introduced Bill C-43, the Senate Appointment Consultations Act. With this bill we have acted to strengthen accountability with legislation that gives Canadians a say in who they want representing them in the Senate.

The proposed Senate appointment consultations act recognizes that it is the citizens of the country, not big money or backroom boys, who are best qualified to choose who should speak for them in the Senate. The Senate appointment consultations bill is currently being debated at second reading and we are anxious to see passage of this groundbreaking legislation.

That brings me to Bill S-4, the legislation that proposes to limit Senate terms to eight years instead of the current 45 years.

Today just happens to be the first birthday of the bill to limit the terms of senators. It has been delayed and obstructed by the Liberal Senate for a full year now. Remarkably, even though the Leader of the Opposition says he supports term limits for senators, Bill S-4 has been ensnared in procedural limbo since May 30, 2006, thanks to Liberal senators bent on obstructing and delaying any meaningful democratic reform.

We hope the Liberal senators will give the House of Commons a chance to actually deal with this bill one day.

As you can see, these legislative measures, including Bill C-31, which provides for the improvement of the integrity of the electoral process, as well as all the other bills tabled last week, are modern, realistic and effective and will strengthen our democracy and restore the confidence of Canadians in our democratic institutions.

The bill on expanded voting opportunities provides Canadian workers with more opportunities to vote so that they can make their government accountable. This is an effective means of ensuring an increase in voter turnout and strengthening democracy in Canada.

Unless we check declining voter turnout, we run the risk of having an increasing number of Canadians becoming disengaged from their government.

The way public affairs are conducted could become less democratic and less responsible.

For democracy to work, it must be the property of all, not just a place for narrow interests to pursue their own agenda. That is why it is important for more Canadians to participate in the democratic process. Voter participation is fundamental to the health of our democratic institutions.

Canada's new government is doing all it can to encourage citizens to participate in the democratic process.

This modern, realistic and effective legislative measure represents a new stage in the ambitious action plan that our government has developed to improve democratic institutions and to strengthen the vitality of democracy in Canada.

For all these reasons, I urge all members of the House to support the expanded voting opportunities bill.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

I would not do that.

Tomorrow is an allotted day.

Next week is constituent consultation week, when the House will be adjourned to allow members to return to their ridings and meet with constituents to share with them the activities of Parliament since the last constituency break.

For the interest of members, I will quickly review our plan for the context of our overall legislative agenda.

As he requested, this is currently strengthening the economy week, where a number of financial bills moved forward. The budget bill was sent to committee and, hopefully, it will be reported back tomorrow, or soon, so we can deal with it at third reading when the House returns after the break.

Bill C-40, an act to amend the Excise Tax Act, was read a third time and sent to the Senate. Bill C-53, an act to implement the convention on the settlement of investment disputes, Bill C-33, the sales tax bill and Bill C-47, the Olympics symbol bill were all sent to committee and we all would like to see those back in the House for report stage and third reading.

In an earlier week, Bill C-36, the bill that makes changes to the Canada pension plan and the Old Age Security Act, was made into law after receiving royal assent.

Strengthening accountability through democratic reform week was a success with the consideration of Bill C-43, Senate consultation. We had three new democratic reform bills introduced that week: Bill C-55, to expand voting opportunities; Bill C-56, an act to amend the Constitution Act, democratic representation; and Bill C-54, a bill that would bring accountability with respect to loans. We hope to continue debate on that particular bill later today.

Bill C-16, fixed dates for elections, was given royal assent and is now law, which I think is the cause of the commotion now in all the committees where Liberals are using procedural tactics. Now they feel they can do it with a free hand.

Two other democratic reform bills are in the Senate, Bill C-31, voter integrity, and Bill S-4, Senate tenure. I really would like to have the term limits bill from the Senate for an upcoming democratic reform week if the opposition House leader can persuade his colleagues in the Senate to finally deal with that bill after 352 days. We may get 352 seconds in a filibuster, but they have had 352 days so far. They have been stalling for a year.

During the consultation week, I will be interested in hearing what our constituents think of the plight of Bill S-4 and the irony of those unaccountable senators delaying it.

We dedicated a good deal of our time focusing on making our streets and communities safer by cracking down on crime. Now that we have had the help of the NDP, we restored the meaningful aspects that the Liberals gutted in committee to Bill C-10, the bill to introduce mandatory penalties for violent and gun crimes. We are continuing to debate that bill today at third reading.

Bill C-48, the bill dealing with the United Nations convention on corruption, was adopted at all stages.

Bill C-26, the bill to amend the Criminal Code with respect to interest rates, was given royal assent.

Bill C-22, the age of protection, was given final reading and sent to the Senate, although it did spend close to, if not in excess of, 200 days in committee where the Liberals were obstructing and delaying its passage.

We made progress on Bill C-27, the dangerous offenders legislation. We would like to see that back in the House.

Bill C-9, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (conditional sentence of imprisonment) and a host of other justice bills are working their way through the system.

Members can advise their constituents that when we return, we will be reviving two themes, back by popular demand. Beginning May 28, we will begin again with strengthening accountability through democratic reform with: Bill C-54, political loans; Bill C-55, additional opportunities for voting; and Bill C-56, democratic representation.

Up next is a second go-round on strengthening the economy week with Bill C-52, the budget implementation bill, which will be called as soon as it is reported back from committee.

In the near future, we will have the improvement of aboriginal people quality of life week with Bill C-44. This bill will grant first nations residing on Indian reserves access to the Canadian charter of human rights. They have been denied this right for 30 years. Unfortunately, Bill C-44 is being delayed by the opposition. This is another bill being delayed by the opposition in committee.

After Bill C-44, I intend to debate Bill C-51. The agreement establishes the use and ownership of land and resources and will foster economic development. This bill illustrates Canada's commitment to the North and to settling land claims.

I wish all members a productive constituent consultation week and look forward to more progress on the government's legislative agenda when the House returns on May 28.

[Doris Young, Advisor to the President, University College of the North]

Good day, everybody.

[Witness speaks in Cree] I'm saying greetings to all of you in my language, which is Cree.

My name is Doris Young. I'm here to talk about this very important section of Bill C-67. I am a first nations woman and a member of the Women's Advisory Council of Manitoba; of the Keewatinook Ininew Okimowin, or MKO; and the Opaskwayak Cree Nation Women's Council, which is my community. I understand the MKO was here last week speaking to the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development about this issue. I work at the University College of the North, in The Pas, Manitoba, as adviser to the president, and I live on the Opaskwayak Cree Nation.

First of all, I want to say that the government's plan to repeal immediately this section 67 without a commitment to ensure that there is adequate consultation and engagement of first nations is something that we cannot support, because if it's repealed without proper consultation it impacts on the lives of first nations communities, and in particular, native women. It will impact us in a negative way more than it would benefit us.

We believe, as northern first nations women, in our right to be protected against discrimination, and we also support the idea of empowerment, which is what this bill is designed to do. But empowerment really means to us the ability to make decisions on relevant information, which we don't have. We haven't received any information, there was no consultation with first nations women in Manitoba, and no information has been provided to us about this bill. We are therefore not able to make an informed decision about it, and that's why we can't support it.

I want to say a little bit about this colonization process and the residential school experience, which I myself have been affected by, and we've been personally harmed by both of these--first of all, colonization, and then residential schools. These laws that were passed were not really ours, but nevertheless we were forced to accept them, and it's caused us a lot of misery. Possibly this section 67 will have the same consequences if no consultation is made and no input on our behalf is given to the government about the effects.

We do believe that discrimination should not be occurring to native women, and neither violence nor abuse, because it harms our families and it harms our communities. We are dedicated to our families and we know collectively what is good for them and for our communities. We have the strength, courage, and of course the resilience to continue fighting for our place in society and to plan for the enjoyment of a good future for our children and our communities. This is why this issue is so very important for us.

One of the issues that need addressing is that it's really imperative that measures are in place so that our collective and human rights are protected, and they include our customs, our practices, and our languages. There must be assurance that our ability to create our own human rights laws and decision-making bodies is enhanced, not weakened. There must be provisions in place to ensure that first nations women are meaningfully engaged in the development and implementation of first-nations-driven human rights mechanisms, and there must be adequate resources available to us to be involved in this process.

Twenty-two years ago, in 1985, when Bill C-31 was passed, we did not have the knowledge of or insight into its impact on our future generations. We were so happy that at last the prospect of discrimination would end. Of course it didn't happen.

Now 22 years later, in 2007, the Canadian government is imposing a bill, Bill C-44, that is designed to empower first nations people when seeking redress against discrimination. Those of us living and working on first nations territories are not permitted to seek redress under section 67 of the Human Rights Act. We have no protection against discrimination under the Indian Act.

Bill C-44 is theoretically designed to end that situation. Once again, when we heard that, we were hopeful, but we're really more cautious about this today because of the unintended consequences that resulted from Bill C-31.

The intent to end discrimination is a sound idea, but there's no process in place right now to assess the results of repealing section 67. Native women are the ones who will most likely feel the results. We're the backbone of our communities; we're the daughters, the mothers, and the grandmothers. Whatever decisions are made impacting our community, it's always the women who bear the greatest amount of work in maintaining familial kinship and communal systems.

As noted earlier, we have experience stemming from Bill C-31 and are now beginning to feel its impact. Today we are fearful of its consequences because of our inability to continue to pass on our legal rights to future generations. You heard Dawn mentioning some of the direct impacts on her family. This inability to pass on our rights has a domino effect on the legal and political future of all first nations and its impact on our governments, our lands, our housing, our education, and our other rights. We don't want to enter into another situation that will jeopardize us.

There's another issue that's related to discrimination and first nations women living on first nations territories, and that's accessing protection against discrimination through the Canadian human rights legislation. We can say at this time that this present legislation does not serve us well. It's not a good option for a number of reasons.

It doesn't provide us with adequate due process.

The problem is in the way the tribunal currently operates. Decisions made by the tribunal take too long. It's too cumbersome, too expensive, and the tribunal process will be removed from first nations areas.

The tribunal decisions that are made are not made by first nations and generally are not related to relationship building, which is really an important value for first nations. This results in more alienation, resentment, and very often does irreparable damage to families and the kinship system.

The process is also not understood by first nations women on the reserve, and therefore they'll likely not use the Canadian human rights legislation.

That's another fundamental injustice that needs examination, the fact that there is no safe place for us to get redress from any government. For example, Bill C-31 and the Canadian human rights legislation: first nations women sought redress, and the result did not end discrimination, as stated earlier. On first nations territories, discriminatory practices are prevalent against women in areas such as housing, education, and the right to remain in the family home when a relationship breaks down or when the death of a spouse occurs. In this particular area, lack of adequate community resources often perpetuates these unfair situations.

In spite of all these obstacles, first nations women continue to strive to be involved in the system so we will be able to maintain healthy communities and a balance and justice for all of us.

We need education, resources, and time. We need to educate ourselves about this issue so that we can make informed decisions. We need resources in order to educate ourselves and to be able to meet. We need time to consult with first nations women on the reserves so that their human rights are protected and the discrimination is properly addressed.

Given the opportunity, we could be involved in developing first nations human rights legislation that would help resolve discrimination in our communities. We believe that this process would give us the opportunity to reflect our time-honoured values and beliefs in fairness and justice. Also, this process would not compromise first nations jurisdiction.

Finally, first nations women must be part of this important process. We must be part of the solution to end discrimination.

[Witness speaks in her native language]

I'm saying thank you for the opportunity to come and speak to you on my relations.

Senate Appointment Consultations Act

[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 very great pleasure for me to stand in this place today to speak in favour of Bill C-43 on Senate consultations.

Let me say at the outset that this is only one bill in a suite of legislation that the government has been bringing forward on democratic reform.

We have seen Bill C-16, which is a bill to set fixed dates for elections. It received royal assent just recently and will come into effect. It states, of course, that outside of a non-confidence vote, which may bring the government down at any time, the next election will be held on the third Monday in October 2009. It is a very important piece of democratic reform that is overwhelmingly supported by Canadians.

We also have Bill C-31, which is currently in the Senate. It is moving its way along through committee. It deals with voter integrity and trying to eliminate voter fraud. I am quite confident that this bill will receive royal assent before the House rises for the summer.

However, we also have another bill in the Senate, Bill S-4. We have spoken many times on many occasions in this place about Bill S-4, but I have to say that frankly I cannot fathom why this bill has taken as long as it has in the Senate. For the benefit of those Canadians who may be listening, Bill S-4 is a 66-word bill that has been before the Liberal-dominated and unelected Senate for close to one year now. In fact, May 30 will see the one year anniversary of the bill being before the Senate.

This is a 66-word bill that has been there for close to 12 months. By my rough math, that is a little over five words per month that these primarily Liberal senators have been examining in regard to the bill. All this says to me is that either the bill contains some really big words or there is a second agenda at hand, and that agenda is that the Liberal senators do not want to see Senate reform. They do not want to see Bill S-4 pass.

I have examined the bill and I can assure members that the words are not so big such that it would take five words per month to examine the bill, so I have to go to my second assumption, that is, the Liberal senators truly do not want to see any real and effective Senate reform. Why else would they keep a bill that is so short, so succinct, so precise and so to the point locked up in the Senate for close to a year?

If nothing else, that bill in itself speaks to why we need Senate reform. It speaks to why we need a bill like Bill C-43, which allows the process to be taken away from the prime minister of the day in regard to the appointment of his hacks and flacks to the Senate and allows individual Canadians to express an opinion on who they would like to see represent their region or province in the Senate.

I can think of no greater example than the travesty of Bill S-4 for supporting this bill, yet I hear nothing but opposition from members of the official opposition party, members of the New Democratic Party and members of the Bloc Québécois, who are saying they will not support Bill C-43, consultations that in effect would allow a prime minister to listen to Canadians before he or she makes an appointment to the Senate.

If we truly believe in accountability then we must support Bill C-43, yet I hear nothing but opposition from members opposite, and again, that confuses me. On the one hand I hear members opposite talk about the need for Senate reform, for accountability and for regional representation, yet I hear nothing but opposition to a very good piece of legislation that we have put before the House for discussion and debate.

Bill C-43 deals with a very important conception of ours, which is that all members, whether in this place or the other place, should be accountable. There is only one way to deal with true accountability. That is to allow the individual citizens of this great country of ours to have a say in who represents them so that in fact the representatives then would be accountable to the citizens rather than those who appointed them.

That is the essence of Bill C-43. It is to allow consultations to take place at a provincial or a territorial level. Those consultations, in which the will of the people would be expressed, then would allow the prime minister of the day to appoint the individual to the Senate. In other words, it does not in any way take away from the constitutionality that has been in question from time to time during this debate. In fact, it accommodates the Constitution.

I take some difference of opinion with my hon. colleague the deputy House leader who said that the bill would allow us to skirt the Constitution. I do not like that choice of language. I choose to say that the bill would allow us to accommodate the provisions contained within the current Constitution, and those provisions say that only the Governor General can appoint members to the Senate. The current convention is that the Governor General, before making that appointment, would take advice from the prime minister of the day, and only the prime minister. That would still be in effect. Therefore, the constitutionality argument is really mute.

The prime minister would still appoint senators to the upper house, but only after the prime minister listened to the expressed will, through a consultation process, of the citizens in various provinces, territories and regions. What could be fairer and more transparent than that? What could be more accountable than that?

We on this side of the House say that we have to get away from the process that has occurred for the last 100 years where, for strictly partisan reasons, members of the upper house have been appointed. In all fairness, we have seen time and time again appointments made on a partisan level regardless of political affiliation and regardless of which party happens to be in government of the day.

We have seen time after time Liberal prime ministers appoint Liberal senators for no other reason than the fact that the person has been a good, loyal political partisan soldier to the Liberal Party. We have also seen that happen when Conservative governments have been in power. Conservative governments have appointed Conservative senators because of their loyalty and partisanship to the government of the day. My point is that should not be allowed to happen because there really is no accountability to the people. There is only accountability to the party of the day, or the prime minister who made the appointment.

We need to get away from that method of appointing senators. We have to allow Canadian citizens a voice in who they wish to see represent them in the Senate.

The bill deals with that in a very precise, succinct and fair manner. Consultations would be taken during federal elections at the provincial level. Should the citizens of a particular province decide they wished to see a certain individual represent them in the Senate, that would allow the prime minister to advise the Governor General of his will to appoint that person.

We do not have a constitutional argument here. We have a fairness argument, and it absolutely works.

Many times we have seen appointments made to the Senate which, under normal circumstances by anyone's standards, would not be considered to be fair and would not be considered to be representative of the people of that province. I want to draw to the House's attention only a couple of those examples.

In my opinion one of the most egregious uses of this appointment process happened with a current senator by the name of Art Eggleton, a former mayor of Toronto, a former Liberal member of Parliament and a former Liberal cabinet minister. Most Canadians will recall the disgrace in which Mr. Eggleton was dismissed from cabinet. He was found guilty of awarding untendered contracts to one of his former girlfriends. What was his reward? His reward was an appointment to the Senate. That, under normal circumstances, would never happen.

I am sure if we took a look at some of the other names of current senators in the upper chamber, we would find that the reason those people were appointed was because of the loyalty they exhibited to the party. They were appointed not because they were deserving of representing the people, but only because they curried favour with the prime minister of the day or the government of the day.

[John Paul]

Thank you for giving us the time to come.

My name is John Paul. I'm the executive director of the Atlantic Policy Congress of First Nation Chiefs, and I'm here today with our co-chair, Chief Lawrence Paul, from the Millbrook First Nation in Nova Scotia, to address Bill C-44.

Our organization represents 37 Mi'kmaq, Maliseet, and Passamaquoddy communities and one Innu first nation community, in five provinces, down into the United States, in Atlantic Canada, and in the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec. Our organization shares a mandate to do research and analyze and develop alternatives to federal policy affecting its first nation members.

As you are aware, Bill C-44 seeks to repeal or remove section 67 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which states, “Nothing in this Act affects any provision of the Indian Act or any provision made under or pursuant to that Act.”

Our position is that our communities don't support this as it currently stands. Our chiefs recently, in January of this year, passed a resolution expressing our non-support for the bill due to our serious concerns on its potential impacts.

Our chiefs' primary concerns are as follows.

No meaningful consultations have been held with first nations, as required by recent Supreme Court rulings.

It conflicts with principles in law, outlined in rulings of the Supreme Court, that protect our collective communal interests and rights.

It will have significant impacts on first nation governments in Canada. The Micmac, Maliseet, Passamaquoddy and Innu peoples have long-standing tradition, cultures, and laws and seek to protect and rejuvenate them. Any solution must take into consideration this very unique situation with our first nation governments.

The effect of the bill would make individual rights take precedence over collective aboriginal and treaty and other rights of first nations.

No interpretive clause is included in the bill. It does not reconcile individual versus collective rights.

With six months, the proposed implementation or transition phase is totally unrealistic and far too short.

First nations currently are underfunded and lack resources to manage this new exposure to serious financial liability or undertake measures to minimize potential risk. For example, first nations would face exposure to liability as a result of significant housing shortages, programs, and services for the disabled, land allotments or rights, membership rules, residency bylaws, and the provision of basic programs and services on-reserve to all residents, not just band members.

Examples include things like non-insured health benefits provided by Health Canada, including post-secondary student support provided by INAC.

There is a high potential for complaints to be brought by band members on the basis of various grounds with regard to the existing housing policies and other such decisions made by band governments. It's not likely that the housing backlog and these other issues are going to be resolved in six months.

There is no capacity development funding for first nation communities regarding the application or implementation in the bill. The bill allows for a six-month window of immunity. However, without a significant influx of additional financial resources to minimize potential exposure to risk of complaints, it is irrelevant whether the immunity period is six months or longer. Unless first nation capacity and other implementation issues are addressed before this bill is passed, first nations will be flooded with complaints, with no resources to effectively manage or address them.

It violates principles set out in the UN draft declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples on cultural genocide, and it will have many, many unanticipated consequences like those that came out of Bill C-31 and the Corbiere decision. And it's unclear about the constitutional impact of this repeal.

I'd like to turn it over to my co-chair, Chief Lawrence Paul.

Electoral Reform

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West—Glanbrook, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the debate on Motion No. 262, which proposes two initiatives in response to the 43rd report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. The motion proposes that we strike a special committee of the House of Commons to make recommendations on democratic reform. The motion also proposes the creation of a citizens' consultation group to report on the matter.

This is the type of motion the member for Elgin—Middlesex—London made at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. The member proposed to do a study on democratic reform. What I find interesting is that the member's proposal was voted down by the committee, which included the NDP member on the committee at that time.

I am curious as to why the NDP member would bring forward Motion No. 262 at this time, based on the fact that this was something that one of our members had earlier proposed. Also this is an initiative that as a government we have been looking at as well. Therefore, I find that the motion is redundant.

I appreciate what the member for Vancouver Island North is trying to do. I think we all agree that it makes sense to look at the democratic process from time to time and see if there are ways that we can change it to make it better.

It is for all of these reasons I will not be supporting the motion. Certainly, as I have said before, it is very worthwhile to look at ways to make the democratic process better, but the government has already taken action. Our government has already initiated a process to start looking at this issue.

The previous government did not do a whole lot about the democratic process over the 13 years that the Liberals were in power. They certainly talked about doing something about the democratic process, but unfortunately it never materialized under the previous government.

One thing our government has definitely been looking at is how we consult with Canadians and how we can do a better job on democratic reform issues. With that in mind I would like to talk about what the government is looking at doing over the next little while.

We certainly want to engage parliamentarians. We have initiated a number of legislative issues. Public consultation is also very important to make this process work. We should engage all Canadians.

The work the government has been doing has been noted by other members, but it bears repeating.

The government enacted Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act. This is one of the most notable things this government has done. The act bans union as well as corporate donations, and limits contributions to $1,100, and makes sure that no cash donations are accepted. In terms of the democratic process we have seen what happens in other parts of the world where there is not a limit on donations. People seem to have more influence with the more money that they are able to spend on elections. Limiting the amount will work in our democratic process. It is important regardless of where Canadians come from that they be able to have a say in government and not just be able to influence the government with money.

Bill C-16 was introduced by the Conservative government. The bill looks at establishing fixed election dates. The bill passed unanimously by the House. The Senate recently attempted to add an amendment that the government rejects. We are hoping that the Senate will move forward and put the bill back to the way it was originally.

What is important with fixed election dates is that we would not just worry about what is going on in the polls. Whatever party was in government would have an opportunity for more stability. People would know that every four years an election would be held on a certain date. This has worked in some provinces. This is something that we could look at federally as well.

The third initiative that the government has introduced in terms of legislation is Bill S-4 which was introduced in the Senate. That bill limits the terms for senators. It would eliminate the current situation where unelected and unaccountable senators can sit for up to 45 years. An eight year term would allow senators to get the kind of experience they need when looking at legislative initiatives and ensure they would get new perspectives.

Even though that bill was introduced in the Senate, we are stuck. It has been sitting in the other place for almost a year now, which is kind of surprising. It may be a bit of a concern if a bill was introduced to limit a term from 45 years to 8 years, but we would encourage that unelected, majority-driven Liberal Senate to pass that bill.

There are also other areas that we have looked at. The government introduced Bill C-43, the Senate appointment consultations act, which we will be debating next week. This bill would enable us to talk to people about how senators should be appointed.

These are all great initiatives that will help make the democratic process better.

We have also introduced Bill C-31 which looks at a number of different measures in terms of the electoral system and voter ID. This is important based on all the recommendations that were contained in the 13th report of the procedure and House affairs committee. The government is looking for a way to implement those recommendations through Bill C-31. We are trying to make the electoral system more fair. We are trying to reduce fraud. The bill has the support of all parties and we are certainly hoping that it will be passed very shortly in the Senate.

The second issue that I would like to address today is public consultations. It is important that not only elected representatives participate in the system, but individuals from across the country participate as well. The government is already engaged in this. We started the process back on January 9.

We want to set up citizen forum groups across the country, so we could deal with all the provinces and territories. We are midway in this process. We have been able to talk to people. At each of these forums somewhere in the neighbourhood of 40 to 50 individuals have represented the Canadian population. We are hoping that when we are done with this process, we will have spoken to some 400 or 500 Canadians.

In this way, we really believe that we can get some impartial views. One of the members talked about the fact that certain parties were already leaning toward one certain system. In this way, we have a chance not to bias the process but give Canadians an opportunity to participate. So far the participation and the response has been very enthusiastic. This is good to see as we look at a whole range of individuals from different parties, from across all electoral systems, as well as the House of Commons, the Senate and citizens.

We are also looking at a youth forum that would take place in Ottawa. This forum would try to establish why there is such low voter turnout among young people. We realize that young people are disengaged and sometimes frustrated with the system. It is important that we look at ways to engage young people, so they can be part of the political process and look at making a difference.

We are also looking at sending a survey out across the country. This could be part of our final report.

We have consultations going on with members of the House and with the Senate. We have surveys, citizen groups and youth forums. All of these things will be important as we look at delivering the final report some time in June of this year. I certainly look forward to seeing it.

As we look at introducing legislation in the House, it is important that we consult with people. This gives us a better understanding obviously as we look at different parts of the country with different needs. I have sat in on a few meetings of the procedure and House Affairs, and I know there are concerns given the fact that we have large urban ridings and rural ridings. Because of the uniqueness of this country, I believe this consultation process is important.

Once again, I am going to urge all members to vote against this motion because of what we already having going on in the House. I want to thank parliamentarians for their participation in this process.

[Barry Devolin, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Motion No. 262, which proposes two initiatives in response to the 43rd report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. First, the motion recommends that a special committee of the House of Commons be created to make recommendations on democratic reform issues. Second, it proposes that a special committee look into creating a citizens' consultation group and to report on this matter within six weeks.

I intend to oppose this motion for reasons I will make clear in my remarks today. I would also encourage other members of the House to oppose it.

There appear to be some fundamental inconsistencies in the NDP's approach to electoral reform and public consultation on democratic reform and electoral reform in particular. In this regard I noticed that one of the opposition day motions put forward by the NDP is that we should move immediately to implement electoral reform but that we should implement a specific type of electoral reform, that of a mixed member proportional system.

At the same time the NDP is putting forward Motion No. 262 to study our electoral system, it is also suggesting that we immediately reform our electoral system, and not necessarily in a way that reflects what the Canadian public may wish, but rather in a way that reflects the interests of the New Democratic Party. We can, therefore, all be excused for being confused about what exactly is the plan of the NDP with regard to democratic reform in general and electoral reform specifically.

Does the NDP want us to move immediately to implement a mixed member system, as it has stated on many occasions, or does the NDP want us to consult Canadians on electoral reform in advance, as suggested by Motion No. 262, and find out whether Canadians believe electoral reform is an issue they wish to pursue?

It seems that the NDP has not only prejudged the need for electoral reform, but is also prescribing for Canadians exactly what type of electoral reform Canadians should pursue. I find this interesting because there are a number of electoral systems that could be pursued should it be decided that reform is an advisable course of action.

Personally, I do not believe it would be advisable to barrel ahead to change our electoral system and change it to a specific electoral system before we even have any indication from Canadians that this is what they want.

I note that the sponsor of Motion No. 262 in the first hour of debate made it quite clear that she wanted the consultations to focus solely on electoral reform. From her remarks it did not seem that she and indeed her party had anything but a narrow focus on one single issue.

The question again is, does the NDP want to hear the views of Canadians on electoral reform, or does it want to prescribe for Canadians the type of electoral reform that it has apparently already decided on without consultation?

The actions of this government in the area of democratic reform stand in stark contrast to those of the NDP. We recognize that democratic reform is not a single issue. It is not just about electoral reform, as the NDP would have everyone believe.

Democratic reform encompasses a wide range of issues from political financing to improvements to our electoral system and the modernization of our democratic institutions. This was a fact that was recognized in the 43rd report, which was released in June 2005 but not acted on by the previous government.

The report's conclusions underline a whole range of issues beyond electoral reform that should be the subject of consultation. We need to be clear about the conclusions of the 43rd report if we are to act on them.

Let me read for members exactly what the report said. The report states that a citizens' consultation group along with the parliamentary committee should:

--make recommendations on the values and principles Canadians would like to see in their democratic and electoral systems.... [This] would take into account an examination of the role of Members of Parliament and political parties; citizen engagement and rates of voter participation, including youth and aboriginal communities; civic literacy; and how to foster a more representative House of Commons, including, but not limited to, increased representation of women and minorities, and questions of proportionality, community of interest and representation--

My question would be, why is the NDP focusing only on one aspect of democratic reform when there are so many other equally important issues?

For our part, this government is taking a much different approach. First, rather than just thinking about a consultation process as suggested by Motion No. 262, we have actually taken action to implement a process as the government announced it would do in January.

As a result of the government's actions, a citizens' consultation process is under way. The process consists of two key parts. The first is a series of 12 deliberative forums, one in each province, one for the territories and one youth forum, each with a participation of 40 to 50 citizens who are roughly representative of the Canadian population. The second part is a telephone survey on a range of issues related to our democratic institutions.

The deliberative consultation process is well under way. Consultations have already taken place in British Columbia, Alberta, the territories, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador.

In contrast to the process recommended by Motion No. 262, the government sponsored process is consulting citizens on a broad range of issues. Each forum is addressing a common set of topics, including political parties, the electoral system, the House of Commons, the Senate and the role of the citizen. It will be noted that this is very similar to the recommendation of the 43rd report. Unlike the NDP approach, we are not focusing only on a single issue and we are not prejudging the views of Canadians on these issues.

Once the process is over, a report on the process will be prepared for the government. The government intends to take the results of these consultations very seriously and parliamentarians will continue to be engaged on these important subjects.

It appears that the government is pursuing a much more comprehensive approach to consultation than is proposed in Motion No. 262. Since the process is well under way, Motion No. 262 has become redundant and has been for some time now.

Apart from the consultation process, the government has engaged parliamentarians on a wide range of important democratic reform initiatives, as we indicated we would do in our electoral platform. I dare say that no other government in history has accomplished so much in this important area. Allow me to review some of the initiatives we have taken so far on this issue.

First, we passed Bill C-2, the Federal Accountability Act, which provides for some important political financing reforms, including a ban on corporate and union donations, and the reduction of contribution limits to $1,000. This will ensure that money and influence are not the determining factors in financing political parties and the parties can operate on a level playing field.

We have introduced practical and achievable legislation in the area of Senate reform, including Bill S-4, which would limit the tenure of senators to a period of eight years, and Bill C-43, which would establish a national process for consulting Canadians on their preferences for Senate appointments.

Of particular interest for this debate, the consultations proposed in Bill C-43 would not be carried out by means of a first past the post system. Rather, elections would be conducted using a proportional and preferential voting system called the single transferable vote, or STV system. It will be interesting to know the ultimate position of the New Democratic Party on Bill C-43 since the bill is proposing the introduction of a proportional electoral system which the NDP has been advocating for the House of Commons. Bill C-43 is an important initiative because for the first time Canadians will have the opportunity to have input into their selection of senators.

The government has also moved forward on an important initiative to improve the integrity of our electoral system. Bill C-31 includes important provisions to combat electoral system fraud, in particular through the introduction of requirements for voter ID. If passed, I believe the bill would make a tremendous contribution to ensuring that no election was tainted by the possibility of voter fraud.

The government is taking steps to increase electoral fairness through the introduction of Bill C-16 which establishes fixed dates for federal elections. If passed, this initiative would ensure that elections occurred once every four years and not just on the whim of a prime minister who might choose to call an election on the basis of whether or not his or her party was high in the polls.

The government has demonstrated a tremendous commitment to electoral reform. We are well on our way to meeting the commitments that we made to Canadians.

To conclude, I must encourage all members to vote against the motion for the reasons I have stated. Given that the government has already taken action to implement a public consultation process, Motion No. 262 is redundant. Not only that, but the government's process is much more comprehensive than was recommended by the NDP. It will not be focused only on electoral reform, contrary to the desire of the sponsor of the motion. It conforms largely to the recommendations of the 43rd report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

The New Democratic Party has already decided prior to consulting with Canadians that the mixed member proportional system is the way to go. This government does not want to prejudge the views of Canadians on this important matter.

Might I add that the previous speaker made mention of several changes that she feels need to be made to the way that Parliament works. It is important to point out that the previous Liberal government was in power for 13 years. The Liberals moved forward on none of these provisions. I find that extraordinary.

Quite frankly, as someone who has had a lifelong interest in democratic reform, I am proud of the initiatives that our government has launched. I encourage all members of all parties in the House to support them when they come forward.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the debate today on Motion No. 262. The motion proposes two initiatives in response to the 43rd report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

First, the motion proposes that a special committee of the House of Commons be created to make recommendations on democratic reform issues and, second, that a special committee look into creating a citizens consultation group and to report on this matter within six weeks.

At the outset, I want to make it clear that I will be urging members to vote against this motion, not because involving parliamentarians and citizens in discussion about democratic reform is an unworthy exercise, but because the government has already taken such clear action in this important area and it will continue to do so.

After the 43rd report was released in the last Parliament, nothing happened in the area of democratic reform, consultations or otherwise. This stands in sharp contrast to the actions of this government. We have engaged and continue to engage parliamentarians in a number of important democratic reform initiatives. We have already started a process to consult Canadians on democratic reform issues. In short, I will demonstrate today that the motion before us has been overtaken by events.

First , in the area of engaging parliamentarians on democratic reform issues, I am confident in saying that this government has done more than any previous government in bringing forward democratic reform initiatives for consideration in Parliament. Parliament adopted Bill C-2, the Accountability Act, which included a number of political financing reforms, most notably a ban on union and corporate donations, a contribution limit of $1,000, a ban on cash donations and a ban on trust funds. These measures help to eliminate the perception that only those with money have an influence on politics. This, in turn, enhances confidence in the political process.

The government also introduced Bill C-16 to establish fixed dates for federal elections. This bill was passed unanimously with all party consent in the House. More recently, the House of Commons adopted a motion to reject an unnecessary amendment adopted by the Senate. We are hoping t the Senate will now accept the now twice expressed will of the members of the democratically elected House of Commons regarding this bill. The Senate should recognize the legitimacy of the House, in particular on matters relating to elections, and pass this bill as it was originally intended.

The implementation of fixed dates for elections will greatly improve the fairness of Canada's electoral system by eliminating the ability of the governing party to set the timing of a general election to its own advantage.

The government has also taken important steps in the area of Senate reform, with the introduction of practical and achievable measures. Last May, the government introduced Bill S-4 in the Senate, which would establish a term limit for senators of eight years. The adoption of this bill would eliminate the current situation where unelected, unaccountable senators can sit for up to 45 years.

An eight year term would allow senators to gain the experience necessary to fulfill the Senate's important role of legislative review, while ensuring that the Senate is refreshed by new perspectives and ideas. Despite widespread support for this initiative, the bill has, unfortunately, been held up in the Senate for almost a year now.

Also in the area of Senate reform, the government introduced Bill C-43, the Senate appointment consultations act, which would provide a process whereby voters may be consulted on potential appointments to the Senate in their respective provinces. Debate on this bill began last week. For the first time ever, legislation will provide Canadians with a voice on who represents them in the Senate.

The government has also introduced Bill C-31, which includes a number of initiatives aimed at ensuring the integrity of the electoral system, including a new system of voter identification. Bill C-31 would implement most of the recommendations of the 13th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. The passage of this bill will reduce the opportunities for fraud and promote fairness in our electoral system. I hope Bill C-31 will soon be passed in the Senate.

In summary, this government has demonstrated the most extensive commitment ever to the modernization of Canada's national democratic institutions.

In the area of public consultations, we are not just looking into the issue, as proposed in Motion No. 262, we are acting.

On January 9, 2007, the government announced that it was launching a public consultation process on democratic reform issues. In particular, the process would engage Canadians in a dialogue to identify the priorities, values and principles that should underpin Canada's democratic institutions and practices.

The process consists of two main elements, both organized by independent contractors.

First, there is a deliberative process to consult Canadians in 12 citizens' forums, one held in each province, one in the Territories, and also in one national youth forum. The process is more than half complete, with the forums in British Columbia, Alberta, the Territories, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island already completed. Each forum includes approximately 40 to 50 citizens who are roughly representative of the Canadian population.

In that regard, it is worth noting that by the time we are finished approximately 500 Canadians will have participated in the deliberative discussions, all of them giving up a few days of their time, not to mention studying the issues in advance.

The response so far has been very enthusiastic. Participants are examining a whole range of issues, including: political parties, the electoral system, the House of Commons and the Senate, and the role of the citizen.

In the youth forum, which will take place in Ottawa, participants will take a close look at why there is low voter turnout among Canada's youth and why a significant number of young people appear to be disengaged from the political process.

The second element is a large scale national survey that will be administered to a representative sample of Canadians across the country.

We will learn in the forums and the survey and they will be combined into a final report that will be ready by June of this year.

I very much look forward to the report and what it will tell us about the views of Canadians and our democratic institutions and practices. The government intends to take the results of these consultations very seriously.

In conclusion, I urge all members to vote no on Motion No. 262. While the member undoubtedly had honourable intentions in bringing the motion forward, passing this initiative would not serve any useful purpose. The government has engaged and will continue to engage parliamentarians on democratic reform issues; witness the extensive legislative agenda we have introduced in this important area.

The comprehensive process to hear the views of Canadians on democratic reform issues, which we announced in January, is well under way. We will be listening to the views of Canadians and deciding the next steps in the reform of our democratic institutions.

Parliamentarians will play a role in that process. Having the information from the consultation process will mean that parliamentarians are better informed when considering further improvements to our democratic process.

Senate Appointment Consultations Act

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I had actually hoped to ask the hon. member for Ottawa Centre a question but maybe after my speech he will want to intervene during the long period for questions and comments.

I had wanted to ask the member if we remembers his predecessor, Ed Broadbent, a man I liked and admired and still do. I wonder if he remembers that Ed Broadbent and I had a difference of opinion in the procedure and House affairs committee concerning a report, to which he is referring, about changes to the electoral system and that the process for searching out this change existed. Mr. Broadbent advocated a system very similar to the one the government has actually implemented. Conservative members actually advocated a much broader consultation but, when we pushed hard on it, Mr. Broadbent organized a walk out from the committee to deny us a quorum and then raised the matter in the House.

What I am getting at is that there has been a reversal of position here and I think everyone should be aware of that. I would like the member to comment on why the New Democrats, or at least he, have now switched to a position of favouring narrowing consultations, although he says that he is now in favour of a citizens' assembly as well, which they opposed at the time. I am actually a little unsure of which particular iteration of the changing position he is on at the moment. I will leave that thought with him. This is not strictly relevant to Bill C-43 and the Senate, which is the subject to which I will now turn.

When the end of the government comes, be it soon, be it off in the distant future, the bill and the work we have done on democratizing our Canadian institutions, this bill and other bills along the same lines, will be regarded as the greatest accomplishment of the government unless they are totally blocked by the other parties, in which case they will be regarded as the greatest missed opportunity that this Parliament had.

I just want to go through and mention some of the legislation we have put forward, of which Bill C-43 forms a package. We have Bill S-4, which would create fixed terms for senators, and it is in the upper House. That bill has been executed, not as part of a grandiose single package but as a separate piecemeal, to use the word that the member for LaSalle—Émard, the former prime minister, used to use, or incremental reform. The adoption of that bill is very important if we are to move to electing senators so that we are electing people for fixed terms.

The advisory consultations or informal elections that would take place for senators is another step in that package, and that is what Bill C-43 is all about.

We also have Bill C-31, which is designed to reduce to the extent possible electoral fraud throughout the country. We have also moved to change electoral financing rules. This would be very significant in reducing the influence of corporations, unions and non-voters in the financing of our elections and, therefore, the manner in which our decisions take place.

Those are all substantial moves forward. However, what is of particular importance is the work we are doing on the Senate. I am surprised at the way this gets belittled by some members of the House. This is an extraordinary measure. Canada has had an unelected chamber as its upper House for over 100 years. We are not quite unique in the world but we are getting closer and closer to being unique in the world in having an unelected upper House with full powers. It is an equal House to this one, with the exception of its inability to create money bills, and yet it is completely unelected.

This was a model that was considered by the Australians when they were designing their Senate over 100 years ago and rejected as being antiquated. They opted for an elected Senate.

We are looking at the replacement, in the member's words, incremental replacement, but we are looking at the replacement of an antiquated way of doing things with the modern and democratic way of doing things.

I want to talk a little bit about some of the things I think are important. Let me begin with a really basic one, which is the need for bicamerals and the need for a federation like Canada to have a bicameral system as opposed to a unicameral system where there is one chamber. This is a matter where I respectfully disagree with the position of the hon. member's party.

I would just point to the examples of federations in the world. Many countries claim to be federations but many of them are not real federations. For example, the Comoros Islands claim to be a federation but it is not a real federation. However, there are several long lived and successful examples of federal systems. Canada, of course, is one and Switzerland, the United States and Australia are others. We can also look at Germany and Austria. What we see in all of these cases is that they have, through one means or another, an elected upper chamber. In particular, the examples that are closest to Canada would be Australia and the United States but they have elected upper houses.

There are a number of purposes for having two chambers. One is to allow, and this is using the language of the Fathers of Confederation, a chamber of sober second thought, a place where decisions that may be taken in haste in this House can be examined, perhaps improved and sent back to us. As we know, the Senate is not shy even now about sending back measures that have been passed in this House for reconsideration.

Unfortunately, sometimes I think the Senate does so excessively on the basis of the interests of the partisanship of the party that put the senators there. That is a long term history. If we go back and look at the appointed Senate, it has either acquiesced completely to the government in power when the majority in the Senate reflects the majority in the lower house, or it has been unnecessarily obstructionist. That is a fundamental flaw with an appointed Senate, appointed effectively by the prime minister because the Governor General always takes the prime minister's advice on Senate appointments.

A significant change and improvement would be to move away from a Senate that is, depending on the moment, either a lapdog or excessively aggressive to one that gives considered sober second thought. That can be accomplished by an elected upper house. All we need to do is look at the examples that I have cited of other mature, responsible federations to see how this can work.

The other thing about an elected upper house is that it will tend to be elected on a separate mandate, both geographically and in terms of the electoral system we propose and also, to some degree, in terms of timing from the lower house that provides a different cross-section of Canadian public opinion and public sentiment over a broad period of time. The classic federalism theory is that we ought to have counterbalancing mandates for the upper and lower houses.

I want to turn now to the question of incremental reform, that which the former prime minister and now the hon. member for Ottawa Centre have derided as piecemeal reform versus wholesale reform. We have an unhappy series of experiments in our recent history with attempts at mega-constitutional reform. They have not been successful. I am thinking here of the Meech Lake accord and the Charlottetown accord. We are trying to move away from that.

The simple, practical reason for moving away from that to incremental reform is that it works. Incremental reform, making changes that are possible, does not involve hanging us up the way the country got hung up on the Meech Lake accord in which the part of the accord that had the highest threshold for approval became the standard by which everything had to be dealt with, which effectively guaranteed that it would be impossible to get it through.

The problem with wholesale reform is that in order to change the terms of senators and the way in which senators are selected, and to move from an appointed to an elected or an advisory elected system, and the changing of the regions and the representation by regions would involve, by necessity, moving to the seven-fifty amendment formula, which means having the approval of seven provincial legislatures representing 50% of the population on the very sticky issue of who should get how many senators.

While I would certainly agree that British Columbia is very underrepresented, which I think we can all agree on, we may discover, as we try to put in more seats for British Columbia and other provinces, that we may not get a national consensus on that. It is easy to say that we should get a consensus, but I would encourage the hon. member, if he gets a chance to stand up, to perhaps provide the percentage, the number of seats he would offer for each province and see whether he would get the support of all provinces or even of his party in all provinces on this subject. There is not a national consensus on this point. We can throw the baby out with the bathwater, which was the approach of the former prime minister, and say that since we cannot get to perfection from here we cannot go anywhere.

However, I still advocate perfection, an unspecified kind of perfection, but I advocate it, or we can work on practical piecemeal incremental reform. This is the route to success. I invite all hon. members to look at the history of elected upper houses in the federations that most closely resemble our own, the Australians, the Swiss and the Americans. What everyone will notice is that in each case they went from much less democratic institutions to much more democratic institutions: to equal, elected, effective senates by means of incremental reform.

For example, 101 years ago was the anniversary of the election of the first American senator. It was an informal election held in the state of Oregon in 1906. Prior to that date, state legislatures had appointed senators. The famous Lincoln-Douglas debates in the 1850s were not debates between two men seeking direct office. They were seeking to cause people to influence their votes for the state House of Representatives, which would then choose which of those two people would go on to the senate.

That changed through the action of one state. Once that state acted, other states began to act the same way. There was a popular groundswell in support of elections and by 1913 the constitution was amended. In short, piecemeal reform produced a breaking of an impasse that would have continued to exist had there been an attempt of wholesale reform.

Australia moved from a first past the post system for its upper house, which was its initial system, to a proportional system. Again, that was done incrementally through piecemeal constitutional reform.

If I have time I will return to this. I note the system we have proposed in the upper house does involve a system of proportional representation known as a single transferrable vote. It is the same system, with some improvements, that exists in the Australian upper house and a number of other countries, including Ireland and Malta. It is a great success in producing more proportional representation.

I mention this simply because part of the critique raised by my predecessor, the hon. member for Ottawa Centre, was that the government was doing nothing on electoral reform. I suggest that moving from completely unelected partisan appointments by the prime minister to a system of proportional representation in the upper house is the greatest move toward any kind of proportional representation we have seen anywhere in this country's history. It is a great accomplishment.

I have mentioned how we are moving in this direction incrementally.

I point out that not only do we require the 7/50 amendment formula, which I would suggest is practically impossible, to move to a different representation province relative to other provinces in the upper house, we require the same thing to abolish the Senate.

While there are people who support abolition of the Senate, in fact the hon. member's whole party would support that, it requires the support of seven provinces with half the population. I think we will find that is just as difficult to attain as a process for changing the proportional representation of the provinces in the upper house. In practice, it is as Utopian as the other suggestion and leads to the fundamental problem of essentially leaving us with the status quo.

The Prime Minister is faced with a choice of attempting to act incrementally, as he is doing, or simply going to direct appointments based upon his own preferences, which might be wise or might be entirely partisan, who is to say, but they would not be democratic by definition.

The problem here, constitutionally, is that there is a section of the Constitution, specifically section 42(1) of the Constitution Act, which deals with and explains our amending formula as it relates to, among other things, the amendment of the Senate. The following categories of rules regarding the Senate are constitutionally protected and cannot be changed without the 7/50 formula.

The Governor General's power to appoint senators cannot be changed without the 7/50 formula. That is why the law is structured as it is. It is a Senate consultations act. It is not a Senate elections act because these are formally consultations. In Canada it is the convention. We have come to understand that the Governor General's power to appoint means in practice a prime minister's unfettered right to advise the Governor General and to expect his advice to be taken without question.

That cannot be changed except, as we are doing, through a law that effectively creates a convention. To those who object to the idea that we should move incrementally and use conventions for our Constitution, I point out that so much of our Constitution is conventional, such as the notion of a prime minister at all. The prime minister is not mentioned in the Constitution. He is purely a convention. This is a very honoured place in our system. In fact, I do not think our Constitution could function without conventions having a central role.

The constitutional qualification for Senators is one cannot become a Senator in Canada unless one is 35 years old. I do not think that is terribly fair, although I feel it is a bit fairer than I did when I was under 35. However, we do not have the power to change that provision, without the 7/50 formula, much as I would like to see that change. Perhaps that can be a non-controversial amendment in the future that all members could support.

I note that constitutional scholars over the years have been clear that the government's approach would not constitute a breach of the relevant sections of the Constitution. It can be done through non-constitutional means.

What we see here is the way mature federal systems act. If we take a look at other federations, one of the things that distinguishes their constitutional history from Canada's recent constitutional history, not Canada's entire constitutional history, for the last say 40 years is this.

In countries like Switzerland, Australia and the United States we see small incremental constitutional amendments discussed, sometimes accepted and often rejected, but never by means of attempts to create vast new edifices, dramatic changes. We see reasonably regular changes to their constitutions. Whereas in Canada we have developed this idea that we must always act as we did in 1982, with the constitutional package that changed our amending formula and introduced the Charter of Rights and so on, but also caused some other problems. As we know there are many Quebeckers who feel greatly dissatisfied with this arrangement and with the fact that their province and their legislature did not sign on to it.

As we did in the Meech Lake accord in 1987 through 1990 and as we did in the Charlottetown accord, attempts were made to create vast new changes, to essentially pull the system up by the roots to examine it and see if it is still growing. These other countries have acted in piecemeal manners and the result is they have gone further in changing and modernizing their constitutions than we have done.

Therefore, it is precedented. It speaks well that we are acting this way through our maturity as a country. It also reflects a part of our constitutional history that gets forgotten, and that is the fact that we actually have had successful piecemeal changes to our Constitution in recent years in areas that were for some mystical reason not seen as being part of a vast edifice.

I think of things like the Prince Edward Island bridge amendment. We had to amend the Constitution to allow a bridge to be constructed to Prince Edward Island. We had an amendment dealing with Newfoundland schools. We had an amendment to change the name of the province of Newfoundland to the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. We also had an amendment on the Quebec schools system that moved to a non-confessional system.

All these amendments have been done successfully, as were some others as well. They were all piecemeal and they all dealt with specific problems.

The attempt here, because we cannot deal through the Constitution, is to step aside, deal through a convention effectively with this law and thereby deal in the same spirit in the same way, which has brought success to our country and other countries, in order to achieve a mature bicameral democratic and, to a greater degree than ever before, a proportional system of democracy in the country.

I am excited by this. I think when the time comes in the future, all Canadians will look back at this move forward as one of the keystones in our country's democratic development.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

moved that Bill C-43, An Act to provide for consultations with electors on their preferences for appointments to the Senate, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to open the debate on Bill C-43, the Senate Appointment Consultations Act, which is important legislation to make Canada's democratic institutions better. It also represents another step in the positive reform of the Senate undertaken by this government.

This bill follows through on the promise made to the people of Canada in the Speech from the Throne to “explore means to ensure that the Senate better reflects both the democratic values of Canadians and the needs of Canada's regions”. More importantly, this bill strengthens the pillars of our proud Canadian democracy. Bill C-43 not only strengthens but also revitalizes and modernizes some of our traditional Canadian values. What I am talking about, of course, is what Prime Minister John George Diefenbaker called the “legacy of freedom” cherished by all Canadians.

In 1960, Prime Minister Diefenbaker's definition of Canadian values included the right to “be free to speak without fear, free to worship in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, and free to choose those who shall govern my country”.

The right to choose who will govern our country or the right to vote is perhaps our most precious and fundamental right, something that has been in our thoughts this week as we mark the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

We on this side of the House are proud and honoured to be part of a Conservative parliamentary tradition of expanding rights to Canadians, including particularly the right to vote.

It was Sir Robert Borden's wartime government that first extended the right to vote to women who had close relatives in the armed forces through the Military Voters Act of 1917.

At the dawn of 1919 all women were enfranchised with the enactment of the Act to Confer Electoral Franchise Upon Women, again by Borden's Conservative government.

Likewise, in 1960 Prime Minister Diefenbaker put an end to what he rightly considered an unfair law that forced native people to choose between their right to vote and their treaty rights. Giving aboriginal people the right that was granted to them at Confederation was an ideal to which Prime Minister Diefenbaker had long been dedicated. He noted this in his memoirs:

I felt it was so unjust that they didn't have the vote.I brought it about as soon as I could after becoming prime minister.

Diefenbaker's government granted status Indians the right to vote, without having to give up their treaty rights on March 10, 1960, thus eliminating once and for all voting rights restrictions based on race or religion in Canada.

Our government is following the course charted by our predecessors in Parliament and strengthening the voice of the Canadian people in the Senate, one of our most valuable institutions. We had told Canadians that our government would be mobilizing and democratizing the Senate so that they could have a say in the appointment of their senators. It is time that all Canadians be allowed to exercise the most fundamental right in any democracy, namely the right to vote, in the selection of those who will represent them as senators.

As soon as it took office, our government undertook, as promised, a process to strengthen democracy.

The first legislation passed in this Parliament was the government Bill C-4 that created a review of party registration rules, and just before Christmas, we finally secured passage of the Federal Accountability Act. From a democratic reform perspective, the act reduced the influence of big money in election campaigns and imposed new donation limits and disclosure requirements on those who seek public office.

We have, again with the support of our colleagues in the opposition, passed legislation in the Commons to establish fixed dates for general elections, that is, every four years in October.

Just like the bill we are discussing today, Bill C-16 represents a meaningful improvement to the democratic landscape without requiring a constitutional amendment. Ironically, the Liberal Senate has blocked it from becoming law by amending it at the last minute. We will be asking the Senate to remove that inappropriate amendment so that fixed dates for elections can become law.

Bill C-31 will enhance the integrity of the electoral process. It is currently awaiting approval in the Senate and we would like to see it passed as soon as possible, so that it can be put in place for the next general election.

As we know, citizen involvement is fundamental to any democratic institution. Unfortunately, Canadians have had no involvement in the selection of their senators.

There is one exception. In 1990, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney appointed Stan Waters to the Senate after he was selected in a Senate election sponsored by the province of Alberta.

This week, the Prime Minister told us another exception is coming, with his intent to appoint Bert Brown to the Senate, also chosen by Albertans in a vote to represent them.

These are the harbingers of change and the democratization that will be made a permanent fixture in our Canadian democracy, allowing Canadians a say in who will represent them in the Senate, strengthening our Canadian democracy.

Bill C-43 moves to make this happen by immediately involving Canadians in the process.

This bill will enable the government to consult Canadians about the people who will be representing them in the Senate. It is also an important step in the evolution and modernization of a great Canadian institution.

Furthermore, this bill recognizes that citizens—not political friends or big donors—are in the best position to advise the Prime Minister about the people who should speak on their behalf in their institutions. We know that Canadians think it is time to act on this idea.

Bill C-43 will do more than enable Canadians to have their say about the representatives who will be making decisions on their behalf here in Ottawa. It also guarantees that those representatives will be accountable for the decisions they make.

Consulting the Canadian public on Senate appointments will help to boost the Senate's legitimacy in the eyes of Canadians by transforming it into a more modern, more democratic, and more accountable institution that reflects the core values of Canadians.

Senate reform has been something of a national preoccupation for more than a century now, consuming a great deal of time, energy, effort and attention, almost since Confederation in fact.

Well-meaning and reasonable proposals to improve the Senate have sadly become bound up in the broader national pursuit of omnibus constitutional reform, and those efforts to modernize the Senate came to naught.

Ultimately, of course, we know that fundamental reform of the Senate will require complex, lengthy and multilateral constitutional change. There does not exist, sadly, at present, the national consensus or will required to engage in the inevitably long and potentially contentious rounds of negotiations that would be involved.

Some people say that it would be best to do nothing. They just want to shrug their shoulders and say they cannot do what must be done. That is exactly what the Leader of the Opposition did this week. Others prefer to close their eyes and wait until some other time when all of the issues concerning the Senate can be resolved at once.

That is not what the government thinks, nor is it what Canadians think. We believe that Canadians expect more from their national institutions and their government. In fact, that is what they have told us. They know that some Senate reforms are within our grasp, and they want us to act.

There are, of course, other elements of a reformed Senate that will have to wait for another day, most notably redressing the inequalities of provincial representation. However, our step-wise approach will lay the groundwork for a strong foundation for any future change.

I am pleased to note that during the consultations of the Special Senate Committee on Senate Reform last fall, leading constitutional scholars agreed with the government's interpretation that the approach taken in Bill C-43 is legally valid without a constitutional amendment.

Speaking of that Senate special committee, I would like to use the example of another piece of legislation, Bill S-4, as clear evidence that Canadians need and deserve an upper chamber that is more democratic and more accountable to them.

Bill S-4 is legislation that proposes to limit Senate terms to eight years. Bill S-4 was introduced in the Liberal dominated Senate for consideration on May 30, 2006.

Last spring the upper chamber struck a Special Senate Committee on Senate Reform to examine the subject matter of Bill S-4. The committee held exhaustive hearings with witnesses, including the Prime Minister, ministers from several provinces and constitutional experts. In October of last year it reported its findings, which supported the government's approach.

Let me emphasize the point that the special Senate committee with its Liberal Party majority, in its report, endorsed the government's incremental approach to Senate reform. It went so far as to pronounce itself hopeful that the government would continue the momentum of reform it began with Bill S-4.

Paradoxically, however, Liberal members of the Senate brought the momentum of reform, so admired by the committee, to a screeching tortuous halt. Bill S-4 is now the subject of a second round of hearings by a Senate standing committee, a committee that is essentially duplicating the efforts of the special committee.

Despite the endorsement of the special Senate committee, Bill S-4 languishes in the upper chamber still, an astounding 325 days after its introduction.

This is all the more remarkable when one considers that the Liberal Party leader says he supports term limits for senators. He even bravely declared months ago that he would get the Liberal senators to finally deal with the bill. According to the Canadian Press, Dion's decision “Breaks an impasse in the Senate”. Despite his bold declarations, he could not get it done. More Liberal senators continue to obstruct and delay the Senate term limits bill.

A national institution that is truly accountable to the people would not engage in this political muscle flexing for almost a full year so far. An institution that is truly responsive to the people it purports to serve would not employ these recalcitrant procedural manoeuvres for the sole purpose of frustrating the government's agenda, an agenda endorsed by Canadians.

I would like to take this opportunity to once again implore members of the official opposition to urge their colleagues in the Senate to stop playing games, stop resisting constructive change, and get on with the job that Canadians expect and want them to do.

The government rejects the tactics employed by some senators and is taking action to respond to the wishes of Canadians on the subject of Senate reform.

In conclusion, Bill C-43, the Senate appointment consultations act, will strengthen and revitalize the very values that define us as Canadians, values such as democracy and accountability in government.

Indeed, it extends to Canadians the most fundamental right of all, the right to vote, by advancing the principle that Canadians should have a say in who speaks for them in the Senate.

The government believes Canadians should have that right. Bill C-43 not only allows Canadians to indicate who they would like to represent them, it ensures that the people they select are required to account for their actions. In fact, the bill proposes rigorous standards of accountability for nominees, similar to the ones Parliament has put in place for the Commons through the Federal Accountability Act's amendments to the Canada Elections Act.

Bill C-43 is a realistic and achievable Senate modernization measure. It will not have to go through official constitutional amendment procedures. This is not a bill to amend the Constitution, and there is nothing in it that requires a constitutional revision. That is the government's position.

Rather, this is an important step that is part of a gradual approach. The ultimate goal is to bring the Senate into line with the democratic values of Canadians. We need to strengthen democracy. The act to provide for consultations concerning Senate appointments lays the foundation for future changes that will transform Canada's Senate from a 19th century institution into one fit for the 21st century.

[Marc Mayrand]

As regards preliminary preparations given Bill C-31, I do not know if I have any more time to talk about it.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Given that my preambles are always longer than my questions and your answers, I am going to ask my next 12 questions in one go. So please take notes.

On the topic of suitable office space, what do you think of the returning officer calling a meeting of local party representatives to go over the list?

Second, on the other page, you specifically mention that the list has been reviewed with MPs' agreement. You talk about revisions to polling divisions, mobile offices, and advance polling districts. Personally, unless my official agent or my representative is involved, any talk of revisions having been made with MPs' agreement means nothing.

In Quebec, an election was held last March 26th. Are you going to immediately transfer the data in Quebec's register to the National Register of Electors?

There was a question from Hon. Stephen Owen on Bill C-31. You know what Bill C-31 contains, the unique identifier, lists with dates of birth, revised tasks for the poll clerk. Are you starting to get ready in case an election is called?

During the last Quebec elections, there was a picture of the ballot at the entrance to each polling station. In other words, there was an enlarged photocopy, a homemade one, of what we see on the small ballot in the booth. I found that useful and practical in helping us make a choice when we are lining up. A photograph of each candidate had been added as well, and I found that interesting. Ms. Stoddart will probably say that our faces are protected information, but whatever.

I was kidding with that last remark.

Those are my questions, Mr. Chair. Thank you.

[Marc Mayrand]

We do have a range of programs to reach out to various groups, one group certainly being homeless individuals across the country. We try to facilitate registration and make it accessible for them, as well as to provide them, through community relation officers, with the information they need to exercise their right to vote.

On the matter of Bill C-31 and the 5% figure, I would just point out that this 5% is coming from an assessment done in Toronto on a municipal election that had ID requirements. We found out there, after a discussion with the municipality, that they estimated up to 5% of electors did not necessarily have the ID pieces required—

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Okay.

First of all, congratulations on your appointment. It's a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for coming to the committee today.

I have a couple of questions related to the estimates in terms of where the priorities are. Having listened to your presentation, where you talked about performance targets, I am very concerned. Elections Canada, overall, is a terrific organization. You have, as has been said, an incredible reputation both nationally and internationally. But I have concerns about performance targets and making sure the system we have is based on real voter accessibility for all people, based on their socio-economic indicators.

I too have a question about Bill C-31. It has gone through the House. The former CEO has been quoted in the press as estimating that up to 5% of the voters who show up at the polls could possibly lose the right to vote because of these new rules. You have mentioned briefly this new voter ID that will be required, and I know you met with representatives in the aboriginal community. But to me it is a given that of course Elections Canada will strive to make sure that people are registered. Maybe for 80% of the population that's a very easy thing to do, through income tax filing or through public announcements. But it's that last 10% or 15% or 20% of people who, for various reasons—they don't have addresses, they are homeless, they don't have ID, or they move around a lot—are the most difficult to get.

When you talk about performance targets, I'd like to know whether they include this, because I am very concerned that under this new, rigid requirement for voter identification there will be many people who lose the right to vote. I would like to know what Elections Canada intends to do to ensure that doesn't happen, and if someone hasn't been registered, to make your best effort to register them for sure.

When it still hasn't happened, what will happen on election day or in advance polls when those people show up and have to go through this ridiculous vouching system, where we have to find another person in the same poll who is registered and who has the right ID to vouch for one other person? It's going to create havoc in communities such as mine, in Vancouver East.

That is one question I'd like you to respond to.

This is the second one. It took me a long time to twig to the fact that there's systemic discrimination, I believe, in the way we do election spending, in that the election spending for each riding is based on the registered voters list. To take two ridings in Vancouver—Vancouver Quadra, which is a very affluent riding, and my riding, Vancouver East—the former probably has the highest number of voters in Vancouver and I probably have the lowest. Because our electoral spending is based on that—It's level for all the parties within that riding, which is good—it would be terrible if it weren't, so I agree with that—but, for example, my spending limit could be $20,000 less than that of some of my colleagues in other ridings.

It comes back to this question of who's on the voters list. It's taken me years to realize that it actually is a systemic issue that even impacts the level of election spending that can take place from riding to riding, which can produce huge variations.

I don't know whether you're aware of this or whether you have any suggestions about how to deal with it, but it may be something that requires an amendment at some point. It is systemic discrimination that exists within the system.

[Marc Mayrand]

First, regarding the international missions, we have completed the missions for Iraq and Haiti at this point in time, and there is no ongoing mission. Those missions are generally funded outside of Elections Canada, either by CIDA, DFAIT, or other international organizations. My plan, certainly as the needs arise or the requests come, is to consider them, given the priorities of the organization at the time, but certainly to seek to foster the branding of Canada around the world through our electoral process.

With respect to first nations, there are a number of initiatives that are taking place to assist and foster greater registration among first nations. We have a number of community relations officers who provide information and facilitate the process for registration. We also use elders and youth in the community to reach out to first nations.

As for the requirements under Bill C-31, I think I did forward a letter to the chair of the committee regarding identification pieces. I understand the matter is still before the Senate, and I'm sure the matter will be raised in due course when it is discussed there.

As for electoral reform, I must admit I'm not familiar with the Law Reform Commission.... I understand, and I think we all understand, that many provinces are looking at alternatives, and we expect to have maybe two provincial referendums on these matters in the coming years. I also understand that the government has launched a process to have public consultations on the democratic process and democratic reform. I am not privy to those consultations, but I'm certainly looking forward to the outcomes and the proposals that will be coming through that process.

[Beverley Jacobs]

With respect to the Native Women's Association, I'm not sure how many are aware of the organization itself. It is an aggregate of 13 provincial–territorial member associations, and the goals are to empower aboriginal women by engaging in national advocacy measures aimed at legislative and policy reforms that promote equal opportunity for aboriginal women, including meaningful access to human rights protections.

We are committed to ensuring that the unique needs of aboriginal women are reflected in any and all legislative and policy directives that have the potential to have a significant impact on the lives of aboriginal women and children. We adhere to a culturally relevant gender-based analysis. Basically what that means is that it's about balance. It's about ensuring the balance between men and women in our communities and promoting common goals towards self-determination for aboriginal people, and for women as the role models in our communities and as natural leaders.

We use this framework to assess differential impacts of proposed and/or existing legislation on aboriginal women and children. We believe this process enables us to review the policies through an understanding of historical, cultural, and political and socio-economic marginalization of aboriginal women within Canada. It thus makes it possible for governments to be more effective in responding with informed, equitable options. We will be using this process during our proposed implementation plan, and with any legislative change.

For the last 30 years, with respect to section 67 in the Canadian Human Rights Act the equality interests of aboriginal women have maintained a prominent place in policy discussions about the Indian Act and in discussions about self-government. This has primarily been the result of efforts by individual women and organizations to keep these issues in the public eye and on the federal policy agenda.

One high-priority area for NWAC has been the promotion and the protection of the human rights of aboriginal women in Canada. It is our belief that while often viewed as a champion of human rights in international fora, Canada has failed to ensure that basic fundamental standards of human rights are applied to aboriginal peoples in Canada, particularly aboriginal women and children. This is true in relation to many aspects of social, economic, cultural, political and civil rights.

Several United Nations bodies have been critical of Canada's human rights record and of its treatment of aboriginal people. Specifically in relation to aboriginal women, Canada has been criticized by domestic and international bodies for failing to protect the equality rights of aboriginal women in matrimonial real property issues, to redress such human rights mechanisms as the Canadian Human Rights Act, and for the rates of violence and the low socio-economic status facing aboriginal women.

We have learned as well about the impacts of the 1985 amendments to the Indian Act, called Bill C-31. We know that when amendments are made without consultations and without acknowledging the potential impacts, there are detrimental effects within first nations communities, such as divisions within the community, lack of resources and capacity, and effects upon education. Those are just some examples.

As to concerns with respect to Bill C-44, in the House of Commons we've heard members of Parliament voice a number of concerns. First, there is a concern that this does not address the root causes of human rights violence. From a balanced perspective the mere revocation of the Indian Act exemption will not address the effects of colonization. The repeal of section 67 is only one element in the advancement of human rights protection for aboriginal people.

Next, supporters of Bill C-44 purport that an immediate repeal is required, since aboriginal people have waited long enough, and consultation should not be used as an excuse not to act.

We agree that the repeal of section 67 is long overdue. However, we feel there has to be meaningful consultation as a strong first step of an evolving and collaborative process. We do not view human rights protection as compartmental. It is a process in which each step is necessary to achieve success in the overall goal. Consultation is not an excuse for inaction; it is an essential element in an active process.

In many cases, first nations communities do not have the capacity or resources to expose themselves to liability. As noted earlier, without proper resources and capacity as a result of Bill C-31, we have learned what this has done in our own communities. We don't want this issue added on as a burden in the communities nor resources taken from other programs and services to address issues we know will result from the repeal of section 67.

In turn, we believe that capacity-building and education are key factors for aboriginal communities to implement their own mechanisms of protecting human rights. This would greatly minimize the risk of conflict and promote prevention of human rights violations, unlike the current system of reactive measures.

Members of Parliament have also expressed apprehension about the six-month transition period. So why is the current government expediting human rights protection haphazardly after 30 years without meaningful action? And what validates these concerns, especially considering the lack of support that this government has for the United Nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples?

By implementing a community-based process that addresses the key factors of meaningful consultations—adequate implementation, resources, and capacity-building—Canada would be in a better position to support international standards, since they would then be in the process of complying with those standards. This kind of comprehensive process will require at least 36 months to implement.

Another important issue with respect to Bill C-44 is whether it addresses the individual and collective rights. This debate is at the very core of aboriginal and governmental relations in Canada and has yet to be resolved. Due to the complexity and cultural differences embedded in this question, NWAC advances that any conclusions on the matter must come from community consultations.

In the discussions we had with aboriginal women in our matrimonial real property consultation process, many discussed this issue; and to reconcile this issue, most talked about their responsibilities to their communities and to their future generations. Many said that we are individuals from nations. That's where we come from, and we cannot separate ourselves from that.

The core of this issue is addressing conflict through various forms of indigenous legal traditions, which we believe will assist in resolving the debate of individual and collective rights.

[Chief Phil Fontaine]

It did—for example, with housing. The way housing is delivered to first nation communities, you develop these lists. In many communities, because of the crisis situation that exists—there is a backlog of approximately 80,000 houses needed to catch up—that list has been growing and growing. If the community already had a list, Bill C-31 people who were reinstated just went to the bottom, and the pressures just grew and grew on our communities.

That's why the situation exists as it does. It's not because chiefs and councils or communities are not transparent or don't manage well or are not accountable. It's just all of these provisions that have been introduced without due care in terms of ensuring that communities develop the capacity. We end up in the situation we're in, and we're cast then, as a result, in a very negative light. It's just so completely unfair.

It's not that we're without error or mistakes. We are like any government. What one has to do is look at the situation now in the business community and in governments and all of these other major interests. They make mistakes, but the entire community is not cast in a negative light as a result. But if we have one mistake in one community, lo and behold, every first nation community is the same way.

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

I want to come back to Bill C-31, and I want to thank National Chief Fontaine for completing that answer, because that would have been my next question.

The only other comment I want to make about Bill C-31 is that, in addition, my understanding was that the timeframe that communities had to access additional resources was fairly narrow. By the time many communities were aware of whatever additional resources were available, as minimal as they were, the timeframe had already lapsed, and I think that placed an undue burden on communities as well.

[Chief Phil Fontaine]

Let me first conclude my response to the previous question about how this whole matter would affect first nation communities. I talked about Bill C-31. I want to conclude my response to that, and then I'm going to turn to Candice Metallic to speak to your question, Jean.

When Bill C-31 was introduced, it was to correct a wrong that had been inflicted on women primarily. It was heralded, and everybody was all excited that finally there would be justice done. When it was brought to us, we were told that as a result of Bill C-31, no first nation community would be worse off. What happened is that there was this unfair burden imposed on first nation communities. In fact, with the overwhelming numbers of our people who were reinstated, we just couldn't deliver on demands related to housing, education, health, and land.

In fact, Bill C-31 is a termination bill. That's what it is. So it wasn't what we were told it would be when it was brought before us in 1985. In fact, just about every first nation community is worse off as a result of Bill C-31. We have a housing crisis. We can't deliver safe drinking water to our communities. People can't access quality health care.

So it's an unfair burden that has been imposed on our communities, and we don't want the same thing to happen here.

Candice.

[Chief Phil Fontaine]

First of all, the result would be an unfair imposition of something that's as significant and as important as Bill C-44. We would be treated unfairly, because we wouldn't have the same time consideration as was provided to the federal government and the provincial and territorial governments with the implementation of the charter. They were given three years, and we're being told that this must be implemented immediately.

Second, there would be an unfair burden placed on first nation governments, because we don't have the resources, we don't have the institutions, we don't have the wherewithal at the moment to be able to deal effectively and fairly with the provisions of Bill C-44, if complaints were to be registered against first nation governments. There has to be sufficient time to enable first nation governments, chiefs and councils, to be ready, to be able to respond fairly and appropriately to these provisions, even though we recognize that most of the complaints, much of the initial attention, maybe over a prolonged period, would be directed toward the federal government—most of the abuses of human rights have been by government—because first nations have been rather limited, if I can put it that way, in their ability to abuse their citizens.

Take, for example, water. The suggestion has been made that it's somehow less than transparent, irresponsible, and non-accountable chiefs and councils who have caused the crisis situation with safe drinking water not being accessible to our communities. Well, we didn't pollute our waters. We didn't cause our river systems, our lakes, and our streams to be polluted, but we're being held accountable for that.

On the inadequate housing situation—let me put it fairly and properly, the housing crisis in our communities—the expectation and the demand, in fact, would be that we make appropriate provisions for the disabled. We're not in a position to be able to deliver the goods on that.

Concerning Bill C-31, at present there are at least 60 cases before the courts because of Bill C-31 and its unfair provisions that deny many of our people the right to citizenship in their nations. There are 60 cases. I think the government knows it will probably lose all 60 cases, as these are charter violations clear and simple.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I too would like to thank you, not only for the work you've done in your capacity as Chief Electoral Officer but also for your work before that as a public servant. Those of us who are from Ottawa will know you have worked in the public service for quite a while and have done stellar work. I've always been impressed by that, and I say that not only on behalf of the people in my party but also, I think, on behalf of the people in Ottawa in general.

I also know the work you've done internationally is well known. My brother happened to be in the former Yugoslavia and got to know people in the international community. He was part of the NDI group that went over there. Your name has been well noted in the international community, so I'm glad to see you'll be moving on to a global stage. I hope we'll be able to support you in any way we can, because I think it is important.

The next step for Canada to take is to help build strong democratic frameworks in the rest of the world. I think that really is our role.

I wish you well. We will miss you. Personally, I would have hoped you would have been around for a little longer, with a couple of things we're dealing with.

I would like to touch on a couple of things, and that has to do with Bill C-31. You had mentioned to my colleague.... I was just talking to Mr. Godin about the concerns raised with birthdate information. I will be very specific.

When I wrote to the Privacy Commissioner on this--and she wrote me back last week--she stated the following. I'd just like your take on it.

Is the problem of voter fraud so serious and sufficiently widespread to require the use of additional personal information?

That's the first thing. And we talked about having voter identifiers. I think you mentioned to Mr. Godin that it might be helpful to have the year of birth. But she then says that if it is a serious problem.... Do we have a problem here? That's her first point. And,

If it is a serious problem, is it necessary to provide polling clerks with the date of birth or can the same objective be achieved using less detailed information?

To this, I think you would say yes.

In light of what the bill--it's gone through the House, now it's going to the Senate--has in it, amended, with date of birth information to be available to all polling clerks but also to be shared with all political parties, is it your fervent belief that was the right tool to use to deal with voter fraud? I should say potential voter fraud, because we've heard from you there were only four cases in the last three elections that we're aware of. I believe we've gone too far with it, in terms of the use of personal information. But what would suffice, in your estimation?

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for appearing today, Mr. Kingsley.

I want to pick up on the sentiments being expressed by all colleagues around the room and offer my sincere thanks and congratulations. I did that privately before the meeting, but I'd like to say that publicly.

As Mr. Godin indicated, we haven't always agreed. Sometimes things became quite heated when you appeared before the committee on difficult issues you had to deal with and the committee had to struggle with. In fact I would suggest you're probably sitting there in a bit of shock that you have nothing but accolades coming at you, as opposed to some very pointed questions.

All that's in the past. I do sincerely wish you all the very best in your future endeavours. There's no doubt in my mind that given the skills and qualities you've shown in your 17 years as a CEO for our nation, you will continue to do great things in whatever you undertake.

Having said that, I'd like to pose a couple of questions. The first one Monsieur Godin touched on, which is Bill C-31.

I've always believed there's a delicate balance in any democracy regarding the right of every citizen to vote. Hopefully every citizen in our democracy believes that fervently and passionately. Having said that, I also strongly believe that every citizen has a responsibility as well. It isn't up to governments or Elections Canada to go to inordinate lengths to ensure that every single citizen is on the voters list. I believe there is responsibility that comes with citizenship, if you will. I think that all too often we take our rights for granted in this country and we don't pay much attention to our responsibilities.

Certainly you, in the time you have spent internationally, and the many colleagues who have served as election monitors in other countries, have seen that other countries' citizens--especially perhaps at a time when these rights have been denied to them--take their responsibility very seriously. I've heard stories of people who walked for hours in the blazing sun and stood in line to cast a ballot. Those people will go to inordinate lengths to ensure they can vote.

As we're parting company, I would like you to express your views on that delicate balance, which all of us recognize exists, between our right as citizens to vote but also our responsibility to take some personal responsibility to ensure that as individuals we protect that right.

The other issue is whether there is more that Canada can be doing internationally. Is there more than what we're already doing to promote and assist democracies, whether it's our efforts in Afghanistan or your efforts in Iraq and things like that, that you see we could do to promote that in future initiatives?

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

I'm also touched by your comments about the fact that I was available to serve people. Sometimes people criticized us for being available on Friday and Sunday evening to do certain things. I learned when I was the CEO of a hospital that one has to be available to serve people at all hours of the day or night. That is why my telephone number has always been in the telephone book.

When I announced that I was be resigning, I received some phone calls from Canadians—and I will take the liberty to make this comment—who told me how much they appreciated the fact that when they telephoned during an election, I was the person who answered the phone. They wanted to talk to me, and I did just that. So I find it tremendously touching when ordinary Canadians tell me something like that.

As regards the impact of Bill C-31, I have already said what I had to say about the percentages involved. I think the committee will obviously want to look into this matter at some point with Mr. Mayrand. You will need to show some imagination to move forward on this. Perhaps you will find a solution in this type of document. Personally, I have not found a solution to the problem so far.

However, as I said, I was rather surprised by the amendment made by the committee following my appearance. That is not what I was expecting. I thought you would stick with the proof of identity—on that, I was in complete agreement.

As regards the voter information card, there was a project—and we will have to check on this—to put the cards into an envelope with a window, so that we could have even more control over what happened to them. We would have to check how far that project got, I do not remember that. However, I thought the committee did have a good idea. I know that something was done in this regard, but I do not know how far the project got. The cost is minimal, and the integrity of the process is the important thing.

As regards the birth date, the committee made some amendments there as well to make this information more available to the representatives of the parties. I am wondering whether this is really a good idea, because we worked very hard to control the distribution of the list of electors, so much so that, as you know, some information is included in the list provided to members of each party each year. It is specific to each party. In other words, we send the Bloc Québécois the information that is added and that enables us to determine who provided an electoral list specific to the party. It meant we could call up someone in the party and tell that person that the leak came from his or her shop. We could also call up a member of Parliament and say—although I do not think this ever happened—that the leak of the list came from his or her office. People wanted this information to be protected. That was one of the main objectives when the register was established in the act, which was passed on December 12, 1996. We attached a great deal of importance to this.

During an election campaign, it is more difficult to do something of this type. I'm being quite frank here—it is more difficult. When it comes to sharing this type of information, the committee will want to review whether this was the right way of proceeding.

Initially, we proposed that a birth year be shared to provide another check on the individual who comes in to vote. If the person looks 30 but the information shows that he or she is 50, the deputy returning officer can ask some questions, and can even push the questioning even further.

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley, Former Chief Electoral Officer, As an Individual]

Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the committee for providing me with this opportunity to appear before you as an ordinary citizen.

In all seriousness, it has always touched me profoundly to come to this committee and render account for what Elections Canada did and did not do. It's in the same spirit that I approach this opportunity.

I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the excellent letter you sent to me on behalf of the committee. I shall cherish it, in light of the 17 years to the day that I spent in the position. When I gave my eight weeks' notice, I wasn't conscious of the fact that it was going to be exactly 17 years.

On Bill C-31 and the international scene, one must remember that when going to another country to provide advice, one is not selling a system or selling Canadianism; one is sharing values. When it's a newly emerging democracy or a democracy that used to exist but was taken over, smitten, and is being brought back, there's an element of distrust at the core of what they're trying to do. That is the reason why there's such a fundamental difference between what Canada has and what new democracies and newly re-emerging democracies usually give themselves.

When the Iraqis visited Canada during the election, they were surprised that there was no need for ID at the polls, because the international community, the United Nations, had told them they needed that. These were board members from the Iraqi electoral commission. Some of them went back with the idea that they wanted to look at that again. I'm sharing that with you because it's something they had never thought of, but they knew they had something to overcome. That is an important difference.

I want to add one thing about Bill C-31 that I think needs to be said. Parliament has decided to address the question of ID at the polls. I've always said that was fair, but proof of address at the polls may prove to be more problematic, and you'll want to review with my successor how that's going to work.

The experience Canada has is limited in that respect. In the city of Toronto, if you don't have proof of address you can swear yourself in at the poll; you don't need to have somebody else in line who's able to do it. From the statistics they provided to us, about 5% of the people had to go through that process. At the federal level, would 5% of the people have to go back home to get proof of address that they did not bring with them to the polls?

So I wanted to share that with the committee. You might want to look at that in more detail with my successor, because some of this research only came in after you put together Bill C-31.

I also want to mention that the letter on the pieces of ID recommended by the Chief Electoral Officer is ready to come to you. My commitment was that it would come here the moment Bill C-31 received third reading. It wasn't supposed to come before that because we did not know how Bill C-31 was going to come out in third reading. That letter is ready, and obviously the people at Elections Canada will have to decide about sending it and when. All the work was done in that respect, and it's just waiting to be sent and for your review.

I would look at the address situation as a committee. If 5% or even only 1% of the people don't bring the necessary proof of address with them, how do you address that? Do you send them back home to get another piece of ID? Right now they will have to find someone in line to attest to who they are, and that person will need to have all the necessary proof of ID and address as well.

So I just thought I'd bring that to your attention.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our guests today.

I actually wanted to shine a little light on something that isn't in the brief here, but it has happened most recently. It's a bill that went through Parliament and is on its way to the Senate, and that of course is Bill C-31, which touches on privacy issues.

It's interesting that while we're trying to deal with privacy here, we seem to be opening up opportunities for people who want to exploit privacy in other places in this precinct. That's because in Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, in the original legislation, they provided birthdate information for purposes of verification of voters. I wrote to you about this concern I had, and that we have in our party, and the fact that it was then amended to further extend that information to political parties. I wrote to you on that; you sent me a letter last week, and I thank you for that.

I just want to clear something up. As recently as Tuesday, in a question in the House, I asked the government if they would be--

The House resumed from February 16 consideration of the motion that Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, be read the third time and passed, and of the motion that this question be now put.

Canada Elections Act

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, they can run but they cannot hide.

The electoral lists are not secure documents. Often, all it takes to activate a credit card is a name, address and date of birth. Now the Conservatives plan to give birthdate information to anyone who asks.

This big brother bill does nothing to protect the integrity of the voting system. All it takes is support from the government.

Will the Prime Minister take this matter seriously and scrap the peeping Tom clause in Bill C-31, yes or no?

[Marc Mayrand]

I'm sorry I cannot give you a more specific answer to your question. I know that Bill C-31 provides for a random voter number. That is about all I know. I really have no idea about the context of this provision or the use that will be made of this number. This is something I will have to find out about as soon as I assume the position, in order to see how we will go about implementing all of this.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Good morning, Mr. Mayrand, and welcome to the committee.

I would like to follow up on a question Mr. Proulx asked about the way in which complaints are dealt with. I think the appointment of returning officers through a competition, which will take into account merit, will probably eliminate some of the complaints Elections Canada receives.

I would like you to give me some reassurance about one aspect of the way in which complaints are handled. When the Chief Electoral Officer receives complaints from candidates or returning officers, I would like some reassurance that they will actually be investigated. At one point, the former Chief Electoral Officer told this committee that he no longer made any recommendations about the way the complaints service should manage the complaints, because it was of absolutely no use to do that.

I hope that as Chief Electoral Officer, these investigations will be pursued, so that these complaints which recur from one election to the next in some ridings will be settled once and for all.

I know that we have to give you a chance, because you are just about to assume this position. A number of amendments have been made to the Canada Elections Act through various pieces of legislation, such as Bill C-31.

Have you heard about the introduction of a voter number? If so, how would you plan to implement that, if an election were to be called tomorrow, for example?

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Privacy is a consideration in the greater public good, but you say you want the democratic process to apply. I'm referring once again to Bill C-31, which provides that in future people will only be able to vouch for one other person. Not for a group of individuals, as was the case formerly.

I would like you to look into this as well and come back to the committee to discuss this matter. I would appreciate that. I do not know whether you understand what I mean. Let me give you an example.

[Marc Mayrand]

I understand that Bill C-31 has been passed at the third reading stage in the House of Commons.

Has it not been passed at the third reading stage in the House of Commons?

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

No, Mr. Chair, with all respect, I disagree with you. When we had Bill C-31, we brought the former director of Elections Canada to bring his opinion on Bill C-31. We brought the Privacy Commissioner to give their opinion. Here is a person who will undertake a duty that is very important, and I think I'd like to know what he feels about it.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Even though you say that this is the will of Parliament, in light of the fact that you may be the next Chief Electoral Officer, you are entitled to your opinion, but you do have a significant responsibility.

On the one hand, there's the need to protect people's privacy, and on the other, all democracies are required to recognize people who come in to vote. But at the same time, the two considerations must go hand-in-hand.

With respect to Bill C-31, would you recommend that we wait, that we give you an opportunity to review it and to come back to the committee before it is passed by Parliament?

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

But under Bill C-31, the birth date must be provided, on the list of citizens, to all the political parties.

[Marc Mayrand]

If I understand it, there must be a balance between facilitating voter participation and maintaining the integrity of the voting system.

In order to maintain the integrity of the vote, from what I understand of Bill C-31, we must be able to identify voters who want to exercise their franchise on voting day.

Bill C-31 specifically requires that a birth date be entered on the list of electors. This appears to me to be the will of Parliament. I would not want to create the illusion that I could change that will; however, my concern would be to ensure that this information is used only as required in order to facilitate the vote.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

As Ms. Robillard was saying, since this is the second minority government in the recent past, we are getting used to having elections every 18 months. It could happen even sooner this time, who knows. So there could be an election, we will soon have a new Chief Electoral Officer, and various legislation is in the process of being implemented, such as Bill C-31.

You have a great deal of experience in the area of bankruptcy and finance. Bill C-31 is of great concern to the NDP, because it would require people to reveal their birth dates to the various political parties. In Canada at the moment, there have been some problems with credit cards. One piece of information that is sometimes requested in order to validate a credit card transaction is a person's birth date.

Is birth date not the ultimate tool to give to people who steal credit cards? Do you think that Elections Canada needs the birth date, as provided for in Bill C-31?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome to our committee, Mr. Mayrand. I'd like to use the eight minutes I have in the following way; I'm going to ask you three questions, and you can use the remaining time to answer each question, in as much detail you wish.

All three of my questions will be on the subject of the manner in which the previous Chief Electoral Officer conducted himself. I will be asking you whether you would be continuing the same practice or changing the practice. I understand that you might want to take some of this under advisement, but nonetheless, I'll lay these things out. It would be very helpful, I think, to all parties to understand whether we can expect continuity or change in these areas, and in particular to know that you are considering in good faith how to deal with these areas.

The first one relates to the issue of the all-party consultative committee that currently exists. This committee existed prior to the tenure of Mr. Kingsley as Chief Electoral Officer. The incumbent prior to Mr. Kingsley was in the habit of consulting with the all-party committee prior to making rulings or issuing interpretive bulletins. This allowed him to gain the on-the-ground wisdom of all the parties in a context in which all parties could listen in on what was being said by all other parties--there was no favouritism being shown--and then he would issue the interpretation bulletins. Mr. Kingsley discontinued that practice and has tended to consult with the all-party committee after the fact.

I would certainly like to know whether you would continue Mr. Kingsley's practice or the practice that existed prior to his tenure. At the very least, I would like you to take back the thought of considering which course of action you would take, and report back to us at a future date.

The second question I have also relates to the information and interpretive bulletins that Elections Canada issues. These are posted on the website of Elections Canada. When the new Commissioner of Elections was here, I asked him how he treated them or was going to treat them. It struck me that one could argue that it's more appropriate for the commissioner to issue these bulletins than for Elections Canada to do so, given that it's actually the commissioner who would have to rule on them.

At any rate, we would like some clarity as to who is doing what. The impact upon your legal standing, if you attempt in good faith to follow the interpretation written down in the bulletin, is obviously of importance. At the very least, I would ask you if you're willing to read through all the bulletins to see if you agree with them, and if you don't, to change them as appropriate and come back to us, and let us know the progress you've made on looking at those bulletins. I think there are 26 or 28 on the website right now.

The final thing I wanted to ask you relates to a provision of the new anti-electoral fraud bill, Bill C-31. This includes a provision--it's in clause 21 of the new proposed act--which states that in order to cast a ballot, an individual must produce either one piece of photo identification with their address, or two pieces of identification. I'll just quote from the legislation:

(b) two pieces of identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer each of which establishes the elector's name and at least one of which establishes the elector's address.

The previous Chief Electoral Officer volunteered to us, at his most recent appearance before the committee, that prior to actually issuing such a list, he would come back to this committee and would give us his tentative list and seek input from us. Would you be willing to do the same thing?

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Good morning, everyone. We have quorum.

Welcome to meeting number 12 of the Legislative Committee on Bill C-30.

We have three witnesses today. Mr. Michael Cleland, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Gas Association, will lead off. He will be followed by Mr. Matthew Bramley, director for climate change, for the Pembina Institute. Finally, we have Gordon Lambert, vice-president for sustainable development of Suncor Energy Inc.

I would point out to committee members that we have the procedure and House affairs committee meeting right after us at 11. We want to move along fairly quickly, since they are the whips and House leaders. We don't want to make our bosses angry.

So we'll move along fairly quickly. As a reminder for the witnesses, we'll be giving you each about 10 minutes—preferably 10 or less—to make some opening remarks and then we'll be putting it around to the members of the committee to ask questions.

I would give a reminder to all that this is about Bill C-30. We know people have a lot of things to say, but we'll try to keep it focused as much as we can on Bill C-30 and ways that we can make it better.

Without further ado, I would ask Mr. Michael Cleland, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Gas Association, to make some opening remarks.

Mr. Cleland, the floor is yours.

Electoral Reform

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak on Motion M-262 put forward by the hon. member for Vancouver Island North. I thank her for having proposed this motion.

First off, let me say that the Bloc Québécois will not be supporting this motion proposed by the hon. member for Vancouver Island North because it duplicates the work done by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

Considerable work has been done, and the committee has expended a great deal of time and energy as well as taxpayers money to produce its 43rd report, pursuant to the order of reference of November 25, 2004, that, further to the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs recommend a process that engages citizens and parliamentarians in an examination of our electoral system with a review of all options.

In March 2005, members of the committee divided into two groups and travelled to several countries in order examine at first hand the experience of electoral reform and to see how those countries had consulted and engaged citizens in the reform process. Seven members travelled to Scotland, England, and Berlin, while six other members travelled to New Zealand, and Australia. During these trips, the members had the opportunity to meet with a wide variety of politicians, academics, representatives of political parties and electoral commissions, and persons involved with electoral reform, and to study at close hand the systems and reform processes used, if any.

The committee approached this study resulting in the 43rd report by hearing from a number of witnesses. These included representatives of the Law Commission of Canada; representatives from various groups involved with public policy; academics who have studied issues relating to electoral reform and public consultations; and representatives of various provincial initiatives involving reviews of electoral systems. All of these individuals and groups have been extremely helpful in providing members of the committee with valuable insight on how to approach the issue of electoral reform, the ways in which to review the existing electoral system, and how best to consult with and engage citizens.

Moreover, a call for tenders for public consultations on Canada's democratic institutions and practices went out on January 9 in response to the April 4, 2006, Speech from the Throne, which stated that:

Building on the work begun in the last Parliament, this Government will seek to involve parliamentarians and citizens in examining the challenges facing Canada's electoral system and democratic institutions.

The consultations will address various issues, including political parties, the electoral system, the House of Commons, the Senate, and the role of citizens. These consultations are to begin March 9, 2007, and an interim report is to be tabled by May 23.

The motion tabled by the member for Vancouver Island North proposes a number of elements already included in Bill C-16, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act, and in Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act. Let us take a look at some of these elements.

Bill C-16 would relieve the Prime Minister of the prerogative to call a general election at the most auspicious time for the political party in power.

This bill has other positive spin-offs. It supports the work of Parliament by enabling elected representatives to better plan their work and by preventing elections from interfering with the adoption of the estimates. It also promotes voter participation. Contrary to what the Conservative government would have us believe, democratic reform as set out in Bill C-16 will not lead to an upheaval because it will not bring major changes to the status quo.

In a minority government, the opposition will still be able to overthrow the government and trigger an election at any time because this bill does not challenge the fundamental principle that a majority of parliamentarians can decide to trigger an election if they feel it is necessary.

A fixed election date system only works if the government in power agrees to it. Since the Prime Minister retains the right to recommend that Parliament be dissolved at any time before the fixed date, he can call an election whenever he chooses, with a good reason to do so.

The other element in motion M-262 relates to Bill C-31, which seeks to reduce the opportunity for fraud or error, improve the accuracy of the national register of electors, facilitate voting and enhance communication between election officials, candidates, parties and voters.

Bill C-31 was the product of close cooperation among the political parties. The government listened to the opposition parties when it introduced Bill C-31. The Conservative government should take the same approach to other issues, instead of stubbornly pushing its law and order agenda, and it should listen to the Bloc Québécois, which is calling for rehabilitation rather than repression. Moreover, instead of insisting on dismantling the gun registry, the minority Conservative government should listen to the Bloc Québécois, which is calling for better control over the registry costs.

As I have already said, the purpose of this bill was to improve the integrity of the electoral process by reducing the opportunity for fraud or error. As a member of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, I participated in the work leading up to the introduction of this bill in the House of Commons, so I can say that a lot of work went into it.

The committee includes representatives of each political party, all of whom cooperated effectively, thus enabling us to achieve our goal of improving the electoral process and strengthening the public's faith in it.

The bill also proposes another change that the Bloc Québécois has long been calling for: assigning each voter a unique identification number. This unique identifier will appear on the voters' lists, eliminating duplication and making for better lists. It is important to point out that this unique identifier will be randomly generated and assigned by the chief electoral officer.

In our opinion, other concerns are more pressing that motion M-262, such as the fiscal imbalance, which the Bloc Québécois, on behalf of all Quebeckers, is calling on the government to correct by transferring $3.9 billion to Quebec.

There is also the crisis in the manufacturing sector. The Conservative government's economic laissez faire approach is no response to the challenges manufacturers face to modernize, innovate and equip themselves better in order to compete with foreign companies.

These are just a few of the issues that we think are more urgent than creating a special committee to continue the work of electoral reform, because, as I said a few minutes ago, that work has already been done, and at a considerable cost.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the gist of my presentation today will be to point out that in view of the very aggressive set of initiatives already introduced by the government on the subject of electoral democratic reform, both in this chamber and for application to the upper House, the motion by the hon. member for Vancouver Island North is effectively redundant.

I want to start my comments by pointing out that the government in its throne speech indicated that it was going to focus intensively on the challenges faced by Canada's electoral and democratic systems. This was done in part in response to the 43rd report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in the last Parliament.

Seeing as the New Democrats are talking about the report of this committee as if it is holy writ or, indeed, brought down from Mount Sinai by Moses, I note that in fact it was not; it was brought down by a group of us, including me.

Let me just read for members what the report said, because it does not say quite what the New Democrats represent it as saying. It states that a “citizens' consultation group”, along with the parliamentary committee, should:

--make recommendations on the values and principles Canadians would like to see in their democratic and electoral systems...[this] would take into account an examination of the role of Members of Parliament and political parties; citizen engagement and rates of voter participation, including youth and aboriginal communities; civic literacy; how to foster a more representative House of Commons, including, but not limited to, increased representation of women and minorities, and questions of proportionality, community of interest and representation;....

Some of this is being taken care of through the citizens' consultation process that is currently under way, as the government has announced, and which has a much broader mandate than what the hon. member is proposing in her motion, but it is a mandate that reflects accurately what was proposed by this committee when it made its report in June 2005.

Indeed, we have made sure that the consultation group reflects what the committee wanted. At the time when I sat on that committee, I was not a fan of that process, but Ed Broadbent, who is constantly cited in the NDP's arguments, spoke in favour of that particular type of process. I said that we would have the usual suspects showing up at this process, and he said, “Sure, it will be the usual suspects, but they have a lot to say, and it is a good process”. The committee voted for it and the government is following through on the recommendations of the committee.

Now the New Democrats have discovered that they really favour another proposal, the citizens' assembly proposal, which Mr. Broadbent fought against vigorously when it was brought up by the Conservatives and which is why the Conservatives put a dissenting report advocating that proposal into the 43rd report of the procedure and House affairs committee. Thus, when the NDP members refer back to this through a revisionist version of history, we must recall that it is a little bit different from the way it actually worked when it happened.

I now want to list some of the legislative initiatives that the government has moved forward with on the subject of democratic reform, because this is really an extraordinary push forward. We are doing more on this issue than any previous government has ever done.

I will start by pointing to the Federal Accountability Act, which changed the rules for financing. It made them much more restrictive, eliminating corporate and union donations and reducing individual donations to $1,000 per capita, ensuring, in other words, that money and affluence are not the determining factors in financing political parties, and therefore ensuring that parties can operate on a level playing field.

We have moved forward on a number of items that deal with making the electoral system fairer, such as Bill C-31 to get rid of electoral fraud, a bill that the NDP opposes although all other parties in the House support it. It is a bill that will do a great deal to make the system much fairer and will ensure that no Canadian is disenfranchised, because electoral fraud disenfranchises everyone who is affected by a vote outcome that can be determined fraudulently, and that is a real problem.

The increased electoral fairness through Bill C-16, which is now in the Senate, having been passed by the House, will ensure that elections occur once every four years, not when the Prime Minister chooses to call them based upon whether his or her party is high in the polls. That was a terrible wrong. It was abused by the previous government repeatedly. This initiative will ensure that it is not abused again. This follows, of course, a series of legislative initiatives adopted at the provincial level, first in British Columbia and then in Ontario, to ensure that provincial elections are also on fixed four year dates.

We have also moved forward on Senate reform. Bill S-4 limits the tenure of senators to eight years. We are having a tremendous problem getting that bill through the Liberal controlled Senate. The government has initiated this bill. It makes sense. It is going to ensure that senators are not effectively appointed for life. Frankly, this is the first time we have seen any serious attempt at Senate reform in the history of this country.

Bill C-43, An Act to provide for consultations with electors on their preferences for appointments to the Senate, would allow for elections of senators. They are called consultative elections because we have to respect the constitutional prerogative of the Governor General to appoint senators.

That bill is interesting not only because it would allow for democracy to finally reach into the Senate and elections to occur within the Senate, but elections under this legislation would not be by means of the first past the post system. Rather elections would be by a single transferable vote system, in short, a proportional system that attempts to ensure that broader preferences come forward and are represented in choosing a senator. It would have the same effect in the Senate as what occurs in the Australian senate, for example, which uses a similar system where a broader range of preferences is expressed. This is a tremendous step forward.

I find it interesting that when talking about proportional representation the New Democrats always take great pains to avoid talking about the one piece of electoral reform legislation that is actually before the House right now, the attempt to introduce proportional representation in the upper house of Canada. In listening to the New Democrats talk about this, one would think there is nothing going on there at all and that it is not worth discussing.

Focusing on something that can happen right now in this Parliament is very important. The issue came up when the member for Elgin—Middlesex—London introduced a motion in the procedure and House affairs committee last week asking that the committee consider a variety of democratic and electoral reform issues, including the issue of proportional representation in the upper house. The New Democrats on the committee voted against it. They ensured that the motion would be defeated.

I do not detect a pattern of behaviour that is logical and actually beneficial toward moving forward on the democratic reform file. The New Democrats are trying to focus on a single hobby horse in a way that suits their interests best.

I find it interesting that Ed Broadbent advocated the idea of electoral reform. During the election campaign when the New Democrats released their election platform, that party moved from favouring more proportional representation as a general theme and letting Canadians look for the best solution, to directly choosing the solution that would be given to Canadians, the multi-member proportional system.

That system has some merits. That system is used in Germany and New Zealand, both of which are respectable democracies, but it not the only available proportional system. For example, it is not the system used in Australia's upper house, which is proportional. It is not used in Malta or Ireland. All of those countries have a single transferable vote system. It is also not the system used in Australia's lower house which uses the alternative vote system. It is not the only proportional system, but it was the only one that the NDP wanted to advocate.

The New Democrats were actually advocating it. They were saying it was essential to move from our system to that system when the MMP system, the multi-member proportional system, had just been defeated in P.E.I., where it received less than 40% of the vote, and an alternative system, the single transferable vote proportional system, had been adopted by almost 60% of British Columbians in another referendum.

We have to be careful. When we look at what the New Democrats are proposing we have to ask ourselves, do they favour proportional representation? Do they favour changing the electoral system in a way that reflects what Canadians want, which means maybe not choosing that system up front, or do they favour the system that is likely to produce the best result in terms of numbers of seats for New Democrats if their vote total does not change? In other words, the NDP is saying, “Without actually changing our appeal to the Canadian people, how can we get more seats in the House of Commons?”

That is not a beneficial approach. We have to work on allowing Canadians to make these decisions themselves.

Canada Elections Act

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it has been interesting to listen to the debate on Bill C-31 today. This is a bill that we have described as insufficient. It has not dealt with the real issue of what the failure of electoral system is. It does not deal with electoral reform. We soon will bring that forward for the House. One of my colleagues has a motion on which we will be voting and it will get to the heart of the problem in our system, which is the fact that we do not have a fair voting system.

Alas, though, we do have Bill C-31 in front of us. I think it is important to go back to the origin of the bill, which was a committee report that was cherry-picked by the government. The government decided it would use the opportunity to respond to a committee report by putting forward an agenda that it thought would make it look good in the eyes of the public. We have seen this piecemeal approach to democratic reform from the government before. Those members take a morsel here and a morsel there and try to make it sound like dinner, but it is not. It is just crumbs.

The government has done this before. Recently we heard that the government was going to deal with Senate reform by way of having elections in the provinces. The Prime Minister would bless it and it somehow would be real reform. That is piecemeal. It is pretending to be doing something.

Mr. Broadbent, my predecessor, had an ethics package that included the idea of fixed election dates. The government put that idea forward. No arguments there, but the government has not dealt with the other piece of Mr. Broadbent's ethics package, the fundamental changes he proposed to make our system fairer so that a citizen's vote would actually mean something.

Here we have Bill C-31. I guess the government thought that with this bill it would look credible because it was going to solve the problem of the opportunity for voter fraud. It is very important to state that: the opportunity for voter fraud. Because, as my colleague from Winnipeg Centre quite rightly pointed out, “there is no there there”, as the quote goes, when we talk about voter fraud. It is the opportunity. If we could deal with that, then I guess we could be dealing with many other issues. Climate change is not the opportunity but is what in front of us and the government has finally come on board and recognized it, a little late perhaps, but there it is.

This idea that we are dealing with the opportunity for voter fraud is what the government is responding to with Bill C-31. The government quickly put a bill together and made it look as if it was going to solve the voter fraud problem that was so ubiquitous. Then it would be seen as credible, as cleaning up the system.

I dare say the Conservatives did not do their homework. When the Chief Electoral Officer responded to the whole idea of voter fraud, he was very clear. He said there was rampant integrity in the system and in citizens. He said there was no problem. We heard evidence that there have been four cases over three years.

The government has decided that it knows best. I call this bill the big brother bill. Why? Because it says that the government is going to tell citizens what is best for them. It claims to know better than ordinary citizens. It claims to know better than the witnesses who came forward. The witnesses said the bill would not be good for citizens, but the bill says that is okay because the government knows better.

Witnesses told us that the bill would not increase voter participation. It would put barriers in front of people. As has been mentioned by my colleagues, it is probably a recipe for further disenchantment with the voter system. It will mean that fewer people will actually participate in voting. If that was the intent of the bill and the government, they have succeeded, because that in fact is what will happen.

We have identified clauses 18 and 21 of the bill as major concerns. I put amendments forward. These clauses are really going to disenfranchise people and open up the privacy of everyday citizens to people who will be able to exploit it.

I considered that if this were an opportunity for the government to address the problem of voter fraud, instead opposing the bill, I would bring forward ideas and amendments in committee. As has already been mentioned, one of the concerns is the voter card. Why are these voter cards left in hallways in apartment buildings. Anyone can pick them up and use them for whatever purpose, including voter fraud?

A simple piece of technology called an envelope can be employed. In fact, I brought this idea forward in committee. I suggested this to the Chief Electoral Officer who said that it was a good idea, that it was something his department was looking at. Yet when it was put forward as an amendment, the government said that it was out of the scope of the bill.

The government has failed to accept a simple solution, a common sense idea of putting voter cards in envelopes addressed to the voter. If the voter has moved, it will be returned to sender. It happens all the time with other pieces of mail. Why not do this with something as important as a voter card? Hopefully the government will find a way to bring that idea forward.

Everyone in this place knows the problems with the centralized voters list. We know why we went to that list, which was to save money.

The most important aspect of our democracy is the right to vote, to participate. It seems passing strange that we would not see the wisdom of investing and supporting universal enumeration, that we would not go door to door, as was mentioned by my colleague, the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre. We could employ people, for instance seniors or people at the Legion and others, who had the time and could use some extra income to go door to door. They know their neighbourhoods.

People who are members of civic and community associations could help out. As a kid, I recall the knock on the door. An enumerator would confirm who was on the voters list and ensure that the names were written down. These lists were more accurate than the centralized voters lists we now have on computer. That idea was put forward, but, alas, the government again said that it knew better, big brother, that it would not invest in it. Instead, it would do targeted enumeration.

The problem with targeted enumeration is that it is hit and miss, more often miss than hit. What we end up with is a scattered approach across the country. Voters lists in some areas are accurate and up to date, such as bedroom communities where there is a low turnover rate.

What happens in the areas where there is high turnover? There is massive turnover in my riding of Ottawa Centre. It is always a problem. A very simple solution to that would be to go door to door. That idea has not been embraced by the government. When it was proposed as an amendment to the bill, it was not accepted.

If members were to ask people in Tim Hortons or on Main Street what makes sense to them, to continue with a centralized computerized voters list that does not work or have door to door enumeration that would clean up the list, they would probably say that it would make sense to go door to door, employ people who need extra income and have an accurate voters list. It is the most important tool we have to allow people to vote. Their names are on the voters list.

If we were to go through the history of our country, people would be shouting from their graves and asking what we were doing. They fought for the right to vote and we are undermining that.

Those are two ideas. The first is to put the voter's card in an envelope, address it to the voter and if the person has moved on, the card is be returned to sender, prompting a cleanup of the list. The second is door to door enumeration. It makes sense and is a worthy investment.

Look at the money that is spent in government, yet it will not consider investing in enumeration. My constituents shake their heads and ask me what we are doing in this place, if we cannot even come up with something as fundamental as funding for enumeration. The voter's list is the bedrock, the foundation of our democracy. That suggestion has been rejected by the government.

The one that troubles me the most, and I have spoke about it in this place many times, is the idea that Canadians' privacy will be at risk because of the bill. As I mentioned before, the have the following in the bill. We have a requirement for photo ID to be presented when people vote. If they do not have photo ID, they are to present two pieces of ID that have been sanctioned by the government. If they are unable to produce that, someone has to vouch for them and that person has to be on the voter's list. That is the sequencing.

Each voter now, according to this bill, will be given an identification number, I guess analogous to an ID number such as a SIN. That is fine, we did not argue with that. In fact, we did not argue with having photo ID or the other two pieces of ID. We argued about what happened when people did not have that.

However, the piece that puzzles me to this day is the fact that the government saw fit to add birthdate information on the voter's list. I fought that in committee. I did not think it was necessary because we would have photo ID and a voter identifier. Because of this terrible problem of opportunity for voter fraud, which as we have already mentioned that there have been four cases in three elections, we will now have the birthdate information of Canadians on the voter's lists. This is absurd.

Not only will Elections Canada have information, every political party will have this.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Western Arctic for his passionate commitment to this issue and for his very relevant comments on how this affects the people in his riding of Western Arctic.

His question specifically to me was about what the effect would be in an inner city riding like Winnipeg Centre. I know that the voter ID issue is a huge problem, because I have seen the lineups, even under the current rules. People come to the voting station and have to stand in a separate line for an hour, and sometimes an hour and a half, to get registered.

Now the test will be even higher. It used to be that one could bring an envelope, a hydro bill or some printed material with one's ID on it, as well as a driver's licence, for instance. Once people have made the commitment to come and vote and stand in line for that long, if they were turned away and told to go home to get something else or something they did not have at all, that would be it, they would never come back. It is tough enough to get low income people convinced that it is relevant to vote.

If I may, I will suggest some things we could do that would have been relevant. If we made sure the voters' cards were sent in envelopes instead of just in the mail, I think that would add an element of security. This is one of the things that my colleague from Ottawa Centre proposed. I have been in apartment buildings where I have seen the cards loose around a bank of mailboxes.

There is also universal enumeration. There is no substitute for door to door enumeration. The permanent voters list is a flawed document. An army used to be dispatched, sometimes of retired people, sometimes of people from the local legion, to knock on every door to clean up that voters list before an election. That practice should never have been stopped, in my view, especially in transient areas with high turnover, such as the inner cities we represent.

Also, my colleague from Ottawa Centre made the point for allowing people who are not on the voters list the ability to swear in with a statutory declaration, with the voters having to swear in at the polling station verifying who they are. This is reasonable. This has been used in the past. We do not believe it was subject to wanton abuse, as was implied by the Conservative Party members I have heard speaking. We think this is a reasonable consideration.

If the goal is to have more people voting, we should be putting in place measures that will facilitate it. If one is satisfied with the status quo or even can live with fewer people voting, then Bill C-31 is the answer.

It seems to me that we are coming at this the wrong way. The biggest problem we have, like my colleague from Western Arctic says, is the poor voter turnout, not this notion that there is widespread electoral fraud, because there is no evidence to back that up.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to enter into the debate on Bill C-31. I would like to bring the perspective of the good people of Winnipeg Centre into this debate and I will try to accurately portray the views that I am getting from the area that I represent.

Let me say at the outset that we believe this new election law will be bad for voters and bad for the voters in the riding that I represent in a disproportionate way perhaps because it is, and I say this with no sense of pride, the poorest riding in Canada.

Low income people will be disproportionately disadvantaged by the provisions of this law, mark my words. I will make this point today, but I think we will be hearing a lot more about it in subsequent charter challenges. I say that without any hesitation or fear of contradiction. This will be challenged as a Charter of Rights and Freedoms issue.

Let me remind members of Parliament here today that section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms says:

Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.

This is a fundamental basic right and freedom that we established in this country. Persons wiser than I have said that the highest duty bestowed on anyone is that of a citizen in a democracy, and key and integral to that is the right and duty to participate fully in that democracy. That means exercising one's franchise to vote.

My colleague, the hon. member for Ottawa Centre, in his remarks in the House of Commons dealing with Bill C-31, quoted Alfred E. Smith, a former governor of New York, a famous populist and champion of child labour issues, et cetera. His famous quote was, “All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy”. There is no such thing as too much democracy.

Some of us are concerned that perhaps democracy was just a moment in history and in time. There are those of us who believe democracy is the highest achievement of civilization, but it is constantly at risk and under threat. If we are not vigilant and absolutely determined that we will embrace, enhance, protect, develop, promote, and strengthen democracy with everything we do, then it starts to slide. It cannot remain static. It is either improving or deteriorating. I argue without exaggeration that I believe the moves taken within Bill C-31 are detrimental and deleterious to the state of democracy in this country.

Speakers before me have made the point that requiring voter ID, the stringent new rules contemplated by Bill C-31, will have the predictable consequence and effect of less people voting. I would argue that if there is any one single problem with our election system today, poor voter turnout is the biggest problem we have. It is the failure to participate.

Roughly 60% of registered voters went to the polls in the last federal election. That is bad enough. But only about 50% of all eligible voters cast a ballot in the last federal election. If we treasure and value democracy above all else, we should find those figures very troubling.

The new changes contemplated by Bill C-31 will result in fewer people voting and ironically, or perhaps not ironically, and cruelly, the very people who need representation the most will be the most affected by these new rules. They will be disenfranchised and will not be exercising their right to vote.

I heard my colleague, the hon. member for Vancouver East, make some very passionate remarks in the House. I think I can safely argue that no one that I know in the House of Commons or anywhere else in this country makes a greater effort to encourage low income people to exercise their right to vote than the member for Vancouver East. Registration tables were set up in the Vancouver lower east side, some of the most devastated neighbourhoods and postal codes in the country. There was an effort to reach out and encourage people who were otherwise marginalized to participate and vote.

The member sounded the alarm that this bill will have a disastrous effect on the work that she does and will result in fewer people voting.

That is only one part of the bill that we are critical of today, the idea of the much more stringent rules about voter ID. That in itself would be enough to say that the NDP would not support this bill, but there is a second element to it that I find equally troubling.

I am our party's critic for ethics, privacy and access to information and serve as the vice-chair of the committee of the same name. From a privacy point of view in this era of identity theft and increased heightened concerns about the protection of the privacy of one's personal information, how could the government even consider putting the date of birth on the permanent voters list? It boggles the mind. It runs so contrary to everything we are doing, hearing and studying at the privacy committee. It is almost as if the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing in the government. It is sounding the alarm at committee that Canadians have never been so vulnerable to having their personal identity and privacy compromised and used in ways that the information was never intended to be used.

One's date of birth could be considered as one's individual pin number. That is the identifier. When we phone some place to get information about our accounts, the person at the other end will check by saying, “What is your date of birth so I can confirm you are who you say you are”. That is the identifier we use. It is the identifier crooks use too. If they have someone's name, address, phone number and date of birth, it is a recipe for identity theft. They have themselves a credit card under that person's name probably without much difficulty.

We cannot keep that information secure if it is put on a permanent voters list. I think I had 350 volunteers working on my election campaign. During an election campaign we cannot control everyone who does some volunteer phoning or some door knocking. It is not unusual to tear off a sheet of the voters list and tell someone, “Contact these 50 people and ask them to vote for our party”. This stuff will be circulated widely. It will not be controlled.

Our PIPEDA legislation mandates that anyone holding personal information must go through stringent security and privacy measures. Then on the other hand, again it is the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, the government in a cavalier way will spread all over the countryside one's name, address, phone number and date of birth on one convenient database. It is a recipe for disaster in terms of breaching one's privacy and allowing identity theft to take place. It is appalling.

In committee we are currently studying PIPEDA. Ironically, in this chamber the government is giving away the personal privacy protection of ordinary Canadians and in another room in the same building the privacy committee is seized of the issue of PIPEDA trying to enforce ever more stringent rules on the private sector so it will not divulge that information to anyone for our protection. Within the same building under the same roof we have these two competing dynamics going on: one striving to protect Canadians' privacy; the other cavalierly tossing it around the country. This ain't no beach party. This is not funny. It is not a joke.

I cannot believe we are even having this debate. I cannot believe the Liberals and the Bloc are in favour of this. We know where the idea came from, this date of birth business. Bloc members and PQ members in Quebec like to send birthday cards to voters. That is just crazy. If we are going to compromise the privacy and the personal information of every Canadian just so MPs can send birthday cards to try to endear themselves to their voters, we are really being flippant with the interests of Canadians. We are not putting the best interest of Canadians first and foremost, if that is the rationale. I do not know how they got away with it.

I do not know what the vote was like at the committee but I assume only one party voted against this idea at the committee. I think it was the NDP. I may be corrected; perhaps in the questions and comments period someone might want to correct me.

Then we heard from the Liberal Party. A university professor who teaches constitutional law, the member of Parliament for Vancouver Quadra, made a very good speech full of good facts and figures of all the things to be careful about. He raised the caution of the voter ID situation. He raised the caution about the date of birth. Then his party is going to vote in favour of it. I do not understand it. I do not accept that more thorough and comprehensive enumeration will protect the interests of either one of those issues.

I will say there is important work that needs to be done in the Canada Elections Act. I wish we were having a serious debate about cleaning up some of the atrocities that I have witnessed in election campaigns.

One of the favourite tricks of the Liberal Party of Canada is to clear out senior citizens homes, especially in Chinatown in the area I represent, and then at the polling station, as each individual senior gets off the bus, the seniors are handed a piece of paper with the name of the Liberal candidate and a big X beside it. That is illegal. The Liberals think illegal is a sick bird. They do not really have any concept of right and wrong. I have maintained this before. However, if investigations were to take place on the Canada Elections Act, I would love to see that addressed, because where I come from it is illegal.

As far as actual voter fraud goes, we were kind of led to believe that this act is necessary because of the preponderance of voter fraud. In fact, all we can go by is the actual experience. In the 2006 election campaign, one person was charged and convicted of voter fraud. It was a person who voted even though he was not yet a Canadian citizen. He voted for all three parties or something and got 30 days' community service. In the previous election in 2004, there were no cases; not a single person was charged or convicted of voter fraud. In the 2000 election, there were three individuals convicted of voter fraud.

Where is the experience? Where is the empirical evidence that voter fraud is so rampant that we have to take these heavy-handed measures and risk disenfranchising many--I will not say thousands and I will not say millions--possibly disenfranchising a lot of low income people who do not have the economic stability to provide the right kind of ID?

Where do we get off jeopardizing the personal privacy rights of every voter in the country by putting their DOB on the voters list based on that kind of flimsy evidence? If we could have pointed to a thousand cases, I still would have argued that would not warrant the heavy-handed measures of Bill C-31, but the Conservatives can only point to four cases in the last three federal elections.

We know there is funny business going on, but it is not voter fraud. It is not the permanent voters list. It is not people misrepresenting themselves.

The Conservative members have said that it is going on like crazy, that it is going on all over the place, but we just never catch the people. That is not good enough. That kind of reasoning is not justification for changing the legislation. We need hard facts, and the hard facts are that there were four cases in the last three elections out of 24 million votes cast. Mercy. Statistically insignificant would be the way scientists would phrase that percentage. I cannot even figure out how many decimal points of 1% that would be.

I do not agree with Bill C-31. I fundamentally disagree with it.

The one thing I wanted the government to do was clean up the loans issue, if we are to deal with elections at all. Somehow the government left a loophole we could drive a Brinks truck through, or maybe a Mazda, in terms of loans as opposed to donations.

In Bill C-2, the federal accountability act, we severely limited the amount of money that individuals can donate to an election campaign, and we completely banned any union and corporate donations, which was the right thing to do. Get big money out of politics. Nobody should be able to buy an election in this country. However, we left a big loophole where we can lend a candidate any amount of money or we can lend ourselves any amount of money and never pay it back. How is that different from big money buying influence in Canadian politics? Frankly it is a bit of a no-brainer, because if the loan is not paid back, Elections Canada deems it to be a donation in 18 months.

What they did in one famous case on the Liberal side is that 24 hours before that 18 months was up, they took out another loan and paid off the first loan with the second loan, so now another 18 months would go by. Who is ever going to police whether those guys ever pay off their leadership loans in conjunction with the rules? I believe it will be lost in the sands of time and we will have been made fools of, because we will have knowingly and willingly watched those people violate the spirit and the letter of the election financing laws.

If we were going to address any shortcoming or inconsistency in our Canada Elections Act, election financing should have been addressed, especially if we are going into a federal election. Every well-off MP, or any MP that has a big financial backer or corporate sponsor now knows that Elections Canada is completely feckless, completely unable to police, to stop or to do anything about these massive loans.

When is a loan not a loan? If one never pays it back, it is a donation, right? That is the only conclusion I can come to. There are guys lending themselves a quarter of a million dollars. No one person is allowed to donate a quarter of a million dollars to any election campaign, even their own, but they are allowed to lend it to themselves. I cannot do that. Ordinary Canadians cannot do that. The whole idea was to level the playing field so that nobody had a disproportionate competitive advantage because of who they knew or what corporate backer they had or if their daddy was rich. That was the whole idea. Well, that is out the window now. It is making a mockery of the election financing laws.

Our time in the House of Commons would have been better spent trying to get that fixed before the next federal election campaign, because it is going to snowball now. Every Tom, Dick and Harry who has no conscience is going to take advantage of that loophole. Those of us who have morals and ethics I would hope might have a contributing factor in stopping people from doing that, but others who have a paucity of ethics and morality will take advantage of that loophole, and it is perfectly legal, apparently. Elections Canada cannot do anything about it.

The new requirements for voter ID will add further barriers to voting for marginalized people, for low income people, and will seriously undermine the right to vote. I think we are going to see a charter challenge.

I want to acknowledge the work that my colleague from Ottawa Centre has done on both of these issues, the voter ID issue and the amendments that he sought to put in place on Bill C-31, which we debated last week. The amendments made it to the floor of the House of Commons and then they were summarily dispatched to the trash heap of history, but it was a noble effort and he tried his best, given the limited cards he was dealt to do the honourable thing and the right thing with this.

I want to acknowledge my colleague from Western Arctic too, who has been a champion on this issue, because in the northern regions and in first nations communities, the idea of addresses and photo ID is a big problem. There are no street addresses on a lot of first nations reserves and people do not have photo IDs.

I know that this is a matter that my colleague from Ottawa Centre has brought to the Privacy Commissioner. I hope the Privacy Commissioner sees things the way we do. I hope that we can look forward to a favourable ruling from the Privacy Commissioner that will say that the government is wrong, that it is putting the right to privacy and the personal information of Canadians at risk when it has a permanent voters list with names, addresses, dates of birth and phone numbers on it. It is just folly.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, be read the third time and passed, and of the motion that this question be now put.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, regarding Bill C-31 which I will speak to eventually, I did not have the luxury of hearing my colleague speak because of his self-inflicted censorship. He knows that the committee heard witness statements from people who represent the homeless, aboriginal people and students. They were very concerned with what was being put forward in this bill, that a voter would have to find a person to vouch for the voter if the voter was not able to present photo identification or two pieces of identification that was recognized as legitimate by the government. In the present system a person can vouch for a voter by identifying who the voter is and that would be fine. As the member knows, the bill restricts it and only one person on the voters list in that particular riding and poll is able to do that.

The member knows from the testimony that witnesses were asked specifically about what effect this would have on the homeless who move around quite frequently and do not have proper identification. I asked if people would lose their ability to vote in the circumstances as presented. In other words, a homeless person who has to have someone vouch for him or her would not have that benefit because the person vouching for the homeless person may be an advocate who might be on the voters list but does not live in the riding in question. There would be a barrier to homeless people being able to vote.

The member was in committee and heard the testimony of those who advocate for the homeless, aboriginal people and students. Does the member not understand that the witnesses highlighted this barrier and said we should not do that? If the member believes them and not me, then why is he supporting this bill and why is he not supporting the amendments I put forward for a statutory declaration? In other words, do we not trust Canadians? Are we so big brother and paternalistic in this place that we decide what is good for them? I am curious as to what the member thinks about that.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me begin by restructuring my arguments in the right sort of way.

I want to begin by dealing with the very last comment the hon. member for Vancouver Island North made regarding aboriginal people and concerns about the identification they would be able to use at the polls. This issue came up in committee and I felt it was dealt with very effectively. It was in a spirit of multi-partisan cooperation that we dealt with this.

The committee amended the bill as it is before the House. It was actually a Liberal proposal submitted to committee. I spoke to it and we adopted the proposal dealing with identification.

Under the provisions of Bill C-31, we need to have either one piece of identification with our photograph, name and address in order to vote, or we need two pieces of identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer. I am reading from the bill, “each of which establish the elector’s name and at least one of which establishes the elector’s address”.

This was an amendment I had proposed going from two pieces of ID with an address and name to just one with an address. It ensures that a number of commonly used pieces of identification that do not have the address but that have a very high degree of certainty such as passports, bus passes, student cards, and items that are out there in great number and not likely to be fraudulently produced because the issuing authorities have very strong incentives for reasons of their own to prevent people from coming up with fraudulent bus passes, for example.

This allows a wider range of people to vote, particularly those with a lower income and who do not have drivers licenses or students who move frequently and therefore unlikely to have identification with their address.

The amendment that had been moved by one of the Liberal members on committee says:

--a document issued by the Government of Canada that certifies that a person is registered as an Indian under the Indian Act constitutes an authorized piece of identification.

This would be one of those two pieces of identification required to be produced at the polls.

A special effort was made to ensure that aboriginal people who have some particular difficulties, given the fact that many of them live on reserve and do not have some of the ID other people would often have such as passports, bus passes, student cards, or driver's licences, would still be able to have an ID and go to the polls to vote.

I have a great deal that I would like to talk about, but I am going to have difficulty doing it in the allowed time. Therefore, pursuant to Standing Order 26.(1), I move:

That the House continue to sit beyond the ordinary hour of daily adjournment for the purpose of considering Bill C-31.

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

The member asked why, and that is a good question. Why would political parties need access to a voter's date of birth?

The member for Ottawa Centre felt that providing birthdate information was a contravention of privacy. The member for Ottawa Centre wrote a letter to Jennifer Stoddart, the Privacy Commissioner, expressing the concerns of the NDP around this.

In part, there is some feeling that providing voter ID to political parties is actually more about politics than protecting the integrity of our electoral system. There has certainly been some suggestion that this will allow political parties to target voters for campaigning and fundraising. Surely the integrity of our electoral system should not be used for such crass political purposes.

The New Democrats have been very concerned about making sure that the integrity of the system is protected. The member for Ottawa Centre put some concrete amendments forward in order to ensure that integrity.

With me today, I have three that he raised. He talked about making sure that all voter cards are sent in envelopes addressed to the voter, so that if the person no longer resides at the address, the card would actually be returned to Elections Canada and not just left lying around for an occupant of the residence to pick up.

In addition, he has requested that there be a universal enumeration system so there is an accurate voters list. Any political party who has had to deal with the current voters list knows that the voters list is inaccurate. There are duplicates. People who have passed away years before are still on the voters list despite all the efforts of their families and loved ones to have them removed from the list. I would argue that universal enumeration would help us address some of those concerns. It would provide a much more accurate list at the polling stations, one that people could rely on with some degree of comfort.

As well, and this is a really important point, the member for Ottawa Centre has suggested that people who are not on the voters list should have the ability to be sworn in with a statutory declaration, with a voter at the polling station verifying who they are. There is some provision in the current legislation to allow a person to vouch for another individual, but the person can only do it once. I would argue that in some cases such as homeless shelters, for example, some of the workers in those shelters have known some of the residents who come in nightly to stay out of the cold for quite some time and could vouch for a number of people.

In regard to some neighbourhoods, such as the Vancouver east side, I know that the member for Vancouver East has spoken about the fact that there is a system set up for statutory declarations so that people who often do not have government ID of any sort do have the right to exercise their vote. In a society in which we are talking about how we want an equal society, we must make sure that all members of our society have access to the right and privilege of voting.

One of the concerns that has been raised in the House is around first nations and their ability to access their right to vote. Although I agree that the status card is one of the tools that is recognized as government ID, what concerns me is that there is a new status card being developed. There is not a date at this point in time about when that new status card will be available. A release by the Assembly of First Nations talked about this in the context of land crossings, but said:

The “roll-out” of the new secure status card--still in the design and approval process--will occur later this year.

That means later in 2007. The release stated:

It is anticipated that the new secure status card would be available for use in time for the implementation of the requirement for trans-border documents for land crossings as of January 1, 2008.

The question at this point in time is this. If we should end up in a federal election in the next couple of months, and I know that many members in the House hope it will not be so, the question is, will the old status cards be accepted while the new ones are being developed? That is an important question that needs to be answered for first nations people.

It is unfortunate in terms of amending the Canada Elections Act that we also did not look at this as an opportunity for broader electoral reform. Many Canadians over a number of years have expressed concerns around, for example, the lack of representation of women in the House.

The member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca talked about having some discomfort with quota systems. A couple of years ago at the United Nations, the Inter-Parliamentary Union had some presentations on countries where there has been some success around increasing women's participation in the electoral process. What they found was that the remedy was complicated. Unfortunately, we do not have time in the House today to talk about what would be a good system around improving women's participation in the electoral process.

The presenters at the Inter-Parliamentary Union suggested that one actually needed a broad cross-section of remedies, including quotas. They found that in countries where quotas were put in place, legislated in conjunction with education and some financial supports, these countries did a far better job of increasing women's participation in the electoral process. I would agree with the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca that numbers in and of themselves are not sufficient.

In the early 1990s, Sweden was quite dismayed at the dropping rate of participation of women in parliament, so the Social Democratic Party instituted a policy of its own party. Although it does not translate well into English, its slogan was, “Every other one is a lady”. The party ran a campaign committed to electing more women. Fifty per cent of the ridings were held by women. As a result, that initiative by the Social Democratic Party shamed the other parties into running more women candidates.

We could certainly use that in the House, given the fact that only 20% of the House is made up of women. Although the New Democratic Party has close to 50%, with 41% of our caucus women, other parties have not done nearly as well.

I think it is very important to ensure balanced representation in the House.

To go back to the topic of Sweden, it managed to increase women's participation to approximately 43%. A couple of years ago, a survey done of the members of the House discovered that although women were participating in greater numbers, there were still many systemic barriers to women's full participation.

Parliamentarians were shocked. With 43% of women participating, they thought everything was going to be fixed. What they discovered was that there was still sexism and there were still inappropriate remarks, and women were still not getting some of the higher profile assignments. The Swedish parliament has struck a committee to address some of those concerns. I look forward to the report that will come out to see what measures they have put in place to ensure that their House has true equality and moves beyond just the numbers.

There is another area with this particular piece of legislation amending the Canada Elections Act where we have missed an opportunity to look again at some other broader electoral reform.

A couple of years back, the former member for Ottawa Centre, Ed Broadbent, put together a paper called “Cleaning up Politics: Demanding Changes in Ethics and Accountability”. I am not going to focus on the whole seven point plan, although I would welcome the opportunity to do that.

There were two key pieces in this plan. One was democratic accountability for MPs and the other was electoral reform.

I would suggest that there is a growing cynicism in this country around the fact that one can be elected for one party and a mere two weeks later end up representing another party without one's constituents having any say whatsoever.

Ed Broadbent, the former member for Ottawa Centre, talked about this, saying:

Democratic accountability should mean no MP can ignore his/her voters and wheel and deal for personal gain: MPs should not be permitted to ignore their voters' wishes,change parties, cross the floor, and become a member of another party without first resigning their seats and running in a by-election.

Wherever we can, we must put an end to backroom opportunism in politics. In particular, we must ensure that MPs who are voted in as members of one political party no longer have the right to ignore those parties and those voters who put them there in the first place. MPs should not be permitted to ignore their voters' wishes by changing parties, crossing the floor, and becoming a member of the cabinet without first resigning their seat and running in a by-election. We must combat cynicism by making better rules. Public trust cannot be written off for personal gain.

I know that this House has great respect for the former member for Ottawa Centre. Because he has served in the House for a number of years, he certainly has seen the winds of change and I am sure that he can only speak from a place of great disappointment at the floor crossing that has happened over this last couple of years.

In addition, the former member for Ottawa Centre, Ed Broadbent, was also a big proponent of electoral reform and talked about the fact that we have missed the opportunity to institute meaningful electoral reform. He talked about a couple of things. Again I will quote from the paper that he helped to author. He said:

A major source of needed democratic reform is our outmoded first-past-the-post electoral system. There is a serious imbalance in the House of Commons in gender, ethnic, ideological and regional voting preferences. Our present system does not reflect Canadians voters' intentions. Fairness means we need a mixed electoral system that combines individual constituency-based MPs with proportional representation. Most other commonwealth countries have already moved in this direction.

A major source of needed democratic reform is our outmoded, first-past-the-post electoral system. In Canada every vote should matter. Ninety per cent of the world's democracies, including Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland and Wales have abandoned or significantly modified the pre-democratic British system that still prevails in Ottawa. As the Canadian Law Commission recommended and five provinces seem to agree, fairness means we need a mixed electoral system that combines individual constituency-based MPs with proportional representation. The global evidence is clear: only such a system would positively redress the existing imbalance in the House of Commons in gender, ethnic, ideological and regional voting preferences.

The Pepin-Robarts Commission pointed out a quarter of a century ago, our present system does a great disservice to Canadian unity because regional representation in the House of Commons--in the caucuses and in the cabinet--does not reflect Canadian voters' intentions.

I am going to go back in history a little bit here and continue to read for members what he stated:

Recently a Standing Committee of the House of Commons voted unanimously on a motion presented by Ed Broadbent that called for a concurrent, two-track process to begin by October 1, 2005, with a joint session mid-way through the process in November. According to the Committee's proposal, the citizen consultation process would have concluded its work, and publicly released its report by January 30, 2006. This report would then have been taken into account by the Special Committee in the development of its final report and recommendations on Canada's democratic and electoral systems. It would table its recommendations in the House on or by February 28, 2006.

Regrettably, on September 20th, [2005], the Minister responsible...announced that the consultation process on electoral reform would not begin as promised this year. This cynicism effectively means that there will be no decision on electoral reform before the next election.

We can see that there was in fact no decision on electoral reform, so I would urge all members of the House to support the motion that the member for Vancouver Island North will be bringing forward, calling on the House to examine a system of electoral reform, proportional representation, that would have us make sure that every vote in Canada counts.

It is an important matter. I hope all members will support the motion from the member for Vancouver Island North and defeat Bill C-31.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is with some sadness that I am getting up to speak to Bill C-31, a piece of legislation that would amend the Canada Elections Act.

I highly value our democratic system, as I am sure all parliamentarians do. What we really need to be doing in our democracy is encouraging people to vote. It is important that we look for ways to ensure the integrity of our system so that our voting system is not breached. We also need to look for ways to encourage voter turnout.

I have a couple of issues that I want to specifically address today.

The rationale behind this legislation has been around alleged voter fraud. The Chief Electoral Officer has said that there have been very few incidents. It almost feels like we are using a sledgehammer to kill a gnat. I would argue that what we really need to do with this particular piece of legislation is look for the places where there have been breaches and develop fixes for those breaches. Instead, what we are potentially doing is disenfranchising voters.

Over the last number of elections we have seen a decrease in voter turnout. In the last election, voter turnout was somewhere in the low 60% range. That should be a true warning bell for each and every one of us here because one party could form a majority with 30% of the vote. If we do the math on that, a party with 35% of 60% could form a majority.This should be a major concern for us.

The bill that is before the House has failed to look for ways to encourage voter turnout. Instead, what I fear is that some of the things in it may actually discourage people.

There are a number of individuals who, for many good reasons, lack proper identification. This may be due to poverty, illness, disability, frequent moves or having no stable address because they are homeless. These people may not have an opportunity to exercise their democratic right.

This week my caucus colleague from Timmins--James Bay talked about a letter he received from a senior who does not drive and has never driven. She does not have government issued ID in the form of a driver's licence. She was very concerned about whether her ability to vote would be impinged upon.

In addition, one of the things that we look to is a lack of intrusion in our lives by governments. I want to quote from some work that my colleague from Ottawa Centre has done. He has done some very good work in raising concerns about this legislation. He said, “Ordinary Canadians feel a sense of vulnerability because of a lack of protection over their identity by governments and institutions”.

It may come as a surprise to many that Parliament is about to pass Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, a bill that would make the average citizen's privacy even more vulnerable. The intent of the bill is to crack down on potential voter fraud. While this is an admirable goal, the bill misses the point and provides ill-measured remedies. Voters will be shocked to learn that in the next federal election every citizen's birthdate will be on the voter's list. Why? Presumably, it is so returning officers can use this information to verify if the voters are indeed who they say they are.

The bill would require all voters to provide government issued photo identification, in addition to a special identifier that would be given to each voter. If that is not enough of a peek into Canadians' privacy, an amendment was passed to share birthdate information with political parties.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-31, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act. The summary of the bill states:

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.

We support the changes to the Canada Elections Act that protect against the likelihood of voter fraud and misrepresentation. All of us who have been involved in vying for a position as an elected representative would like to ensure that those citizens who vote are able to vote honestly. All citizens want to ensure that their vote counts and also that the voting process is not subject to fraud.

Many countries of the world do not have that luxury. Many countries in fact do not have an electoral process like ours. I have said it before and I will say it again that it speaks to the excellence of the team at Elections Canada that Elections Canada is world renowned. Elections Canada not only ensures that in Canada we are able to have elections that are free, fair and above board but it also exports that level of expertise abroad. I do not think that most Canadians are aware that the team at Elections Canada is able to do this. Elections Canada does it because being able to have free and fair elections is a hallmark of a country's being able to acquire stability.

For example, this has happened in the former Yugoslavia, in the Congo and in a number of other countries in Africa. In particular, when South Africa moved out of the dark days of apartheid and into the rainbow nation it is today, it was able to do that in some small part with the help of Canada, Canadians and Elections Canada. It was a very proud moment for those of us who have had dealings with the country of South Africa that we were able to see the country metamorphose out of the dark days of apartheid into a new era where people are treated equally.

During the time of the election in the early 1990s there was great fear within the country of South Africa and elsewhere that the country would implode in a bloodbath, but it did not happen for many reasons. One small reason it did not happen is that Elections Canada was involved in the elections that were taking place. Why was Elections Canada asked to participate? Because the men and women who serve in that area are people of excellence and are above reproach. They are public servants who do an unbelievable job for all of us here and abroad.

It is quite tragic that the head of Elections Canada, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, a person who served the public for more than 16 years in that post, if my memory serves me correctly, has left that post. We do not know why he left, but I will say that losing a superb public servant like him is a loss to Elections Canada, a loss to Canada and a loss to the international community. Thankfully, within days of Mr. Kingsley's leaving that post, he found another job in Washington, one that enables him to use his expertise and his skills to deal with elections all over the world. This is another fine example of a Canadian who is able to use his or her expertise in the service of many.

Unfortunately, we have lost other superb public servants since the government came on board. Mr. Peter Harder, the deputy minister of Foreign Affairs, comes to mind. He is leaving his post. If memory serves me correctly, he has served in the public service for some 29 years. He served as deputy minister of various departments. He acquitted himself with excellence and served many different governments, both Conservative and Liberal. He did this in the best interest of the country and the departments in which he worked. It is a huge loss. The reasons, I am sure, are personal, but it is unfortunate that we are seeing this egress of individuals from our public service.

Unfortunately, the power has shifted quite significantly to the Prime Minister's Office in a way that we have not seen, certainly not in my memory, and I have been here 13 years. Even those who have served longer cannot remember a situation where so much power was centred in the hands of the few in the PMO, people who, with the exception of the Prime Minister, are unelected and unaccountable to the public.

It is a divide among not only the Prime Minister, his office, his caucus and his cabinet, but between bureaucrats and public servants who serve all governments with honour, regardless of political stripe. By not listening to the public servants in our bureaucracy, the Prime Minister is treading on very thin ice. He is also ignoring a great deal of expertise within the bureaucracy that could serve him well.

I happen to be involved in foreign affairs. It is deeply disappointing to see the way in which the Department of Foreign Affairs has been excluded from the creation of foreign policy within our country. This is an unwise move. There are a lot of very smart people in foreign affairs with a great deal of experience. Foreign affairs is not something that a person could simply pick up in a matter of months. It is a deficit of the government and we see many examples of it.

For example, in Afghanistan the government is quite appropriately supporting our troops, as we all do, and supporting the military aspect as well. However, the Prime Minister is ignoring the political solutions to Afghanistan, which are required to resolve the challenge there. If we are to deal with the insurgency within Afghanistan in the future, it has to be done through political solution, for example, by dealing with the opium crop.

Why has the Prime Minister not called Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair and asked them to stop the poppy crop eradication program? By not doing that and allowing that process to continue, it is putting the lives of our troops at grave risk. Farmers have said that if we eradicate the poppies on their farms, they cannot feed their families or themselves. As a result of that, they are going to join the Taliban, taking up arms against the group that is destroying their poppy crops. While our troops are not involved, Afghan people do not differentiate between groups in their country. In other words, they will not differentiate between Americans, Brits, Canadians, Dutch and others.

It is a very grave situation taking place right now. I implore the Prime Minister to call President Bush and Prime Minister Blair and ask them to stop the poppy eradication because it is putting the lives of their troops and our troops at greater risk.

It would be smart to listen to the public service and divert the opium crop into the development of pharmaceutical grade narcotics. One of the great challenges within developing countries is the absence of much needed essential medications, including narcotics. Imagine a people needing surgery or other medical help, such as repairing a broken arm. They would go through that without pain relief. It is inconceivable in our country, but the fact remains there is an 80% deficit of narcotics in developing countries.

Why do we not think about taking that opium crop, diverting it into the production of pharmaceutical grade narcotics, because opium is a substrate, then taking that material and producing medications that can then be sold and distributed to developing countries? This would be sensible and it would benefit farmers and Afghanistan by having a value added industry that is legal and safe. It would also undercut the financial underpinnings that are propping up the Taliban.

The second question is this. Why does the government not listen to our public service on the issue of the insurgency? We cannot win an insurgency, particularly one that has its bases outside of the country. In this case the Taliban's bases are in Pakistan. Therefore, there is no hope whatsoever of defeating an insurgency through military means when the people we are fighting flee across the border and disappear from Afghanistan.

The only solution to that is to deal with it politically. One solution could be the development of a regional working group on Afghanistan, which would involve the countries of Indian, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and others. They are all playing a game within that country while our troops are there. Unless all those countries are involved, we will never be able to resolve the internal and complex dynamic within the country.

I know the government recently, and I think wisely, put more money into the Afghan national police. However, why do we not ask our NATO partners to also do the same. They have been reticent and have not come up to the plate to support our troops, but one thing they can do is put money and resources to train the Afghan national police.

When our troops go in and take out the Taliban, there has to be a constabulary force that comes in behind them, which is able to provide security, but that is not there. The Afghan national police are seen to be as much of a problem on the ground as the Taliban. The country needs an effective Afghan national police force, and that is not happening. Police officers are paid $70 a month, they have two weeks of training and they are ill-equipped. What do they do? They become part of the problem and they engage in thuggish behaviour.

How do we stop that? We have to put in the resources. I implore the Minister of Foreign Affairs to say to his counterparts in NATO that this is something that would be palatable to the domestic constituencies within the countries that make up NATO for them to contribute finances, resources and personnel to address this issue.

Third, in dealing with the internal dynamic within Afghanistan, the government continues to talk about the Taliban today, as if it was the same Taliban as in 2001. It is not. The Taliban of 2007 is amalgam of different groups. We need to draw some of those groups away from the Taliban and allow them to become a part of the decision making process in the future of their country.

The government needs to call on Mr. Karzai to call a loya jirga, which would bring in those disaffected groups together, those that excluded from the Bonn agreement, bring them back to the table and include them in the future of their country. By doing so, we will have a situation where these groups will move from the Taliban and become a part of the future of Afghanistan. This would weaken the Taliban quite effectively.

Lastly, this ties into the opium situation. We have to follow the money with respect to opium. There are people in Mr. Karzai's government who are roundly seen as being very corrupt. While we are giving the government a lot of money, it is not trickling down to the people who need it the most, those on the ground. We need to spend an awful lot more resources to provide for the basic needs of the people to allow them to help themselves. By following the money, some of that is going to be tracked to Mr. Karzai's government, and those people have to be prosecuted.

Mr. Karzai is in a place where he has a bayonet in his chest and a bayonet in his back. He cannot do this by himself. He is going to need the partners, of which we are one, to assist him in ensuring that his government can have the transparency and accountability and that moneys that go into Mr. Karzai's government are put toward the basics such as primary health care, primary education, water security, food security, corruption and governance.

Also important is how we measure this. One particular parameter is maternal mortality, which is something we need to look at carefully. The maternal mortality statistics are astronomical. In fact, I believe they are the worst in the world. The chance of a woman dying in pregnancy in Afghanistan is 300 times greater than in Canada.

If we want to find out how social programs in a country are working, particularly in the area of the health of the people, we look at this. If the maternal mortality figures are down, it means health care personnel, medications, diagnostics and a rudimentary surgical system that is clean and effective are available. We then we know it will affect all the other parameters, such as infant mortality. We know we will be able to affect the lives of men and women. It also means there is adequate nutrition and clean water.

If we want to measure the effectiveness of how we have done in Afghanistan, the maternal mortality statistics within that country is very a sensitive indicators. Right now that indicator is the worst in the world. The indicator has to shake Canadians up. We have do a better job. It means devoting those resources not into single silo issues such as particular disease silos, but to developing an integrated health care system. This applies not only for Afghanistan, but for other countries as well.

One of the mistakes we make is we pour money into malaria, or AIDS or a number of other diseases such as tuberculosis. While this is important, a smarter way to do this would be to work on building integrated health care systems to ensure that we have the health care personnel, the diagnostics, the medications, clean water, the nutrition, the personnel and also the surgical sites and clinics, which are clean and effective and reasonably well equipped.

If we silo the medications and our health care initiatives internationally, we will not have the long term effect that we need to establish an integrated health care system for developing countries. This is exceptionally important. One of our flaws is we do not deal with the health care system as an integrated system. We do not produce a long term, stable health care system that can function on its own for a prolonged period of time.

It is a challenge. I ask the minister responsible for CIDA to contact her excellent public servants in CIDA and to work with them so that Canada is a leader, with other partners, in doing this. It is important for Canada to work in Afghanistan and in other areas.

On Darfur, which is be utterly excluded by the government, I plea to the ministers responsible to act now. The Prime Minister said “never again”. The Prime Minister said that he would not allow genocide and gross human rights abuses to occur on his watch. They are occurring now.

The atrocities of genocide and human rights abuses are not only occurring in Darfur, but in Chad and the Central African Republic. If any member has seen the movie Blood Diamond, there are some horrific scenes in it. While it is only Hollywood, it gives us some indication of the type of terror that people endure such as gang rapes, their limbs are chopped off and there is torture in ways that we cannot imagine. That is happening right now and it is happening on our watch.

God help us if five years down the line someone writes a book Shake Hands with the Devil, part two, about our failure to deal with the genocide in Darfur, Chad and the Central African Republic.

This is entirely preventable. Why on earth do we not call on other countries and work with them to send in the troops, which are required right now, to support the African Union to save the lives on the ground? We must do it now. If we fail to do this, we are simply condoning genocide. Innocent people are dying, being tortured and raped unnecessarily.

The crisis can be dealt with. Khartoum will block our efforts. This is the longest serving genocidal regime in the world. The issue before us is do we listen to Khartoum, which does not want this to end, or do we act even if this regime does not like it? I submit that we should act, get the troops on the ground, get them in now and save lives.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Ottawa Centre is right. I have participated in a number of elections over the years. I have participated not only as a candidate but as a campaign manager for other candidates. I have a fair amount of experience in Canada's elections.

Clearly, the people who would be most vulnerable to losing their vote if the provisions of Bill C-31 are not amended are those who are most vulnerable in our society. It will be the people who are disabled, the people who are sick, the people who live in poverty. It will be women who are in shelters for battered women. It will be the homeless. They are the people who will be disenfranchised under this legislation unless changes are made to it.

I urge the government to make those changes to ensure that all in society have a fair opportunity to cast their ballots.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to address Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

I would like to commend my colleague from Ottawa Centre for the wonderful job he has done in dealing with the bill and for pointing out some of the concerns that the New Democratic Party has with respect to the bill.

Canadians are becoming increasingly concerned about their own privacy. They are concerned that their names may now end up on a no fly list or banks may refuse to remit money to them because of their country of origin. They are also concerned about cyber criminals hacking into their credit card and debit card information.

Identity theft is an increasing concern. Organized crime is involved in identity theft. Police services across the country are warning us about identity theft. They are urging us to take great precautions around our own privacy information so that we do not become victims of identity theft.

Ordinary Canadians also feel a sense of vulnerability because of a lack of protection by the government of their private information. It is really shocking that the House of Commons is now being presented with a bill that would make the privacy of average citizens even more vulnerable to theft.

The intent of the bill is to crack down on potential voter fraud, a goal that all Canadians can support. The New Democratic Party wants to ensure there are no opportunities for voter fraud. While this is an admirable goal, the bill misses the point. It really puts forward a set of problematic remedies.

Voters will be shocked to learn that in the next federal election their dates of birth will be printed on the voters list. Why is that? Presumably the best interpretation is that returning officers will be able to use this information to verify if the voters are indeed who they say they are. The bill would require all voters to provide government issued photo identification in addition to a special identifier that would be given to each voter. We really question the necessity of birth date information being on the voters list.

If that provision is not bad enough, the Bloc put forward an amendment at committee which was passed with the support of the Liberals. The amendment would allow birth date information to be shared with all political parties. Why would that be? Political parties do not need to know the birth dates of their neighbours. My colleague the member for Ottawa Centre opposed this amendment at committee for obvious privacy reasons.

When political parties are dealing with voters lists, that information is shared with scrutineers who work for each political party. There would be no protection against the information getting into public hands and perhaps even into the hands of criminals involved in identity theft.

The real reason for political parties to have this information has nothing to do with voter verification. The Liberals who supported the Bloc amendment and the Conservatives who are now supporting it at third reading simply want as much information as they can possibly get so they can target demographic groups during election campaigns. I am convinced they will also use this information for fundraising purposes. This is the kind of information that people in direct sales or marketing would be delighted to get their hands on.

It is appalling that those three political parties would be pushing for political parties to have that kind of personal data on people. If they really cared about potential voter fraud, they would not devise a system that is in effect an identity theft kit for would-be criminals, now sponsored by the government putting out that information.

If they were really serious about amending the Canada Elections Act to help prevent voter fraud, instead of exposing people's private information they would have taken into account the measures that my colleague from Ottawa Centre has put forward. Those measures include making sure that all voter cards are sent in envelopes addressed to the voters. In that way, if the person no longer resides at the address, the card would be returned to Elections Canada and not left at the address for someone else to pick up and use in some kind of fraudulent manner.

They would also have universal enumeration, the way we used to do it in Canada, so that an accurate voters list would be in place and not open to fraud. They would allow people who are not on the voters list to swear a statutory declaration on election day at the polling station so that the polling station employees could verify the identify of the voter. This has been done in the past and it has worked well. I do not understand why it has been taken out of Bill C-31.

The people who are most vulnerable to lose their opportunity to vote, to be disenfranchised, are the most vulnerable people in our society. They are women who may be in a shelter for battered women who do not have a fixed address to register at, or they may be homeless people who are also residing in a shelter, or people who have moved. It will be the disabled, the people who are ill who will lose their opportunity to vote. That is a very serious thing.

This may result in the bill going to the courts because of these issues and also because of the privacy issues.

I am sure that all Canadians will be distraught when they find out about the changes that are put forward in this bill and how they will actually impact vulnerable people on voting day, and also the issue of privacy.

I urge the government to consider changes to this bill that will make it a bill that all Canadians can support and so that Canadians do not have to worry about the privacy issues.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, be read the third time and passed, and of the motion that this question be now put.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my speech, I have been through eight elections. During my first election, I must admit that I was a little naive and I did not believe that fraud existed. If I had looked at the Chief Electoral Officer's reports and they indicated there had been one or two cases, then I could have said I was right. But since 1982, in the last eight elections, in which I have taken part, I have seen for myself that, unfortunately, a lot of people have tried to abuse the system.

What matters is that the people who have the right to vote can vote and those who do not have the right to vote cannot. With more specific pieces of identification, we will ensure that people have the right to vote. After that, we want to ensure that the people who do not have the right to vote, do not vote. There is no point in thinking that fraud does not exist, because it does.

The hon. member from the NDP who asked this question has probably been in the House of Commons longer than I have. He said earlier that he obtained and read information indicating that there is practically no fraud. Fraud statistics are based on the number of charges that have been laid. Therein lies the problem.

When the deputy returning officer was not able to ask for identification and someone claimed to be Joe Blow, it was difficult to know whether that person was telling the truth or not. Sometimes, the deputy returning officer or the clerk knew this was not true because Joe Blow was their neighbour. However, not much could be done about it.

I believe that Bill C-31 will prevent people who do not have the right to vote from voting and will allow those who do have that right to go ahead and vote. As the Conservative Party representative was saying, those who have the right to vote have a small responsibility to ensure they are on the list. Protecting the integrity and accuracy of an electoral list and the integrity of an electoral system to defend democracy is a shared responsibility.

Quebec has been using the date of birth for a long time. As far as I know, the problems related to the date of birth appearing on the electoral lists were few and far between, even fewer than the cases of fraud the hon. member from the NDP was talking about.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today on Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, especially since I have run in eight elections. These elections touched me personally, because I was a candidate. I have to say that I have seen just about everything since I first ran for election in 1982. At that time, attempts at electoral fraud had already declined, but not disappeared completely, and they are still a problem today.

We must therefore protect the integrity of the electoral system and make sure that all the information on our lists of electors is accurate. We also have to make sure that everyone who is entitled to vote does vote and that everyone who is not entitled to vote does not.

But something strange is happening, and it underscores how important it is that only those who have the right to vote actually do so. Curiously, election results in the various ridings are becoming closer and closer. It is therefore especially valuable to have an accurate list and a sound system, because that can make all the difference in the end. Ultimately, when the differences are added up, a minority government could become a majority government. We must therefore make sure our electoral system is above reproach.

Obviously, the Bloc Québécois is in favour of this bill. The political parties worked together extremely well in committee. For once, the government apparently listened to the opposition parties, in contrast to what is happening on many other issues, such as law and order, the Kyoto protocol and even the gun registry. It has to be said that the party in power does not listen very well.

In this case, there was good cooperation and, as a result, the bill will reduce the opportunity for fraud or error, improve the accuracy of the register of electors, facilitate voting and improve communications between election officials, candidates, parties and the electorate.

Following the general election in June 2004, the Chief Electoral Officer released a report entitled “Completing the Cycle of Electoral Reforms”. It was tabled here in the House, but we did not have time to examine or approve the report before the election was called on November 29, 2005. It was presented, however, after the January 2006 election, in June. The committee then looked closely at this bill, analyzed it and made recommendations. We are now ready to move forward and we hope to see this piece of legislation enacted in time for the next election.

Given the timeframes that must be respected, the election will not be held too early this year, which means we can implement all the points presented in this bill.

Should we force an election anyway, considering the values placed on certain points that the opposition parties do not accept? Or should we wait for this bill to become law and come into force, to ensure that the next election is held under the provisions of the new legislation?

In any case, this bill clearly contains significant improvements. The Bloc is particularly proud to have made a number of gains with respect to this bill, such as the date of birth, the unique identification number, as well as the so-called “bingo cards” on election day, which serve to identify those individuals who have gone to vote and therefore encourage people to get out to vote. Getting people out to vote is an important part of it.

Lately, voter turnout has been declining with every election. In municipal, provincial, Quebec and federal elections, we have been seeing a downward trend in voter participation.

Some political parties have access to good lists of electors to ensure follow-up and encourage voters to cast their ballot. These tools are also critical on voting day to track voting and support better turnout. This is democracy in action, playing by the rules. I would like to review the proposed rules that will reduce the opportunity for fraud or error.

Voters must present government-issued identification. The best example of this is a driver's licence with the holder's photograph, signature, and other information that appears on the list of electors, such as an address.

We can be certain that the address is correct because if a person moves, he or she must inform the government so that his or her new address appears on the licence. This piece of identification is proof that the voter is legitimate.

Some people may not have photo identification. In such cases, they must provide two other pieces of acceptable identification. The Chief Electoral Officer is responsible for determining what constitutes acceptable identification.

There may also be some people who do not have two pieces of identification. Earlier, someone mentioned homeless people. Most of them are Canadian citizens, so they do have the right to vote. We must make it possible for them to vote. A person who has no identification can still vote if someone else can vouch for them in an affidavit. If that happens, that person can vote.

That said, the act provides that an elector who has been vouched for at an election may not vouch for another elector at that election. That could set off a major chain of events and could lead to electoral fraud if one of the individuals involved had dishonest intentions.

In addition to ensuring that people can be correctly identified, we must ensure the accuracy of the list of electors to verify that these people are eligible to vote. That is why clause 4 of the act states that:

The Register of Electors must also contain, for each elector, a unique, randomly generated identifier that is assigned by the Chief Electoral Officer.

There are a number of advantages to assigning unique permanent identification numbers.

Duplications do occur. We must be able to spot them and ensure that the eligible individuals are registered. Those who should not be registered should be deleted from the register of electors.

The identifying information required by the Act includes the date of birth, mailing address, civic address, as well as sex. Often, individuals may provide all this information in a particular order that may not necessarily be used in other circumstances. Linking lists may sometimes generate errors.

The use of a unique identifier would eliminate a fair share of potential errors.

In terms of the register of electors, when we complete our income tax returns, there is a small box to be checked if we want the information to be forwarded to the Chief Electoral Officer so that it is available. It is a fairly reliable data base because the taxpayer has contributed the information. It does happen that an individual who is not a Canadian citizen—and thus does not have the right to vote—prepares a tax return and checks off this small box. Their name is added to the register of electors. Thus, it was also suggested that a declaration of citizenship be included on the annual tax return as well. This would solve several problems and ensure that only the personal information of voters eligible to vote is used to update the register.

Tax returns are also filed for deceased persons. Unfortunately there are a fair number every year. We could also use the information included in the return filed for the deceased individual to ensure that their names are removed from the voters list.

For federal elections, the Quebec electoral list is used in Quebec, because of the completeness and accuracy of the information, which is updated regularly. The list also contains the new voters who have just turned 18, who are added regularly.

Once the eligible voters have been identified, and the ineligible ones eliminated, the voting process must be facilitated, to ensure that the highest possible number of people can easily access the polling station. For example, persons with reduced mobility who report to a polling station that is impossible to access can ask for a transfer. This transfer can now take place almost immediately and that individual can go to vote at another location.

In any case, we must ensure that returning officers in the various ridings do not overlook accessibility issues at the polling stations, which must be as large and fully equipped as possible, even though transfers are a possibility. After all, it is the responsibility of the returning officer to ensure that all sites can handle situations involving reduced accessibility.

Another purpose of the bill is to improve communications between electoral officials, candidates, parties and the electors. There are various aspects that enhance communication and facilitate access to the lists of electors. As I was saying earlier, the purpose of this is to “get out the vote” as much as possible and as honestly as possible. The bill also provides for additional operational improvements that will make the system increasingly effective and ensure its integrity and accuracy.

The Bloc Québécois is very proud of other aspects that are not included in Bill C-31. I am talking about the appointment by the Chief Electoral Officer of returning officers. History and experience show the truly different situations that have come up at times and that have been quite odd, not to say crooked. From now on, people will no longer necessarily be selected based on their political stripe, but will be appointed by the Chief Electoral Officer. Thus, those who seem best qualified will be appointed to the position.

Furthermore, there will of course be fixed date elections. Unfortunately, this will not be the case the next time around; I am sure the next election will not be held in October 2009, since the current government is a minority government. Nonetheless, we will now be prepared for it, especially with the tools available in Bill C-31. Future elections will be held with as much integrity and accuracy as possible.

In closing, seconded by the hon. member for Drummond, I move:

That this question be now put.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Secretary of State and Chief Government Whip]

Mr. Speaker, as always, I certainly appreciate the comments by my colleague from Vancouver Quadra, a member of the official opposition who, like myself, sits on the procedure and House affairs committee where this bill ultimately came from. As he said, we have had a lot of discussion there and certainly the whole area that he branched off into, the whole area of future electoral reform, and ultimately that is our intent.

In fact, we presented a motion recently, which was defeated, but the member for Vancouver Quadra was the only opposition member who supported our motion to have the procedure and House affairs committee look more in-depth at additional reforms that we could consider over and above Bill C-31, and some of the companion legislation that we have presently over in the Senate.

The only part of his remarks that I would take some particular exception to is that the election of 2006 was unnecessary. I think Canadians certainly did not share that opinion because they dramatically changed the makeup of this place and opted to replace his party with the new Conservative government.

However, be that as it may, he did actually touch upon, both at the beginning of his remarks and at the end of his remarks, a primary concern that has been expressed both at procedure and House affairs and in this House.

When we started down this process that ultimately led to Bill C-31, certainly my thoughts at procedure and House affairs were that we had unanimity among all four parties. We wanted to ensure the integrity of our electoral system, both for the advantages that present here in Canada, but also to uphold the image of Canada as a bastion of democracy worldwide.

He pointed to his own experiences in Nicaragua. Many members from all parties have participated as observers in electoral processes worldwide, monitoring elections in some of the world's poorest countries. I certainly applaud the efforts of the member and others who have done that, but it does point to the need to ensure the highest possible standards for Canada's democracy, for how we go through elections here.

I am very disappointed in the fearmongering of the New Democratic Party subsequent to our decision to move ahead with legislation like Bill C-31. Somehow it is trying to communicate to Canadians that there are going to be thousands of Canadian citizens who are going to disenfranchised by this legislation. I do not hold that point of view and I do not think the member does either.

As he quite correctly said, there are a number of steps that can be made, not the least of which would be targeted door-to-door enumeration in those areas to ensure that people are on the list and to ensure the list is as accurate as possible.

My question is the one that I hold near and dear. I do believe that there are some responsibilities that should be placed on citizens, that it is not entirely the responsibility of government to ensure that they are on a voters list, and that it is not entirely the responsibility of the government or Elections Canada to ensure that they have the opportunity to vote.

Yes, we have a collective responsibility, but I believe the citizens themselves have a responsibility to ensure that they can be properly identified as residing in a particular riding and thus they are eligible to vote in a particular part of the country, and that indeed they are Canadian citizens.

I think that comes home as we travel around the world. The hon. member referred to the great extents to which other citizens of other countries will go to ensure they have the opportunity to vote. Yet somehow we seem to reverse the onus here in Canada and think it is the responsibility of Elections Canada or the government, or members of Parliament from all parties, to ensure that every single Canadian actually somehow gets out to vote. There are responsibilities on the part of citizens themselves.

I would just ask for the member to comment, specifically if he feels comfortable with the assurances that we have had from the Chief Electoral Officer and from Elections Canada that it is certainly not our intent, nor the intent of members present, to see people disenfranchised and not have the opportunity to vote if they are actually qualified to vote.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we are at third reading of this important bill now and I would like to begin by recounting how we have come to this place.

The recommendations for amendments to the Canada Elections Act emanate from the report of the Chief Electoral Officer following the January 2006 election. That is normal, of course, as he reports on the activities of elections and points out any failings or any improvements that may be made in the election process.

He produced that report and of course we went on to consider it in committee. The committee report went to the government and this bill is the answer, which falls very much in line with both the Chief Electoral Officer's report and the report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to the government. This will bring into force, for the most part, the recommended amendments from the Chief Electoral Officer.

The notion of the integrity of our elections is absolutely critical to our democracy, just as it is anywhere else in the world. It is interesting that Canadians are asked to monitor and help establish electoral commissions and the rules and procedures for elections in many newly democratizing countries.

In just the last few years, in the Ukraine there was major Canada Corps participation. Canadian teams of electoral monitors and advisers have been involved in the Palestinian authority and in Afghanistan. There was a team of Canadian officials in Bangladesh preparing for the election that should have taken place last month but has been delayed because of disruptions in that country.

The point is that we are seen as a country that has a sound electoral system. We must, as our first responsibility to our democratic condition, ensure that this integrity continues and is improved wherever it can be. The amendments to this act mainly deal with the identification of the voter.

I had the privilege of going with a Canadian team in 1990 to Nicaragua to monitor an extremely contentious election. Members might recall that it was a time when the Nicaraguans were in the middle of the civil war with the Contra rebels. It was a very dangerous time, yet the Sandinista government was submitting itself to free and fair elections, which is the standard we use.

I recall being up in the Honduran-Nicaraguan mountains in the northwest of the country checking out small voting stations, one a broken down old schoolhouse in the mountains, where there were literally hundreds of people lined up in the very hot sun. Many had walked for many hours to be able to exercise their right to vote.

There was one very poignant moment. One woman had walked for two hours, lined up for two hours, got to the front of the line, and did not have proper identification. She was heading back, another four hours both ways, to her village to get her voter card. That was the importance she placed on going through that electoral process. It also reflected the seriousness with which the Nicaraguan electoral commission, under the direction, guidance or advice of Canadian officials, was taking the integrity of the process.

When we have an international standard that we are often asked to advise on and monitor, the question is this: is an election free and fair? Of course free means the right of all adult citizens to vote in an election, but fair means that it has integrity, that there are no opportunities to stuff ballot boxes or for people to disguise their identities and vote improperly. That integrity is absolutely critical if we are going to ask our citizens to come forward and put their trust in the electoral and democratic system. Therefore, free and fair is an immensely important point.

We know that in the U.S. presidential elections in 2000 confusion was caused in Florida when voting machines were found not to be operating properly. There were irregularities. That cast a pall over the election, which I think many Americans to this day have not recovered from in terms of the feeling of unfairness that the vote may well have gone the other way had there not been those irregularities.

Let us look at the process under Bill C-31. It is not perfect. It probably never will be, but it is a reasonable advance in ensuring the integrity of that vote. For instance, there are improvements for access for the disabled. There are more convenient locations for the advance polls.

The access of candidates and officials to gated communities is clarified. The candidates' access to malls, privately owned public spaces, has been clarified. This is immensely important for any of us who have been candidates. Increasingly we are not going to meet people by knocking on doors but by going to malls, so this is important.

Also, there is an increased effort with the outreach provisions to get electoral officials to people unable to get to the polls.

I think these are immensely important improvements in that we must make sure our citizens have adequate access, but we must be vigilant against any irregularities.

What we have done in the committee, both in receiving the Chief Electoral Officer's report and considering it ourselves and in considering the government's response in Bill C-31, is to turn our attention to whether we were putting barriers in the way for people. They may be in remote communities, in aboriginal villages or in the inner cities. They may be living in shelters or they may be homeless. I think that all members of the committee from all parties were very seriously attending to the question. How can we ensure to the greatest extent possible, without risking the integrity of the system, that these people have access to vote? I think this was probably the toughest situation that all of us had to face.

We charged the Chief Electoral Officer to do a number of things. One was to ensure that areas of low enumeration and low participation were identified and targeted with extra resources to attempt to ensure access to identification and the voting process.

In regard to remote aboriginal villages, we heard evidence of people having difficulty providing adequate identification, so we also charged the Chief Electoral Officer to, first of all, recognize the aboriginal status card, which has a picture on it. It does not always have the address, but that card would be one of the recognized pieces of identification, as well as a letter from the band manager if the address was not on it, confirming that person's residence in that reserve area or wherever the person might live.

Those are reasonable attempts to deal with this tension between freedom and security: security in the system and freedom to vote. It is immensely important that we not drop our bar of the integrity of the system below that which we expect, advise on and monitor in other countries during their electoral processes.

We have an extremely important role. We have heard evidence from representatives of student groups and from people who work in the downtown east side of Vancouver, for instance, where the homeless or people in shelters have difficulty getting the adequate identification to secure their vote. The way we deal with the balance between integrity and freedom is not by lowering the bar so low that it could be open to abuse and therefore to lowering our citizens' belief in the integrity of the system. If they do not believe in it, they are not going to use it, and voting rates are going to continue to plummet.

We are concerned. I think we should express our concerns not by dropping our standards, but rather by redoubling our efforts through our electoral commission and the Chief Electoral Officer to get to those areas, to get to those people where there is evidence of low participation.

More broadly, as we talk about the Elections Act in this country we must attend to the issue of electoral reform, and we are in some parts of the country, in some provinces. We simply cannot continue to have dropping participation rates and fractured minority governments that do not properly represent the majority of the people in this country.

We must have some reform that will not do away with out constituency-based, first past the post system, but that at least will apply some adequate level of participation and proportionality so that the number of seats in the House represents in some better proportion than it does now the percentage of the vote achieved.

We have had some good experience with that, both in this country and abroad. In 2004, in the throne speech of the former Liberal government, with the encouragement of the NDP, I must say, we put forth the objective of studying electoral reform. A special committee of the House was to look into this. It was one of the processes that was cut short by the unnecessary election, if I may say so, of January 2006.

However, there we are and here we are, and what are we going to do about it? I would suggest that we charge the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs with this as the appropriate venue and place for this to be considered very carefully.

The government, through the Prime Minister, announced two or three weeks ago that in fact there was going to be a communication, a consultation, with Canadians over issues of electoral reform, Senate reform, decorum in this House, which is a very important issue, and public engagement. That is a bit curious, because for most of those topics, except for electoral reform, although that was started and stopped, the government has already put bills forward. It seems to me to be a bit backward to start a consultation process after bills on parliamentary reform have already been presented to the House.

Be that as it may, let us look at the quality of what was suggested. A $900,000 tender is being put out to a polling firm and an as yet unknown think tank to hold, across the country, a few consultations that are being called deliberative. Something can be called deliberative without it being anything close to deliberative if there is not the proper information brought forward, if there is not the time taken to advise people and have them well informed on the issues, the options and the different models, and then have a true conversation and a set of recommendations.

This is happening now in the province of Ontario with its citizens' assembly, which is very much patterned after the citizens' assembly process in British Columbia and which before the last B.C. election identified an alternative form of electoral process. That assembly process was deliberative. It went for about a year and a half. It was a widely representative group of about 178 people.

In fact, at the same time as the last election, the referendum was held on whether we would stay with the first past the post system or move to this new electoral forum recommended by the citizens' assembly, a single transferable vote system.that is quite complicated. Of the people voting in that election, 58% voted in favour of that change from our current system. The threshold was set at 60%, which is very high, but when we think that there was 58% represented, that is a very, very significant desire for change, certainly by a majority of the people.

We are watching that. It will come forward again for a vote in a referendum at the next B.C. provincial election in three years, so we will see where that goes. We also will see where Ontario goes.

Federally, quite apart from having polling companies and think tanks do some kind of quick, superficial testing of the atmosphere across the country, we want to look at it in an extremely in-depth way with a lot of consultation. Let me advise the House that in fact that process to a great extent has already happened.

The Law Commission of Canada in 2004 published a massive study. The Law Commission legislation charges that independent public commission to look into whether the laws of Canada properly conform to the social reality and the needs of the people. The Law Commission probably carried out one of the most in-depth research jobs, first of all, on voting systems in other democratic countries compared to Canada, and also looked at the different models that were going forward. It recommended on balance that we add an element of proportionality, not to do away with our current system but to add an element of proportionality to it. I commend this report to all members of the House. It is on the Law Commission of Canada website.

I commend all members of Parliament to do it quickly because as they may recall, the government, in its fall economic update, announced that it would basically eliminate the budget for the Law Commission of Canada, so it may lose its website as of April 1. Canadians may have less of an opportunity to see that fine work, that reasoning, that research, and the consultation which the commission is charged by its statute to undergo. It is extremely thoughtful and that is the way we should go forward.

There is nothing wrong with polling. There is nothing wrong with some deliberative discussions across the country with a think tank, but the place where these issues should be decided and studied, and where the consultation with Canadians should take place is through the House and the members of the House and, in particular, either a special committee or the procedure and House affairs committee of the House because that is our responsibility.

Second, we should be looking to the statutorily independent expert Law Commission of Canada for the fine work it has done and build on it, rather than simply ignore it.

Those are my remarks. I am speaking in favour of the bill at third reading, but I must conclude by reinforcing the observation of the committee that there are pockets of citizens in this country who do not have easy access. They face barriers in being able to exercise their right to vote and those include often aboriginal communities, but remote communities and people, often homeless, in inner cities.

We must redouble our efforts, through our electoral commission and Chief Electoral Office to ensure that those areas are targeted and the right to vote is brought to those people in an as accessible and effective way as possible.

The House resumed from February 12 consideration of the motion that Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, be read the third time and passed.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, today we will continue the debate on the Liberal opposition motion.

Tomorrow we will resume debate on Bill C-31, the voter integrity bill, with Bill C-35, the bail reform bill as backup.

Monday we will call Bill C-31, elections, if it is not completed tomorrow; Bill C-44, human rights; Bill C-11, transport; Bill C-33, technical income tax; Bill S-2, hazardous materials; and the statutory order. We have an ambitious agenda there.

Tuesday, February 20, and Thursday, February 22, will be allotted to the business of supply.

On Wednesday we will continue with the business outlined on Monday.

Next Friday, I will consider beginning the debate on Bill C-45, An Act respecting the sustainable development of Canada's seacoast and inland fisheries.

With respect to the debate on the statutory order regarding the Anti-terrorism Act, if an agreement on debate is not reached before February 28, certain provisions of the Anti-terrorism Act will sunset. It is the government's view that all members should be given the opportunity to decide the fate of these provisions because they involve the safety of people they represent.

Recent events have made us aware that the terrorist threats continue to specifically target Canada, but if the terms of the law are not extended by March 1, the protections that we have in place right now will cease to apply.

If an agreement can be reached, I am prepared to call the motion sooner and sit as long as necessary on that day to bring the debate to a conclusion.

Canada Elections Act

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

It is only 66 words long, Mr. Speaker, that is all, but the Liberal-dominated Senate continues to delay and obstruct something that their own leader claims to support. Despite the fact that the leader of the Liberal Party, the hon. member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, advocates fixed terms for senators, his Liberal colleagues in the other place just will not listen to him. He just cannot get it done.

I hope this bill will not meet the same fate, because it of course also enjoys the support of the opposition here in the House of Commons. I hope opposition members will be able to persuade their Senate colleagues to support it as well.

Before I turn to the benefits of this bill, I do want to express my thanks and gratitude to the member for Niagara Falls, the Minister of Justice. It is because of his work as the former government House leader and minister for democratic reform that we now are in a position to advance this very important bill.

On January 4, the Prime Minister reaffirmed our government's commitment to make our country's institutions more democratic and more accountable. Bill C-31 is just one of the government's very robust democratic reform agenda items. It is an agenda based on bringing accountability and integrity to the institutions and processes of government.

We have successfully passed the federal Accountability Act. Oddly, it was another bill that was held up for almost a year in the process, but we finally got it through. That bill brought about important changes to political financing to eliminate big money from our electoral system.

As I indicated, we have passed Bill C-16 on fixed election dates through the House of Commons. Never again will the government of the day be able to play around with the date of an election for its own crass political motives.

We also have introduced Bill S-4 to limit senator's terms to eight years. It is a concept endorsed by the Leader of the Opposition. We would like to see it become law. We would even like to debate it in this House. That has not happened yet, but we would like it to come out of the Senate so we can consider it.

I fully encourage the Leader of the Opposition to stand up and use the full force of his leadership. I know how strong that full force of leadership has been. As is evident from indications in the past few weeks, it is not that strong, but I would encourage him to muster all the strength he has to get it through and out of the Senate and to tell his colleagues to follow his lead. We would be happy to deal with it.

We of course have also introduced Bill C-43, which is a bill to consult Canadians on who they would like to see representing them in the Senate. Right now, of course, terms can be as long as 45 years, and those people can be appointed by the Prime Minister without any consultation. They have been in the past, which is perhaps why we have a Liberal-dominated Senate that will not allow the will of the House of Commons and Canadians to prevail.

We would like to have an opportunity to ask Canadians who they would like representing them in the Senate. That is another one of our objectives. That of course would reform our system and Parliament in a more democratic and more accountable way. Everyone knows that our parliamentary institutions are the foundation of our democracy and, as such, they must be democratic. We have a responsibility to ensure they continue to operate well for the benefit of Canadians.

With this in mind, as the current Minister for Democratic Reform I feel privileged to rise to speak on this bill today.

Bill C-31 makes a number of operational improvements to the electoral process and the Canada Elections Act. It is aimed at improving the integrity of our elections. It implements almost all of the recommendations of the 13th report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, a report which was agreed to unanimously by committee members from all parties. The same committee reported the bill with some amendments to fine-tune it on December 13.

In short, Bill C-31 is about simple solutions that will yield tangible improvements to the integrity of our electoral system.

Most of these amendments to the Elections Act were originally recommended by the Chief Electoral Officer, who has had on the ground experience in administering elections. All of these legislative changes were endorsed by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, comprised of members of Parliament with real on the ground experience as candidates. A number of the changes may seem small, but collectively they will lead to real results that will improve the integrity of our system.

First, I want to speak about improvements to the national register and list of electors. We have proposed, for instance, amendments that will improve the accuracy of the national register of electors and, by implication, the lists of electors used by each of us during electoral campaigns.

As most will recall, the national register replaced the door-to-door enumeration that used to occur up to 1997. It is from this register that permanent voters' lists, as some of us call it, are generated.

We all know the importance of these lists for engaging our constituents in a campaign and for encouraging them to vote. We have all experienced the challenges that have been faced by Elections Canada in maintaining a database of such a large size in a country growing so rapidly where mobility is so high.

Over the years, Elections Canada has taken strides to improve the quality of the register, but the Chief Electoral Officer has requested more tools to allow for greater improvements and efficiencies. Bill C-31 gives him those tools. For example, we have all seen the box on the front page of the income tax return that allows Canadians to consent to have their name, address and date of birth shared with Elections Canada for inclusion in the register.

Unfortunately, the Chief Electoral Officer has found that a lot of non-citizens who are not entitled to vote are checking the box and making the information less reliable.

Bill C-31 provides the authority to change the question on the income tax form and make it clear that it only applies to Canadian citizens and only they should check it off. This will improve the reliability of the information received, enhance the accuracy of the register and, in turn, improve the quality of the voters' lists. It is a simple change. It will produce real results by ensuring that only eligible voters will have their names placed on the voters' list.

Similarly, Bill C-31 allows income tax returns to be used to inform Elections Canada of deceased electors, so those names can be removed from the register more quickly.

In addition, the bill updates statutory authorities to allow returning officers to update the register and the list of electors, to clarify the ability of the Chief Electoral Officer to exchange information with provincial electoral authorities, and to permit the Chief Electoral Officer to use stable identifiers that will make cross-referencing of information on electors more efficient.

Each of these reforms will contribute to a better, more up-to-date national register and in so doing improve the integrity of the lists.

Another element of this bill would improve the ability to communicate with the electorate, which is of course a fundamental cornerstone of our democratic system. These reforms are designed to allow candidates, parties, election officials and the electorate all to engage in a dialogue. That is what makes democracy work.

Election officials, particularly returning officers, will have access to apartment buildings and gated residential communities to carry out their functions.

It will therefore be easier for them to conduct a targeted revision of the list of electors by going to electors in areas of high mobility and low registration.

It will also be easier for candidates to meet electors because they will have better access to gated communities and areas open to the public, such as malls, to campaign.

Taken together, these reforms will help the electorate become better informed and enable voters to become more familiar with local representatives and the political process.

A third set of reforms in this bill would improve the accessibility of voting by those who are entitled to vote. For instance, many Canadians are using advance polls to cast their votes rather than waiting until polling day. That is critically important if we are to see the turnout increase or at lease reverse the decline in turnout that has been happening until recently.

Bill C-31 will allow greater flexibility to establish more advance polls when circumstances warrant. This is of particular benefit for large ridings and remote areas, where advance polling districts can be very large and hard to access for some residents. This bill will go a long way to improve access for voters and will lead to increased voter turnout across this country.

One of the things that has saddened many of us who care a great deal about democracy is that at the same time as we have seen a decline in community involvement in all kinds of activities, we have seen that decline in the voter rate. That decline in voter participation is a bad thing for our democracy. We want to see Canadians engaged in their process. We think it is important that voter turnout increase.

All of us in the House of Commons have to explore ways in which we can work to improve voter turnout. If allowing more advance polls is one way to do it, as Bill C-31 opens the door to doing, that is something that we should be doing.

I encourage all members of this House to take that step in the right direction to reversing the decline in voter turnout and encouraging more Canadians to vote, encouraging more Canadians to have a real stake in our electoral system and to participate in that way.

On another subject, one of the most significant sets of changes in this bill addresses potential voter fraud. Like all the reforms that I have discussed, these amendments protect the integrity of the electoral process. The fundamental democratic principle of our electoral process is that only those entitled to vote should vote and they must vote only once.

During meetings of the House Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, it was clear that most of the members had heard of times when this principle was violated. Every time that happens, voter confidence in the electoral system and its integrity is shaken and an eligible voter is deprived of the right to vote.

Bill C-31 takes action to reduce the opportunity for voting fraud through a very simple step. It amends the Elections Act requiring Canadians to show identification for voting. Rather than only stating one's name and address, which is all someone has to do right now, a voter will have to provide some kind of proof of their identity and residence before receiving a ballot.

I cannot say how many times voters have come to me and said they could not believe that they were not asked for any identification and that anybody could have voted in their place. I think most of us have probably heard stories of folks who have gone to vote and found out that somebody had already voted claiming to be them. We all hear those stories and they are alarming. This change will put an end to that.

The change applies to people who are already registered to vote and are on the list of electors. I should stress that under the current system those who are not registered to vote must already show identification to register at the polls. We are simply making that requirement a uniform requirement. Simply put, the bill requires individuals to prove who they are and that they are who they say they are before they vote.

The federal voter identification process will be modelled on similar procedures in Canada and in other countries, such as those in Quebec and a growing number of municipalities across the country. It will improve the integrity of the process and reduce opportunities for electoral fraud, which can have an impact on very close election results.

In turn, this reform will, like the other measures I have discussed, enhance the integrity of our system and the confidence of the people in that system. This is what this bill is all about, the integrity of our electoral process, which is something in which we all have a stake.

In closing, as Minister for Democratic Reform, I am excited about this bill because it provides tangible and real results for Canadians. Without a well functioning electoral machinery our democracy will not work. All hon. members will agree that the machinery must be regularly maintained, updated, renewed and modernized, and it is our duty as parliamentarians to do that work.

The progress of Bill C-31 is an ideal example of how that work should be done. The genesis of the bill was a parliamentary committee report that was agreed to by all the members of that committee, including the representatives of the New Democratic Party. The government responded with legislative action. We have worked with the other parties in fine tuning the bill after hearing from a number of witnesses in committee. It is truly a multi-partisan or non-partisan effort designed to improve the integrity from which all of us will benefit.

If our electoral system is held in a higher regard, all of us will be held in a higher regard and to the extent that confidence is lacking, all of us suffer as parliamentarians. That is why I think the spirit in which this has gone forward is a positive one and what this bill does is positive.

I hope that the House will pass this bill quickly so that it can come into force as soon as possible. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the House to join me in supporting Bill C-31.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

moved that Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, be read the third time and passed.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak in favour of Bill C-31. I strongly encourage all hon. members to join me in passing this bill by the House in order that it may come into effect as soon as possible after it is passed by the Senate.

I would hope that senators would not unduly delay passage of this bill, unlike two other bills, Bill S-4 to limit Senate terms, and Bill C-16 to establish fixed dates for elections, both of which have already passed in this House.

I would note that it has now been 258 days since the bill to limit Senate terms to eight years was introduced, 258 days that it has gone without a second reading vote. Every single day it comes up in the Senate, the Liberal-dominated Senate obstructs it by delaying it and voting for adjournment.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, today we will be continuing the debate on the Bloc opposition motion.

Tomorrow we will begin debate on the statutory order concerning the Anti-terrorism Act. That is for the extension of its provisions.

Next week will be justice week, when the government will showcase part of its safer streets agenda, starting on Monday with the continuation of the debate on the Anti-terrorism Act if it is not completed on Friday.

On Tuesday we plan to begin debate on Bill C-35, which deals with bail reform, and on Wednesday we will resume debate on the second reading stage of the dangerous offenders legislation, Bill C-27.

Thursday, February 15 shall be an allotted day.

On Friday it is my intention to call the report stage of Bill C-10 on mandatory minimum penalties, on the assumption that the justice committee can have it to the House by that time.

For each day, we will have the following business scheduled as backup bills: Bill C-31, the voter integrity legislation; Bill C-44, relating to human rights; Bill C-11, on transport; and Bill C-33, the technical income tax act.

I will be working closely with my counterpart in the Senate with respect to progress on Bill S-4 or, as we keep hearing, the lack of progress.

As you know, Mr. Speaker, a strong, effective and responsible government must speak with one voice, whether it be in the Senate or the House of Commons. The fact that the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons and the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate cannot present the same position on Bill S-4 is further evidence that the Liberals are currently not fit to govern. I certainly would like the opportunity for this House to deal with that bill.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Thank you for appearing today, Mr. Corbett. I appreciate that. I have about four questions that I've jotted down here. Maybe you could just make note of them. I'll run through them very quickly and hopefully leave you half of my five minutes, at least, to respond, if that's all right.

The first one has to do with what's included in determining what's in the public interest. If I understood you correctly, you said there were a number of criteria, including the following: do we really need to prosecute; is there reasonable likelihood of success if you suggest the laying of a charge or put it over at least for further investigation as to prosecution; and is it in the public interest?

As part of whether it is in the public interest, do you include any consideration of deterrence? It would seem to me that if the offending person is contrite or remorseful, the terms you used, that's fine for that particular individual, but what about others who might have committed a similar offence? Is there any consideration of deterring them from their activities in the future, if it has not become known but is simply a cautionary letter or something that's sent to that particular individual?

The second thing is that this would have an impact, I would think, on the statistics. This gets into the issue that Mr. Guimond was raising, I think, in the sense of his table or list of the number of offences that are investigated. Statistics can be skewed, and we have a debate right now about Bill C-31, as to whether we really need to address the whole issue of voter fraud right now.

People point to the statistics and say there haven't been very many investigations; there haven't been very many charges laid; there haven't been very many people prosecuted and convicted. Therefore, from that we extrapolate that there is no problem, and yet we continually hear as elected members that there are problems. So is there any consideration that the public interest might also lie in the fact that statistics can be used by people to say, well, the present system is working quite well, thank you very much, so there's no need for any further reform?

My third issue deals with the two instances that you said you investigated and you found no hard evidence—I think is that's the term you used. That was in northern Saskatchewan and Edmonton Centre. Could you give the committee some idea of the amount of time that was invested in those two investigations, the cost that was involved? I guess what I'm trying to find out is just exactly how much was involved in investigating those complaints before you made the determination that you were not going to proceed any further.

My last question, as an appendage to that, is that you didn't mention Trinity—Spadina specifically during your remarks today, yet I think if we were to look at the minutes of our previous meetings, when the CEO was here, he did make a commitment to this committee to have that particular riding looked into, investigated. Could you give us any indication of whether that's still ongoing or where you're at with that particular investigation?

With those four questions, I don't know how much time I've used up. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Canadian Human Rights Act

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-44 today. The NDP will support the bill at second reading and refer it to committee. We do support the intent of the bill, but we do have some grave concerns around a number of aspects of the bill and that is specifically what I am going to be addressing this afternoon.

There are a number of issues that I will be talking about. I will be talking about lack of consultation, resources and process.

There have been many claims that there has been consultation over a number of years and yet, when it actually came to writing the content of the bill, there was no consultation on that particular part.

Part of what has been called consultation is consultation that went back to 1999, for example, in an overall review of the Canadian Human Rights Act and the old Bill C-7, the First Nations Governance Act. Those are some of the mechanisms that have been deemed as consultation.

I would argue that part of the problem that we have before the House right now is the fact that we have a government and previous governments as well that have not defined what consultation has meant. So we continue to bump up against this as a problem.

For first nations, Métis and Inuit people, whether it is this piece of legislation or other pieces of legislation that are developed, this directly impacts on their lives, on their ability to live in their communities, and in their ability to maintain a living. There was no consultation and sometimes the consultation is what I call lip service consultation. They will be called in and provide an opinion, and then the door is closed when the decision making is actually going to happen.

Consultation has been a problem that has been identified by the Auditor General. Supreme courts have ruled that there is a duty to consult, but the Auditor General has identified in one of her reports that there has been very little progress made on the part of the government in defining what consultation means. I would argue that if we are going to define what consultations means, we should actually include first nations, Métis and Inuit people as well.

In the discussion of the repeal of section 67 in Bill C-44 is the fact that every review of section 67 has called for an interpretive clause. Although there have been previous attempts to take a look at an interpretive clause, they have fallen short and actually failed.

In this case, I want to go back to the October 2005 report, “A Matter of Rights” by the Canadian Human Rights Commission which did call for the repeal of section 67 legislation. In the report it states:

--provisions to enable the development, in full consultation with First Nations, of an interpretative provision, which will take into consideration the special rights and interests of First Nations in order to guide the Commission and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in the application of the Canadian Human Rights Act with regard to complaints against First Nations governments and related institutions.

There are two pieces in that. First, is the issue around full consultation which I have already talked about and the long foot dragging that has happened in defining consultation, but second, in the report it specifically called for an interpretive provision. This same report also called for a transitional period between 18 and 30 months to allow for that consultation and the enactment of the proposed interpretive provision.

The bill is dealing specifically with first nations on reserve. We have 633 reserves in Canada and part of the challenge when we are talking about consultation is how do we meaningfully include people. We have seen some of these challenges come up with matrimonial real property in how people are included from coast to coast in consultation.

How do we reach out to those rural and remote communities? How do we ensure there are sufficient resources to make sure that people who are different nations, who have different points of view and different cultural and traditional backgrounds, have a consultative mechanism that actually takes a look at those differences?

Further on in this report it talks about moving forward to repeal the legislation. New Democrats agree there is a need to do that, but many first nations women are concerned that moving too quickly will have unanticipated consequences, much like the aftereffects of Bill C-31. That bill reinstated a woman's status if she married a non-native person, but has had the unintended consequences of what some people are calling legislated extinction. Under subsection 6.1(b) of that particular piece of legislation, there is a provision where people who marry non-native people end up losing their status. I want to say a little more about that.

I want to quote from a press release issued by Quebec Native Women Inc. It states:

If passed into law, Bill C-44 would change the ways in which decisions are made in Aboriginal communities. Human rights protection is an issue that deserves immediate attention, but a solution must be developed that takes into consideration the unique reality of Aboriginal people. Moreover, our customs and traditions must be taken into account, as well as our Aboriginal and treaty rights. “The creation of a structure that respects individual and collective rights of Aboriginal people should also originate from a process that reflects these same principles”, stated QNW president, Ellen Gabriel.

Ellen Gabriel is a well respected woman from Quebec. She has expressed some other concerns about how this particular piece of legislation can also be compared to the unintended consequences in Bill C-31. The press release went on to say:

The experience of Bill C-31 has shown us that well-intended legislation can have serious consequences for our people in the future. In addition, Aboriginal people can no longer accept the unilateral imposition of non-Aboriginal laws, which may be incompatible with our cultural values. Furthermore, research regarding the effects of the legislation should be undertaken before it is passed into law, not five years after when the problems created may be irreversible or are simply ignored. After all, we have understood for some time now the negative impact of Bill C-31, but nothing has been done about it.

It is really interesting to have a Conservative government introduce a piece of legislation that is talking about human rights. Yet, the Conservative government had an opportunity to support the United Nations declaration for indigenous rights. The Conservatives worked hard to ensure that Canadians were not supporting that, the Canadian government was not supporting that declaration. That has signalled to first nations, Métis and Inuit communities that this particular government is not taking human rights seriously in their communities.

Recently, Monday as a matter of fact, we had National Chief Phil Fontaine talk about filing a complaint at the Canadian Human Rights Commission regarding the appalling situation concerning child welfare in this country. Then my colleague from Timmins—James Bay today asked a question about Kachechewan, a community where the children do not even have access to a primary school. Surely schooling is a fundamental human right in this country.

There have been many opportunities for the government to demonstrate its commitment to human rights for first nations, Métis and Inuit people across this country and it has failed to do that. It is a bit hypocritical, I would suggest, to argue that the government's foremost piece of legislation will deal with human rights for first nations people in this country.

Mary Eberts from the Native Women's Association participated in the Department of Justice review on section 67 in the year 2000. She made a number of recommendations around section 67. I want to talk about a couple of those because people have put forward some proposed solutions for how we might deal with section 67. These are solutions that have come from first nations communities. Surely, those are the people who should be actively involved in putting forward those solutions. She said:

To protect traditional Aboriginal rights from the impact of a CHRA without section 67, include in the Act a provision similar to s. 25 of the Charter: the guarantee in this Act of certain rights shall not be construed so as to abrogate or derogate from any Aboriginal, treaty or other right that pertains to Aboriginal peoples in Canada.

She went on to say:

However, it should be recognized that some of Canada's most prominent foes of the rights of Aboriginal women have argued that the right to discriminate against and exclude women is part of the traditional heritage of Aboriginal people.

I might add that there are many people who do not agree with this opinion. This is not a universal point of view.

She states:

This argument is made, for example, by the Sawridge band in its case against Bill C-31, and in its intervention to oppose John Corbière's attack on s. 77 of the Indian Act. Accordingly, any provision drafted pursuant to recommendation 2 should include a safeguard, or rider, to the same effect as ss. 35(4) of the Constitution Act, 1982, that aboriginal and treaty rights are extended equally to men and women.

The [Canadian Human Rights Act] should apply to Band Councils, to their membership codes, and to the actions of the federal Government pursuant to the Indian Act. The Act should also include a standard provision that would make the [Canadian Human Rights Act] applicable to self-government agreements unless and until the measures to protect human rights were put in place pursuant to the agreement.

She also mentions:

--procedural rights, which could be enforced against procedural unfairness in dealing with claims for reinstatement under Bill C-31, and in the ways First Nations deal with reinstatees.

The [Canadian Human Rights Commission] needs to be provided with the funding to make it fully effective as an instrument of human rights enforcement. In the case of Aboriginal people, such funding would allow the Commission to take account of the facts that Aboriginal people live in isolated and remote areas; may not have access to sophisticated communications means; may have literacy and language issues in dealing with the Commission; do not have ready access to legal advice because of their isolation and poverty; live in small communities where reprisals for complaints may be a continuing problem or in urban centres where they may be homeless or transient; and are dealing with organizations...with a record of poor communication, so that access to required documentation may be difficult to obtain.

Ms. Eberts made a number of concrete recommendations that successive governments have failed to implement. The report was written back in 2000, I believe. I also have another section that I want to read for members, around the old Bill C-31, the old bill that reinstated women and has had this unintended consequence. She stated:

The shrinking of the status Indian community as a result of the application of the discriminatory provisions will enable the federal government to shed its responsibilities toward Aboriginal people, since it now recognizes obligations only to those who have status under the Indian Act. Bill C-31 also restricts the life choices of young Aboriginal people whose parents are C-31 reinstatees: to ensure that their children can be registered, they will have to partner with a status Indian. Policies restricting access of Bill C-31 reinstatees to their Bands or Band reserves may make it difficult to make such social connections; in any event, forcing them erects a kind of race segregation that resembles apartheid.

I am sure that nobody in this House wants to see unintended consequences from a piece of legislation that has not had that full consultation with first nations communities. The reason we support getting Bill C-44 to committee is that there must be that opportunity to hear from people who are going to be directly affected by the impact of this bill. It is essential that those voices are heard not only in examining this bill, but in identifying the resources required, in identifying the processes to make sure that we are hearing from people, and in identifying any potential amendments that might be necessary to make sure this bill reflects the needs of people in their communities.

I mentioned funding and resources. There are a couple of other things where we could talk about what might actually address some of the issues around human rights complaints. A number of first nations and reports have identified the fact that first nations are quite capable of developing human rights standards that could be equal to those of the Canadian Human Rights Act, if not better. The other issue is that there is a potential to have an ombudsperson who could work with communities that are identifying some human rights issues in their communities.

One of the things we know, of course, is that there is a financial cost to this, but I would argue that there is a financial cost to not doing it as well. We often do not examine those financial costs of not doing things. In this case, what we know is that if this bill goes ahead as it is, without any additional resources assigned to it, the Canadian Human Rights Commission could face increasing backlogs around dealing with some of these issues.

However, we also know that many band councils are not equipped to deal with the volume of Canadian human rights complaints that could come in. They do not have the resources. They often do not have the capacity. Then there are the challenges with travel, communications strategies and all of those kinds of things. If this bill is to move forward, it is essential that resources are provided to communities.

Mary Eberts and others have actually called for an ombudsperson. This person should be able to interact with communities that often have different language capabilities and that have perhaps some educational awareness issues around what could be included in appropriate mechanisms to deal with section 67.

The Native Women's Association of Canada has also recommended that the Canadian Human Rights Commission establish staff and tribunal panels composed of aboriginal people who not only have a background in human rights but also have a background in traditional dispute resolution mechanisms. That would also make sense.

We are seeing in other fields that there is a call in the criminal justice system for some restorative justice processes. Under the Canadian Human Rights Act, it would seem reasonable that we have some sort of commission or tribunal that could work with communities around their own traditional methods of dealing with complaints.

The other issue that I do not think we have touched on is the fact that the Canadian Human Rights Commission should have a special monitoring function with respect to Canada's compliance with international human rights obligations. I know that unfortunately Canada has been cited on a number of different occasions around violations of human rights in this country, particularly women's rights.

We have seen things like the cuts to legal aid that have impacted on first nations women being able to access legal aid when they have a court case to deal with. There are other issues like that which would seem to make it important to give the Canadian Human Rights Commission the ability to oversee the implementation of Canada's international obligations.

I talked about the short transitional period. The Canadian Human Rights Commission, when it made its recommendations, and we would support it, said that there should be at least an 18 to 30 month period of transition to allow the consultation and the development of the interpretive clause, which would make sure we were meeting the needs of first nations communities.

There are a number of other things that I would like to address, but I know I will run out of time so I will close with a couple of specific points.

I mentioned earlier that this is an opportunity for the Government of Canada to fulfill other obligations around human rights. I want to touch again on the United Nations declaration for indigenous rights. This is a statement of principle that has become a flagship for first nations, Métis and Inuit peoples from coast to coast to coast. Canada could signal its absolute commitment to human rights by supporting that declaration. There will be another opportunity, because it will likely come up again over the next few months.

It would be a statement that would say to first nations, Métis and Inuit peoples across this country that Canada takes human rights seriously and is committed to human rights. If we want to demonstrate that we are prepared to work with first nations, Métis and Inuit peoples across this country on human rights, that we are prepared to engage in discussions on a nation to nation basis and talk about some of the situations on the reserves in this country, this would be one way to show that we are prepared to not only talk the talk but walk the walk. That in itself would go a long way to telling people in this country that Canada truly does have a commitment to human rights.

In conclusion, the NDP will support this bill going to committee for a fuller review, where we would look forward to the kinds of consultation that could have this bill reflect the needs in communities across this country.

Canada Elections Act

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

It being 5:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motion at report stage of Bill C-31.

Call in the members.

The House resumed consideration, from February 5, of Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you.

Bill C-31 talks about voter ID, having to produce two pieces of ID, but it also would change the permanent voters lists. It would now have your name, your address, your phone number, and your date of birth. Now, in election campaigns that I've managed--four of them now--I've had 400 volunteers. And quite often you tear off a page of the voters list and say, “Go phone these 50 people and see if they'll vote for us.” I'm wondering if all of you, as privacy experts, see it as a problem to be spreading the name, address, phone number, and date of birth of every Canadian to virtually anybody who wants it, and if that's not a recipe for identity theft.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to take advantage of some of the experience on the committee to ask a question that's a bit outside the study today. The House of Commons is currently looking at Bill C-31, amendments to the Canada Elections Act. Part of this is requiring more identification for voters when they come to the voting station—

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act. At the outset, if the goal of the bill is to improve democracy in Canada, then that is a laudable goal.

I had the privilege of being an election observer for Canada in the first free elections in South Africa in 1994 and then again in the presidential run-off elections in Ukraine in 2004. It is with enormous pride that Canadians like myself have the opportunity to visit other countries and observe their election procedures with the goal of commenting on their fairness and democratic nature. We do that because Canada in general is known as a country with a good democratic record. Our elections are known as generally fair and democratic. If the goal of the bill is to enhance that, then it is a laudable goal.

However I fear the bill will not achieve that goal because it has some serious flaws. As a result of the identification requirements in the bill, I believe thousands of individuals will be unable to exercise their right to vote because they lack proper identification due to poverty, illness, disability, or no stable address. Homeless people, or those who are temporarily housed, or who stay in a shelter often do not have the identification that reflects their address.

My riding of Parkdale—High Park is an urban riding in the west end of Toronto. We have a large majority of renters as opposed to homeowners. There is a very high turnover in voters in the riding because of the huge number of people coming in and going out of the community. I see it all the time. We have a large number of newcomers to Canada, people who come as refugees or as landed immigrants. They stay and get their citizenship. We know from recent studies that they are disproportionately under-represented on the lists of voters. Unfortunately, we also have a large homeless population in Parkdale--High Park. I see them on the streets in Parkdale and other parts of my riding every day. We also have people with mental health issues, who unfortunately, because of a lack of government support, do not have the kind of care and supportive housing and services they definitely require.

These people do not go around with a big wallet in their back pocket with multiple pieces of ID. Many people in Parkdale struggle to get bus fare let alone photo ID. To say that, as a result of their economic circumstances, or their mental disabilities, or their newcomer status to Canada, they might be denied the opportunity to vote in an election, ought to worry all of us. I believe this will most likely be an outcome of this bill.

I firmly believe we should go back to the system of enumeration. We ought to be going door to door, finding out who is in the ridings across Canada. We ought to be signing them up and telling them what their rights are when it comes to voting. I wish this was in the bill. We tried to get it in the bill, but were not successful. We have abandoned that system in Canada, and I think that is to our detriment. It makes it harder for people to vote, especially people who already have multiple barriers before them.

So many times in an election I will talk to people on a street corner or I will go through an apartment building. For those of us in political life, we may be consumed with political life, but I will knock on people's doors or talk to them on the street and they do not even know there is an election going on. They feel so disenfranchised and powerless to be able to make a difference, and so I encourage them and tell them that they can make a difference, that every vote will count.

The last thing I would want is to have those individuals make the effort to show up to vote, in spite of working two or three part time jobs, family responsibilities, lack of child care or no transportation, and when they get to the voting registration area, they cannot vote because they do not have proper ID. This bill would disenfranchise them in that respect.

I am also concerned about the privacy elements of this bill. I do not know why we would have to have people's birth date information shared with political parties. I have a concern about that and that may well be challenged.

For me, the fundamental issue is about voter disenfranchisement. We know that south of the border, where there are similar bills and laws that have been put forward and passed, they have been challenged because of the disenfranchisement of many people. Quite frankly, it is not those of us in this room who will be disenfranchised by this bill. It is not people who are informed, who have the wherewithal to make sure that they are aware of their rights and opportunities under the law. It is the people who, through no fault of their own, are not engaged in the political process, and yet have that very basic fundamental right to democracy and the right to vote.

I believe that there is a way to achieve the goal of reducing the potential for voter fraud and extending the franchise as broadly as possible to include people who, little by little, have been dropping off the voter lists, but I do not think this bill does it. We should go back to the drawing board and bring in something that makes a better attempt to marry those two goals, but this bill does not do it.

Canada can do better. We are an example to many other parts of the world. This bill does not live up to our reputation as a model of democracy and well run elections.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

Coming from a northern riding in the Northwest Territories, this issue has raised a great deal of concern in my riding. It has been the subject of questions in our legislative assembly and it has raised the ire of northerners in my constituency and, I am sure, every other northern constituency across the country. These types of restrictions on voting, which we would be creating with the requirement for photo identification, would hit hardest among people in small communities across northern Canada, our aboriginal people and older people who live a simple life in many communities across the north and who may not have a driver's licence. They may have a hunting licence but that does not have a photo on it.

Once again we will see legislation that, arguably, might have some place in large urban ridings but which will have a detrimental effect on northern Canadians and Canadians in isolated communities across the country.

Many of the MPs who are from northern ridings and who represent these communities will be voting for this legislation, but I urge them not to. I urge them to stand up for their constituents and for northern Canadians and vote against the bill.

The bill represents more of the intrusive big government that Canadians never wanted and continue not to want. It represents more of the security type of provisions that we are seeing in legislation in Parliament that reflects the paranoia that has increased in our country and in other countries since 9/11. The bill stands against the roots of our democracy and will impact voters.

I have been in many tight election campaigns in my career. I remember the election campaign where the Conservatives won in my riding by one vote over a member of Parliament, Wally Firth. Many ballots were contested because many elders who had voted with clear intent had not put the X in the right spot. They did it the old way.The way one put one's X was changed 1979. People who were illiterate or who did not understand voted the wrong way and the Conservative candidate won and our candidate lost. That could happen in any riding and it could happen in any sequence.

The point is that when we change the way people are accustomed to voting things can happen. What happens when a voter who has voted in elections most of his life walks into a voting station and needs to pull out a photo ID? The person could be a hunter who just came in out of the bush and does not have any photo ID. How does that make him feel about the electoral process?

How do we think that makes people feel about the way that we are conducting business in this country? There needs to be good reasons for changing the way we allow people to exercise their fundamental franchise in this country, their right to vote for us. I truly think this is an intrusion on that.

The types of things in the bill, such as the clause 18, the sharing of birth dates with political parties, I find also quite repugnant. I go back to my grandmother who moved to this country in the early 1920s, escaping the Bolsheviks in Russia. Her whole life she would not tell anybody her birth date. My mother did not even know how old my grandmother was. We did not find out that she was 100 years old until she died and we obtained her birth certificate. She voted all her life and she was an honest, good citizen, but she was not interested in sharing her birth date with anyone.

The thought that we are making people share their birth dates with political parties, which will use it for their own particular purposes, is quite repugnant and should be repugnant to every member of Parliament in this place. We should recognize that Canadian citizens have rights to their own privacy and dignity. We must do everything to maintain those things, regardless of our interest in understanding how we can usurp their thoughts and change the way they think about voting through understanding their age and direction.

The bill deserves a great deal of contempt, and I hope I have expressed that today. I do not want to take any more of the House's time on the bill. I have said my piece and I will leave it to other members to stand on their consciences.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to speak to Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, a very important piece of legislation.

Our democracy is truly the essence of how we define ourselves as a nation and as a people. We all know that the electoral process in Canada needs to be updated. Different provinces and municipalities are looking at Bill C-31.

In general, the New Democratic Party supports the effort behind Bill C-31, but our party cannot support the bill because of a number of specific clauses which we believe will eventually reduce the electoral system in terms of fairness. We believe it will eventually end in a court challenge in that the charter rights of individuals may be exposed in a very vulnerable sense. Hence, the bill could eventually be struck down.

I want to talk about how we can improve the electoral process. Also, I want to speak to the dangers in the bill. The first danger is the bill requires that before voting, an elector provide one piece of government issued photo identification showing the elector's name and address, or two pieces of identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer which show the elector's name and address, or that the elector take an oath and be vouched for by another person.

The problem with that is the simple fact that persons with disabilities, the homeless and other disenfranchised voters may not have that type of ID at the time of voting or they may not be able to produce it at the time of voting and they would not be able to vote. In my constituency there are some individuals who arrive at the voting station and use other documents to prove who they are. Sometimes they produce bills from an established body, for example, Bell Canada, with other ID, such as a birth certificate. However, they may not have the photo ID required under Bill C-31. Individuals who did not have government issued ID would not be eligible to vote, despite being able to prove who they are and that they have resided at a particular address for many of years. Also individuals who have no fixed address could be left out of the system. That is very important to note.

In Windsor West, which I represent, there is a college and a university. Those institutions have individuals who may decide to vote in different electoral districts. Students can choose to vote in their home district or in Windsor West where they are studying, where they have a permanent address, but they may not have the identification required because they do not have it with them or they have not yet reached that point in their lives where they have obtained that type of identification. That is important, because the percentage of voters in Canada is steadily dropping. There are a few peaks once in a while, but the percentage is low in terms of individuals being engaged enough to feel that their vote counts and at the same time are willing to come out to cast their ballot.

Before Bill C-31 is considered, we need a full commitment to go back to the census and the enumeration that was done. There is a potential cost in this. No doubt it takes more resources, but I have seen the benefits even in my own consistency.

When we had the complete count in 2000, I was the chair for Windsor and Essex County. Our municipality was engaged in door to door canvassing to sign up people in the electoral district. I represent a population of great ethnic diversity. There are educational institutions as well. A lot of people move in and out of the district at different points in time. That resulted in low enumeration in the past. We did a complete count. We were one of six communities across the country that actually did door to door canvassing.

That was important because of the language issues. We worked with a series of different not for profit organizations, dedicated groups and individuals, as well as municipal, provincial and federal colleagues to ensure that we were getting the best enumeration process possible. The statistical information for the census is important for the electoral end of things.

The census is also important for funding and for information that we use for a whole variety of social programs and services. It is also important when we are lobbying for some of the changes that are necessary for areas that might require more immigration services or more types of government intervention on issues that are important to Canadians. It also helps seniors, who are being left off the GIS, to get enrolled. The series of net benefits that we get from that investment are very important.

I would argue that a census is one of the first things that needs to be done even before Bill C-31, or in conjunction with it. If we are trying to actually improve the democratic electoral process, a census needs be done to get people out. Bill C-31 is more restrictive in those confines, whereas the census elements are more important to ensuring that the people are being identified.

Another thing that I find interesting about the bill is clause 18. I find clause 18 disturbing in the sense that it would provide a sharing of birthdates with political parties. What would end up happening is that political parties would acquire people's birthdates as part of their return from Elections Canada. I find it completely unacceptable how this amendment got into the bill and why the other three political parties are supporting it. It is a complete invasion of privacy and the bill needs to be dumped on that alone.

We have seen enough in terms of the United States with the patriot act and a series of other scandals involving private corporations that have exposed Canadians' privacy in many different ways. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why and what type of justification there is to provide the age of a voting person to political parties. That is people's private information. What does it matter if an 18 year old, a 40 year old or 60 year old votes?

I can say, from a party perspective, what the party will do. It will identify people who voted on that day. It will then identify who the people are and then their ages. It will be able to target people and individuals for messaging. I believe it is counterproductive to the renewal of democracy.

Why is it that the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Bloc need to have people's private birthdates? I do not understand that. It is not just for that time that they have it. They will have that list in perpetuity so that they will always be able to define people's needs and target them a lot more strongly because they have that private information.

It is rude to just go out and ask somebody their birthday or their age. People do not walk around the street and normally do that. People seem to want to keep that information to themselves. Why would we then have this bill, an instrument to collect that information and put it into the partisan core of politics of those party operatives? I do not understand that. The bill needs to be dumped just for that alone.

The member for Ottawa Centre has done an excellent job proposing solutions to the bill and has tried to get this clause out but was defeated. He then wrote a letter to the privacy commissioner on January 19, 2007, for which we have not had a response yet. The letter reads:

Dear Ms. Stoddart,

Recently the Standing Committee on Procedures and House Affairs amended and passed Bill C-31, An Act to Amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act. In its original form Bill C-31 required elector's birth date information to be made available to Elections Canada to use for the purpose of verification of electors. As a Member of Parliament I have concerns about the possible misuse of this information and believe most Canadians would not support this kind of information being shared with Elections Canada. While I have great confidence in the integrity of Elections Canada and all who are employed by them, I do worry that such a large database with such wide distribution would be vulnerable to potential abuse.

The reason for my correspondence is to alert you to my concern and to inform you of a more disturbing breech of privacy.

An amendment was passed in Committee that would also require Elections Canada to share the birth date information of all registered voters with all registered political parties. I believe that this is an abuse of a citizen's privacy; therefore, I politely request that you investigate the implications of sharing this type of information with Elections Canada and most importantly the implications of sharing this information with political parties.

I look forward to your response.

Thanking you in advance,

Member of Parliament

Ottawa Centre

Once again I must impress upon the public that the bill needs to be defeated on that clause alone. It is something that needs to be taken out. Personal privacy is something we pride ourselves on. For this clause to be added to the bill is a slap in the face of democracy.

The principle of the bill is important in the sense of cleaning up our electoral process but as it is now it would detract from actually encouraging and expanding voter turnout and giving people the opportunity to participate in democracy. For all those reasons we cannot support the bill in its current form.

The House resumed from February 2 consideration of Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

It being 1:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on the order paper.

When Bill C-31 returns to the House, the hon. member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley will have two minutes left for his speech and also five minutes of questions and comments.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

I speak strongly in support of the amendments at report stage put forward by my colleagues from Ottawa Centre and Vancouver East. I thank both of them for their long term work on the issue of full participation in elections in Canada in terms of both democratic reform and fair elections. Both the member for Ottawa Centre and the member for Vancouver East have been long-time and strong advocates for the participation of all Canadians in the electoral process, particularly marginalized Canadians, to ensure they do not lose their franchise in Canada. I know the amendments that they have put forward, which we are debating at this point, have come out of that experience and work.

New Democrats have very serious concerns about the bill. As has been heard over the course of several days of debate on it, we are very concerned about what this does to the electoral process in Canada and how this affects the most marginalized people in our communities. We want to ensure that we have a fair electoral system and one of which we can be proud and in which we have confidence.

There has been constant talk from the government, and from the Liberals and the Bloc, that the bill is about stopping opportunities for voter fraud. It is not about stopping voter fraud. It is about stopping the opportunities for voter fraud, and that is because it is hard to point to exactly where the problem is with the current situation. Where exactly is the problem with the current voting process and with presenting oneself on election day to vote?

The Chief Electoral Officer was asked that question directly at the committee when he was testifying in relation to the bill. What he said was very interesting. He said that there had been a few isolated incidents of attempted voter fraud, but nothing systemic or large scale. He said that there were some investigations underway, but there were no current charges. Over the course of the last few days, we have constantly heard about the need for this, but we have never really heard very many specifics about the record of charges or convictions around voter or electoral fraud in Canada. That is because there have been very few, if any, convictions for voter fraud in Canada.

We keep hearing about anecdotal evidence. The previous speaker from West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country talked about anecdotal reports. That is all well and good, but I do not think we develop legislation based on anecdotal reports. We need to develop legislation out of real experience and real problems that exist in our communities and with legislation and law in Canada.

Anecdotal reports just do not cut it. We have all heard those kinds of reports. Sometimes I think they are stimulated by partisan competition between electoral parties and scurrilous charges that have nothing to do with the reality of the process at the time of an election.

I really believe the bill sets out to try to solve a problem that does not really exist. It is a phantom problem of the opportunity for electoral voter fraud. It is kind of like the need for the big foot rabies protection act. It may exist, but it may not and we had better get to work solving it right away. I do not think that is a way in which we should be proceeding in the House.

Other issues are far more important in terms of electoral reform, but we have not spend any time on them in the House. Nor did the committee spend any time on them.

The whole question of proportional representation is something that Canadians know goes to the heart of the problems with our electoral system. It goes to the heart of improving our electoral system. Yet we have not been spending time on figuring out a way to implement that in Canada to ensure that all political ideas in Canada, all political ideas that Canadians hold, are represented in Parliament and that groups are represented, all ethnic minorities and racial minorities, and that women are represented in numbers representative of their place in our communities.

We need a system that takes those kinds of considerations into account and we do not have that now in the first past the post system. We need to ensure new approaches to government rather than the winner takes all approach that we have now. I think there would be spinoff benefits for that.

Some people say that we will be in an endless minority government situation. I do not fear that. I believe we will learn new ways of doing politics that stress cooperation and coalition building. I also do not fear the models of other countries where there is a proportional representation system. People sometimes say, “Do we want a Parliament like Italy?” It does not seem to me that Italy has collapsed as a country because of the wide representation in the Parliament of Italy.

People do not seem to recognize that Israel has a very fine tuned proportional representation system. Yet the Parliament of Israel, The Knesset, has never failed to act in the national interest of Israel when push comes to shove.

Those are good examples to remember. There are different ways of doing politics than the one where a party does not receive a majority of votes cast by Canadians, but it gets a majority in the House and then runs roughshod over all the other political ideas that are of importance to Canadians.

We should have spent more time on this legislation, ensuring that there was universal enumeration at each election. We all know, those of us who have run in campaigns or who have organized political campaigns, that there are huge flaws in the permanent voters list. An NDP suggestion to go back to a universal enumeration at each election was defeated as Bill C-31 was being considered in committee.

That is the crux of the matter. We have heard about huge numbers of voters being left off the list at elections and the problems that those have caused on election day. We need to go back to a system that ensures that each time we have an election in the country we seek out all the potential voters and ensure they are on the list, so they can exercise their franchise.

Some simple measures, which do not need legislation, would go further to deal with potential voter fraud. We could have done, and I think we could still do under the current provisions of the current electoral law, measures such as putting voter cards in sealed and addressed envelopes, so the information on a voter postcard or voter card could not be viewed or copied by other people. A measure such as that would be a significant step toward preventing the opportunity for voter fraud, one that does not require this legislation nor new legislation.

I also want to talk about the provision of the bill that was added on an amendment, I believe, by the Bloc and supported by the Liberals. Now it seems the Conservatives have caved in and are supporting it as well. It is the birthdate information that will be collected as part of the building of the voter list and it will be distributed and shared with political parties.

I am not at all concerned that Elections Canada officials and employees have access to that information as part of ensuring a fair electoral process. However, huge difficulties with an amendment that would see this information provided to all the parties. It is a huge invasion of privacy. It is an invitation to identity theft.

There is no need and no justification for political parties to receive this information. There has been chatter in the hallways of Parliament that MPs are looking forward to having birthdate information so they can call constituents on their birthday and wish them a happy birthday, or so political parties can more finely tune their polling or their distribution of political information in constituencies. There is absolutely no need for that kind of invasion of privacy. It is a huge grab of private information by the political parties.

The restrictions around vouching are unacceptable. We heard a criticism of serial vouching. In many neighbourhoods and communities that will disenfranchise many people. The fact that there will have to be a person who is on the voters list in that poll to vouch for another person and that this person can only vouch for one person will limit the access of many people to the voters list and to exercise their franchise. There is no excuse for that kind of limitation.

We should be doing what we can to encourage people. If there is a person who is working in that area and who knows people and where they live, there is no reason why they should not be able to vouch for more than one person.

We see a steady decline in voter turnout. We need to take measures that work toward increasing the turnout. The legislation goes in the opposite direction. It increases unfairness and reduces the ability of people to participate in the electoral process. For that reason I cannot support the bill.

[Blair Wilson, Liberal, West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-31, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

Canada is a great democracy. We have a long tradition of being one of the most open, fair and inclusive democracies in the world. To honour that tradition, though, we must continually strive to improve both the integrity of our electoral process and its accessibility. By so doing, we allow ordinary Canadians the opportunity to exercise their right to vote easily and with confidence.

This bill, I believe, aims to further these goals. It is based on the recommendation of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs and the report, “Improving the Integrity of the Electoral Process: Recommendations for Legislative Change”. This report, in turn, was based in part on recommendations from the Chief Electoral Officer.

The bill would amend the Canada Elections Act to improve the integrity of the electoral process by reducing the opportunity for electoral fraud or for error. It would require that, before voting, electors must provide one piece of government issued photo identification that shows their name and address, or two pieces of identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer that shows their name and address , or they can also take an oath and they may be vouched for by one other elector who has photo identification from that riding.

These changes would do much to improve the consistency of our electoral process. Too often the identification rules have been applied in an inconsistent manner, unfairly placing demands on some citizens that others do not have to meet.

In the last election alone, I encountered several instances of inconsistent behaviour. For instance, anecdotal reports from scrutineers in my riding suggested that voters were rarely challenged for identification in one area of my riding but continually challenged in other areas. At least one voter in the latter area had to go home to get her identification.

This inconsistency is a product of our current rules which only require that identification be checked when an electoral officer, the candidate or a candidate's representative has reason to doubt the identity of an individual wanting to vote. It is regrettable when different citizens are held to different standards across our country, something that is all too possible under our current state of affairs.

I would also like to stress that the vouching procedure has been retained. Anyone who has no suitable identification can still be vouched for by another person with valid identification, ensuring that none of Canada's vulnerable population will be denied the right to vote.

The new rules, however, also introduced safeguards against serial vouching by allowing each elector to only vouch for one person and to not allow vouching by electors who have been vouched for before. This would stop an abuse that has been experienced around Canada.

One instance I know of, on which I have heard consistent complaints, is in the riding of Trinity—Spadina where over 10,000 new voters were registered on election day. It is almost inconceivable that 10,000 people in one riding would be vouched for on a serial basis. These are the types of potential abuses that this legislation is aiming to stop.

The bill would also amend the Canadian Elections Act to make operational changes to improve the accuracy of the National Register of Electors. It would facilitate voting and enhance communications with the electorate. It would amend the Public Service Employment Act to permit the Public Service Commission to make regulations that would now extend to the maximum term of employment of casual workers. These changes are all welcome.

It is also pleasing to see a practical approach to interprovincial cooperation in these changes. Currently, the act permits the sharing of information between provincial governments and Elections Canada. However, the Chief Electoral Officer can only share data in the registry. He cannot share source or preliminary data or other data that is not incorporated in the registry itself. Both the Chief Electoral Officer and the committee have recommended that he should be able to share all data and, accordingly, the bill would expand the scope of data that is permitted to be exchanged.

The bill also would allow a common sense improvement to the information collected by the Canada Revenue Agency. It would create a citizenship box on the tax returns so that taxpaying residents who are citizens of other countries do not end up on our electoral rolls as they still do today.

Bill C-31 would also allow the Canada Revenue Agency to share information about deceased electors, ensuring that the deceased do not end up on our voters list.

While the government did not incorporate all of the committee's recommendations into the bill, it stated that when it did not accept these recommendations it had a fundamental disagreement with principle, items required further study or that we had received inadequate testimony that had been unable to reach a definitive decision during the committee proceedings.

A major concern of the Liberal members of the committee is to ensure that the bill allows aboriginal status identification to be deemed acceptable proof for voting purposes. Government officials have clarified that the text of the bill requires government issued photo ID with an address or government issued photo ID without an address. This would include band status cards but they would need to be accompanied by a letter from the band council or something, such as a phone bill, that would have the person's number, name and address to corroborate the claim that he or she was indeed eligible to vote in a specific riding.

My riding of West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country is home to a large aboriginal population. It is unfortunate that the turnout in polls in the first nations community in my riding is well below the average for the riding as a whole. As parliamentarians, we must work to improve their participation and it would be irresponsible to put an unjustified obstacle in their way. First nations members should be able to use their aboriginal identification to vote, full stop.

On this side of the House, the Liberal Party supports changes to the Canada Elections Act to protect against the likelihood of voter fraud and misrepresentation. We need to ensure that aboriginal photo identification is an acceptable form of voter identification. We also support strengthening the enumeration process, particularly on reserve communities and other areas of low voter enumeration.

A photo identification is essential because on election day it would allow the volunteers and the workers at Election Canada to facilitate Canadians who have the right to vote and ensure no mistakes or voter fraud are involved in what we know is an outstanding electoral system. We need adequate safeguards to ensure that eligible Canadians are able to vote, to prevent fraud and to ensure that no one is impeded in his or her ability to vote.

The bill achieves these aims and ensures the integrity of the Canadian electoral process.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act. This bill flows from a committee report that sought to address certain concerns about the election process. In my opinion, everyone on both sides of the House wants an election process that is as impeccable as possible. However, careful attention must be paid to the negative effects certain sections of this bill may have. My colleagues who were members of the committee attempted to mitigate these effects by proposing certain amendments.

We should also remember that Canada does not have to make any drastic changes. I believe that Canada's Chief Electoral Officer stated that the integrity of our electoral system is intact and that there were, at the very most, only two or three cases of fraud in the last elections.

I would like to talk about certain sections of the legislation that we are discussing. First, some of them could deprive the most vulnerable of their right to vote. Second, they would allow political parties to assume the right to receive personal information, such as the date of birth of Canadians. I will start with this last point.

As I mentioned, the intent behind taking all possible measures to reduce the possibility of fraud is excellent. However, providing all political parties with personal information, such as birth dates, is symptomatic of a big brother state.

What in the world could justify giving political parties this information, aside from allowing MPs to make a birthday call for crass political reasons or to better target voters? This is not about reducing fraud. It is simply about targeting voters to get personal information to improve political parties' messaging. The Conservative Party, for example, is already spending fortunes to find out what would make voters less likely to vote for the Liberal Party rather than focusing on the issues. We are now developing personality attacks in Canada. I think Canadians will be very irritated when they find out that political parties can now have that kind of personal information.

It seems to me that political parties already have enough information, if we judge from the kinds of political ads that are presently being aired. Why make political opportunism more rampant than it is right now in Canada? I ask my colleagues to be attentive to this tool that Liberals and Conservatives are proposing and want to create through this law. The tool will shape the use, as noted scientist Ursula Franklin says. If we do not foresee the impacts of the changes that we are proposing through this law, we will not make a good decision.

Talking about good public policy, I would like to go back to the question of the new requirements for one piece of government issued photo ID showing a name and address, and two pieces of ID authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer showing the name and address of the voter, or the requirement to take an oath, or to be vouched for by another elector.

On the surface, this might seem fairly benign or innocuous, but in reality it seems that this bill could result in thousands of individuals who lack proper identification due to poverty or disability, or who have no stable address, not being able to exercise their right to vote because of the identification requirements of this bill. People who are homeless or temporarily housed often do not have identification that reflects their addresses or their stay in a shelter. During the last election I spoke with some homeless people on the street and that was in fact their case. They could go to a homeless shelter where the staff there could vouch for many of them, but this possibility would be removed for them. It would further disenfranchise those people.

My colleague from Ottawa Centre put forward recommendations at committee that would have addressed these concerns. These included the use of a statutory declaration as an alternate means of identification for an elector to prove his or her identity. I believe we also proposed an amendment to allow for a representative of a recognized agency, such as happens now, to be authorized to vouch for the agency's clientele as authorized by the local returning officer. These amendments were defeated by members of the other parties.

We should talk about one of the real problems that has occurred, and that is with respect to enumeration. I know personally that my daughter-in-law, who lived with me six years ago and has voted since then in a number of elections, still receives her voter slip at my address. There has been a real problem in performing proper enumeration in Canada and this should be corrected. That would be a way of reducing the possibility of fraud. This bill just does not do it.

The bill does require other amendments, for example, the proposed amendments to the PSE Act that are, more or less, buried in the bill. Those amendments could, potentially, have a significant impact on employment patterns in the federal public service where, clearly, the Conservative government is talking about more flexible employment and more flexibility in departmental hiring. We have a concern about what that might mean.

The bill is not good in its present form and I would urge my colleagues to consider some of the amendments that have been proposed by my colleagues.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on Bill C-31 at the report stage. This bill includes a number of amendments that are basically grouped into three sections, in addition to the amendments proposed by the hon. member for Ottawa Centre, at the report stage. I will focus primarily on the foundation of the bill, that is, the amendments concerning the electoral list, its preparation, maintenance, use, precision and accuracy.

From time to time, it is a good idea to evaluate the process in order to ensure that elections—either Canada's general elections or byelections, the elections that bring us into this House—are properly structured and accurately reflect the will of the population.

Recently, since the list was created, many questions have been raised about its quality.

Without criticizing anyone in particular, I believe it is important from time to time for parliamentarians to assess the situation and offer corrections, if needed. That is essentially what we are doing today. The Chief Electoral Officer and the committee have thought about this issue and made recommendations to the government. Generally speaking, the government seems to have accepted these recommendations to ensure that the permanent list of electors is better structured and that the accuracy of the information is improved.

It will be possible to obtain information from both the federal and provincial levels. The information could be combined better and given an identifier in order to avoid the duplication of names and so forth. In my opinion, these amendments should generally improve the permanent list of electors.

There is also the whole issue of voter turnout. We have heard comments about this from our colleagues. They mentioned the decline in voter turnout in Canada. In the past, questions were raised about the quality of the list and the number of duplications. Would this situation not be artificially lowering the turnout rate among the Canadian public? If the list is inflated with a few too many duplications, then such an improvement in preparing the list could eliminate this problem.

That is what I had to say about the first series of amendments to the bill. I did not hear anyone categorically oppose them.

The second series has to do with the need to identify the electors on polling day or when electors want to register on the list of electors on polling day.

On this matter, I share the concerns and apprehensions of a number of my colleagues that the system, as it is currently structured, could be abused.

On election day, when one goes from polling station to polling station and sees several dozen people waiting to register on the list of electors, one is entitled to ask what is wrong with the system.

There is not necessarily any fraudulent activity involved but, obviously, something is not right with the system. In my opinion, it is up to us to eliminate all opportunities for abuse. I believe it is fair to ask for photo identification, a government identification card or an identification card that is recognized or authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer. Most Canadians have no problem with that.

These days when we get on a plane, we have to have photo ID. It is also required when applying for credit and when young people want to have a drink.

Photo ID is often required to join a political party, or to fight for a nomination in a riding or the leadership of a party.

I think that asking voters and citizens to present photo ID is quite acceptable and normal. I would perhaps be less inclined to accept this if there were no other means of registering. We have to recognize that some citizens may find it difficult to obtain photo ID.

The system will continue to allow citizens to register without photo ID under certain conditions. Someone must be able to verify that the information provided by the person wishing to register is true and accurate.

I have to admit that I did hear of some situations in certain areas of the country where, on the day of the election, hundreds, even thousands, of individuals arrived to register. This was cause for concern or, at least, food for thought.

The parliamentary committee did its work and proposed legitimate recommendations. The government has accepted them and we will now proceed with these changes so that Canadians will have greater confidence in our electoral system.

I must admit that I am not inclined, at this point at least—unless I am shown evidence of fraud—to go so far as to require a voter's card. We have heard about them and some colleagues have seen them in certain countries.

In some situations, such as when an electoral process is just being introduced, a voter's card can be beneficial. Last summer, two of my parliamentary colleagues and I had the opportunity to participate in the elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo as observers. Voter's cards really went a long way toward inspiring confidence in the electoral process there.

I do not think we are at that stage, so I do not think we need a voter's card. But that is not what the bill is proposing. The bill is proposing that voters can use any piece of government-issued photo identification, such as a driver's licence, a passport or a health card. I support that.

I think that most Canadians will recognize that this makes sense.

Our colleagues from the New Democratic Party highlighted one of the administrative measures in Part 3 concerning casual hiring—from 90 to 125 days. The Chief Electoral Officer requested this power. The committee acted wisely in leaving that power with the Public Service Commission which will be able to increase the number of days a person can work casually from 90 to 125 days per year, at its discretion. The Public Service Commission has a great deal of knowledge about and experience managing the public service and will be able to bring in appropriate regulations in this case. I am comfortable with that way of doing things.

From the comments I have heard, all of my colleagues recognize that it is essential that Canadians have confidence in the electoral process. When issues come up, it is our duty as parliamentarians to stop, think and find a solution if we can. If it is theoretically possible to abuse the system, we must act to eliminate that possibility, at least in theory. That is what this bill is proposing.

All in all, this is a positive bill that will move things forward. It will not stop us from checking periodically to make sure that the spirit of the bill is being respected and that those goals are being met, and, if they are not, bringing in new solutions.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from B.C. Southern Interior has given us a very helpful intervention in the debate on Bill C-31.

I think we have a bit of a phantom bill here. It is a bill that is trying to address an issue that has not proven to be a serious problem in Canada. We keep hearing about the need to address the opportunity to commit electoral fraud when we know that the actual incidents of electoral fraud have been very few. In fact, it is hard to get anyone to give a very clear example of a conviction, let alone a charge, of electoral fraud in Canada, yet we have this whole piece of legislation that largely attempts to deal with this phantom issue of electoral fraud.

In this corner of the House, we believe there are some very serious issues around electoral reform that need to be addressed. I know that one of them is very important to us and to the member for British Columbia Southern Interior. It is the whole question of proportional representation. We want to make sure that the House is truly representative of all the political ideas that are found in Canada and that Canadians are interested in.

In the current first past the post system, that just is never the case. It is also never the case that the representation in the House clearly reflects the popular vote in Canada or reflects the diversity of the Canadian population or the participation of women in Canadian politics.

I wonder if the member for British Columbia Southern Interior might comment on what is really needed in terms of electoral reform in Canada and particularly on proportional representation.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Secretary of State]

Mr. Speaker, it has already been well stated by members of Parliament from all four political parties in the House how important is the integrity of our electoral system. I certainly would agree with that.

Even prior to the government bringing forward Bill C-31, I have been a very welcome participant in the debate that has ensued at the procedure and House affairs committee, so I welcome the remarks of my colleague from Thunder Bay—Rainy River, not Kenora—Rainy River, and agree with the thrust of the comments he was making.

I would like to draw attention to the comments of his colleague from Vancouver Quadra who on a number of occasions has made reference to the fact that if we as the nation Canada are going to be a beacon for democracy, and a model, as my colleague just referred to, to the developing nations in the world, then it is incumbent upon us as parliamentarians and indeed all Canadians to ensure that our electoral system is of the highest possible standard. That is the concern of all of us. It certainly was expressed by members of Parliament at the procedure and House affairs committee.

I could not agree with my colleague from Vancouver Quadra more about that fundamental point, that it is up to us to ensure that we safeguard the integrity of our system. If there is any possibility of fraud, we must make adjustments to our system to ensure that we can stand up or as he said, when we suggest to other nations how they could model their systems on ours, that we have every confidence that we are holding ours up as the standard to aspire to. I would agree with the member on that.

The NDP has brought up this whole issue of vouching. The difficulty I have with that is if we have multiple vouching where one individual says, “Yes, I know Joe and Sam and Lou”, et cetera, there is an obvious opportunity for fraud, and that is what we are trying to prevent.

I recently had the opportunity to be in South Africa, a nation that has been developing its electoral system. A specific voter ID card is required there. In addition, it is required that the thumb be actually inked on the day of the election. These are the extremes that some countries are going to, to ensure there is absolutely no fraud in their systems and yet we seem to be balking at even having fundamental rules about voter identification.

As the member for Vancouver Quadra indicated, it is very difficult for us to maintain our defence of our system if we cannot ensure when we say this to other countries that ours is an example.

I wonder if my colleague from Thunder Bay—Rainy River would comment on this whole business of vouching specifically and of the importance of ensuring that when a person actually casts his or her ballot that at a minimum the person is a citizen and he or she does at least even temporarily reside in the riding where he or she is marking his or her X.

[Ken Boshcoff, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to express my support for Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act. The bill would make many positive changes to the Elections Act that would protect against voter fraud and misrepresentation.

One issue that the bill addresses is the current practice of using federal income tax returns to update the Elections Canada register. Certainly tax returns are an excellent tool to obtain current information on our citizens. However, I have had numerous experiences where an individual is listed on the electors list who is not a Canadian citizen.

As we know, only Canadian citizens over 18 years of age are qualified to vote. The bill adds proposed section 46.1 to the Canada Elections Act authorizing the Minister of National Revenue to amend tax return forms so that individuals may indicate whether they are Canadian citizens. I believe this is a very positive step and will reduce significant confusion among foreign citizens who reside in our communities. I will have an anecdote toward the end of my speech on this very issue.

The bill would also implement new requirements for proof of identity to be shown at the voter's booth. I am sure we have all heard stories of voter cards being stolen. Until now there has been no requirement to show any proof of identity, which meant that anyone who had a voter's card could cast a vote, regardless of whether he or she were actually the citizen whose name was on the card.

Clearly, under the former system there was a very big loophole and any person or group with dishonest intentions could steal voter cards and use them for their own purposes. This deficiency put the entire election process in a bad light and had the potential to cause significant damage to the rights of Canadian citizens. Often, the perception of wrongdoing is just as harmful as the actual immoral act. As such, just having such a deficit in the system can add to the distrust felt by voters.

I am pleased that this new process will be implemented to ensure that all Canadian citizens who are eligible to vote cannot have that right stolen from them by the dishonesty of another.

Under this process, a voter would be required to provide identification at the voter's booth. That identification consists of: one piece of ID issued by any level of government that contains a photo and the name and address of the voter; or, two pieces of identification with the name and address that have been authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer. The Chief Electoral Officer would be required to publish a list of what will be acceptable identification; or, alternatively, if the elector does not have suitable identification, he or she can take an oath as long as he or she can be vouched for by another person who is listed on the list of electors.

I am very pleased with this third alternative being added to the bill. There are many people, whether seniors or disabled individuals, who do not have the above identification items. Through this option to take an oath, these Canadian citizens would still be able to vote as granted by the Canadian Charter of Rights.

The bill also addresses the practice of serial vouching by limiting each elector to be able to vouch for only one person. In addition, it bans vouching by electors who have been vouched for by another. That is a good rule. I am confident that this new provision to require proof of identity will be an excellent deterrent to fraud.

As the member of Parliament for Thunder Bay—Rainy River, there are 11 first nations in my riding: Fort William, Lac Des Mille Lacs, Lac La Croix, Seine River First Nation, Nicickousemenecaning, Couchiching First Nation, Naicatchewenin, Manitou Mounds, Rainy River First Nations, Stanjikoming First Nation, Big Island and Big Grassy.

The residents in first nations such as those often share one joint community postal box. As such, door to door enumeration in those areas is vital to ensuring that all eligible first nations people are included on the voters list.

One can imagine the difficulties when fathers, sons and uncles or mothers, aunts and daughters have the same name and surname. This can create terrific problems. It has in the past and I believe it has led to considerable discouragement of the voting process.

I am pleased with the committee motion calling on the Chief Electoral Officer to strengthen enumeration in reserve communities and areas of low enumeration. I believe this extra effort will go a long way to help the disenfranchisement of our first nations people in federal elections.

We have all heard of the horror stories in the big urban ridings of people being bused in by the dozens or the hundreds, voter cards missing from apartment buildings and those kinds of things. This amendment would certainly correct that. It is important to instill that last vestige of security that we need for our democratic process.

As elected representatives, we are all familiar with the process of volunteers calling people who have received voter cards and then being asked whether they can vote with their card. The volunteer must ask whether they are 18 and whether they are Canadian citizens. From a campaign standpoint, we can give them the best advice but they still have the card sent to them.

I believe that with this type of identification we should be able to eliminate those last vestiges of people taking advantage of the system.

In the last round of municipal elections in Ontario there was yet another decrease in voter participation. In my previous life I was the mayor of the city of Thunder Bay. Although I did not run in the last municipal election, many people actually congratulated me and advised me that they had voted for me. We know there is considerable confusion in the democratic process. It is flattering, but then I know for sure these people did not vote for me.

If we want to set an international example, when we go to other nations that ask us to consult and be the model on which they establish their democratic process, it comes down to presenting them with our great rules and our great process. However, I only hope that they have not watched question period when they ask for an example of how a democratic nation should behave. Indeed, our own decorum is probably where we should be starting to set an example, not only for ourselves but for the young people in the galleries. They know that if they behaved and used some of the language that they hear, they would rapidly be in detention or out of class.

If we can restore that decorum part, it will let people know that if we think they are important, then they will realize that they are important and that their vote has much more value and importance. By knowing that they count, that actually means our country counts for more. In this way, we would actually increase the value or the significance of someone's vote. People would not feel that their vote has been wasted. People would feel that they were all pretty much the same.

Standards of respect and recognition in decorum, in tandem with Bill C-31 on the technical side, would certainly restore voter confidence. We know as a nation, when we compare ourselves to nations such as Australia with compulsory voting or others with much higher voter participation, that we can do more.

I encourage all members to support Bill C-31 to increase voter participation.

[Mark Eyking, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-31, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

On June 22 the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs tabled a report in the House entitled, “Improving the Integrity of the Electoral Process: Recommendations for Legislative Change”. The report was based in part on the recommendations that we had received from the Chief Electoral Officer. While there have been discussions about fundamental changes to our entire electoral system, these should not detract from the efforts that have been made to improve our existing system.

The government tabled a response to the committee's report on October 20 and agreed with a vast majority of the recommendations that were made by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. Bill C-31 was subsequently introduced on October 24 of last year.

The proposed bill would amend the Canada Elections Act to improve the integrity of the electoral process by reducing the opportunity for electoral fraud or for error. It would require electors before voting to provide one piece of government issued photo identification that shows their names and addresses or two pieces of identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer that show their names and addresses, or they can also take an oath or they might be vouched for by an elector who does have photo identification.

The proposed bill would amend the Canada Elections Act to, among other things, make operational changes to improve the accuracy of the national register of electors. It will facilitate voting and enhance communications with the electorate. It amends the Public Service Employment Act to permit the Public Service Commission to make regulations that will now extend to the maximum term of employment of casual workers. We see this as an improvement.

While the government did not incorporate the committee's recommendations in Bill C-31, it stated that when it did not accept these recommendations, it had a fundamental disagreement in principle, or the items required further study, or we had received inadequate testimony and had been unable to reach a definitive decision during the committee proceedings.

A key concern of the Liberal committee members was to ensure that the bill allowed aboriginal status identification to be deemed acceptable proof for voting purposes. Government officials have clarified that the text of the bill requires government issued photo ID with an address or government issued photo ID without an address. This would include band status cards, but they would have to be accompanied by a letter from the band council or something like a phone bill that would have the person's number, name and address to corroborate the claim that he or she was indeed an eligible voter in that specific riding.

A second concern that the Liberal committee members have is ensuring that the enumeration process is strengthened on the reserve communities. The government has suggested, rather than send the bill to committee, that the committee simply pass a motion calling on the Chief Electoral Officer to strengthen enumeration in reserve communities.

My riding of Sydney—Victoria is in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. It has the highest population of aboriginals in Atlantic Canada. There are three communities: Wagmatcook, Membertou and Eskasoni. Eskasoni is the largest aboriginal community east of Montreal. These communities are overcoming some major challenges and it is very important that as they are taking charge of their destiny, they get involved in our electoral process.

These communities contain 4,000 status aboriginals. Voter turnout in these areas has been historically lower than in the rest of the communities in my riding. I would hope this measure could help increase the voter turnout.

According to the 2001 census, 4.5% of the riding is aboriginal and I think this measure will go a long way to bring voter turnout up to match the portion of the population. Indeed, Eskasoni is probably the fastest growing community in my riding. It deserves representation so that its infrastructure and social needs can be addressed.

As the bill has emerged from the work of the all-party committee, sending it back to the committee would somehow be redundant, given that the government has assured the opposition that the aboriginal ID concerns are addressed in the text of the current bill.

On this side of the House we support changes to the Canada Elections Act that protect against the likelihood of voter fraud and misrepresentation. We need to be assured that the aboriginal photo identification is acceptable. We also support strengthening the enumeration process, particularly on the reserve communities and in other areas where there is low voter turnout.

Before I became a member of Parliament I did work in underdeveloped countries. As a member of the trade committee and the foreign affairs committee we visited many countries with my colleagues. Many of these countries were just embarking on a democratic process.They use us as an example.

It is not only important for Canadian citizens to be encouraged to vote, but it is also important that we encourage other citizens of the world to fully participate in democracy. I encourage all my colleagues in both the House and the Senate to support this legislation.

Voter turnout continues to be low. I never thought I would see a 60% turnout from an area that used to have some of the highest participation rates in the country. Even in my riding where people are generally more engaged politically there continues to be a lower turnout. There is nothing more frustrating for voters when their name does not appear on the list.

The ID provision in this bill actually will make it easier for voters to engage in the political process. I am sure all my colleagues have seen that problem and will agree with that.

My riding is on the north shore of Cape Breton Island. It stretches from Bras d'Or Lake in the southwest to Cabot Strait in the northwest all the way to St. Paul Island in the northeast. Sydney is our largest centre, along with North Sydney, Sydney Mines and New Waterford. They are all communities in my riding.

As I stated before, there are also three Mi'kmaq reserves: Membertou, Eskasoni and Wagmatcook. They want their voices heard. I believe this bill will bring greater confidence to the system.

A government issued ID photo is a small requirement to protect our precious right to vote. Indeed, even without an ID a voter still may be sworn in. That makes Canada by far one of the easiest jurisdictions in which one can exercise one's franchise.

There are other components to our system that make Canada a model for the world, including our system of professional returning officers. In my riding of Sydney—Victoria we have always been blessed with competent returning officers and our electoral staff. They undergo more training than ever before and this adds to the credibility of our system.

I believe the bill in a small way helps keep faith in the integrity of our system and that is why I am support the bill.

The House resumed from January 31 consideration of Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the fine words of welcome from the opposition House leader.

Today, of course, we will be continuing with the opposition motion. Tomorrow we will continue debate on the report stage amendments to Bill C-31, the election integrity act amendments with which we are all familiar.

For Monday and Tuesday, we are intending to call Bill C-26 on payday loans, which is at third reading, Bill C-32 on impaired driving, Bill C-11, the transport act, and Bill C-33, the technical income tax bill.

On Wednesday we hope to begin debate on the third reading stage of Bill C-31, followed by Bill C-44 relating to human rights.

Thursday, February 8 shall be an allotted day. Next Friday we would like to begin debate on the anti-terrorism motion that would extend the application of certain sections of the Anti-Terrorism Act that are due to expire.

Finally, as members know, democratic reform is a priority for Canada's new government, and given that the Liberal leader has publicly expressed his support for term limits for senators, could the official opposition inform the House as to when it can expect the unelected, unaccountable Liberal senators who are delaying and obstructing that bill to give us a chance to consider it here in the House of Commons?

Motions in amendment

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will do my best to speak to the bill and talk about the issues related to the Canada Elections Act.

We are here to talk about Bill C-31, in case anyone who has tuned in may be mixed up given the debate we just heard. The object of Bill C-31, as I understand it in my reading, is to amend the Canada Elections Act to improve the integrity of the electoral process by reducing the opportunity for electoral fraud. At least that is one of the elements of Bill C-31.

To start from that basis we must be of the view that there is widespread fraud that justifies the introduction of this bill and justifies our being preoccupied with it today. When I used to negotiate collective agreements for the carpenters union I would sit down at the bargaining table and say that we wanted to change a clause in our agreement. The first question the employer would always ask was, “What has the experience been? Has this clause been a problem that warrants amending it?”

My colleague from Timmins—James Bay pointed out that the actual empirical evidence, the incidence of electoral fraud, at least the convicted cases, is so insignificant and minuscule that it makes me wonder why we would burn up our political energy, our political capital and House of Commons resources to address this particular issue. In the context of all of the things we could be talking about in terms of elections, how we conduct them and electoral reform, we have seized on this issue of fraud.

I would argue, as my colleague from Ottawa Centre has pointed out, that voter turnout is a far more compelling problem in this country than the almost insignificant incidence of convicted fraud. About 60% of all registered voters in the last election voted, but only 50% of all eligible people voted. I would think that would be a cause of grave concern to anyone who embraces democracy and espouses to want to use our time to enhance the process.

Even the Chief Electoral Officer when he testified before the committee testified that on electoral fraud he did not see the need for these measures, if I can paraphrase him.

My colleague from Timmins--James Bay went through the actual incidents. In the last federal election, of the 10 million people who voted, only one person was actually convicted of fraud. It turned out he was not yet a Canadian citizen. Perhaps he misunderstood the rules. He was a landed immigrant, but he did not have his citizenship. Somehow he did manage to cast a ballot. The system caught him. He was given an absolute discharge. I guess the Chief Electoral Officer determined this was not malicious. It was in fact erroneous. It was more in error. We are glad that the system was working such that the person got tripped up. I believe he received 30 days of community service and then it ultimately wound up in an absolute discharge.

The NDP is passionate about this issue for a number of good reasons. Anyone who heard the speech by the member for Vancouver East would have been moved. My colleague from Vancouver East has tried to address the issue of disenfranchisement and to enable more low income people to vote who otherwise may fall through the cracks. She has gone to enormous lengths. She has even set up voter registration tables with lawyers working pro bono to help people who may not have their requisite pieces of ID, or may for whatever reason not have been enumerated.

I could point out that one of the things that does deserve our attention is the appalling condition of the permanent voters list and the lack of enumeration that goes on in the current regime. As the member representing the riding of Winnipeg Centre where there is a high incidence of low income people and a transient population, the permanent voters list is of almost no value to us in certain neighbourhoods. When the door to door enumeration stopped, we lost track of tens of thousands of people. I say that with no fear of exaggeration or being accused of any contradiction.

The permanent voters list and the full door to door enumeration, those are areas we should be debating in the House of Commons today. I am not sure we should be debating this non-issue, this notion that there is widespread fraud.

As my colleague from Burnaby—Douglas pointed out, if we did want to write a new law about electoral fraud, we should have pulled together a committee of failed Conservative and Liberal candidates who may be authorities on the subject. Given the way some nominations we know of are run in this country, maybe there are people who have had personally frustrating experiences within their own parties but do not extrapolate that on to the population as a whole.

I am the spokesperson for my party for ethics, privacy and access to information. Under the privacy category, I am appalled that we are considering putting the date of birth on the voter's list. We will now have a voter's list with a name, address, phone number and date of birth. That is a recipe for identity theft. We might as well hand somebody a kit stating that this is all they need to steal somebody's identity and get credit cards, et cetera. This is appalling.

We are in the process at our committee of reviewing PIPA, the Personal Information Protecting Act. It is all about the obligation, the duty, to protect personal identities that we have in our possession. I know how voter's lists end up getting distributed within election campaigns. Sometimes a page gets torn out and given to a canvasser who is told to go canvass a couple of blocks. It gets circulated widely and freely. That alone would make this particular bill subject to a number of legal challenges.

I believe the stricter requirements about identification will have the net effect of disenfranchising people to the point where those barriers will be deemed to be in violation of the charter and the right to cast one's ballot. I believe there is enough in the bill that it will be challenged and probably will not survive that challenge.

The privacy issue alone is enough reason to condemn the bill. The idea is that we are throwing up barriers for low income people, marginalized people, and people with unstable addresses and a lack of ID to vote, which I believe could constitute a charter issue.

The third thing, the most frustrating thing, perhaps, is that in the context of this 39th Parliament it is unlikely that electoral reform will come back to us, although there is a private--

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today to Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

It is important at the outset to give accolades to Elections Canada and the men and women who serve in that institution. What is probably not well-known by many listeners today is that the people who work at Elections Canada are world-class individuals who do world-class work. The proof in the pudding is that they have been asked time and time again to lend their expertise to countries that are trying to get out of environments that were highly undemocratic and often fraught with individuals who grossly abused their power and often dictatorships. Canada, through Elections Canada, has given those countries the ability to move from a dictatorship to a democracy.

One individual who is more responsible for that happening than anyone else, someone who is one of the best and brightest, is the head of Elections Canada, Jean-Pierre Kingsley. He has led Elections Canada and, under his 16 year tenure, has moved it into an institution that is world-class.

Elections Canada has served in many areas. I remember during the time when South Africa was moving from its dark days of apartheid into a rainbow nation and a democracy, it was Canada that came to the forefront to help out the South Africans to do something that was utterly inspiring and quite remarkable in moving from a draconian system into one that is a democracy without bloodshed.

All of us remember those times so long ago when we saw lineups of people that would extend for kilometres, individuals who for the first time in their life were able to exercise that most remarkable of democratic rights, the right to vote. Canada played an extraordinary role in that, as did Elections Canada. In fact, Jean-Pierre Kingsley and his team had a lot to do with it, as they did in the Ukraine, Democratic Republic of Congo, Aceh and so many others.

Unfortunately, the government has, ironically, squeezed Mr. Kingsley out of his position. No longer will Jean-Pierre Kingsley be Canada's Chief Electoral Officer and, in that, we all lose.

If we are to have electoral reform, what is one thing that we could do to dramatically improve the ability of individuals to exercise that mighty right to put their check mark against somebody's name they want to represent them? It is electronic voting. In this era of new Windows operating systems, in these powerful computers that we have today and powerful operating systems, does it make sense that we cannot use the technologies that we have today to enable Canadians to vote electronically? There is no reason whatsoever, without putting the appropriate checks and balances in place, that we cannot have electronic voting.

One can just imagine what we could do if that were an option for Canadians to vote in a federal election. One can just imagine what that would do in terms of being able to garner and allow a greater number of people to exercise this right that so many have gone before and given their lives to enable us to do.

It would be a remarkable thing and, in particular, for a couple of populations: first, populations that are isolated, aboriginal and non-aboriginal, as members have mentioned before; and, second, youth. We know that many youth are not getting their information and news from traditional media. They are getting it through other means, often through computers and through the Internet. Why not tap into that and enable people to vote electronically which would enable people to exercise their democratic right and strengthen the democratic pillars of our country. It would be a remarkable thing.

Perhaps what is more important than how we elect individuals is the ability of those who we choose to come to this mighty House to exercise their ability to represent their constituents. I am talking about democratic reform. The Conservative Party's roots were in the Reform Party, and I was a member of that party. In part we came to this House to democratize it. What happen to those ideals of that party long ago?

What happened to enabling all members of Parliament to innovate, to drive and implement ideas, to work with members across party lines, to work with the bureaucracy, to work with the best and brightest in our country to implement the solutions that Canadians need?

Our constituents have less patience for the shenanigans that take place in this House. They have much more interest in their elected officials doing their jobs and implementing solutions in the best interests of the public. All of us here are trying to do that.

Mr. Speaker, you sir, have been here much longer than many of us and have seen that the system has declined over time. Particularly over the last year there has been a precipitous decline.

The Prime Minister was a member of the Reform Party. He knows from where I came. His view is different from that party's. His view is the opposite of reforming Parliament. He is an acolyte of the Straussian view of the world and believes that a small group of people are destined to rule. This is a dangerous thing. We see it now where decisions are not being made among the Conservative caucus but decisions are being dictated to the caucus by the Prime Minister's Office. A tiny group of people in the Prime Minister's Office is making decisions for everybody. It has to be disheartening for members who can serve their constituents, their communities, this House, and our country well with their individual expertise. They are innovative and they have solutions to offer that can be implemented in the public interest. Why is that no happening?

The government is being utterly remiss in not offering solutions that we can work on. My colleague from Vancouver Quadra is a world-class innovator. He knows how we can democratize and liberate Parliament. He knows how we can draw the best and brightest to the House in the interests of the public. The Prime Minister and his caucus could tap into the expertise and knowledge of individuals like my colleague from Vancouver-Quadra. There are others who can offer similar solutions.

Why can we not reform the committees of the House? Why can we not allow individuals on those committees to do a better job for their constituents? There is no reason that cannot happen.

One of the things the government could do with respect to the public service that would be innovative would be to abolish the mandatory age of retirement. The mandatory age of retirement was set when the lifespan of individuals was in the late fifties, not today's lifespan which is 79 years for a man and 81 years for a woman. That would be an innovative way to reform the public service act. That is not included in this bill but it ought to be.

On the issue of accountability which the government speaks about, one of the big lies is the government's Federal Accountability Act. It is one of the government's initiatives where it is pulling the wool over people's eyes. The Federal Accountability Act is causing gridlock in the public service. It will not enable the public service to do its job and liberate the innovation that resides in the outstanding men and women who serve in our public service. That is a shame. The public is not aware of this. The Federal Accountability Act works counter to the public interest.

It is important that--

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-31. There are a number of concerns that we face on the front lines in my riding to which I would like to speak.

At the outset, I find it very interesting that in terms of electoral reform issues, this is the one issue that has been brought before the House. We are talking about the threat of fraud, yet we see very little evidence of actual fraud having occurred.

In 2006 there was one case of fraud in the entire country. In 2004 there were zero cases. In 2000 there were three cases. That is four out of the millions of people who voted in elections in the country. Yet we have a need for all parliamentarians to stand up and deal with this threat.

I raise the question that perhaps it is guilty minds. We have only to look at the leadership races of parties in the House, where questions of conduct have been much more egregious than what we see in people who try to exercise their democratic franchise. Certainly no one would suggest average citizens would be out patting down cadavers to see if they had party memberships to vote for the leadership, as happened to some very august members of the House. What are we thinking to impose on the honest law-abiding citizens of our country?

I suggest the bigger issue is disenfranchisement and cynicism about the electoral process. We need to be looking at that. There are number of problems that have to be addressed. I would have expected that they would have been addressed in a bill brought forward by the new government.

For example, on the need for electoral reform, people have been calling out for it. People are tuning out of the electoral process. They are tired of our old system and they feel that more voices have to be heard. Yet the two main parties certainly have no real interest in seeing this go forward, so this is not coming forward as a priority.

The other question is on how the actual electoral voting system works now that we do not have a proper voting list.

In the 2004 election people in my riding who went to vote were told that they were on a voter's list 40 kilometres away. I know people in the southern end of my riding were told they did not belong in their own riding because their mailbox was in the municipality. Elections Canada had actually run a line through the bottom of my riding so people who lived in my riding were told they had to vote in another riding.

These are problems. People get fed up when they try to vote. They go home and they say they are not going to vote. That is a serious threat to democracy. I would have thought that issue would have been brought forward with some sense of urgency, but no.

What we are dealing with is the potential that somewhere down the road Canadians are going to commit fraud in voting. Why would anyone go out of their way to defraud just to try to vote, when we are begging and encouraging people to come out? However, that is a larger philosophical question.

I would like to focus on a few areas that are very important in my region. I have very large isolated first nation communities. When we talk about getting a photo ID card, that makes sense, if we believe that every Canadian has a right to a photo ID card. However, on the James Bay coast up to 30% of our population is not eligible for health care status because the province of Ontario does not bother to go and deal with the Cree communities. It has fallen to my office and my provincial counterpart, Gilles Bisson. We go there and fill out these cards.

The interesting thing about this is how do they get a photograph on the ID when the provincial government is leaving it up to a federal member of Parliament and a provincial member of the legislature to fill out the forms for citizens? Guess what. The Ontario government has a special loophole. It does not bother giving a photograph, if one lives on the James Bay coast. It will simply fill out the form and send it there with a trillium logo.

It is amazing. I have thousands of wonderful looking Cree families and all their faces look like a trillium logo because the province of Ontario does not even both to ensure that these people have photo ID. This is something they are expected to have if they are going to be able to vote.

There is the issue of having an address. I invite anybody to go into Fort Albany and ask people their addresses. People do not have street addresses that they go by. We find that in all our communities. We have many of our communities where they simply do not have even the most basic registration.

In fact, if we are talking about administering an oath, I would like to see electoral officers come up and do the oath in Cree or Ojicree. Many elders, for example, do not speak English. Many elders have not birth certificates, but we are trying to get them.

There is the issue of these community members being unfairly penalized because somebody somewhere might some day decide to defraud the system. I find it is an outrageous thought. Imagine people in Attawapiskat going to the poll and claiming to be someone different when everybody knows who they are. I think they would get run out of town fairly quickly.

Unless the members of Parliament think I am making light of these issues, I would like to quote some of the testimony that was brought before the committee from Nishnawbe-Aski Nation, which represents the 70 communities across the northern Treaty 9 area, an area I represent.

It stated:

We are also concerned that these amendments to the act could affect our elders. Most of these people do not have birth certificates; few of them have a driver's licence. Leaving their communities to acquire photo identification is a severe hardship and in some instances it will be neither feasible nor affordable.

—we suggest that the proposed amendments have failed to take into consideration the realities of the people in our remote communities. They are based on the assumption that the majority of Canadian electors live in urban centres. Until government services are made available in an equitable manner to our people living in remote communities and the amendments to the act reflect the realities of the lives of our people....I suggest that the committee, if possible, visit some of our communities to better understand the challenges we face in our role as Canadian citizens.

This is the message I hear from the leadership in Nishnawbe-Aski Nation and the Mishkeegogamang tribal areas, and it is a message I want to bring to Parliament. Our people on the James Bay coast are not committing fraud. The biggest issue we have is encouraging them to see themselves as participants in the electoral system. That has been a hard sell. We need to ensure that more and more Canadians are entitled and encouraged to vote and are made to feel that voting is something worthwhile.

I will go back to the original point that I started to make.

We have put this forward as the only bill so far of electoral reform in this Parliament, and it is to deal with fraud. We have had almost zero cases of fraud in the electoral system. Yet we know this bill would disenfranchise hundreds, if not thousands, across Canada. For the one person convicted of fraud in 2006, for the zero persons in 2004, for the three convicted in 2000, what we are setting out to do is to go after many people on the margins who right now we should be trying to encourage to vote.

I will conclude with this whole question of allowing political parties access to birth dates. Some people might say this is a minor issue, it is a way of ensuring fairness. I do not impugn any political parties here or any political regions in the country, but I suggest that is in there for the crassest political opportunism. The idea of outreach in certain parties is to get people's birth date and then phone them on their birthday and say, “Hi, it's Bob, your MP, phoning you on your birthday”, and that is supposed to suffice.

In fact, I first heard about this trick from a MLA from Quebec who said, “You know, this is the one thing I do all year, I make sure I phone everybody on their birthday, and they love it. And you know what? I don`t have to do much else”.

What we are saying is, in the interest of going after the fraudsters, we have to ensure that every political party can ensure that they can phone constituents on their birthdays just to secure their vote. That is the reason we are talking about this today.

Let us be honest. I know it is a sin as a politician, and I have to admit it, to give away trade secrets to the general public so they know how politicians really act. However, I feel incumbent at this moment to stand up and speak. The reason we want their birth date information is so we can hit them up on their birthday and secure a vote. I think that is fairly cynical, just as I feel a lot about this bill.

I would encourage the members to consider the bigger issue, which is that we need to find ways for people to have confidence in the democratic system and to feel as if they can become involved. I am concerned that what we are going after is a chimera because we have not seen the evidence of fraud to back up the need for this. If there were large areas, I would consider it, but at this point I cannot see further disenfranchising the communities in my riding, such as Ogoki, Kashechewan, Attawapiskat, Peawanuck, Moosonee and Moose Factory. I cannot see people from those communities, who have already been marginalized enough, feeling that they need to do anything more than to show up and say that they are citizens of this country.

As it says in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein, end of story. There are no qualifications. It does not say anything about bringing ID. It does not say anything about people having to give out their birth date information. They have that right.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in the House today on Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

On June 22, 2006, the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs tabled a report in the House that was entitled “Improving the Integrity of the Electoral Process: Recommendations for Legislative Change”. The report was based in part on the recommendations from the Chief Electoral Officer.

While it has already been referenced and there continue to be ongoing discussions and debate about fundamental changes to our electoral system, these should not detract from the efforts that should be made to improve the existing system.

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to improve the integrity of the electoral process by reducing the opportunity for electoral fraud or for error. It requires that electors, before voting, provide one piece of government issued photo identification that shows their name and address, or two pieces of identification, authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer, which show their name and address. Or they can take an oath, or 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 registry of electors. It facilitates voting and enhances communications with the electorate. It goes on to amend the Public Service Employment Act to permit the Public Service Commission to make regulations to extend the maximum term of employment of casual workers. This works both for the system and for the individual workers.

All of us in this House have gone through the electoral system at least once. Many of us have gone through it several times. On election day, we put our faith in the hands of our electorate. However, collectively as Canadians, voters and candidates, we also depend on the integrity of the electoral system to reduce the opportunity for electoral fraud and to ensure secure, fair and accessible voting on voting day. It is my hope that the initiatives contained in this legislation will enhance this process for Canadians.

A key concern for the Liberal committee members is ensuring that the bill allows for aboriginal status identification to be acceptable as proof for voting purposes. Government officials have clarified that the text of the bill requires either, number one, government issued photo ID with an address, or number two, government issued photo ID without an address, including band status cards, accompanied by a letter from the band council or by a phone or utility bill that shows the resident's name and actual address.

A second concern for the Liberal committee members is ensuring that the enumeration process is strengthened in reserve communities. The government has suggested that, rather than send the bill to committee, the committee simply pass a motion calling on the Chief Electoral Officer to strengthen enumeration in reserve communities and in other areas of low enumeration.

It is difficult to strike the balance that ensures the integrity of the system without becoming overly onerous on the citizen and denying him or her the right to vote. It is a privilege to cast a ballot. I appreciate the fact that voters do not have acceptable ID. I also know that all of us in this House can dedicate ourselves entirely to the activity of election day. As a matter of fact, many of us spend every waking moment and several weeks campaigning.

However, the vast majority of Canadian voters have busy lives that involve hectic, challenging schedules. Even though voter turnout improved in the 2006 federal election, it continues to be alarmingly low. It is important that Canadians can go to their local polling station knowing what information is expected of them in being able to exercise their democratic right. It is our expectation that a uniform procedure for voter identification at the polls will provide clear and consistent information and a system that reinforces the importance of exercising one's right to vote.

We on this side of the House also support the strengthening of the enumeration process, particularly, again, in reserve communities and in other areas of low enumeration.

Further, parts of the proposed legislation also address accessibility issues as some voters with disabilities will no longer required to request a transfer to a polling station with level access three days in advance. As well, the proposed legislation opens up accessibility to advanced polls. These are positive improvements for people with mobility limitations.

On this side of the House, we support the changes to the Canada Elections Act that protect against the likelihood of voter fraud and misrepresentation. We need to ensure that aboriginal photo identification is an acceptable form of voter identification. It is our understanding that Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, makes the operational improvements that are necessary and will advance the integrity of our voting system.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the NDP for her comments. I will answer her questions.

The NDP claims that disclosing the date of birth of voters infringes on privacy rights. We in the Bloc Québécois regard the date of birth as an important tool allowing political parties to control the identity of voters who want to exercise their franchise, especially if a would-be voter shows up at a polling station without the required ID. With respect to the NDP's concerns about privacy, the Bloc Québécois suggests that, in Quebec, political parties have access to such information, and democracy in Quebec is no worse off. Consequently, the Bloc Québécois opposes Motion No. 2. The NDP thinks that this provision might restrict the ability to vote of those who do not have ID or forgot their ID at home on voting day. The Bloc Québécois thinks that it is necessary, in order to prevent fraud, that ID be required. Sufficient amendments have been made to the bill to enable sensitive groups such as aboriginal people to exercise their franchise. Note that a homeless person who does not have ID could still vote provided a qualified elector was able to vouch for them. Earlier, the parliamentary secretary described to our colleague from the NDP what was added to the Canada Elections Act for those who may not be able to get ID.

Regarding Motion No. 4, clause 22 provides that, in the event that a name is crossed off in error from the list of electors, the elector in question may vote, provided that the elector takes an oath and that the returning officer verifies that there was indeed an error made. Bill C-31 added to these two requirements the need for electors to identify themselves with ID. The NDP amendment proposes to remove the latter requirement. The Bloc Québécois thinks that it is necessary, in order to prevent fraud, that ID be required.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to discuss Bill C-31 at the report stage.

Before stating our position on the motions in amendment, I would like to provide an overview of Bill C-31 and the work that has been done.

The purpose of this bill is to improve the integrity of the electoral process by reducing the opportunity for fraud or error. As a member of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, I participated in the work leading up to the introduction of this bill in the House of Commons, so I can say that a lot of work went into it.

The committee includes representatives of each political party, all of whom cooperated effectively, thus enabling us to achieve our goal of improving the electoral process and strengthening the public's faith in it.

This bill will reduce the opportunity for fraud or error and will improve the accuracy of the list of electors. It will also make it easier for people to exercise their right to vote and will improve communication among election officials, candidates, political parties and voters.

I would suggest that the Conservative government approach other files with the same attitude and the same level of respect for other parties' ideas. The Conservatives' ideological agenda did not dominate our work, which probably explains why we were able to cooperate so well.

I would like to discuss in detail some of the provisions designed to reduce the opportunity for electoral fraud and error.

Electors must now present government-issued photo identification showing their name and address. In Quebec, a driver's licence is an excellent example of acceptable identification.

An elector who cannot produce such identification must present two pieces of identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer showing both name and address.

Potential electors who cannot produce two acceptable pieces of identification may swear under oath that they are who they say they are. They must also be vouched for by another qualified elector.

The bill also provides that in case of reasonable doubt concerning whether a person qualifies as an elector—for example, if the person's age or citizenship are in doubt—that person must sign an affidavit. Only citizens over age 18 qualify to vote; currently, no proof of age is required, not even if there is reasonable doubt that the person qualifies.

We think that such a simple and clearly defined procedure will improve the electoral process by preventing more fraud.

The elector's date of birth will be added to the list of electors. This will help better identify the person wishing to exercise their right to vote.

In Quebec, the lists of electors include date of birth. This system works and fosters the objectives we want to achieve with this bill.

The bill also limits vouching so that an elector may vouch for only one person. This measure will help prevent a practice referred to as “serial vouching”, which could result in fraud.

What is serial vouching? Serial vouching is when an individual who was not originally registered to vote is vouched for by someone—whose name is on the list of electors—in order to be added to the voters’ list, and then vouches for someone else who was not registered, and so on.

The bill also contains another change that the Bloc Québécois has been calling for for a very long time and that is assigning a unique identification number to every elector. This unique identifier will be included on the list of electors and will improve the quality of the lists by ensuring that duplications are eliminated.

It is important to point out that this unique identifier will be randomly generated and assigned by the Chief Electoral Officer.

Bill C-31 also proposes measures to facilitate the right to vote. The time limit within which an elector with physical limitations can request a transfer certificate to vote at a polling station with level access has been removed. There will no longer be a deadline for disabled electors to apply for a transfer. I want to emphasize that this amendment does not give licence to avoid making polling stations accessible.

Bill C-31 permits an advance polling station to serve a single polling division rather than two or more polling divisions, in order to improve accessibility to advance polling stations for voters, particularly in remote regions.

It can be difficult for voters in these regions to get to advance polling stations. Year after year, a growing number of people choose to go to an advance poll to exercise their right to vote. It is therefore necessary to enhance accessibility.

The bill also seeks to improve communications between election officials, candidates, political parties and voters. It gives candidates a right of access to common areas of public places for election campaign purposes.

It is important to be able to meet people where they are. An election campaign is a unique opportunity to call attention to ideas and to talk about our record as members of Parliament. We must promote this, while also respecting the public.

Bill C-31 also improves access for parties and candidates to up-to-date lists of electors, which they can use to communicate with voters and encourage them to vote. In order to do so, it is important that they have access to accurate and up-to-date lists.

Various motions were presented to amend this bill. The Bloc Québécois reviewed all them and has taken a stand.

The Bloc Québécois opposes Motion No. 1, because it would imply not indicating the date of birth on voters lists, thus reducing the chances of properly identifying a potential voter.

The Bloc Québécois is also opposed to Motion No. 2, because it increases the risks of electoral fraud by opposing the simple and clearly established procedure of identifying potential voters by requiring appropriate pieces of identification and having them take an oath.

In conclusion, I want to mention the successful cooperation that led to this bill. I hope the Conservative government will follow this example in the future.

The Bloc Québécois supports this legislation. However, we oppose the motions presented at report stage.

My Bloc Québécois colleagues and I are proud to have proposed some elements of the Quebec electoral system to help the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs in its work. The Quebec electoral system has proven its effectiveness. The elements found in Bill C-31 that are patterned on the Quebec model will help improve the federal electoral system.

The objective of this bill is to improve the integrity of the electoral process. I believe that, in this sense, the bill is a step in the right direction.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the standard we use in advising other countries in their electoral commissions and their electoral processes and in monitoring those elections is free and fair. Were the elections free and fair? When we say free, we are talking about the right of every adult person to vote, which is a charter right in Canada. The fair side is equally important to the equation of having an election. Fairness means the integrity of the process.

We as legislators have a duty to ensure that there is integrity in the voter process, so that it will be fairly applied and available to Canadians. Hon. members opposite have spoken of marginalized communities. Of course that means they must be given every possible opportunity within the integrity of the system to vote. That is fairness. It is also fairness to ensure that fraud cannot be perpetrated. I suggest that is what this bill is intended to do.

We have had a long series of discussions and processes to get to this point, including the Chief Electoral Officer's report after the January 2006 election to the committee, our committee's report to the House, and the response of the government in Bill C-31.

The bill makes a number of improvements. It improves access for the disabled. There are more convenient locations for advanced polls. There is access for candidates as well as election officials to gated communities. The processes of the electoral office also allow candidate access to malls or privately owned public spaces where often candidates are not allowed to communicate with the public. A former chief electoral officer made it very clear that there will also be an opportunity for electoral officials to go to perhaps seniors houses and shelters, places where people may not be able to get to the polls. I would suggest that we as a committee and we as legislators be immensely vigilant going forward to ensure that marginalized groups are not left out.

We on this side of the House had real concerns with the electoral officials and other witnesses who came before us. We implored the Chief Electoral Officer to be more vigilant and more targeted in areas of low enumeration or voter turnout. That office has taken on that responsibility.

We also asked that in areas, whether it is an intercity or a remote community, an aboriginal community or otherwise, where people in the past have shown an inability to exercise their franchise, that more vigilant and more targeted enumeration takes place.

With the special concern that has been raised with respect to aboriginal communities, remote communities in particular, we put to the Chief Electoral Officer that an acceptable form of government picture identification could be an aboriginal status card, if it had an address on it. If the address is not on it, then there could be a letter from the band office or something else indicating the address of the person together with the card in order to satisfy the requirements.

While we must be extremely vigilant that marginalized groups are not left out of the process, we must also be vigilant and ensure that there is no opportunity for voter fraud, not by those people, but by others who may for unscrupulous reasons, and with many more resources, try to defeat the process and the fairness of the process.

It is the fairness of the process and the belief that Canadians have that it is a fair and honest system that is really one of the major concerns in this country. I would suggest that nothing will cause voter participation to decline faster than if the general public loses its faith in the fairness of the process.

That may sound far-fetched, but we all know what happened in 2000 in Florida with the U.S. presidential election and how flawed that process was even though it was presenting a very elaborate electoral system.

We do need to be vigilant going forward to ensure people are not left out but we also need to take this as a first step in a much broader electoral reform process. In the spring of 2004, the Law Commission of Canada published a paper. It is an independent commission which, I would remind the government, that it has just starved of all of its budget from its actions last fall. However, the Law Commission came up with a paper on electoral reform that is probably based on greater consultation and greater research than any other electoral reform suggestion in the Commonwealth and there was an obligation on our previous government and on the current government for the Minister of Justice to answer that Law Commission report.

The process had begun. Electoral reform, with the agreement of the NDP, was put in the Speech from the Throne of the previous Liberal government. A committee had plans to look into electoral reform but that, for some reason, has now been stopped. I would put it to all members of the House and certainly to the government and the Minister of Justice that there is a responsibility to take up that public review.

I heard last week that the government will be hiring a polling company and a think tank to consult in a few communities across the country. I would ask the Prime Minister and the Attorney General of Canada whether they have ever read that Law Commission report and, if they have, why they think they need an alternative process at this stage and start all over again.

We should have Parliament and the House of Commons in a special committee looking at real electoral reform and then we need a proper response from the government to the Law Commission's report. If we are to have a citizen's assembly, which we had in British Columbia and which is being advanced in Ontario, we need to ensure that the objective is to have an open and comprehensive process and not some slapdash polling process.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak today to the amendments proposed at the report stage of Bill C-31.

This is a bill that provides real, tangible results for Canadians. Without a well-functioning electoral machinery, of course, our democracy simply will not work. All hon. members will agree that the machinery must be regularly maintained, updated and renewed. That is what Bill C-31 seeks to do. It is in fact an ideal example of how to go about doing that.

The genesis of the bill was a parliamentary committee report to which the government responded with legislative action. We have worked with the other parties in fine-tuning the bill after hearing from a number of witnesses at the committee.

I point out that while we opposed certain changes that occurred to the bill at committee, that is, our Conservative members opposed them, we are now prepared to support Bill C-31 in its current form. A big reason behind this is that we think this bill has benefited from a multi-party degree of support, which is important in a bill of this nature. For that reason, Conservatives are not going to support the proposed NDP amendments that are before us today.

Before elaborating on some of the benefits of the bill, I want to express my thanks and gratitude to my predecessor, the member for Niagara Falls, the Minister of Justice. Through his work as the former government House leader and Minister for Democratic Reform, we are now in a position to advance this important bill, which was, I repeat, the product of cooperation and collaboration in this Parliament.

Bill C-31 is just one part of our very robust democratic reform agenda, an agenda based on bringing accountability and integrity to the institutions and processes of governance.

We of course know about Senate Bill S-4, which remains mired in the Senate. Again today the Liberal senators refused to debate it. It has been almost a year since they have gone about refusing to debate it and have filibustered. Their own leader says he supports term limits for senators, yet that bill remains mired there. I cannot understand why Liberals want to make their leader look so weak, but I am not surprised that it is happening.

That is just one part of our agenda. At least on Bill C-31 we think we can see results very soon.

With regard to some of the amendments before us, it is important to note that the bill implemented virtually all of the parliamentary committee's recommendations in its report. In particular, it took up the committee's call to do more to combat voter fraud. That is really the core of Bill C-31: to protect the integrity of our electoral system.

The two major recommendations made by the committee—and included in Bill C-31—were as follows: to confirm the identity of voters, record their date of birth on the new official lists; establish a standard process for identifying voters.

This same committee reported, on December 13, 2006, on Bill C-31 to which some amendments were also made. Once again, the committee emphasized the importance of these two specific aspects of the bill. Motions in amendment moved by the member for Ottawa Centre attempt to reverse the committee's decision in this regard.

I urge all other members to join me in opposing these amendments so that we can avoid further delays to this very important bill. Let us address them.

First is the date of birth on the list of electors: The first amendment proposed by the member for Ottawa Centre proposes to remove that provision. At committee, we opposed that as well. However, it is now there in the bill and, as I said, in the spirit of cooperation, we are prepared to support it at this stage so that the bill may move forward. Also, we do agree that it can go some distance to assisting in combating voter fraud and ensuring that people's identification is what they say it is.

Second is voter identification. The balance of the NDP amendments aim to gut the provisions of the bill that require the provision of identification for someone to vote and, in so doing, effectively undermine the central objective of the bill, which is to ensure the integrity of the electoral process.

Let us take, for example, Motions Nos. 2, 4 and 9. On the requirement for voter identification and the ability for polling officials to challenge voters for identification, both of those provisions were part of the key recommendations of the thirteenth report of the procedure and House affairs committee, aimed specifically at dealing with the potential for voter fraud. There were no dissenting opinions to that report, so now we are hearing from the NDP a new position compared to what took place in the original report.

Second, as I said, addressing voter fraud is the core reason for Bill C-31. If we were to remove those provisions, we would weaken it. In terms of requiring identification, the Canada Elections Act already requires voters to provide identification if they wish to register. However, there are no guidelines on what kind of identification is acceptable. Bill C-31 establishes what constitutes acceptable identification by implementing the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs on this matter.

Bill C-31 will require voters to show one piece of government-issued photo identification with name and address, or two pieces of identification establishing identity and residence. If the voter does not have identification, Bill C-31 allows the voter to take an oath and be vouched for.

These motions for amendment being proposed today will take us back to a realm of uncertainty and uneven practice as to the types of identification that can be used. The government strongly opposes these motions.

Simply put, we have ample opportunity for anyone who seeks to vote legitimately to do so. The net effect of the amendments being proposed by the New Democratic Party here--and I am surprised after the positive experience of the NDP in supporting the federal Accountability Act that the NDP would propose such amendments--would be to open up loopholes for those who wish to take advantage and those who wish to commit voter fraud.

That is what the effect of these amendments would be. That is why I am surprised that they come from the New Democratic Party, which I thought was concerned with seeing some preservation of the integrity of the process. That is what we are trying to do with the bill.

In conclusion, the potential for voter fraud hurts the integrity of our electoral system and undermines public confidence in the voting process. In fact, every time someone votes fraudulently, it undermines the legitimate say of every other voter. We all lose a little when that fraud takes place. That is why we cannot support amendments that create the opportunity for such fraud.

This bill provides better tools to poll officials to confirm the identity and eligibility of voters. One way is through the addition of the date of birth, which is in that amendment.

Another way, which came out of the committee, is to require voters to show identification or be vouched for before voting, and to systemize the identification required before registering at polls so there is certainty, no ambiguity and no opportunity for fraud and cheating.

The third way is to allow poll officials or candidates to challenge the eligibility of potential voters and require them to affirm their eligibility in writing: to say who they are and prove who they are. I think most Canadians actually think that is what we have to do now when we vote. I do not think many people are offended by the fact that when they say their name is X they must actually prove they are X. I think that is what Canadians expect. I think that is what Canadians hope for.

There are many who come to me after voting in an election and say they are amazed by the fact that anybody could have walked up and said they were Jane Doe, or by the fact that their vote could have been taken away because nobody actually asked them for ID. That troubles people. That is why we need to have those voter identification provisions.

Each of these tools would be removed from the bill under the proposed amendments from the New Democratic Party. Bill C-31 and these features in particular were the result of a non-partisan, multi-party recommendation of a parliamentary committee of the House that was seeking to improve the integrity of the electoral process.

These motions for amendment would reverse that work and I hope members will join me in opposing them.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

moved:

Motion No. 1

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 18.

Motion No. 2

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 21.

Motion No. 4

That Bill C-31, in Clause 22, be amended by deleting lines 28 to 42 on page 10.

Motion No. 5

That Bill C-31, in Clause 26, be amended by replacing lines 38 and 39 on page 11 and lines 1 to 18 on page 12 with the following:

“26. Subsection 161(6) of the Act is replaced”

Motion No. 6

That Bill C-31, in Clause 28, be amended:

(a) by replacing line 32 on page 12 with the following:

“28. (1) Paragraph 162(f) of the Act is”

(b) by replacing lines 37 to 42 on page 12 and lines 1 to 11 on page 13 with the following:

“(2) Section 162 of the Act is amended by striking out the word “and” at the end of paragraph (i) and by adding the following after paragraph (i):”

Motion No. 7

That Bill C-31, in Clause 30, be amended by replacing lines 25 to 43 on page 13 with the following:

“30. Section 169 of the Act is amended by”

Motion No. 8

That Bill C-31 be amended by deleting Clause 33.

Motion No. 9

That Bill C-31, in Clause 38, be amended by replacing lines 31 to 40 on page 15 and lines 1 to 6 on page 16 with the following:

“38. (1) Subsection 489(2) of the Act is amended by adding the following after paragraph (a.1):

(a.2) contravenes subsection 161(7) (vouchee acting as voucher);

(2) Subsection 489(2) of the Act is”

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-31. I want to step back and talk a bit about how we arrived at where we are.

Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act came from a committee report that was commissioned by all parties initially to look at the previous election and how it had been conducted. People had some concerns about how that election and previous elections had been conducted. This report was boiled down and turned into this bill.

Unbeknownst to many people, including myself, the bill was put forward without those of us in the House and on committee understanding that we were going to take on how people voted, the most fundamental aspect of our democracy.

We heard from numerous witnesses in committee about their concerns with this legislation. The amendments that we have put forward deal with those concerns as well as the concerns of many others who spoke to us in our communities.

The concerns expressed by witnesses and people who we spoke to in our communities were about the requirements for photo ID. Initially, many people said that was fine. However, those without photo identification would be required to have people vouch for them, but an individual who vouched for one person could not vouch for another, and they considered this restrictive. Witnesses who supported this amendment and had those concerns spoke from the perspective of those who worked with our homeless, our most vulnerable, and our students, who some would say are part of our most transient population because of the fact that they move back and forth from their homes to their schools numerous times.

We have tried to encourage both of these groups over the last number of years to exercise their franchise, to vote. Sadly, what we have in front of us are barriers to that. Why? Now they are required not only to have photo identification, but different tiers are being used. If they are unable to produce photo ID, then they are required to produce other pieces of identification with vouchers.

Vouchers is a topic of great concern for myself and my colleagues in our party. They will now be required to have someone who is already on the voter's list vouch on their behalf. This can only be done once. We know from people who were witnesses at committee that this is impossible in many cases simply because of the populations with which they deal.

If I can reference the homeless population. It has only been recent that we have been able to organize systems in our country allowing homeless people the opportunity to exercise their franchise. That was not done by government, but by the people who work in our communities. They took this on themselves. They were not paid by government exclusively to do this. They saw the need, the benefit and the responsibility as citizens to ensure that our most vulnerable citizens were not disenfranchised. These people did the work that some of us in government should perhaps have done. They took this on themselves.

They are confused and angry because they believe Bill C-31 will undo all the good work they have done by way of organizing people who do not have addresses because they are homeless. They ensure the homeless have an address, usually a drop-in centre or homeless shelter, and they are able to vouch on their behalf. The bill as proposed, without our amendments, would mean that those who work with the homeless would not have the opportunity to vouch for more than one person if they themselves were on the voter's list. This would be the restriction.

We put forward an amendment that would allow someone to vouch for more than one person. Also, we would have an opportunity to use a system that works in British Columbia. There would be an opportunity for them to swear that people were in fact who they said they were, and this could be tracked and accountable and would not be open to exploitation.

Further amendments that we have made have to do with privacy issues. I want to underline the concerns that we have, which I brought forward in committee.

According to the bill as written, electors will now have their birth date information given to Elections Canada. This birth date information will be passed on to people who are working in the polling stations for Elections Canada.

I do not have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, about the concerns people have had recently about privacy and personal information. We have seen exploitation of the privacy of people recently with companies. We have seen stories about the information of people being used and abused.

What we have in front of us is a bill that would take the birth date information of citizens and that information would be circulated among all those who work on behalf of Elections Canada. I am not concerned about the propriety in the trust of the employees of Elections Canada. I am concerned about how this information can leak out. We have 308 ridings with I do not know how many different polling stations. This kind of privacy needs to be protected. That is why we put forward an amendment to remove the requirement to have birth date information shared with Elections Canada because of the privacy factor.

When we look at ensuring we have legitimacy and trust in the election system, there are other ways of dealing with that issue, other than sharing the privacy of one's birth date. I know many people in my riding are aghast at the fact that their birth date information would be shared with Elections Canada.

What is even more egregious is the fact that we now will share, according to the amendment put forward by the Bloc and supported by the Liberal Party, this birth date information with all political parties. For what reason? We know what it is. It is so they can exploit it and use it for their own purposes. It has nothing to do with checking the verification of the voter in front of them. It is an opportunity, to be polite, for political parties to use personal information for their own purposes. Why else would a political party need one's birth date information?

We put forward amendments on birth date information and the sharing thereof. We do not believe Elections Canada should have it to share with everyone. We most assuredly, and I think there would be a charter challenge on this, do not want political parties to have birth date information.

Consider this. In my riding of Ottawa Centre we have up to eight to ten different candidates and parties running. This would mean that each and every one of those parties would have access to the private information of each and every elector. How do we ensure that this information will not be shared with others for purposes other than to verify if a voter is genuine?

I implore other members of the House to support our amendments to ensure that there is privacy protection. When they find out that Parliament will pass a bill that will open up their private information to not only Elections Canada but to political parties, I think most people will be aghast. I am sure they do not know that at this point.

That is why we have put forward these amendments. I hope for the support and hopefully a change in the minds of the Bloc and the Liberals, who at committee said that it was fine for political parties to have birth date information shared among themselves. That makes no sense. I am sure others in the House, now that they have learned about this, will want to support our amendment to remove that clause of the bill, which allows political parties to have this kind of private information of citizens.

Finally, I think if we are unable to have these amendments go forward, it will be very difficult for us to support the bill. I look forward to questions from my colleagues.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

There are nine motions in amendment standing on the notice paper for the report stage of Bill C-31.

Motion No. 3 will not be selected by the Chair, as it could have been presented in committee.

All remaining motions have been examined and the Chair is satisfied that they meet the guidelines expressed in the note to Standing Order 76.1(5), regarding the selection of motions in amendment at report stage.

Motions Nos. 1, 2 and 4 to 9 will be grouped for debated and voted upon according to the voting pattern available at the table.

I will now put Motions Nos. 1, 2 and 4 through 9 to the House.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, as reported (with amendment) from the committee.

Procedure and House Affairs

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the twenty-sixth report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

This report concerns the committee's order of reference of Tuesday, November 8, 2006, Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

The committee has considered Bill C-31 and has agreed to report it with amendments.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Colleagues, that ends the discussion on Bill C-31. I do thank you very much for your diligence and efforts.

Is there any other business? No?

Merry Christmas to everybody, and thank you very much. Have a great and safe holiday season.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

I would like to introduce the amendment on page 12, noted as NDP-1. Simply stated, Chair, it is that Bill C-31 be amended in clause 9 by replacing line 41 on page 3 with the following:

Subsections 55(1) and (2) of the Act are

This is a bit like a puzzle, Chair. To explain to members why I want to make this amendment in the way it is being done, it's important to explain how the bill is written and what it does to the act.

If you look at the bottom of the page as we have it in the bill, it says:

Subsections 55(1) to (3) of the Act are replaced by the following:

Then it scopes out subsections 55(1) and 55(2). What it does is eliminate subsection 55(3) of the Elections Act. I think that's important to note, because upon first glance one might look at it and say, this is fine; they're just making some changes to that particular section. What in fact it does is delete a subsection of the act, and that's what I want to bring to members' attention.

What we're doing by this amendment is in effect not adding, but preserving. That's very important to understand. What we're doing here is making sure that where it says that subsections 55(1) to 55(3) are replaced, we actually preserve 55(3).

If you don't have the act in front of you, it's important to note, particularly after the discussion we just had, that the act says, under subsection 55(3):

A body to whom information is given under an agreement mentioned in subsection (1) may use the information only for the purpose of establishing lists of electors for an election or a referendum held under a provincial law.

What it does is retain conditions on how information is shared. I think what we need to do, if we're concerned about how information is shared, is preserve this piece.

That's what this amendment does. It is to make sure that subsection 55(3) is preserved and not jettisoned. The reason is to make sure that we're not allowing, as is proposed under the bill, information to be handed over without conditions. The more conditions around how information is shared the better, in my opinion. So that's what this does; it retains what is already in the bill. It doesn't delete it; it keeps it in place.

[Natasha Kim]

Clause 18 of Bill C-31 does provide for that right now. It makes a distinction between the lists that are used at the polls--the advance polls and the regular polls--and the lists that are distributed.

So it makes that fine distinction, reflecting the committee's recommendation on that point.

[Dan McDougall]

At the time of voting, the issue would be exactly the same: if there were privacy concerns with respect to both date of birth and address at the time of voting, they would apply equally. The issue here is that we were talking about the distribution of a list. That's one step removed from the time of voting. It's less clear that the intention is exclusively to prevent fraud at that particular time. The structure, as currently within Bill C-31, is to have the list with the date of birth available at the official register, so at the time of voting it could be used for verification. But for more general distribution prior to the actual voting, having that list distributed is potentially cause for concern.

[Natasha Kim]

The revised and official list will have the date of birth on it, which is provided for in Bill C-31. It amends section 107 for that purpose, so that polling officials can identify and confirm someone's date of birth for the purposes of dealing with voter fraud. The address is something that almost must be used for that purpose. But the point of this amendment, and a number of these other amendments, would be to add that date of birth to lists that are distributed to candidates and parties and MPs as well.

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley, Chief Electoral Officer, Elections Canada]

I would like to thank the Committee for inviting me here today to discuss Bill C-31, An Act to Amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

I am accompanied by Rennie Molnar, Senior Director, Operations, Register and Geography, and Michèle René de Cotret, Director, Legislative Policy and Analysis.

My presentation today will focus on a significant change proposed by Bill C-31—that is, the requirement for registered voters to provide proof of their identity and residence before being allowed to vote on polling day.

However, I would first like to inform the committee about the initiatives that my office launched in recent by-elections held on November 27 in London North Centre and Repentigny that are tied to the objectives sought by Bill C-31, and that are most relevant.

First, to reduce the risk that poll officials would accept voter information cards as proof of identity, my office instructed election workers to collect them at the entrance to the polling station. That suggestion was made here, at the committee.

Second, we modified the notice posted at the polls informing electors about the qualifications for voting to include a warning that it was an offence to vote unlawfully and to indicate the maximum punishment for doing so—up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $5,000. I have brought copies of the notice in both official languages, and they will be distributed to committee members following my presentation.

Third, Canada Post agreed to have letter carriers collect the VICs found discarded in apartment building mail rooms in the days following the distribution of the cards. In fact, there were very few: 182 out of the some 90,000 VICs mailed in London North Centre and 22 of the some 85,000 mailed in Repentigny. But we did want to go through this exercise.

The President and CEO of Canada Post, Ms. Moya Greene, has indicated to me in writing that her office is prepared to continue this practice in future elections across the country and that they are currently determining how to do this.

Our preliminary analysis indicates that these initiatives were successful in further enhancing the existing statutory and administrative controls on the voting and registration processes.

Bill C-31 proposes to change the rules respecting voting by electors. It will require that every elector, whether on the list of electors or not, will have to prove two things before being allowed to vote. The elector will have to prove his or her identity, and the elector will have to prove his or her residential address. In order to do so, the bill proposes that the elector present one piece of identification issued by a Canadian government—whether federal, provincial or local, or an agency of that government—that shows a photograph of the elector and his or her name and residential address.

If the elector does not have this first piece of ID, he or she will have to present two pieces of identification, each of which must itself set out the name and residential address of the individual and be on the authorized list established by the Chief Electoral Officer.

Otherwise, the elector must take an oath and be vouched for by another elector whose name appears on the list of electors for the same polling division, together with proof of identification and proof of residential address.

The requirement to prove residence presents a significant challenge. It is worth noting that in Quebec, which is the only province requiring ID at the polls, electors only need to prove their identity, not their residence.

When I last appeared before you, you requested that I look at which card issued by the federal, provincial and municipal governments would satisfy the first requirement for government ID. While this research continues, I can report that there is no such card issued by the federal government.

At the provincial and municipal levels, the only cards identified up to now that likely meet the legislation's requirements are the driver's licence in all provinces and territories, the non-driver's licence or identity cards in a number of provinces and the Ontario health cards issued since 1995, which only 60% of Ontarians have.

Even the driver's licence, the most prevalent government-issued card and one that meets all the legislative requirements and is available in all provinces and territories, has its own limitations. Based on an analysis of the driver's licence that we have received, we estimate that some 15% of electors, or some 3.3 million people, do not have a driver's licence. As well, the chief electoral officers of other Canadian jurisdictions have pointed out that in many rural and northern areas of the country, especially west of Ontario, the address on the driver's licence is not the residential address but the postal address.

Once again, we estimate that in addition to the 15% of electors who do not have driver's licences, the licence of up to 10% of those who do have one will not satisfy the requirement for government ID because a required element will be missing.

This may be more of an issue for some provinces and territories, such as Saskatchewan and Nunavut.

In addition, as the committee has heard, some groups of electors are much less likely to have a driver's licence--in other words, they are targeted by this absence. This includes the homeless, the disadvantaged, seniors, and youth. This means, in effect, that some 4.5 million electors, one in five, will be required to prove their identity and their residence by bringing and presenting two pieces of alternative documents, as proposed by the bill.

In this regard, we have found only five identification cards that show both name and address: the federal fishing licences issued by Fisheries and Oceans Canada; cards issued by the Centre local de services communautaires, CLSC, in Quebec; trades cards in Quebec; some hospital cards anywhere in Canada; and the card issued by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind to its members. That is what we have found so far.

It is important to note that proof of residence is missing from a number of better known pieces of identification, including the Canadian passport, the Canadian Forces ID card, the certificate of Indian status, and the Canadian citizenship card.

We have been informed that the reason there are very few cards that show a person's residential address is because addresses obviously change frequently--16% of time, according to our statistics--and it is expensive and complicated to keep them current.

It is for this reason that in interpreting the bill, I assume that electors who do not have two cards each showing their name and address would be able to use documents such as utility bills, tax assessments, insurance documents, and personalized cheques as proof of identity and residence. I'd like to know whether I'm mistaken in this respect or whether I'm right.

By the way, while I appreciate the confidence of the committee in authorizing the Chief Electoral Officer to prescribe the list of alternative documents, I would wish to advise you that before approving such a list I would be submitting it to this committee for its review and comment. I consider this essential in light of the political import of this bill.

In light of the foregoing, however, and the testimonies before the committee, you may wish to consider whether other alternatives would better serve the same purpose as the current proposal for proof of ID and proof of residence. For instance, the committee may wish to consider whether it may be sufficient to require that a registered elector prove his or her identity, rather than his or her identity and his or her address in order to vote--in other words, as they do in Quebec, only the identity.

Furthermore, when it comes to proving identity, the committee may wish to consider the type of identification that should be sufficient to accomplish this. For example, this could be done by requiring that electors show, one, an identity card from a list approved by the committee on the recommendation of the Chief Electoral Officer that shows their name and photo; alternatively, two documents, again following the same approval process that both show their name. This would allow the prescription of forms of ID that will serve those groups with special needs, the same ones I mentioned earlier. Or thirdly, one document with their name and requiring them to state their date of birth that could then be compared to the one printed on the list of electors, as is proposed in this very bill. Otherwise, in accordance with the bill, the elector could take an oath and be vouched for by an elector who is already on the list of electors for that polling division and who has the necessary documents to identify himself or herself. That is in accordance with the bill, if everything else fails.

We've been talking about voting for people who are already on the list, whose name is already on the list. With respect to registration at the polls, people who are not on the list, the committee may wish to consider whether it would be sufficient to require that an elector establish both his or her identity and residence through one or two types of documents, from a list approved by the committee on the recommendation of the Chief Electoral Officer, that together would establish the elector's name and residential address. Photo ID would also satisfy this requirement.

I also wish to advise the committee that the changes concerning identification at the polls could be implemented within six months of royal assent, but changes relating to the list of electors will require more time, as we need to make changes to our software systems, followed by extensive testing process. Also, by July 2007 we have to change all of our computers and all of our computer systems. They have reached the end of their useful life.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my remarks. With your permission, I would like to table the chart summarizing the results to date of our research on identity cards—we've provided this to the clerk in both official languages, of course—as well as the poster that was put up in every polling station during the two by-elections recently.

My colleagues and I would be more than happy to answer any question that you may wish to raise regarding Bill C-31.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Ladies and gentlemen, let's begin the meeting this morning. Thank you all, members, for coming.

We do have a quorum, representatives from all parties, so we're going to begin. I just want to remind members that this meeting is being held in public, and as is the usual routine, we are going to need a few minutes at the end of the meeting. There are some motions before us. We'll get to those in one second, but we do want to discuss those as well.

Ladies and gentlemen, today's meeting is the continuation of the discussions of Bill C-31. We are again privileged to have expert witnesses before the committee this morning to help us with our understanding of this bill and our forward movement on the bill.

Mr. Kingsley is with us again this morning. We all know Mr. Kingsley, but I'm going to ask Mr. Kingsley to introduce himself and his colleagues. I just want to remind members that following that introduction we will move to our standard round of questioning. The first round will be seven minutes.

Mr. Kingsley, please.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Thank you, Mr. Dewar, it is duly noted. We will deal with that under future business.

Witnesses, it's not often that I have my work done for me, but you have been thanked. I want to echo on behalf of all the committee members the great work that you do outside of this room, and in particular the great work that you've done today by providing this committee with clear and concise answers and some great and valuable information.

I appreciate very much you coming down on short notice. Mr. Nothing, I know you were called in at the last minute. We thank you for compromising and cancelling and whatever else you had to do to get here. We certainly appreciate that.

I also don't like handing out homework, so I would like to thank my other colleagues for handing out homework. Mr. Preston and some committee members have made requests for some very easy to obtain, I hope, information. As chair, I would simply wish that you could get that to our clerk at your very earliest convenience so we can try to get it into both official languages and distribute it to folks.

Thank you very much, witnesses. Again, we certainly appreciate you coming. I hope you enjoyed your lunch. You are actually at this moment dismissed, with our gratitude.

Colleagues, while the witnesses are excusing themselves, I would like to carry on with some business that we don't need to go in camera for, so we will stay in public at this moment.

You have before you a copy of the committee's budget. I was informed by the clerk that the budget for the next few months, or the next session, needs to be looked at and approved by the committee. As all committee members are aware, this budget is to deal with the expenses of witnesses, for the most part, specifically Bill C-31.

We don't often have lunches. I believe this might be the second time this committee has worked through lunch. Again, I appreciate the indulgence of all members, who work extremely hard on this committee. We may have the need for another lunch next week. We'll see how that goes. Ultimately, that is what the budget in front of you is for.

Are there any questions regarding the budget? I will allow my clerk to answer the tough ones and I will answer the easiest.

No questions? It's a standing procedure, of course.

May I have committee approval for this budget?

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

As we've been talking about today, the job of this committee with Bill C-31 is to establish how we do it.

Mr. Dewar has brought it forward a couple of times, and I'll say it again, there are two pieces to this. There's an accurate list of electors, who people are and where they live. That process needs to be refined. We recognize that where we currently stand is not what it needs to be. So some motions have been put forward by my friend to help in areas where we see it being the absolute worst--the homeless, students, and some other areas. We think, across the country, the electors list needs to be brought to a higher standard.

Once the electors list is brought to that standard, then we still need to identify who is showing up at the polls. That's where the identification shows up. You've hit us today with some very good ideas as to how we might do it.

Ms. Carroll, you're right: your professional credentials are on the line if you are vouching for people and doing this for some fraudulent reason. We have heard, as a committee, about alleged fraud, serial vouching, in past elections, where someone shows up at the poll with 40 people and says that these are people from my street. They get to vote. Under the current election laws, that is absolutely accurate. They can.

I'm not saying that it was fraudulent, because the electors list was in such a bad way. It may certainly have been somebody vouching for everybody on their street, or somebody from their student residence vouching for everybody on their floor.

You mentioned a way to do it, but how do we not get to the point I just mentioned? I recognize, in your personal case, you're saying your credentials would be on the line. But we're trying to prevent fraud. If someone was out there intentionally trying to do it, your way still wouldn't do it for me.

[William Nothing, As an Individual]

Thank you, Chair and honourable members. I am here representing the Grand Chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation. “Nishnawbe Aski” means “people and the land”. The Grand Chief sends his regrets. He could not be here. He wanted to be here.

The Nishnawbe Aski Nation is comprised of 50 first nations, located in the far north. On behalf of these people, I thank you for taking the time to listen to our concerns with regard to the proposed amendments to the Canada Elections Act.

Most of our communities are remote, with access only by air. Access to urban centres is limited and very expensive. Access to government services is also limited, and when personal attendance is necessary it can be very expensive.

Our interest in Bill C-31, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, arises from the measures suggested to achieve improved integrity of the electoral process by reducing the opportunity of electoral fraud or error.

Among other requirements, these amendments would require that the 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.

I would like to inform the standing committee that measures that are simple enough in an urban centre such as here in Ottawa or Toronto impose considerable personal and community hardship in remote first nation communities. At best, these changes will impose considerable inconvenience; at worst, they could cause eligible voters to be disenfranchised.

In addressing the proposed amendments, we have made the following observations.

Few of our communities have street names, and none that I am aware of have local mail delivery based on street address. Consequently, identification based on civic or mailing address is not possible. Most people share a common mailing address, which is the name of their community and the community postal code. With regard to listing the names alphabetically, many share similar names in communities. Individuals with the same name are identified by their family affiliation and their personal history known to the people of the community. We wonder how the list of electors will be approached for residents of remote reserves with no street addresses and one common mailing address.

It seems there is an intention to gather electoral information through income tax returns. I advise the committee that first nations people in the remote north generally do not file income tax returns. If the only issue here is identification of the person filing taxes as a Canadian citizen, I suggest that you take it for granted that we are all Canadian citizens.

Our greatest concerns are related to proposed sections 143 to 145, which refer to requirements for government-issued photo identification. The acquisition of photo identification is made difficult because we have limited or no access to government issuing agencies. Acquiring a birth certificate, driver's licence, health card, or other identification is difficult because we do not have the agencies in our communities to issue these documents.

The attempt to accommodate lack of documentation raises two issues. First, the requirement to take an oath would necessitate that the returning officer or other agent administering the oath should be able to understand our languages. Has the oath been translated? Will you provide interpreters to administer and hear oaths after the content and the intent have been explained to our people who do not understand English?

Secondly, the opportunity to take the oath may be qualified by having an elector with approved documentation vouch for the person who does not have documents. However, the qualified elector may only vouch for one other person. It seems we would have to find separate, qualified electors to vouch for each person who does not have approved identification. In communities where we are generally known to each other from birth, this seems unnecessary.

We are also concerned that these amendments to the act could affect our elders. Most of these people do not have birth certificates; few of them have a driver's licence. Leaving their communities to acquire photo identification is a severe hardship and in some instances it will be neither feasible nor affordable.

In conclusion, we suggest that the proposed amendments have failed to take into consideration the realities of the people in our remote communities. They are based on the assumption that the majority of Canadian electors live in urban centres. Until government services are made available in an equitable manner to our people living in remote communities and the amendments to the act reflect the realities of the lives of our people.... I suggest that the committee, if possible, visit some of our communities to better understand the challenges we face in our role as Canadian citizens.

I am from one of these northern communities, from a little community called Bearskin Lake, which is just a little west of Big Trout Lake.

If you have any questions, I'll be happy to try to answer. Thank you.

[Barbara Carroll, Executive Director, Debra Dynes Family House, and Chair of the Coalition of Community Houses Ottawa, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and committee members, for inviting me here today.

As the executive director of the Debra Dynes Family House, which is a multi-service resource in a low-income social housing area in Ottawa, and chair of the Coalition of Community Houses, which provides similar services in thirteen other identified areas of poverty across the city of Ottawa, I would like to draw your attention to some concerns about the amendments in Bill C-31, particularly those to section 143.

Increasing people's awareness of their voting rights and responsibilities is a function that community houses take very seriously. Our communities have the largest populations of multiculturally diverse people who live in poverty in the city of Ottawa. We have three times the number of people under the age of 25 years, in comparison to other neighbourhoods in Ottawa. This figure, a unique feature of our communities, remains consistent over time. Single-parent families make up 68% of our families. These are all critical factors, and I think all of the people who are speaking today will have had some reflection and some contact with groups that are very similar to the ones I'm talking about.

Lack of knowledge of voting rights and responsibilities and the Canadian voting system, parenting responsibilities, mobility, and, in some cases, fear and trauma from experiences in other countries around voting procedures, form considerable barriers for many of our eligible voters. Bill C-31, proposed section 143, creates additional barriers that are, in my opinion, unnecessary and poorly thought out in setting up a system for voters that is accessible and allows them to exercise their fundamental democratic right to vote.

Proposed section 143 makes several assumptions that will further disenfranchise eligible voters who find themselves too often marginalized socially, politically, and economically in Canadian society. The requirement to provide photo ID as an option of eligibility to vote cannot be met by many of my residents and people living in poverty in Canada. They don't have a driver's licence. They don't have passports. It's an offence for someone to request a health ID card in Ontario, which puts elections staff in a difficult position and leaves voters feeling uncertain of whether they will be accepted or not.

Proposed paragraph 143(2)(b), “two pieces of identification establishing the elector’s name and address that are authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer”, can present difficulties for youths of eligible voting age in our community who are living in poverty, when it comes to providing documentation. They also do not have cars. They may be living with parents. They may not have bills that they can easily provide as ID.

I would also add that low-income families and people living in poverty in Canada move more often. Providing a current address is a very real problem for some people. That doesn't mean they aren't living legitimately where they are. They may have just been in the process of moving, and it shouldn't disenfranchise them from exercising their right to vote as Canadian citizens.

It is also not clear what would be authorized as acceptable by the Chief Electoral Officer in Bill C-31 as it sits presently, and if that would be consistent over time. You may be putting people or professionals in the field in a position where we're trying to inform, educate, assist, and make that voting process as accessible as possible, and if we're scrambling to find out what the new document is this year, or what the flavour of the month is around documentation, that is just going to decrease our ability to help people. It will stop it or it will be a hindrance.

There is a piece in the bill, proposed subsections 143(3) and (5) combined, that may create a barrier for professionals in the field to assist persons with limited ability to provide ID to vote. If you can vouch for only one person at one time, then I really think that is going to limit people's ability to vote, and it's also going to limit the ability of professionals who may be in a very good position to give authentic reference for people to be able to to do that. I'm certain we can come up with something better than what is in the bill at the moment.

I would just say that voting is a fundamental right of all Canadian citizens and it's important that any amendments to the way in which Canadians vote reflect and facilitate the ability of those whose voices are often not heard in the democratic process. The issues mentioned with regard to section 143 of the act set up a mechanism that will make it difficult, and in some cases impossible, for an eligible Canadian voter to exercise their voting rights.

It was very simple for me to walk into this building today. I was asked for photo ID. I could provide a driver's licence. If I had brought residents from my community, they would have had great difficulty in having access to the very foundation of the Canadian parliamentary system to be part of this process today. That's what I'm trying to get at when we are saying that some of the things in the amendments are not well thought out enough to accommodate the families and the people I come in contact with every day.

Thank you very much.

[Mary-Martha Hale, Chair, Alliance to End Homelessness in Ottawa and Executive Director of the Anglican Social Services - Centre 454, As an Individual]

Good morning, honourable chair, committee members, and guests.

I am the chair of the Alliance to End Homelessness in Ottawa, a coalition of seventy-plus organizations and individuals working together since 1995 to develop strategies to end homelessness. I am also the executive director of Anglican Social Services – Centre 454, a day program and counselling centre that has served the homeless population and those at risk of homelessness since 1954.

The Canadian government, through Elections Canada, has been working very hard to include all electors in the election process. We have worked with Elections Canada to address the extremely low voting rate amongst homeless and/or marginalized Canadians. We are concerned that proposed changes exclude homeless and temporarily housed citizens.

Currently, the emergency shelters in Ottawa have staff who have been able to vouch for the identity of shelter residents they know. At Centre 454, where we serve over 300 different people a day, we have held enumeration blitzes, meetings to introduce the candidates to our participants, and, in the most recent federal election, an advance poll in our centre for the homeless community. The other day programs in Ottawa have also done similar activities. In fact, Elections Canada has already contacted my staff to prepare for the next election. Elections at the federal level have become more inclusive of homeless people in the nine years since I have been involved.

In Ottawa, 1% of its population, or 8,853 people, were homeless and used shelters in 2005. Our research shows that 82% of these people are of voting age. These include parents, single women and men, and increasing numbers of people from the first nation, Inuit, and Métis communities. The 1% does not include the many people not living in shelters. It does not include the many who couch surf, moving from the homes of family, friends, or strangers. And it does not include those living in places not fit for human habitation, such as parks and cars.

Bill C-31 will unintentionally reverse much of the groundwork of Elections Canada and its many partners like the Alliance to End Homelessness and Centre 454. We have two points to make.

Proposed section 143 refers to the declaration of identity and the identification required to vote. People who are homeless do not have identification that reflects their stay in a shelter. For those who are homeless and living in a shelter, the average length of stay in Ottawa is between 23 and 45 days. It is essential that shelter staff, no matter where they personally live, are able to continue to vouch for more than one person when the individual shelter residents are well known to them.

Those people who are couch-surfing or temporarily housed often do not have identification that reflects their current address. What happens if an election is called and a person finds themselves in between permanent addresses? This person would not have any ID for their current address and they usually would not have had time to make friends with any neighbours who could vouch for them.

The Alliance to End Homelessness has used its communication mechanisms to raise awareness of the right of Canadians to vote, and the process they must go through to make their vote count by connecting Elections Canada with its members. I have given to the clerk a copy of the report card on homelessness that we produced last winter, and they will be made available to you. They're in both official languages, and they're also available on our website.

Centre 454 has worked with Elections Canada to enumerate people and we have provided a long-time employee on election day in the polling station, to encourage people in our community who may never have voted before and for whom it is an intimidating process. It is essential that my staff and others serving the homeless community, no matter where they personally live, are able to continue to vouch for more than one person when the individual agency clients are well known to them. I believe the government needs to think of the challenges faced by all citizens, including the homeless population, when reviewing Bill C-31. Clause 21 must be amended to ensure that the homeless or temporarily housed are not disenfranchised in this process of amending the Canada Elections Act.

The second point is that clause 9 of Bill C-31 proposes to remove subsection 55(3) from the current Canada Elections Act. This clause very clearly states that a body may use the information only for the purposes of establishing lists of electors for an election or a referendum.

Many in the homeless population are new Canadians who may have come from war-torn homelands. Many others who are homeless have been abused in the past by systems and institutions that professed a mandate to help them. Trust in the state to use personal information justly, legally, and wisely may not be as strong for this group as it is for those of us with more resources at hand to protect our information. At the same time, many Canadians have expressed their grave concerns about the improper use of their personal information. We therefore ask that subsection 55(3) of the current Canada Elections Act remain.

Thank you. I look forward to questions.

[Rob Hepburn, National Communications Officer, Canadian Federation of Students]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Good day, and thank you for inviting the Canadian Federation of Students to speak to Bill C-31.

By way of introduction, the Canadian Federation of Students is composed of more than half a million students from over 80 college and university student unions across the country. My name is Rob Hepburn, and I am the national communications officer for the federation.

The subject matter I'll be addressing before the committee today is that most visible element of our representational democracy—voting.

Of course, with most post-secondary students in Canada falling between the ages of 18 and 26, the constituency I represent has the dubious distinction of having one of the lowest voter turnouts of any group in Canadian society. For that reason, it's critically important that the Government of Canada pay particular attention to the impact on the ability of students to access their right to vote when considering any changes to the regulations and procedures that shape election policy.

The specific amendments to the Canada Elections Act under Bill C-31 that would most affect students are those that introduce the requirement wherein all eligible electors must show either one piece of government-issued photo ID, with a current address, or two pieces of non-photo and presumably non-government-issued ID. This would apply whether or not one is on the list of electors prior to election day.

In the spirit of minimizing electoral fraud and improving the integrity of Canada's electoral process, these requirements make a good deal of sense. However, they stand to impose greater impediments to the right of perfectly honest and legitimate electors to vote, particularly those electors who tend to be transient, including students, the homeless, and lower-income Canadians.

These groups understandably tend to have a harder time maintaining the same address, let alone keeping the address on their photo identification up to date. Many students attend school away from a permanent residence for eight months of the year and often change that place of residence on an annual basis while at school. Keeping the addresses listed on their drivers' licences or health cards up to date at all times, as an example, is a burden that could potentially inhibit them from democratic participation under Bill C-31.

Because of the high degree of discretion that the Chief Electoral Officer is assigned through this bill, the negative impact that these new identity regulations could have on students' access to their right to vote will come to depend largely on the unelected electoral officer.

Proposed paragraph 143(2)(b), which allows for two alternative pieces of identification to qualify an individual as an elector, as long as those forms are authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer, I believe is too vague in its current form for anyone to say with certainty that students, among others, will not be unfairly disenfranchised by this bill.

It is the position of the Canadian Federation of Students that Bill C-31 should more clearly specify the forms and sources of identification that would satisfy the requirement of proper ID of eligible voters, and that the greatest consideration should be afforded to the types of identification that are easily accessible to those who do not have a static and permanent address.

Rather than leaving the authorization of proper forms of ID up to a single unelected individual, who may not have the ability to undertake broad public consultations such as the one here today, accepted forms of ID should be determined by the elected members of Parliament and authorized by statute. It will make a tremendous difference whether or not the two alternative pieces of identification can include college or university residence registration forms.

After carefully reading the bill, I haven't the slightest clue whether or not these would be acceptable proof of a person's right to vote under Bill C-31. For that reason, I think the bill can and should be improved from its current form.

Short of remaking the Federal Accountability Act in order to send the Auditor General's powers of review to the Chief Electoral Officer's democratic balance sheets, I would find it a bit surprising if this bill is enacted in its current form. The government would give such discretionary powers over the franchise to one unelected individual.

I sincerely hope the honourable members on this committee consider at length that this bill could have the effect of limiting the franchise for some of our citizens whose likelihood of participating in an election are already slim at best.

I thank you again for the invitation to speak here today. I look forward to any questions you might have.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Good morning members, ladies and gentlemen. I want to welcome you all today and thank you very much. This is a very busy time of year for everybody, and it's great to see folks are coming out this morning.

I want to advise members and witnesses that this meeting today is being held in public. I would also like to advise members, as is the usual case, that I'm going to need five to ten minutes, or perhaps even fifteen minutes, at the end of this meeting—I will watch the clock—to discuss future business.

Members, today's subject is still Bill C-31. Today we have four witnesses with us from four different groups. We will allow the witnesses to open with a brief statement before we start our round of questions.

Ladies and gentlemen and colleagues, today at the witness table we have Barbara Carroll, executive director of Debra Dynes Family House and chair of the Coalition of Community Houses Ottawa; Mary-Martha Hale, chair of the Alliance to End Homelessness in Ottawa and executive director of the Anglican Social Services--Centre 454. Thank you.

We also have Mr. Bill Nothing with us and Mr. Robert Hepburn, the national communications officer with the Canadian Federation of Students.

We will offer the witnesses an opportunity for opening statements. We tend to try to keep them to five minutes, but we're not that formal, and if you don't need the five then that's perfect as well. Take a moment to introduce yourself, where you're from. I have done so, but feel free to do that for the record, as well.

We'll start with you, Mr. Hepburn. Thank you very much for coming.

[Murray Mollard]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. My name is Murray Mollard. I am the executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. I would like to thank the committee for the invitation to speak.

The association, as some of you may know, is over 43 years old and works on a large range of civil liberties issues, but the right to vote and political rights are at the heart, I would suggest, of the work we do. Democracy and making effective people's freedoms within a democracy are core principles and values, which the association strives to protect.

We see this issue with respect to Bill C-31. The impact it will have in terms of preventing eligible voters from exercising their fundamental right to vote is a top priority for the association.

I wanted to do something for the committee besides just sitting here and asserting that there will be people who are disenfranchised. I made an effort to contact a variety of social service agencies within the area that Tina Marie has referred to--the downtown eastside--that provide direct services for clientele and for marginalized people, homeless people, drug-addicted people, transient people, and people with mental health difficulties. I want to read into the record some of those letters. They have been sent to the committee, but I just want to quickly read some of those.

The first letter is from, Ethel Whitty, the director of the Carnegie Community Centre.

Dear Mr. Goodyear,

I am writing to express my concern regarding Bill C-31.

Thousands of individuals in the city of Vancouver are without proper identification due to poverty, illness or disability or having no access to a stable address. Many of them are known to their neighbours and the present system of verification of identity during election registration allows them to exercise their right to vote.

Changes to this system that would demand two pieces of identification for registration to vote would effectively disenfranchise them. I urge you to seriously consider the consequences of enacting Bill C-31.

This is a letter from Karen O' Shannacery,the executive director of the Lookout Emergency Aid Society:

I read with concern that the Act may change to require either proof of identification or require someone to take his or her oath as well as be vouched for by someone with id. This will place an unreasonable hardship on our residents and clientele, and will almost certainly eliminate the opportunity for the vast majority of them to vote.

I won't read all of this letter, but I'll read the concluding paragraph:

We believe that our residents and clientele should have as much right to vote as anyone else, and that means we have a responsibility to make voting accessible to them. People should be able to attest to their identity and eligibility to vote through a statutory declaration. We urge you to not implement the contemplated amendments, and use this alternative process.

This letter is from the executive director of the Motivation, Power & Achievement Society, Roberta Chapman:

MPA wishes to go on record as opposing Bill C-31.

This bill will make it extremely difficult if not impossible for those who are homeless to vote. The homeless are one of the most vulnerable populations with regards to social service funding reductions and should be able to exhibit that by voting.

MPA believes that “statutory declarations” are the appropriate path for those who are transient or homeless. We need to be encouraging everyone to vote and that includes homeless people. Many of the homeless are stricken with mental illness as a part of their difficult lives. This Bill only serves to remove them even farther from the voting process, giving them less say rather than more. Who is more compromised than the homeless population, and if not them, who will speak on their behalf in the vote?

Again, I won't read from the whole letter. This letter is from Jean Swanson, the co-coordinator of the Carnegie Community Action Project:

I am writing on behalf of the Carnegie Community Action Project to inform you that the requirements of Bill C-31 for 2 pieces of ID for voting eligibility will completely disenfranchise thousands of people in our neighbourhood....

This provision must be stopped if we are to call Canada a democracy.

I think there are considerable concerns by those who actually work directly with and will, as Tina Marie has also attested, know the very significant problems that marginalized people have in obtaining ID and retaining ID.

Our association believes that there should be amendments to the bill. We would urge you to consider carefully and implement provisions. For example, there could be amendment to proposed subsection 43.1(2) of the bill that would allow a sworn statutory declaration to establish the elector's name, eligibility, and residency. The act could also be changed. There would need to be another amendment in paragraph 161(1)(a) that would recognize that the statutory declaration could be used.

We note that the statutory declaration at this moment is reliant upon voluntary lawyers to come forward and provide their services. So it's not necessarily a holistic solution to this problem. We would urge you, for example, to consider permitting your deputy returning officers to take an oath, but not with the vouching system. I know Tina Marie maybe in the questions can speak of her experience of how the vouching system is ineffective because of the problems of these individuals not necessarily knowing others who would have to be on the registered voters list and have the requisite ID as well. Although we understand the reason why you put it in there was as a safeguard, we see the vouching as really a barrier to providing and ensuring people who are eligible to vote actually vote.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Ladies and gentlemen, we'll begin the meeting this morning. I apologize for the delay. Obviously, we have to have this room this morning because of our teleconferencing, which will start at the noon hour. I thank you for your diligence and your patience.

I want to advise members that this meeting is being held in public. Again, we are dealing with our continuation of Bill C-31.

I also want to remind members that at 12 o'clock today we will start our video conferencing. So we have one hour for our first witness.

I would like to welcome the director general of Élections Québec, Monsieur Marcel Blanchet.

Thank you very much for being with us this morning, Marcel. Normally what we do is offer you a few minutes for an opening statement.

Then we would start, colleagues, with our usual round of questions, the first round being seven minutes. I want to just remind members that we have one hour, and if we could keep our questions short and to the point, we'll probably get through more questions than we normally do.

Monsieur Blanchet, the floor is yours.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Minister, I would like to speak about the right to vote of convicts who are serving a sentence of two years and more. To allow inmates in federal establishments to vote, the chief electoral officer recently had to invoke the adaptation right that he has pursuant to section 17 of the Act.

For what reason did the government drop the committee's recommendation regarding inmates' right to vote from Bill C-31?

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to put a brief question to you minister.

You followed the work of this committee since we undertook consideration of Bill C-31, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act. We've had an opportunity to discuss the system that is in place in Quebec. That system enables us to eliminate representatives from each party, which complicates even the physical layout of the tables in polling stations. The committee will be receiving the Québec Chief Electoral Officer, who provides a formula to compile the names of people who have come to vote from the time the polls open. Some doubts were expressed, because it was feared that this would require hiring extra staff. I don't know if this came from you or the returning officer. However, it is possible that in each polling station, the clerk could do this compilation work. This is what we normally call the bingo cards.

Minister, I would like to know if you're opened to amending this bill, if that is the wish of my colleagues here on the committee. This system is not in place in provinces other than Quebec, where it has existed for many years. That's why I suggested we invite people from the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer of Quebec. If that is the wish of the committee, would you be prepared to amend your bill to reflect this, minister?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Minister for Democratic Reform]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'm pleased to introduce Natasha Kim, a policy analyst in legislation and House planning in the Privy Council Office; Raymond MacCallum, counsel in the human rights law section of the Department of Justice; and beside me is Dan McDougall, director of operations for legislation and House planning in the Privy Council Office.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, for inviting me to speak on Bill C-31. But most importantly, and to begin with, I would like to thank you and all the members of your committee for the work you did on the 13th report.

I can tell you that the government has reviewed your report very carefully. We tabled a response on October 20, supporting in principle virtually all of the recommendations you made in that report.

But we did not stop there. Bill C-31 was introduced shortly thereafter, on October 24, and as you know, it is based on the recommendations from the 13th report, recommendations aimed at improving the integrity of the electoral process, recommendations originating from this committee that were developed in a non-partisan, collaborative way.

Mr. Chair, if you take the bill and the government's response together, I think they represent very clearly the intention of this committee, and indeed changes to Bill C-31 at this stage would probably mean revisiting the committee's original recommendations.

That being said, the government is, of course, open to listening to such changes, if it is the will of the committee members, but I would simply say that I agree with Monsieur Guimond, who, in his second reading remarks on November 7, said that Bill C-31 came from an “excellent collaboration among the political parties”.

This is an issue of common concern for all parties, and I would hope you will do everything within your power to expedite the passage of this bill.

I would like to turn to addressing some of the measures in the bill. Because the bill implements the committee's own report, I won't review every measure, of which there are many; rather, having reviewed the second reading debate, there are three in particular that I will address. I will quickly discuss these three issues: voter identification, date of birth on the voters' list, and the unique identifier. I will then take your questions.

First, I'd like to spend some time on the issue of voter identification. Bill C-31 implements the committee's recommendation on this point, and the recommendation had no dissenting opinions. It was formulated after the committee discussed the issue with the Chief Electoral Officer, the Privacy Commissioner, and representatives from the four major political parties. Concerns were raised at that time about ensuring that no voters were disadvantaged because of not having identification.

The result was the balanced approach recommended by the committee and reflected in this piece of legislation. It allows three options: a photo ID, with name and address; two pieces of other identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer; or, for those without identification, an oath or affirmation and a voucher.

This is very similar to the current process for registering at the polls, and I think it is important to spend a minute on this point. As you know, to register at the polls you need to have identification or to take an oath and have someone vouch for you.

The Canada Elections Act already forbids vouching for more than one person to get them registered. We have had these safeguards in place for polling day registration for many years. Bill C-31 simply extends the same safeguards from the registration stage to the voting stage, as the committee recommended.

I would emphasize that amendments were made to the Canada Elections Act in 2000 to allow a shelter to be considered a residence. This provision, subsection 8(6) of the act, will continue to apply to facilitate voting by those without a fixed address.

Mr. Chair, the voter identification process will bring the federal system in line with other jurisdictions that require identification, including the province of Quebec, a number of Canadian municipalities, and many other countries.

By providing three options for meeting the ID requirement, Bill C-31 will provide greater voting accessibility than some jurisdictions that do not provide any alternatives to photo ID. For example, some American states that do not provide alternatives to photo ID have encountered legal challenges; on the other hand, states that provide alternatives like those found in Bill C-31 have not.

Each jurisdiction must determine for itself what works best for its system and its electors, and I think we have found the right balance in Bill C-31 between maintaining voter accessibility and protecting the integrity of the Canadian electoral system. Indeed, without a system that functions with integrity, the right to vote would become meaningless.

The other two issues raised on second reading were raised by the Bloc Québécois. First, my Bloc colleagues indicated a desire to amend the bill so that the date of birth would be added to the lists of electors sent to candidates, rather than only on those used at the polls. To this I would note that the committee expressly recommended against this approach in its report.

Further, this appears to be an unnecessary intrusion into the private lives of Canadians without a clear policy rationale. In appearing before the committee, the Privacy Commissioner noted the importance of adhering to privacy principles in formulating legislative recommendations--in other words, the importance of ensuring proportionality between an objective and the degree of privacy intrusion.

The justification for adding the date of birth to the list used at the poll is clear. It improves the integrity of the system, acting as a means of confirming the identity and eligibility of voters. The same justification does not appear to exist for giving the dates of birth of Canadians to individual candidates. Many Canadians are sensitive about such personal information. While it is an important tool to verify identity, we should avoid unnecessary distribution unless there is a pressing reason.

The other issue raised by the Bloc Québécois was with regard to how the provisions on the unique identifier are drafted in the bill. The identifier would be a permanent number or code assigned to each elector by the chief electoral officer and tracked on the voters lists. The bill currently contains permissive language so that the chief electoral officer is authorized to assign identifiers, but not expressly obligated.

We would see no problem with strengthening the language so that the Chief Electoral Officer is required to assign the identifier.

Before concluding, I would note that other issues arose in second reading. For instance, many members raised recurring concerns with the accuracy of lists of electors and the national register. Indeed, this issue was raised in committee and discussed with the Chief Electoral Officer.

As a result, Bill C-31 implements a number of the committee's recommendations that will unquestionably make important improvements to the register and the accuracy of the lists. For example, the bill will clarify a Chief Electoral Officer's authority to have returning officers conduct updating activities between election periods. Such activities could include targeted revision of the register for areas of low registration, such as areas with a high degree of homelessness or on aboriginal reserves. I would further suggest that the committee pass a motion to formally request the Chief Electoral Officer to undertake such initiatives.

In combination with the greater predictability that fixed dates for elections will provide, measures in Bill C-31 will enable better planning and preparation for accurate voters' lists. Of course, there is always more that could be done, and the government fully supports the committee's desire, as it was expressed in recommendation 6.8 of the 13th report, to explore other methods for improving the lists, such as the use of census data or targeted enumeration.

However, in the meantime, I would suggest that we act now to implement the committee recommendations in Bill C-31, and we can continue to work together on other ways to improve our electoral system.

In closing, Mr. Chair, I will simply quote the committee from page 1 of its report:

As Members of Parliament, we are directly concerned with the electoral process, and have first-hand experience with the rules governing the conduct of elections. ... It is important that we use these experiences and the lessons learned to correct deficiencies and improve our electoral system. ...[I]t is important that the necessary legislative changes are made in an efficient and timely manner. The Committee believes that a window of opportunity for legislative changes exists.

Bill C-31 provides these legislative changes. This is an opportunity to implement your recommendations.

Let me say, on a personal note, that I have been involved with many committee recommendations and reports over the last 22 years, and many, if not most, of those committee recommendations did not end up as completely as parts of legislation as your 13th report has, as before you.

I would ask you to seize this opportunity, keeping in mind that this is a minority parliament, of making a difference in the legislative framework of improving the electoral system, enhancing its integrity. With your cooperation and with your leadership in that report, I think this is very possible, and I urge you to act on that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Ladies and gentlemen, let's call the meeting to order.

First of all, thank you, everyone, for coming out today. I apologize for running a bit behind. There was a meeting before us, and I appreciate the work of our support team here getting things ready as quickly as they have.

I would like to advise all members that today's meeting is being held in public. I would also like to advise members that we're going to need about 15 to 20 minutes at the end of the meeting—I will watch the time, of course—to discuss future business regarding our study on Bill C-31, particularly respecting witnesses. But we'll leave that until the end.

The third thing I would like members to be aware of is that we have received some motions. We'll distribute them in one second. Mr. Lukiwski has provided us with motions; I'll distribute those to the committee, and we can discuss them later.

Next, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to welcome the Honourable Rob Nicholson, sponsor of the bill.

Mr. Nicholson, thank you very much for being with us today. If you would be so kind as to introduce your team, then we can begin.

Let me ask folks on the periphery of the room to keep the conversations to a minimum, out of respect for our witnesses.

Mr. Nicholson, please.

[Chief Patrick Brazeau]

To be really quick, some of the resolutions are to engage in bringing about more accountability within the organization and in being more forthright about membership lists that we were going to be working on, consulting our people within the next year, so that we're in a position about a year from now to say exactly how many members are in the organization.

That doesn't stray from the services we provide on behalf of or offer to aboriginal people across the country. It's to work towards implementing some of the RCAP recommendations, including possibly having a discussion on the issue of Bill C-31, which is very important, because it's outright discrimination. It basically allows the federal government to decide who is a status Indian and who is not. In my family I have nieces and nephews who are non-status Indians, and on my side my children are status Indians. That makes for a healthy debate at Christmastime.

It's basically to move forward to demonstrate our true representation, our legitimacy within the organization, and to demonstrate to the Canadian public, the taxpayers, that the funds we receive, although very small.... We receive an annual budget, including programs and services core funding, of $5 million. Out of that $5 million, half is disbursed through our provincial organizations so that they can provide services.

So we're not talking about a lot of money within our organization. It's to demonstrate to the taxpayers that with the moneys we receive we are going to provide results with the funds and are going to make significant changes in the lives of people, whether being funded or not.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Okay.

Colleagues, thank you very much. I think we've had an extremely productive conversation this morning, and I appreciate the consensus we're hearing around the table. It demonstrates significant cooperation and a need to do better.

What I'm understanding, just for the record, is that this will be discussed amongst the individual caucuses in some matter of seriousness, and that at some point in the future we'll put it on the agenda. My guess is that it might be February, but let's see how things go. If it's not going to take too much time, we could have a brief discussion about the results of those discussions at caucus here at the meeting, and then decide how further to deal with it, if at all.

Is there any confusion on that? Are there any questions? Okay, perfect. Jamie, we'll mark that down for some future date. We're good to go.

Ladies and gentlemen, what I want to remind members is that we do have before us now Bill C-31, which is, of course, as a direct result of our report from this committee. That will be coming before this committee on Thursday. Regrettably, we're putting the conflict of interest code on the back burner, so to speak, for a little while, as legislation takes precedence.

Members, I just want to remind you that, at the very most, we have seven meetings left before the Christmas adjournment. Before you, you should have a blank calendar. I would certainly like to have a discussion now about what witnesses we need. We have some already. We need to schedule the witnesses, and if necessary—hopefully it's not necessary—I would like to have a brief discussion about the possibility of extra meetings so that in fact we can get our work done prior to the Christmas break.

What we know so far, colleagues, is that on Thursday, Mr. Nicholson will be appearing before the committee--that's confirmed--to begin the discussions. He has been invited. He has agreed, of course, to come.

There are some other witnesses here, I can tell you, who have requested to appear, but also, before I forget, I want to make sure that we agree, as a group, on notice for any amendments. We did agree prior, when we were studying Bill C-16, to 24 hours’ notice for any amendments. First of all, can we get that out of the way? Is that acceptable to members, that there be 24 hours’ notice for any amendments?

I'm seeing nods around the table. Okay, then we can just record that that will be the rule with respect to that. The witnesses who we feel that at this point we need to hear from, and as well have asked, are the B.C. Civil Liberties Association; and Duff Conacher, who is the coordinator of Democracy Watch. We have an individual request that I'm not 100% sure of, from an individual named Tina-Marie Bradford, from British Columbia. She's a lawyer. She has requested to come before the committee.

As well, we had requests from our friends in the Bloc to have folks from Quebec in to discuss the issue of bingo cards. My thinking is that Quebec might be able to offer some insight as well on how they have managed the issue of folks who are homeless, how they've dealt with it.

And then, of course, Mr. Kingsley will be appearing--Mr. Shapiro may want to appear, but I don't see the relevance.

May I just suggest as chair, to lead things along, that we have Mr. Nicholson coming in on Thursday. So next Tuesday, might I suggest that we invite our colleagues from Quebec and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association via teleconferencing? Obviously, I will leave it to the committee to agree to that. I have no position on Mr. Conacher or the individual from British Columbia, the lawyer, so I would leave that to members, if they choose, but my thinking is that we get them all in here on Tuesday, November 28.

Thursday, November 30, is adjourned out of respect for the Liberal leadership campaign. We could reschedule that to a Wednesday night, but let's see how many witnesses we come up with.

I suggest that Tuesday, December 5, which would be the next meeting, we have Mr. Kingsley in for at least the first half of that meeting to answer any concerns we come up with as a result of the witnesses.

I remind colleagues that we've had many witnesses on the report that we tabled. Much of this is going to be repetitive, but in all due process and with respect to colleagues here who may have questions, I will now open the floor for comments on who the witnesses should be.

Monsieur Godin.

Canada Elections Act

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak to Bill C-31 on improving the election process. First, I basically agree with everything my colleague said. I would like to reinforce it, in the environment of my riding, with a bit of background.

It is interesting that we are discussing this on the night after an American election. We saw the little pitfalls it ran into, which were related to computers. Improvements can always be made to the system.

I think we have unanimous all party agreement that we want the highest integrity possible in the voter system. It is so important to our country. We want to ensure that as many people as possible are correctly enumerated so no thinks the elections are unfair. The type of indepth study into the bill is totally supported by all parties. We need to do as much as possible to ensure the integrity of the system for every one of our some 30 million Canadians, at least those who are of voting age.

We have had some problems over the years in my riding, once again minor problems. Hopefully, administrative changes can fix these. With the new mailboxes, voter the cards mailed to people sometimes fall on the ground and other people pick them up and think they are supposed to vote. Sometimes they are mailed to the wrong address. Therefore, we have had a problem with all these cards floating around.

Another problem, which we have had periodically, is the transient population in my riding. Some people move either in or out of the riding, or they move to other parts of the riding. There is a fair amount of movement throughout the riding. Although I am a big supporter of the permanent voters list, many times we would go door to door never knowing if we had the right number of voters. People had moved in, who were not on the list, or they had moved out, but they were still on the list. Hopefully, these amendments in the bill will help improve that.

In relation to the photo access card, I am not sure if pilot projects have been done or considered. However, we have to ensure the wrinkles are ironed out so everyone can have access to those cards, whether they are transient, or youth or aboriginal. Many youth in the country have no reason to have a photo ID card. When they need to get one early in their voting career, they have a hard time getting it. I also know there may be transient people who do not have a photo ID. We had a problem in my area when passports were becoming mandatory to get into the United States. Certain aboriginal people could not obtain a passport easily because they lived so far away.

Hopefully, all these items will be facilitated by Elections Canada to ensure that everyone has easy access to the requirements needed to vote. They are not unreasonable requirements. They are in place in many other countries, as the study on the bill has shown. However, we always have to facilitate every person in our society, whether they are disabled, or a youth, or a senior or aboriginal, to ensure that new requirements are fair to everyone, that they can afford them and can obtain them.

I am adding my support to improving the integrity of the system. As I said, it is exciting coming after the eve of an American election, which turned out very well for my riding. A number of people have been elected who are against drilling in the Arctic National WildLife Refuge. The objective of all parties in Parliament is to ensure no drilling takes place in that area. I am excited for those who were elected, but I lament the loss of a few members who were also against drilling.

I close by lending my support to the bill and I compliment all members of Parliament, especially on the procedures and House affairs committee who are looking at these technical details to make the system fair.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Yukon.

The member for Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington and the member for Ottawa Centre went into great detail describing the bill and how we got from that place to here, so I will not repeat that, but I would like to highlight a few aspects that are important for us to consider as we deal further with this bill.

First of all, there was a report from the Chief Electoral Officer in September 2005 which set out a number of these improvements in the integrity of the electoral system. That report was considered by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs last spring and a report was generated from that committee's hearings. That went to the government and on October 20 we received this report back from the government, incorporating most of the committee's recommendations as well as the drafted Bill C-31 which we are considering.

I was not involved in that committee last fall, so I do not have the full history of what was suggested and what was rejected. However, it seems to me that it is a bit of a surprise at this stage, when we have gone through an iterative process with experts, party members, the Privacy Commissioner, the Chief Electoral Officer and other electoral officials, as well as debate in committee, and our own report going to the government and the government responding to it, that we are not a little further ahead than we appear to be now.

I listened carefully to the member for Vancouver East and the member for Ottawa Centre. While the points that they raise with respect to democratic access to the voting process make eminent good sense, and in fact they are fundamental principles that must be respected in a democracy, I am a little surprised that at this very late date in this process these are being raised as things that have been totally neglected by members from all parties, the government, electoral officials over the last period of longer than a year.

I am a little surprised at that. I thought actually there was an agreement that we would be moving this pretty quickly through at this stage. Having raised those concerns, it is incumbent upon us, of course, to consider that concerns they raise are either dealt with by amendment or that we are all given the assurances that they are properly looked after.

As we look at election administration and this particular act amending the Elections Act, integrity of the voting system is absolutely critical. We have to balance two things. We have nothing if we do not have integrity of the system. We may have access to all sorts of people who may not otherwise have been enumerated or have easy access, but if we do not have the confidence of Canadians that the system as a whole has integrity, we have nothing. It simply is a chimera.

How do we balance that integrity in ensuring that we have voter identification, that we have effective enumeration, as well as making access as easy as possible for those in society who do face various barriers? We have heard a number of examples of that, either people who are transient and do not have current local information to establish their residence and address, or people who indeed are homeless or living in shelters where they are living very restrictive lifestyles and have a very restricted ability to identify themselves or have someone vouch for their identification.

That balance is tricky, I agree. We must ensure we get it right. I thought we were getting quite close there, but what needs to be done very quickly is to ensure that, first of all, the enumeration process is as sharp, as focused, as accurate, and as up to date as it possibly can be. I think this bill takes some steps toward doing that. There are many communities in our country which are remote and where there are really perennial problems with enumeration in those areas.

We have to, as a committee and as this House, give very strict directions to the Chief Electoral Officer and his staff to ensure that an extra effort is made to identify those areas of low enumeration. I think remote aboriginal communities are the best example of that where there have been in some communities over time a real under-enumeration. It is pretty obvious on the face of it, given what we know about the population and how many people are enumerated. That is an administrative factor. The bill is adequate for enumeration powers. We just have to ensure that the efforts are more strenuous in getting that enumeration done.

Another part, and it came up partly in the comments from the member for Vancouver East, is that we ensure that identification is as easy as possible. The bill lays out certain types of identification at different levels of challenge that can be used for the purpose of confirming identification. One thing that has not been specifically mentioned, which I think is very important, is that aboriginal band identification cards, which do have a photo and are issued by band councils, be accepted as government identification. This would be sufficient with the address and the photo. If they do not have the address, perhaps a letter from the band council would ensure that people in reserve communities have the full opportunity to vote.

Focusing on careful enumeration in order to ensure that we have a secure but a broad interpretation, particularly in aboriginal communities, of the first line of identification with a photo on it that would be acceptable as government photo identification. It should go without saying. It is certainly in line with the whole recognition, under our Constitution and governments across this country, of the inherent right of self-government of aboriginal people and therefore that type of identification should be acceptable.

What we had better do, because of the concerns raised by members of the NDP, is get this back into committee after the vote as soon as possible, and get the necessary officials before us to ensure that the issues raised can be dealt with. At the end of the day, this will be a balance. We will not have enumerated every person eligible in this country. There will always be transients. There will always be difficulties that individuals have, but we must ensure that, to the greatest extent possible, we catch as many people while still securing the integrity of the system.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak in support of Bill C-31.

This bill should be of interest to all members and all Canadians, because its goal is to improve the electoral process, the foundation of our democratic system. There can be no doubt that Canadian democracy is a great democracy.

All members here have been through at least one election and know that the process is not perfect. They know that an election period lasts 36 days and is organized around a complex set of rules and procedures. They also know that holding general elections in 308 electoral districts is a major undertaking. In any operation of this scope there will always be room for improvement. Bill C-31 will allow our electoral process to run more smoothly.

At first glance, many changes seem to be somewhat technical, but even small operational modifications can produce concrete results in practice. Providing support for the machinery of democracy strengthens the integrity of the process as a whole.

I believe that the reforms should be greeted with the support and confidence of the candidates seeking election, the parties involved in the electoral process, the election officials responsible for the conduct of elections and, more particularly, the Canadian public, whose democratic choice is expressed through the electoral system.

The bill contains tangible improvements for everyone involved in the democratic process. That is why I support it. I would like to briefly describe a few of the changes proposed.

The most important change is that electors must identify themselves at the polling stations. As my colleagues from Quebec undoubtedly know, this measure has been in place in Quebec for the last seven years. Quebec’s Election Act was amended in 1999 to incorporate an obligation to present a piece of identification before voting. Other amendments also require that Quebecers identify themselves to vote in a referendum or municipal election.

In order to exercise their right to vote in Quebec, electors must present a Quebec health insurance card, a driver’s licence, a Canadian passport, a certificate of Indian status or a Canadian Armed Forces card, and electors who cannot do that are referred to an identity verification panel and must sign a sworn statement as to their identity. They must produce at least two other documents to the panel that establish their identity or ask another elector who has an identity card with a photograph to be their guarantor.

Those measures are similar to what is proposed in Bill C-31. I am persuaded that the process for identifying electors will work as well at the federal level as it does in Quebec. A study done by the chief electoral officer of Quebec in 2002 shows that deputy returning officers and the persons responsible for polls are generally satisfied with this provision and that it has been relatively well received by electors.

The deputy returning officers who took part in the study noted these facts: first, mandatory identification has strengthened the integrity of the voting process by reducing the possibility of fraud; second, this measure has led to increased public confidence in the system; and third, it enhances the importance of the voting process.

I believe that Bill C-31 will have the same good results, results that are really necessary at the federal level.

For example, members will recall an incident that was much talked about: an American student had voted in the 39th general election. His stated purpose was to demonstrate that the enforcement of rules at polling stations was too lax and that the opportunities for fraud were in his own words, “immense”. He succeeded.

However, I want to make it clear that the very great majority of voters go to the polls in good faith, solely to exercise their legitimate, democratic duty. It is almost impossible to prevent someone whose goal is to defraud the system from finding a way to do so.

Nevertheless, the provision dealing with voter identification in Bill C-31 will make it a great deal more difficult for voters with unlawful intentions to achieve their goal. The bill includes mechanisms that will allow for an investigation after the election if necessary by requiring, for example, that voters without identification take an oath. The bill will highlight the rules for voters who may believe, incorrectly but in good faith, that they are eligible to vote. It will not prevent eligible voters from exercising their rights.

Most Canadians are used to presenting some form of identification for a variety of daily activities. Unlike other levels of Canadian government where identification is compulsory in order to vote, the bill provides alternative solutions for Canadian voters who do not have photo identification.

In other words, the bill establishes an important balance between accessibility and integrity.

This bill introduces important changes that have been standard practice for a long time at other levels of government in Canada, like most of the reforms on election financing in Bill C-2. I think especially of the prohibition on donations from corporations and trade unions. The voter identification system works well in Quebec, and I am convinced that it will work well in the rest of Canada.

This bill contains numerous tangible improvements to the electoral process. I will mention only some of them. First, the voter’s date of birth will be added to the official and revised list of electors that will be used at polling stations. This measure is already in use in Quebec and represents another means of confirming the identity of a person who wishes to vote.

The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs specifically requested in the recommendations on which these provisions are based that the elector’s date of birth not be shown on the lists given to candidates. I agree with that because it is very important to protect personal information. I see that the bill abides by this request.

I would like to highlight the fact that advance polling stations can henceforth be set up for a single polling division, instead of a minimum of two as is currently the case. This is an important change in those provinces and regions where the polling divisions are very far apart, in northern Canada, for example, or in highly rural areas. Now that the advance polling stations will be closer to the electors in these areas, it will be easier for them to exercise their right to vote.

Finally, I would like to point out that the bill contains various specific points on how the Chief Electoral Officer uses and communicates election information. For example, each registered elector will be assigned a unique, randomly generated identifier to facilitate the updating of the Register of Electors and improve its accuracy.

In addition, income tax returns can be used to enhance the reliability of the information that Canadians agree to provide to Elections Canada.

The bill also contains specific provisions on the exchange of election information between federal and provincial election authorities. This will help to improve the integrity of the federal and provincial voters’ lists and ensure that personal information is well protected.

I could go on much longer about the various advantages of this bill, but what is most important is the cumulative effect of all these improvements. These changes, taken together, enhance the integrity of our election process. Like the Federal Accountability Act , this bill will help us maintain public confidence in our democratic system. Like Bill C-2, which deals with election financing in particular, this bill contains important reforms that have been tested in Quebec. Like Bill C-2, this bill, I hope, will be passed quickly by Parliament so that it will be in effect for the next election. These measures are important for all parties concerned and for all Canadians.

I hope that this bill will receive the enthusiastic support of all hon. members and parties in the House.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Okay. That answers my question. I'm always shocked at what things cost, so don't judge by my reaction.

I'm interested too in a bill that was just introduced in the House of Commons that may have serious implications for the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. It's Bill C-31, dealing with the new voter registration cards, whereby the date of birth will go on the permanent voters lists. A lot of people are reacting negatively to this already. They feel that, seeing as voters lists are given out to every candidate in every election, you will now know the name, address, phone number, and date of birth of every person on the voters lists.

Does this cross any lines that your office deals with on a regular basis, or does it cause you concern? Can you anticipate a volume of complaints stemming from something like that?

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

I would like to begin my comments by quoting Alfred E. Smith, a very well-known governor of New York, a populist, a reformer in child labour and some other areas, and a solid advocate for the poor and for democracy. Many years ago, he said, “All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy”.

I agree with Mr. Smith. Those words are a prescription and should guide us in our deliberations. If, as some have claimed, there are ills in the system, the only way to cure the system is to open things up and have more democracy. I believe that what Mr. Smith was really referring to was the importance of opening up the process of government and of believing that democracy is not a static concept. In fact, democracy is fluid and evolves, and it can always be improved.

On the fundamental idea of improving the process of voting, or of democracy, let us make no mistake about it: my party and I support the concept and we believe that much more can be done to improve our system. To be clear, we support the principle and the spirit of Bill C-31. In fact, for many years we have called for improvements to the voting system.

But let me also be clear in saying that I have major problems with this bill. I believe it needs not just fine tuning but a major overhaul. To be clear, this bill is not the democratic remedy that will cure the body politic and what ails it right now. In fact, there is an argument to be made that the bill could make it worse.

Let us examine the origins of this bill. I think that is important. The bill started with an examination by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, just after the last election, on how to improve the integrity of the electoral system and the electoral process. In June 2006 the committee report was tabled. The government responded on October 20. The government then proposed this bill that is in front of us.

Just as a side comment on that, there is something that I find interesting. Yesterday the government said there was all party support for the report and there was a sense that we had a consensus on what is in the bill. We have to clarify that this was not the case. I think most people who were on the committee would acknowledge that. This bill and its contents are not what the committee asked for.

In fact, there was a committee report and the government response to the report, and then, I would submit, there was cherry-picking in terms of what was in the report and what is in this bill. Those are the origins of the bill. I will be cautionary here. As I said, we support the spirit and the principle, but we are being cautionary because of the way in which the government has decided to improve the democratic process.

We have concerns about some of the points in the bill. As my colleague from Vancouver East has already mentioned, one of our concerns is about requiring people to have photo ID. This is possible disenfranchisement for some people. Not everyone has photo identification. Those on the government side will say, as others have said, that it is not a problem because they can then have someone vouch for them and they can swear an oath. There are problems with that. As my colleague said, the devil is in the details.

There are many concerns around people's ability to find someone to vouch for them and concerns around having supports for that, be it because of language issues or lack of knowledge on how to have people to advocate for them. There may be unintended effects of this bill that would marginalize and shut out some of our most vulnerable citizens. I know that this is certainly not the intent of anyone in this House, but that unfortunately could be the outcome.

The way the bill is written might also leave it open to a charter challenge, for some of the reasons I have mentioned. Of course this is something that will come out in committee. It is very important to understand this. We saw, as was referred to by another member, that in the United States the electoral laws in the 1950s and 1960s were structured in a way that intended to disenfranchise people. It was part of the clarion call of the civil rights movement to change that in the United States.

I would hate to see unintended consequences that would do the same here. I do not think that is hyperbole. We have seen laws in this country that have done that. I refer to B.C. and its so-called section 80, whereby people were not able to get on the voters list until the actual day of the election simply because of a flawed enumeration system. It is important to acknowledge, with the way the bill is presently written, that a charter challenge could happen.

It is also important to note that there are other ways to deal with the concerns MPs and people in general have with the integrity of the system. It is always important to note that when we have a piece of legislation in front of us we have to look at what the problem is. Here, the problem being put forward to us is that there is possible fraud occurring. How do we change that? The government is proposing a bill that talks about photo ID, vouching, swearing oaths, et cetera. Perhaps there are other ways and I think we have proposed some.

One way to change that, as my colleague said, is a proper enumeration. We have just had two bills passed in Parliament that would affect enumeration and the electoral process. I am referring to the clauses in Bill C-2 about the appointment of district returning officers based on merit. That is a good thing. My party supported it. We supported it before the election and we certainly supported it in Bill C-2.

The bill now before us gives the district returning officer a new purview. The bill talks about who shall be given an oath and who shall be questioned, et cetera. We do not have the other piece in place, sadly, because of what is going on in the Senate. That process needs to happen. The Senate needs to pass the bill.

Before that happens, I note that I have concerns about how these people will be trained and what merit we will be basing our decisions on. How are we going to train them so that the people we have employed are going to know the intricacies of their jobs? In this bill, we are giving them the authority to question people's legitimacy and whether they should be given a ballot or not.

Another concern of mine has to do with fixed date elections. Recently in this House in that regard I supported more resources being put into enumeration. That is what we heard about from witnesses who spoke on Bill C-16. I would like to see more emphasis put on a viable and sound enumeration process. That would be a better way of dealing with the problem, rather than simply asking for more ID, for referrals or for vouching for people when they might not have access to photo ID or to someone who could vouch for them.

I believe the intent of the bill is important. Quite frankly, I believe the bill was rushed in the way it came from committee and has been put before the House. I think the bill needs an overhaul, not just fine tuning. We look forward to making major amendments to the bill when it comes to committee and we look forward to hearing from Canadians on how this will affect them.

My last point is that I began my comments by saying that the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy, and if we are not careful, we will not be following that prescription. In fact, we will be doing the opposite with some of the unintended consequences of this bill.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, we heard the discussion yesterday by other parties that spoke to Bill C-31, the voter integrity bill, and now the NDP is here to put forward its issues and concerns about the bill.

I want to say at the outset that the member for Acadie—Bathurst, who is a member of the procedure and House affairs committee, was a member of the committee when the report was done, a report that was based on the bill before us. However, I should make it clear that the bill only deals with a few of the matters that came from the report. I was at committee when the Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Kingsley, responded to the issues in the report.

The bill deals with a voter identification system based on the premise that fraud and serial voting take place and therefore we need a voter identification system in our national registry and in our voting system.

The NDP is very supportive of the need to take measures to ensure fraud does not take place within the voting system. It is very important that we protect the integrity of the system. We are talking about a time honoured, democratic process where eligible voters have a proper place to vote and we have integrity in our system. From that point of view, we support the need to review the system and ensure measures are in place to lower the risk of fraud. I am sure it cannot be eliminated 100%, but measures should be in place to offer that protection.

What is being offered as the main solution to this problem is a voter identification system. In looking at the bill and knowing where this came from at committee, we want to express some of our concerns about what may be the unintended consequences of the ID system on voters. In particular, we are concerned about how this would impact low income people, people who live in small remote communities and aboriginal people who do not have the necessary ID outlined in the bill.

I represent the riding of Vancouver East where, in one community, the downtown east side, regrettably and unfortunately, many people do not have IDs through no fault of their own. These people are often homeless and often transient and they have difficulty getting government ID. They certainly do not have photo ID.

One of the problems with the bill is that it would require one piece of photo ID from any level of government or two pieces of ID that are authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer. A further provision in the bill says that an elector who is not registered can take a statutory oath if he or she is accompanied by an elector with ID whose name appears on the list of electors for the same polling division.

On the surface this may sound like a reasonable measure in that it would allow people with no ID to have some mechanism to vote. However, I have looked at this carefully and have talked to lawyers in my community who have been involved in providing assistance around statutory declarations for voters with no ID, and they are very concerned, as I am, about what this provision will mean.

At present, it is acceptable for a voter to make a statutory declaration along with a person in the community who can identify the voter. In the downtown east side, it has often been a street worker, someone who knows many of the people in the community, who vouches for the individual. Under the new bill this would no longer be allowed.

We are very concerned that this provision may have a very negative consequence and may disenfranchise potentially thousands and thousands of people who will now, through no fault of their own, not be able to vote.

We are prepared to see this bill go to committee. The government has said that it is willing to look at amendments that would correct this to ensure that by dealing with voter fraud, we are not at the same time unintentionally disenfranchising people who have a right to vote, who want to vote and who are voting legitimately, but would be precluded from doing so by these new provisions.

When the bill goes to committee, it is our intention to see substantive improvements and changes made to this bill to address what are very fundamental democratic issues. One of the provisions in the bill is that a person vouching for another can only do it for one person. This would set up a very complicated system where people who are not registered and who do not have ID would be running around trying to find somebody else who is registered, is on the list and does have the proper ID, and then getting that one person to vouch for one person. It would create a very complex situation and could mean that a lot of people would not get to vote.

It may also impact more middle class voters who go to the polls thinking that because they are registered they are okay. They have the voter cards and some ID, only to find that when they get there they do not have the proper ID. We may actually be frustrating those people.

I would also point out that this has been an issue in the U.S. elections and in fact there have been some court challenges. A similar provision was struck down in Georgia and there is currently a challenge going on in Ohio. In the United States, there is no centralized voter registration or election apparatus. It is contingent upon each state, and varies from each state, but a similar provision has been used in the U.S. and it actually has caused immense problems in the current elections that were just held yesterday. Challenges are underway and some of the provisions in some states have already been struck down. We should learn from this.

In terms of the principle of dealing with fraud, we support that but we do want to ensure we are not setting up a system that creates a two tier system where it becomes increasingly difficult for marginalized, low income people to actually exercise their franchise, which would be a travesty.

I do not think that is what anyone intended in this bill, at least I hope not. However, it will be up to us in committee to hear from experts, especially the lawyers who are very familiar, as are those in my community, with the statutory declaration process. They will be able to offer some insight into how this process works and may be able to tell us what we need to not only protect the system but protect people's right to vote.

With those kinds of concerns and reservations that we have, we are prepared to see this bill go to committee where I hope we can sit down and work on some amendments to make sure people who legitimately have the right to vote are not disenfranchised.

The House resumed from November 7 consideration of the motion that Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

This is a bill that the committee has studied exhaustively. When there are things that are not working, the role of the opposition is to point them out. However, when things have worked well, then as a matter of intellectual honesty they should also be pointed out. This is called not engaging in shamelessly partisan politics. Here in the House of Commons there is of course adversarial debate, by definition. It must be noted that if a lot more discussion and a lot more collaboration among the various political parties were sought, by all sides, we would be able to produce better bills, bills that were an improvement on what was initially proposed.

Bill C-31 is a good example of what comes of excellent collaboration among the political parties. I will explain what I mean by this.

At the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, the government responded to a report. To summarize the sequence of events for the benefit of the people listening to us, the Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Kingsley, has to submit a report after an election campaign. The report is submitted to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. That report was studied in committee and all parties are represented on that committee. Our report was tabled in the House. On October 20, the government responded to the report. The response was in writing, in the form of a formal response. There was also a legislative response. Bill C-31 represents that legislative response, which reflects a majority of the points raised in the report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

In the opinion of the Bloc Québécois, when the bill goes back to committee, we will have an opportunity to suggest amendments to our colleagues in the other parties, to improve the bill once again.

The reality of a minority government means that there should be a lot more collaboration and consultation with the other parties, as I said earlier. In my view, the government should follow the example of Bill C-31 to amend the Elections Act and follow the same course for other bills.

For example, instead of insisting on pushing its law and order agenda, its right-wing agenda, the Conservative minority government should listen to the Bloc Québécois, which is calling for more emphasis to be put on rehabilitation rather than punishment. Instead of digging its heels in on its right-wing agenda, it should do the same thing with the opposition parties that are calling for the Kyoto objectives to be upheld. The Conservative government should also do the same thing for the gun registry, when it is bent on dismantling it.

I wanted to explain this point during my introduction in order to illustrate how it is possible to come up with better legislation by consulting the opposition. Why are we of the opinion that Bill C-31 is appropriate? The Bloc is in favour of it in principle. We are in favour of it because there is a whole aspect where the possibilities of fraud and error are reduced. Now, thanks to this bill, voters will have to present government issued photo ID, with the bearer’s name and address.

At home, in Quebec, the basic document could be the driver’s licence, which contains this information.

It seems to me that colleagues from New Brunswick mentioned that their driver’s licences do not have photos. I am not sure, but I think that my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst drew attention to this. The goal is to have a document that is issued by the government and bears personal information making it possible to identify the person. It is true, unfortunately, that when voter identification procedures are inadequate, some situations may arise in which people are tempted, often in exchange for money, to go and vote for other people.

There was the classic case that occurred in the Quebec riding of Anjou. I think that someone voted 34 times in the Quebec elections in Anjou. If I recall correctly, the candidate, Pierre Bélanger, lost by fewer than 50 votes. Since then, this flaw in the Quebec electoral system has been corrected.

Voters who do not have photo ID will have to provide two acceptable pieces of ID so as to establish their identity and address. The Chief Electoral Officer will publish the list of acceptable ID. In a recent election, in 2004 or 2006, someone came to a polling station to vote, armed with a pile of magazines like L'Actualité, Macleans, Femmes d'Aujourdhui and 50Plus. These magazines can be purchased every week at the supermarket. In this case, this person received them at home because she was a subscriber. On the covers was the Canada Post seal. This person managed to vote, thanks to her pile of magazines.

When people live in an apartment building, they have no guarantees that no one will go through their mail. In multiple dwelling structures, the mail is not always protected. Anyone can take the mail. So we can understand the absurd example that I gave. This person wanted to vote using this process.

Under Bill C-31, each voter's date of birth will be added to the official list of electors used in polling stations.

For example, a person might know the Speaker's name. I know the Speaker is young; I believe he is not yet 30. A person could try to pass himself off as the Speaker. At the polling station, he says he is that person. The list of electors makes it clear that that person was born in 1918. Perhaps the Speaker remained young thanks to a fountain of youth or an elixir of youth even though he was born in 1918. The birth date provides some indication that there might be a problem. This raises a flag, perhaps not a red flag, but a warning flag nonetheless. The bill includes this improvement.

Given that we believe Bill C-31 can be improved upon, I wish to announce that, subject to consultation, we intend to amend it to ensure that voters lists provided to political parties also contain date of birth information, as is the case in Quebec.

Bill C-31 will also improve the accuracy of the voters list because the chief electoral officer will assign a unique, randomly generated identifier to each voter.

This is a continuing demand of the Bloc Québécois, which has been calling for a unique permanent identification number for each voter for a long time. We would have preferred that the bill was more binding on the Chief Electoral Officer and clearer on this subject. We give notice that we will also have some suggestions for amendments on that point.

Bill C-31 also seeks to remove the deadline after which voters who have a functional limitation can no longer request a transfer certificate to a polling station offering level access. In our opinion, voters in wheelchairs or with a physical disability should have an equal opportunity to democratically express their choices. Unfortunately, when voting places are located in facilities that do not have full and free access or that involve stairs, by definition, they do not in any way promote access by voters in wheelchairs.

It is our view that Bill C-31 will improve communications between election officials, candidates, parties and voters.

Bill C-31 will give candidates a right of access to common areas of public places for election campaign purposes.

I believe that all of our colleagues here today have encountered situations where the owners of some shopping centres have refused permission for us to meet and introduce ourselves to members of the public. An election campaign is a special opportunity to call attention to ideas, to talk about our record as a member or as a party, regardless of which party is campaigning. The government can speak about its record. In the present case, the record of the Conservative government includes the torpedoing of the Kyoto protocol and a disposition in favour of war, similar to the Americans. We will have the chance to return to that record at the proper time—in an election campaign.

Bill C-31 will also provide election officials with a right of access to multiple residence dwellings and to gated communities to revise the voters list. Gated communities are dwellings to which access is controlled by a gate. How can voters be enumerated if no one is able to enter, or barely so? The accuracy of the lists then poses a problem.

Other provisions deal with certain operational and technical improvements, but I cannot list them in detail since my time has almost expired. In any case, we will have an opportunity to return to this topic. I wish simply to remind members that the Bloc Québécois will re-examine some aspects in committee or at third reading.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

On June 22 the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs tabled a report in the House entitled “Improving the Integrity of the Electoral Process: Recommendations for Legislative Change”. The report was based in part on the recommendations that we had received from the Chief Electoral Officer. While there have been discussions about fundamental changes to our entire electoral system, these should not detract from the efforts that have been made to improve our existing system.

The government tabled a response to the committee's report on October 20 and agreed with a vast majority of the recommendations that were made by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. Bill C-31 was subsequently introduced on October 24 of this year.

The proposed bill will amend the Canada Elections Act to improve the integrity of the electoral process by reducing the opportunity for electoral fraud or for error. It requires electors, before voting, to provide one piece of government issued photo identification that shows their names and addresses, or two pieces of identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer that show their names and addresses, or they can also take an oath, or they may be vouched for by another elector who does have photo identification.

The proposed bill also will amend the Canada Elections Act to, among other things, make operational changes to improve the accuracy of the national register of electors. It will facilitate voting and enhance communications with the electorate. It amends the Public Service Employment Act to permit the Public Service Commission to make regulations that will now extend to the maximum term of employment of casual workers. We see this as an improvement.

While the government did not incorporate the committee's recommendations into Bill C-31, it stated that when it did not accept these recommendations, it had a fundamental disagreement with principle, or the items required further study, or we had received inadequate testimony and had been unable to reach a definitive decision during the committee proceedings.

A key concern of the Liberal committee members was to ensure that the bill allowed aboriginal status identification to be deemed acceptable proof for voting purposes. Government officials have clarified that the text of the bill requires government issued photo ID with an address, or government issued photo ID without an address. This would include band status cards, but they would have to be accompanied by a letter from the band council, or something like a phone bill that would have the person's number, name and address to corroborate the claim that he or she was indeed eligible to vote in that specific riding.

A second concern for the Liberal committee members is ensuring that the enumeration process is strengthened in reserve communities. The government has suggested that rather than send the bill to committee, that the committee simply pass a motion calling on the Chief Electoral Officer to strengthen enumeration in reserve communities, as well as other areas of low enumeration. With all sides in agreement with the goals of the bill, its passage could be accelerated in the House.

As the bill has emerged from the work of an all party committee, sending it back to the committee would be somewhat redundant, given that the government has assured the opposition that the aboriginal ID concerns are addressed in the text of the current bill.

On this side of the House, we support changes to the Canada Elections Act that protect against the likelihood of voter fraud and misrepresentation. We need to ensure that aboriginal photo identification is an acceptable form of voter identification. We also support strengthening the enumeration process, particularly on reserve communities and other areas of low voter enumeration.

The committee thought long and hard. The House procedures committee has a lot of veteran politicians on it and we all had many stories. We also asked our colleagues for some stories. My colleague, the chief government whip, has enumerated some of them. One of the best refinements we are recommending, and it is in the bill, is to include the birth dates of individual electors so there can be an objective kind of identification.

I also think a photo ID is essential because on election day it would allow the volunteers and the workers at Election Canada to facilitate Canadians who have the right to vote and ensure no mistakes or voter fraud are involved in what we know is an outstanding electoral system.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the House leader for laying out some of the principal elements of Bill C-31.

I have run in seven general elections and voters lists are quite familiar to me as I know they are to the House leader. I have had the opportunity recently to look at the latest list issued by the Chief Electoral Officer. My frustration continues with the his office, from the standpoint that changes brought to the attention of the Chief Electoral Officer, through the returning officer of the riding, continue to be ignored.

In fact, it is very difficult for changes to be made in the current system simply because they have to come through sources which are direct from the person on the list. It is clear, simply by taking the list and sorting it by postal code, or by street or whatever, that there is information missing or information is in the wrong columns. There are numerous addresses that have far more persons apparently resident than is legally permissible. None of these things seem to be addressed.

I raise it with the member only from this standpoint. If the obvious things have not been taken care of first, how can we overlay more changes and expect even a greater level of accuracy within the voters list? If basic changes cannot be made by the current system of relying on information collected through other agencies, the provinces, et cetera, or through the income tax return where people volunteer that information, how will this help?

The other point I would raise with the member is this. Even with our existing system, there are some circumstances where a family may relocate. If children do not have documents, which they have to file, then children tend to be left on the list in the former home rather than following the parents.

These are things that over time have led to a very significant distortion in the actual number of electors in a riding. It affects, as the House leader will know, many aspects of the work that members of Parliament and candidates in elections for all parties undertake.

It would be a tremendous boon if the changes being proposed here would contemplate and address some of the existing problems before we ask for a greater level of sophistication. Would the member comment on that?

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

moved that Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to begin the debate on Bill C-31, the voter integrity bill. This bill is aimed at improving the integrity of the electoral process and reducing the opportunity for electoral fraud. Together with the measures proposed in the federal accountability act, this bill will help to maintain the confidence of Canadians in their democratic process.

Many hon. members will already be familiar with much of what is in this bill. That is because it implements recommendations from an all party report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs tabled in this place in June.

In formulating its recommendations, the committee had the benefit of testimony from the Chief Electoral Officer, the Privacy Commissioner and representatives from the four political parties in the House. Of course, the committee also had the expertise of its members. We have all been through the election process and are well aware that there is always room to improve the process by which we come to this place.

The committee's practical recommendations will enhance the process for all parties and all Canadians.

The government has listened carefully to the committee and we have tabled a comprehensive response to the report, but in addition, we are taking concrete action by means of Bill C-31, the voter integrity bill. As members can see, Bill C-31 makes a host of improvements to our democratic machinery. I would like to take this opportunity to highlight some of the measures in the bill.

Foremost, Bill C-31 establishes a uniform procedure for voter identification at the polls. Currently, there is no automatic requirement to provide identification in order to vote. I am sure that probably comes as a surprise to most Canadians. We need identification for everything that we do in society and most Canadians would expect that they would have to properly identify themselves if they want to vote.

Under this bill, a voter need only state his or her name and address before being given a ballot. In practice, voters may often just present a voter identification card. However, these cards sent to individuals to notify them of their polling station are not intended to be used as identification. Indeed, the committee heard evidence of bundles of these cards being left in the lobbies of apartment buildings or being otherwise open to abuse.

Under the Canada Elections Act now, a poll clerk, deputy returning officer, candidate or candidate's representative may request identification only when there is doubt as to a person's identity. However, this right to challenge is often implemented unevenly across tens of thousands of polling stations in the country. Some polling officials may be reluctant to demand identification when it is not legally required. Some candidates may overuse their right to challenge. In the meantime, voters are required to carry identification in case the right is revoked.

By introducing a voter identification requirement, this bill will address these issues by providing consistency and clarity, reducing the opportunity for electoral fraud and signalling to Canadians the importance of exercising the right to vote.

The bill will bring Canada into line with the system in the province of Quebec, a number of Canadian municipalities and many other democracies. These jurisdictions take a variety of approaches, including the development of a unique voter identification card or exclusive photo ID requirements.

The voter ID process in our bill was carefully crafted by the standing committee to provide a balance appropriate to our Canadian system and consistent with our values. The balance is struck between protecting the integrity of the process and ensuring that no one is disentitled to vote by reason of lack of identification.

Most voters who have photo ID with name and address, such as a driver's licence, can show that in order to vote. Alternatively, a voter without such ID can show two other pieces of acceptable ID, establishing name and address.

The bill requires the Chief Electoral Officer to publish the type of ID that would be accepted so that all voters will know what to bring in order to vote. We encourage and trust the Chief Electoral Officer to take the necessary public education initiatives to ensure voters are aware of these requirements.

Let me be absolutely clear. Under the bill, the voters who may not have acceptable ID will still be able to vote. These voters will need to take an oath or affirmation as to their identity and have another elector vouch for him or her. This also reflects a balance of providing reliable procedures to protect the integrity of the vote while maintaining the accessibility of the franchise. We, like all the parties in the House and on the committee, want all qualified voters to be able to vote. Under this bill, they will be able to do so.

The voter identification process will go a significant way to reduce the opportunity for electoral fraud. In addition, we will tighten up the vouching system, both for registration at the polls without identification and for voting at the polls without ID. People who vouch for those without ID will not be able to vouch for more than one elector, as is currently the case for registration. Someone that is vouched for because he or she does not have identification will not be able to vouch for another person seeking to be registered or to vote without their own ID.

The date of birth of electors, something already contained in the national register, will be added to the list of electors used at the polls. As also recommended by the committee, we will require a written affidavit to be signed by an elector where reasonable doubts are raised as to his or her qualifications.

For example, together these measures will assist where someone presents himself or herself at the polls and does not appear to be of voting age. The ID may indicate the date of birth and establish the entitlement to vote. It can also be used to confirm identity if it matches the name and date of birth on the list of electors. This is especially helpful if there are two names that are very similar.

Or, if the identification does not indicate the date of birth but the person's ID establishes his or her identity, the person can be allowed to vote after signing the affidavit. If it is subsequently discovered that the person was not qualified to vote by being 18 years old, then there will be a record of the event. This reform remedies a gap in the current legislation for situations where someone's qualifications to vote are in doubt.

In addition, in its response to the committee, the government supported a number of recommendations that were not statutory in nature to deal with potential electoral fraud. We look forward to working with the committee and the Chief Electoral Officer to ensure such measures are pursued.

At this point, I want to underscore that we must be vigilant to ensure our electoral system is sound and functions with integrity. While the incidence of electoral fraud is difficult to pin down precisely, it is clear that it has occurred. There have been well publicized instances of non-citizens having voted, or people voting twice, or the clear potential for individuals presenting themselves at the polls as someone else, such as by using a voter identification card that has been discarded.

Such examples can erode public confidence in the democratic process, affect the results of a close election and create real harm to the integrity of our system. That is why Canada's new government is taking action to implement the parliamentary committee's recommendations.

Protecting the integrity of the electoral process of course means more than just reducing the opportunity for defrauding the system. It also means improving how the system operates. A well functioning electoral system will go a long way toward reinforcing public confidence in the electoral process.

There are four main areas of operational improvement that I would like to outline briefly.

First, the bill will implement measures for improving the accuracy of the national register of electors. Errors in the register have the potential to harm the integrity of the electoral process because it is meant to indicate who has a right to vote. For example, the committee heard evidence of the list of electors including multiple entries for a single elector, electors registered at business addresses, and even dead people on the list.

The bill will make important changes to the way the information on the national register of electors is updated to improve its accuracy. The bill will permit tax filers to be asked their citizenship so that only the information of qualified electors will be sent to Elections Canada if voters consent to the sharing of that information. The Canada Revenue Agency will be able to share information on deceased tax filers with Elections Canada so that deceased electors can be removed from the register in a timely fashion. Returning officers will be expressly authorized to conduct updating initiatives in relation to the register. This will enable, for instance, targeted updating in areas of high mobility or new development. The authority of a CEO to collect, retain and share identifying information for the purpose of updating the register will also be clarified.

Second, the bill will make reforms to avoid some electors being discouraged from voting due to operational hurdles. For example, no longer will voters with a physical disability be required to request a transfer to a polling station with level access three days in advance. This time limitation is impractical for voters, who may not realize their polling station is inaccessible until they arrive on polling day. Similarly, electors who have their polling station reassigned will now be able to vote at their original polling station. This avoids inconveniencing or discouraging voters because of an administrative change.

The bill also opens the accessibility of advanced polls. Under the act now, advance polls must group two or more polling divisions. In large areas of sparse population, this could require an elector to travel significant distances in order to vote.

Third, the bill will improve the way candidates and election officials communicate with Canadians. The way the Canada Elections Act is currently worded, candidates have access to apartment buildings to campaign but not to gated communities, all access to which is also controlled by someone other than the residents. The bill will clarify the wording in the act so that candidates may access such communities in order to canvass at homes in the communities. Individual Canadians themselves should be able to decide whether they want to speak to candidates seeking public office on their behalf.

Similarly, the bill will clarify the ability of elections officials to access apartment buildings and gated communities for the purpose of updating the register and list of electors, and candidates will have clear access to public areas for informing Canadians of their right to vote. They should be able to campaign. This is one that I am particularly pleased about. As for the shopping malls and strip malls, where sometimes candidates now find their way barred, if these areas are open to the public they are open to political office seekers to engage the public. I think this is a terrific step forward and one that I particularly like to see.

Lastly, the bill will make other improvements to ensure the electoral process runs smoothly and efficiently. For example, drafting errors in the act will be corrected and timelines for the production of annual lists of electors will be extended. Like all the changes I have already discussed, these reforms were recommended by the committee made up of all four political parties, often based on the suggestions and the experience of our Chief Electoral Officer. Like all changes already discussed, these reforms would improve the integrity of our electoral system.

Before I close, I want to thank the committee for its important work. Canada is a great democracy. We should never lose sight of that. There is no greater democracy in the world, but it does not mean that we should not adapt to the times and that we should not be vigilant to protect our democracy. Even the smallest technical change can help the way ordinary Canadians exercise their right to vote.

This bill, based on the committee's recommendations, makes these operational improvements and does more. It ensures that all Canadians can exercise their right to vote while improving the integrity of the voting system. This bill will benefit all Canadians and all parties. I will say to hon. members that since this has already been supported at the committee and is an adoption of the recommendations that were made by the committee, I hope this bill will have speedy passage and will soon pass into law.

Aeronautics Act

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

I would like to thank my colleague from Alfred-Pellan who has informed me that it is actually Bill C-6.

I would note that my colleague from Alfred-Pellan is on the committee. His participation is valuable and he, too, will have an opportunity to ask the government questions in committee, including why it is introducing Bill C-6, which is the old Bill C-62, which was itself the old bill S-33, which came out of a Transport Canada study begun in 1999.

The department wants to implement a new approach to the security management system. It claims this new approach has shown good results in Australia and Great Britain. The idea was to correct deficiencies that Transport Canada might never even have heard of. The department believes that this initiative would provide an additional layer of security.

Transport Canada is trying to convince us that this would not change the existing system. An additional layer of security would simply be incorporated. However, we think that in the final analysis, there is a risk that the safety of passengers and civil and commercial aircraft users would be endangered.

Indeed, while this bill aims to implement a new safety management system and to allow employees to speak openly about how it is working, at the same time, it allows each airline to have its own employee training program, its own system for auditing the work of employees, their skills, and the equipment.

Clearly, this is self-regulation. That said, we have learned certain things about the inspectors, the Transport Canada check pilots and those who are tasked with conducting investigations. I will give some examples in a moment. At present, Transport Canada has an entire team that randomly and without warning visits airlines to perform audits. They verify that the pilots have the necessary qualifications, are capable of piloting the aircraft assigned to them and have adequate training, and that the airline is keeping up with the most recent industry standards.

In short, they perform random checks. Yet, this entire system would be replaced in the security management system. That is what Transport Canada investigators are being told. All of the Transport Canada check pilots are being told that, in the future, they will only be auditors. They will no longer be allowed to perform random monitoring or random checks. They will only be auditors. In fact, with this system, the airlines will self-regulate and the auditors will have to confirm that the airlines have implemented what they promised to implement. That is more or less the case.

Lastly, the bill would give accreditation and training authority to the airlines themselves. They will have to ensure that their staff is trained and that the equipment is in proper working order. Thus, there will no longer be an inspection system. The inspectors will become auditors who will ensure that proper records have been kept. If an employee ever files a grievance, quite a process must then begin. In fact, what this bill hopes to encourage is whistleblowing.

Often, the industry will spend as little as possible on safety. Voluntary reports will probably be made after an accident occurs. The employee will say that he had notified the boss, but that the boss had forced him to work. Now, he is saying that, in a given year, something was not right.

That is what we in the Bloc Québécois are afraid of. At the same time as the government is introducing this safety management system, it is dismantling existing systems and investing less in training our Transport Canada inspectors, the check pilots.

What tipped us off was not Bill C-6, but the check pilots—the inspectors— themselves. They came to meet with members and told them that they used to receive training. Every year, there was a minimum number and a maximum number of hours of training. For three years now, they have been limited to the minimum number of hours of flight training. These are the inspectors who are responsible for determining whether pilots have the proper training on all types of aircraft. We are not talking just about airliners, but about all commercial aircraft, ranging from bush planes to airliners. They all must be inspected.

At present, there is a system that ensures that the Transport Canada check pilots or inspectors, trainers and investigators are trained in all equipment and all new technologies and are capable of telling a company that its pilots do not have the necessary training or need to upgrade through ongoing training or some other means. This system is now being set aside.

I would like to read some comments from people who work in this field, including Transport Canada investigators.

In this regard, I would like to read a few comments made by those who work in this area. Here is what they say:

Transport Canada's investigators, through ... the vice-president for Quebec of the Union of Canadian Transport Employees ... said they fear that the government will, under the SMS (safety management systems), take advantage of future retirements to not renew part of the supervisory staff.

This process is already underway. These people are concerned because the government is telling those who are retiring: “Listen, you are going to leave and you will not be replaced”.

The goal is to take all those who conduct investigations and turn them into auditors. They will no longer conduct investigations; they will merely look at the books and check to see if the company is doing a proper job of monitoring.

A letter dated June 7, 2006 reads as follows:

—the Canadian Federal Pilots Association told the government that it objects to pilots' proficiency tests being conducted by the companies themselves, rather than by qualified Transport Canada inspectors, who follow the pilots in flight to assess their skills.

This is what the SMS are all about. Airline companies will be certified and will test their own employees. As I said earlier, this is putting the fox in charge of the hen house. Yet, this is what is being done and what is already in effect.

This is a letter addressed to the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, and it is dated June 7, 2006. That was not five years ago, since this was just done. The letter continues:

—Similarly, we learned that, in order to save money, aircraft are always taking off with less fuel (thus making them lighter)—.

So, in order to save money, airlines have this good or bad habit—if you are like me and you are little afraid of flying—of putting in as little fuel as possible to save money, because the aircraft is then lighter. The letter goes on to say:

The options available are just that much more limited, which means that, in case of deviation, head winds or delays in landing, the risks become much greater. For example, a transportation safety board document indicates that, in 2003, because of a navigation error, an aircraft flying to New Zealand landed with 359 pounds of fuel left, which is barely enough to fly just a few minutes.

The inspectors' reports provide such examples and that is why we need inspectors to arrive unannounced to carry out analyses and inspections. The industry wants to save as much money as possible and it saves on everything, even fuel. Planes fly with just enough fuel to reach their destinations.

When there are investigations, the investigators see that the industry is in trouble. The reason for putting in place safety management systems is that there are no longer any inspectors and the industry is self-regulated. The industry will dictate the standards to its own companies because the government or Transport Canada will have accredited them for that purpose.

This policy of having as little fuel as possible and of saving as much money as possible will continue forever. One day, a plane will not have enough fuel, there will be an accident and then we will question all these safety management systems that were put in place because there was a problem, there were no longer any inspectors and the government, during that time, tried to save money. There were fewer inspectors, thus less monitoring.

I do not believe that the Conservative members or that the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities have fully understood the implications of this reform that dates back to 1999, that is before September 2001.

I will close by quoting Grant Corriveau, a retired Air Canada pilot, in an interview with the Toronto Star:

All the new bells and whistles are continually pushed to the limit in order to become more profitable and to squeeze more airplanes into more airspace and then when something goes wrong, you have less outs and less room to manoeuvre.

He added that during his 30-year career, he has seen budgetary belt-tightening change the way pilots fly. Add to these serious examples the fact that airlines wanted to reduce the number of flight attendants and that the Conservative government decided to take a step backward.

All of these proposals are aimed at having as little security as possible, as little surveillance as possible. An industry that is constantly seeking to bolster its credibility should not be trying to do such things.

We would be doing it a disservice even though, on paper, it looks like a good idea to create this security management system and offload regulatory responsibilities, such as conducting personnel and equipment evaluations. It sounds like a good idea. The government would probably save money because it would no longer have to pay for inspectors, investigators and check pilots.

In the current climate of fierce competition, where companies are closing their doors, the Conservative government would be making a big mistake by letting them self-regulate and do their own personnel skills and quality control inspections. In Quebec, Jetsgo closed its doors about a year and a half ago, not 10 years ago. I am not just talking about large airlines. As I said earlier, we are talking about all aspects of commercial aviation, from bush pilots and bush planes to big commercial airliners.

The Bloc Québécois is against Bill C-6. The committee will try to improve it. We will have to ask the right questions and hear from the right people to ensure that we are not making a mistake by adopting Bill C-6 as written.

As I said, I am not sure my Conservative colleagues have understood. The Bloc Québécois feels that the Department of Transport's budget should be maintained, especially the funds for inspection. This is very important. We cannot leave passenger safety to the industry.

As I already explained, in this context of fierce competition, we are not doing a favour to the industry by making it responsible for its own safety. Transport Canada must maintain its staff of inspectors, check pilots and investigators, and it must uphold the principle whereby it may always carry out inspections and investigations without warning, to ensure that commercial and other airlines always comply with established standards.

Let us not do like in the example mentioned earlier and fly with as little fuel as possible. It was an investigation, an inspection which revealed that only the minimum amount of fuel required to reach destination had been put in the aircraft, thus jeopardizing passengers' lives.

It is often only for short term profit. The airline industry is going through very tough times and it needs long term support. The Bloc Québécois feels it is very important that the public be consulted. The objectives of Bill C-6 must be openly and publicly stated. Similarly, we should not impose an additional burden on the shoulders of small carriers. The bill does not set limits. Any airline can apply for certification. Clause 12, which amends section 5.3, reads as follows

5.31 (1) The Minister of Transport may designate, from among organizations that meet the conditions prescribed by regulation, one or more organizations whose activities relate to aeronautics to exercise or perform any of the powers, duties and functions set out in subsection (2). The Minister shall give a designated organization a certificate of designation setting out its powers, duties and functions and the terms and conditions under which they may be exercised or performed.

That is accreditation. This does not take into account the size of the business. Among the smaller airlines, those that are accredited will likely have lower expenses, and those that are not accredited will have to invest much more money, because they will be under Transport Canada surveillance and could be investigated. This is ideal, because it forces the airlines to always have the latest equipment and the best-trained staff. They will be less competitive and, over the medium term, will see that those that have their own service and have been accredited by the department of transport do not need to invest as much.

In that case, all these businesses will be forced to try to save money and obtain accreditation, and this does them no favours. This is why the Bloc Québécois will remain staunch defenders of Quebeckers and Canadians who like to travel by plane. We hope to maintain an adequate monitoring, investigation and inspection system under the responsibility of Transport Canada.

Speaker's Ruling

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed a pleasure to rise today to join the debate on Bill C-16.

I wish to indicate at the outset of my remarks that I will be splitting my time with my colleague from Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, the parliamentary secretary to the hon. government House leader.

I have had the privilege of serving as the chief government whip in Parliament and the honour, as well, of serving on the procedure and House affairs committee which was the committee to which Bill C-16 was sent for further deliberation following second reading in the chamber.

I was pleased with the work that the procedure and House affairs committee did on this piece of legislation. I commend members from all four of the political parties, not just from the government side but from the three opposition parties, which dealt quite expeditiously with the legislation and I think quite thoroughly. They looked at it, called witnesses, and debated it at some length, as my colleague from the New Democratic Party just alluded to. Amendments were brought forward that provoked further debate and some great comments, I felt, from colleagues from all four parties as we worked through this piece of legislation.

Indeed, it exemplified the way Parliament should work. There was a need identified on the part of the government, but as colleagues from other parties have said, not just on the part of the government. It is something that many people have worked on over the years and have highlighted that there should be further change to our democratic process and institutions.

It reminds me, if I needed any reminding, that I started out in this political business as a Reform Party of Canada member of Parliament. Really, when I was first attracted to the Reform Party back in the late eighties, I was attracted on three big platform issues. I was a farmer at that time raising three young children. I was trying to look forward to what life would be for my children. My children are now all in their mid-twenties. I was concerned then as I am today, as are many Canadians, about what kind of world and what kind of country we will be leaving the next generation.

I focused in on three issues. The first was the need for fiscal reform because I was concerned about the debt load that we would be passing to future generations. That is one of the reasons I am very proud of the steps that the government has taken already in the recent announcement of reducing our national debt by some $13.2 billion. That money was assigned out of the surplus to better enable our country to tackle the issue of our national debt and to ensure as much as possible that we do not see this intergenerational transfer of wealth that could result in reduced services and reduced opportunities for the next generation. Any parent, and indeed any grandparent, is concerned about that type of thing.

The second issue, moving on from fiscal reform for which I was attracted to public life, was the need for judicial reform. Here again, I am very encouraged by steps that the justice minister and the new Conservative government have taken. We have brought in 11 bills already thus far in this Parliament since it got under way in April. I am very proud of that fact. Even if they do not all pass, it has prompted further debate about the need to restore not only justice but the perception that justice is done in our country and that criminals will be held accountable for their actions.

As I travel throughout the beautiful riding of Prince George—Peace River and indeed across Canada, I hear this all the time from Canadians from all walks of life. They are very concerned with what they perceive to be an inherent injustice in our judicial system.

It is important to try to do what we can as parliamentarians to restore that faith in the justice system and, to give one example, in the fact that the most violent and most vicious of criminals will be held accountable and will serve their proper time in jail, not under house arrest.

The third area of interest for me is democratic reform. Here we come to the bill that we are debating. As part and parcel of the need for democratic reform--and the member from the New Democratic Party has just put forward thoughts about proportional representation--we have already taken some steps in this regard. We have legislation in the other place that deals with limiting Senate tenure, because Canadians have expressed concern that under the present system senators are appointed sometimes early in life and serve until the age of 75. Canadians feel that perhaps should be changed, so we brought forward legislation to deal with it.

We also have a bill before the House which I hope we will be debating later this week, Bill C-31. Again, it is on something that was raised at the procedure and House affairs committee by colleagues in all parties. There seems to be a general consensus that something further needs to be done with our electoral system to ensure that, as much as possible, voter fraud is eliminated. I noticed while watching television last night that there is concern about the voter fraud issue in the election that will be taking place tomorrow in the United States. As much as possible, we want to improve our system to ensure that it best serves the needs of Canadians.

On Bill C-16, certainly it has been indicated that we do have general agreement among the parties on wanting to eliminate the potential for abuse, either by prime ministers or, in the case of provincial legislation, which we already have in some provinces, by premiers, by having fixed dates for elections. We all need to be very careful when we refer to this that we do not talk about fixed elections. During the last debate in the House, a few people misspoke. We in the government are certainly not interested in fixing elections, but we are very much interested in fixing the dates of elections.

Already during the debate, we have heard about the fact that if the government were to be sustained until then and in actual fact did not lose the confidence of this place, under our electoral system the next election would not take place until Monday, October 19, 2009. I think that type of clarity is very welcome. I know it is welcomed by the constituents I represent, the people of Prince George—Peace River.

Why do I say that? Because British Columbia does have fixed election dates. It was the first province to do so, in 2001. Indeed, like other countries around the world, it was very quick to see the value in having a fixed election date that brought clarity and certainty to all political parties. It levels the playing field for all participants and indeed for all voters, because it is known well in advance when that election will take place.

In 2001, British Columbia brought this forward and we had our first fixed election date on May 17, 2005. A lot has been said about the possibility that if we have fixed election dates, they somehow will produce lame duck governments, but that has not been the experience, not only in British Columbia but also in other jurisdictions and countries around the world. That has not been the case. I think a strong argument can be made that, with this type of certainty, governments, whether they are majority or minority, will keep governing and working right up to the day of the election. Indeed, far from being a lame duck government, it will be a very effective government and will work in the best interests of its people.

I am almost out of time, but I will note the other argument we have heard, which is that by having a fixed election date the legislative agenda of the government somehow will be held hostage, or that somehow the government could fall suddenly, especially in a minority government situation. That is true, certainly in a minority government situation. We recognize that.

There has been some criticism that under our system the premier of British Columbia and the Prime Minister of the country still will have the power to call an election. That is true, because we have to build that into the system, especially in the present situation because of the minority government. Indeed, it might come about that the government could fall, but I do not think, and I made this point in the last debate, that a prime minister would dare call an election before that date unless he had a very good reason for it. He would be held accountable by the people, because their expectation, through the legislation itself, would be that the date was off into the future.

I of course welcome any comments or questions from my colleagues on this important piece of legislation.

Business of the House

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

Mr. Speaker, today we will continue with the NDP opposition motion.

Tomorrow we should conclude debate on third reading of Bill C-9, an act to amend the Criminal Code (conditional sentence of imprisonment).

Next week we will begin the report stage of Bill C-16, fixed dates for elections, followed by Bill C-26, payday loans, Bill C-6, an act to amend the Aeronautics Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts, Bill C-17, an act to amend the Judges Act and certain other acts in relation to courts and then Bill C-27, dangerous offenders.

I will continue to consult with the House leaders of other political parties with respect to Bill C-31, the voter integrity bill, and we may be able to proceed with that next week as well.

[Jim Prentice, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

You've put your finger on one of the most difficult issues that the department will face, that any government will face relating to Bill C-31. I have a couple of comments.

In regard to the expenditures that you see relative to the registry and so on, one of the initiatives we're moving on is the creation of a status card that is more secure--

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a couple of quick comments. One is on the minister's reference to the Caledon report. The presenter actually indicated that the report had to be used with a great deal of caution because of statistical problems with it. As well, my understanding is that there is insufficient data to talk about the numbers of post-secondary students who would be able to access education but can't because of the resource constraints.

The other comment I had was around the B.C. Treaty Commission and the Indian Specific Claims Commission. The reason it was so startling in its report is that, while it's common practice to project numbers into coming fiscal years, there was absolutely nothing in those two cases; that's why it was a matter of concern.

The question I have is around page 21 in the estimates. This particular page is dealing specifically with things like Indian registry and membership and what not. The actual question I have around this is whether or not the department is looking at Bill C-31, subsection 6(2), which has an impact on band membership. There's a report from 1985 by Clatworthy Smith that has done some projections based on subsection 6(2) in Bill C-31 that actually say a number of bands will start seeing a significant decline in population because of subsection 6(2). Given the fact that the estimates are dealing with band membership and plans around registry, could you could tell me whether the department has plans to address Bill C-31?

On a totally unrelated question, you've talked about the B.C. tripartite agreement. I wonder whether there are plans to put legislation into the House. My understanding is that there does need to be legislation.

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

And we will be reinstating this no matter what happens to Bill C-31. We'll be making sure that this happens, as it should have been happening. And where it has not been happening, we want to make sure it happens.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

I think that when the discussions come up on Bill C-31 as well, this subject is going to be beaten.

Perhaps I may ask for clarification on the bingo card. In the government's response on page 7, it does indicate that “implementing such an obligation at this time could cost as much as $23.5 million”. Is that your feeling as to the cost of implementing only the bingo card, or does it include other implementation recommendations?

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Thank you.

First of all, I have a brief statement to make. I have some difficulty with what Madam Davies was getting at. She said we were going to use a sledgehammer to fix some mythical problem. She's not even part of this committee. This committee had achieved relative unanimity in recognizing a problem with voter fraud. Now she comes in and pretends the problem is mythical and we're using a sledgehammer to address it.

Furthermore, I want to say on record that I agree with her that it's a fundamental right for Canadian citizens to vote. It's an important franchise, and we don't want to disenfranchise them improperly. However, there are certain responsibilities that come with being a Canadian citizen, and we all too often overlook them. One of the responsibilities should be that you have some way to identify yourself. Goodness gracious, where are we going with this? Are we going to suggest that people who can't identify themselves still have this unalienable right to vote? Anyway, that's my little rant in reply to Madam Davies.

I participated in a trip to South Africa this past summer recess, and we had the opportunity to meet with their electoral commission. I was amazed at how advanced their system is. They have a photo ID voters card. They went well beyond what we're suggesting in our report, or in Bill C-31. They went well beyond a driver's licence or two other pieces of non-picture ID. They actually instituted a picture ID card that people are required to have when they go to the polls. In addition, to prevent any potential fraud, they also ink the thumb of the individual. So there's no chance, unless you cut your thumb off, of voting more than once.

I'm asking you, in light of your response to our report, and by extension to Bill C-31, if you believe that what's contained in the bill goes far enough. How many other countries around the world have followed South Africa and taken the precautions to make sure that voters are actually eligible?

[Jean-Pierre Kingsley]

The remarks I made were meant to stimulate exactly the discussion that you're precipitating by your comments. I think it's going to be very important for people to understand that when there are no pieces of ID that are available there will have to be an oath and they will have to be vouched for by someone else who is already on the list. And it will not be possible to have serial vouching to achieve that, in accordance with the changes that would be brought about. I think the committee needs to be aware of that. And there will be no judgment on the part of the DRO; the law will prevent them from making judgments that they'll accept this person anyway because they look honest. That will not be a possibility. There will have to be strict ID, as prescribed.

That's why I said I will send you recommendations of the pieces of ID that I would accept as part of the statute I would have under Bill C-31. I'll send you the pieces that I consider acceptable, and you can tell me if you find them acceptable. Because I intend to be swayed here by the will of Parliament, not by my own will. I run elections; I don't write the laws.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Absolutely. That is on our agenda and it's okay; we'll just talk about that. I'll save time at the end. Thank you.

As discussed at our Tuesday meeting, the committee invited Mr. Kingsley to come today to discuss the response we've received from the government with respect to our 13th report at the end of session in June. We have that before us. Furthermore, on Tuesday of this week the government did introduce Bill C-31, which implements several of the committee's recommendations. That bill will ultimately be referred back to this committee after second reading. I'm hoping that members can maybe focus on the report, the response from the government today, and see whether or not we want to provide a response to the response, rather than getting sidetracked to Bill C-31. I would hope that members can keep focused on the response. That's what I had spoken to Mr. Kingsley about, and I'm quite sure it's the fair way to go.

Mr. Kingsley, I think if it's okay with you we would like to start with opening remarks from you. Perhaps you could introduce again your colleagues and then we'll open the floor to questions.

Colleagues, just so everybody is aware of the rules before we begin, we'll go in the usual round of questions starting with a seven-minute round in the usual format.

Mr. Kingsley, welcome, and thank you so much for agreeing to come again on short notice. I appreciate your cooperation and diligence for the committee. Please introduce your colleagues and then we can begin.

Thank you.

Canada Elections Act

[Rob Nicholson, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister for Democratic Reform]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-31, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)