Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise to speak to this bill. I am actually delighted that we are getting it before the break because it is a bit disappointing in a way that, as the chair of rural caucus, it is an amendment that is specifically for rural Canadians and is coming so late in the game.
That being said, I am delighted that the entire House is cooperating to ensure that this important amendment gets through, so that rural Canadians are not disenfranchised through some administrative mistake. If not, then somehow we would all have been involved in making something that would have disenfranchised a majority of the voters in the next byelection in the prairies. A majority of voters north of 60 could easily not have been able to vote if we did not make this important amendment.
There are a number of other election provisions that I will speak to today, a few that should and could be made, but of course that is not the topic. The topic today is to primarily deal with these rural Canadians who otherwise could not have a vote.
Therefore, we have to make these administrative amendments. These provisions are to ensure that these Canadians will again be able to vote in a coming election, which could be soon, and certainly in the event of byelections.
I want to reassure rural Canadians that if for some reason this did not pass, they would still be able to vote because the Chief Electoral Officer has the authority to deal with such a crisis as this and to enfranchise people through whatever mechanisms are necessary. However, that is not really the way to run a navy, it is not the best way to solve this. We in Parliament who create these laws should, when we make an error, make these amendments even if it is an administrative error and fix the law so that all Canadians have the appropriate ability to vote.
That is why during the process of this bill I, too, as some others have mentioned, have urged the committee, Elections Canada and the department drafting the bill, to ensure that homeless people could vote. There are a number of homeless people across the country and we have to ensure that there are enough people who can vouch for them, and people working in the shelters who might know of their locations. There should not be a limit on the number who can sign for these people.
That is why the best solution is to get these people out of poverty. That is why I am very excited that a few weeks ago our leader made a great announcement for a first-ever comprehensive anti-poverty strategy in Canada that would take 30% of these people off the poverty list in the next five years. It would certainly reduce the problem.
We also have other efforts related to homelessness. We have one of the most successful social programs in history, I think, the SCPI program, which everyone I think in the House has eventually championed after seeing its results. It puts these homeless people in specific good shelters for a time until we solve the ultimate problem. Of course, we should be dealing with the root problems and hopefully getting them back into proper affordable housing, and regular housing, as they again get jobs et cetera.
However, until that time if they are in good shelters, we will have them with workers who can then enfranchise them and get them to vote. In particular in my area, I urge the government on this, we need a shelter for teenagers. We have one under that SCIPI program that we put in place for adults. There were none at all before that, particularly for men. We would want one for teenagers, so that we could segregate them. It would be much safer for them.
In the north homelessness is also a particular issue in that we do not want people lying in the streets at 60 below. They have to go somewhere and unfortunately, they are going into places where they should not be, where they have to offer sexual favours for shelter or they are crowded in, impugning on children where they should not necessarily be crowded in. All these things could be solved and hopefully some of it will be solved with this anti-poverty strategy that we have announced.
Today we are talking about the disenfranchisement of rural voters. I cannot imagine anyone in the House being against a provision that would ensure all rural Canadians are not stuck with this mistake. It should be fixed, so they can vote under the normal process as they did before.
I am talking particularly about individuals with no street address. Those of us who live in rural areas know many people who do not have a street address. We also know that there are entire communities without street addresses. When I lived in the north I did not have a specific street address. It was R.R. #1, Site 2, Comp 3. Some people live near the highway.
Provinces, territories and municipalities are trying to legislate an end to this problem because street addresses are needed for the fire department and for 911, so people can be found in an emergency. Thousands of people still do not fall into that category. That correction has not been made, and unless we amend the provisions in this bill today, they will not be able to vote.
Santa Claus and I visited a small community in my area on the weekend. This community is spread out along the highway and in rural bush areas where there are no addresses. Many people just have general delivery. A truck goes to the community every couple of days and drops all the mail at the post office. This legislation would not solve this problem.
In my community there are many people who live out in the bush. I remember going down roads in the middle of virtually nowhere and coming upon cabins. These people do not have a particular street address. Some of them have to fly in like they do in Nunavut. All sorts of people only have access to their communities by air and not by road. This may be a surprise to a number of southern Canadians, but there are many areas where there is no road access. In these cases it would be very difficult to have a defined street address as we in southern Canada understand it.
There are other people who could also be affected, such as first nations. I have urged in previous speeches that we make sure these people are not disenfranchised either through this bill or through further amendments to the Canada Elections Act.
Many first nations are in fly-in communities or they live on reserve. They may not have the same type of street numbering system that we are traditionally accustomed to. It is important that these people are not disenfranchised.
Fourteen first nations live in Yukon and a number of these are traditionally nomadic. They do not stay in one area for an entire year. They move around because of the various types of game harvesting or plant harvesting they need to do during various times of the year.
It is important that we take into account the nature of all Canadian lifestyles when we are developing an electoral system. This is not impossible to do.
A Mongolian delegation recently visited here. The Mongolian people, unlike Canadians, have many herds, many cattle, sheep, horses and goats, but they do not have fences or private property the way we do here in Canada. When they need to rest an area for the environment, they simply move their herds over to another steppe, or another mountain, or another valley.
Obviously, they do not have specific street addresses while they are moving around. I questioned them when they were here a couple of weeks ago and they said they had no problem in coming up with solutions to enumerating all their people and making sure that they have a very high percentage of voting, I believe higher than we do. That is great for a country in that part of Asia where democracies are not prevalent, particularly with the sad situation today in Burma.
The provisions were put in with the best intent. There are people who have come to members of Parliament with numerous examples suggesting the occurrence of fraud when identification is not available. Not very many cases could be prosecuted or taken to the final stages. Various people have alluded to many problems that would not be in the existing system if we changed the provisions so that they were similar to the provisions in a number of other countries.
I do not think anyone in the House would be against improving the integrity of the voting system in Canada. Certainly the hallmark of our democracy is one person, one vote. That people would try to circumvent that really strikes at the heart of our democracy, but in that sense, as I urged earlier in my speech, we have to make sure that in doing this, we do not disenfranchise people. That principle must apply to everyone.
I have mentioned several groups, such as the homeless, first nations people, and people in the rural areas who do not have a street address, but there are other groups in my constituency that I have mentioned in previous speeches on this bill, for example, students.
North of 60, there are no universities, so all our students make a grand migration to universities or colleges in the south. We do have excellent colleges in the north, such as Yukon College, which has some university credit courses, but many of the students in the three territories go to the south. I can say that as the northern critic. The students would be away at election time and would not be residing at their permanent street address. If for some reason they were not properly enumerated, they could fall into the trap of being disenfranchised.
This reminds me that I wanted to speak about the enumeration lists, as I am speaking about things that need to be corrected. I am speaking now to Elections Canada. I do not imagine there is a member of Parliament here who would not suggest that there have been some disastrous situations with the present idea of the permanent enumeration list.
Personally I am quite supportive of a permanent enumeration list, if it is kept up to date. I am sure all members of Parliament have gone to houses in recent elections where 20 or 30 people lived in the house according to the enumeration list. After people moved from the house, they were still listed as living in the house. The list had not been updated.
In my riding, there is a relatively high degree of mobility. There are all sorts of people who change their address, such as students and young people who move in and out with other people. Somehow they just do not show up on the enumeration lists and are therefore lost, or there are too many eligible voters. I am sure that accounts for part of the low degree of voting in Canada. If there are 20 people listed at one address where only three people live, that is going to show up as 17 people who did not vote. It will make it look like Canadians do not vote. Of course, they are not people who really live at the address; they are phantom residents. They have moved somewhere else and are double listed.
I encourage Elections Canada to modernize the enumeration lists to solve that problem. It is a good system to have a permanent list, but Elections Canada has to get a handle on who lives where so that when enumerators go door to door, the list is relatively accurate and the number of people who are enfranchised is more realistic, so we do not have to make amendments and we can spend our time debating ideas and policies.
There are other groups that we want to ensure are not disenfranchised. One of them is not specific to the north and that is the military. It has to do with the street address requirement for people who move around. The military has a unique way of voting. As I said in previous speeches, I want to make sure that members of the military are in no way disenfranchised by the amendments to improve the integrity of the voting system.
There are two other groups in my area. One is what we call snowbirds. A number of northerners, mostly retired people, go south for the winter, where there are lower heating costs and they can enjoy their retirement in a warmer climate. If they do not have an official street address and cannot vote, they would be unduly disenfranchised. I would urge the people in committee, in the department and in Elections Canada who are studying and improving the elections process to make sure they do not disenfranchise those people.
Another group is people who have to move quickly because of a medical emergency. I visited a hospital in the last election and there were people who had been brought to the hospital from out of town. Therefore, they were not in their poll and they could not vote. I want to make sure that in those cases, people can vote.
In conclusion, since we are breaking for the holidays, I would like to say meilleurs voeux, seasons greetings, auguri di buone feste, felices fiestas, peace, pax, paz, mir, mira poki, frieden.
Please support this bill so that rural Canadians are not disenfranchised. Let us get this bill through as quickly as possible.
