Bill C-18 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (verification of residence)

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to allow an elector or voucher who provides a piece of identification that does not prove his or her residence to use that piece of identification to prove his or her residence provided that the address on the piece of identification is consistent with information related to the elector or voucher that appears on the list of electors.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to pick up on something my colleague Mr. Lukiwski spoke about, and that was priorities for the committee. We did agree that legislation would take priority.

We've heard from witnesses, including the Chief Electoral Officer. We're basically ready to move. We're not done with legislation until it moves out of committee and back to the House.

I understand what Ms. Redman is trying to do in terms of putting pressure on accepting the report so we can move on with Bill C-18, but I don't think that does justice to the voters of Canada.

There's a problem regarding Bill C-18, which is well recognized amongst all the parties, that we're trying to fix. We're at the point where we can move it out of the committee in probably three minutes. Instead, a secondary issue is taking a primary spot and bumping key legislation that will have an impact in any upcoming byelections. To me, that's just not acceptable.

Actually, I'm quite surprised that she has tabled the motion in this manner and that we're continuing to debate it. The priority has to be legislation. We owe that to Parliament; we actually owe that to Canadians. I think it's poor judgment to switch the order around like that.

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Yes. I am in agreement that Bill C-18 be voted upon as quickly as possible, but we did have our priority. We should begin by tabling the first report of the sub-committee on agenda and procedure.

[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.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you.

I would think that the steering committee report itself should not take very long to pass--all we're agreeing to is to have more meetings--at which point we can discuss the substance of the motion. This is not suggesting that we're dispensing with the motion; we're merely organizing additional committees, which the steering committee brought to this committee. That's a subcommittee of all parties being represented. Past experience has shown that procedural things can sometimes take a long time in this committee. Dispensing with the steering committee report to have additional meetings so we could have a fulsome discussion on other topics that may be a bit more contentious than Bill C-18 is in order.

I concur that Bill C-18 is an important bill and should be expeditiously dealt with. However, I don't see the amendment as in any way friendly. I see it as reversing the actual intent of my motion.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Yes. I think, Mr. Chairman, that it would be advisable to do the Bill C-18 business first, for the very simple reason that we don't know when there's going to be an election, and it would really be good if this had passed through all stages, including going on to the Senate, before there was an election called. I think this is a non-partisan issue in the sense that we all want people to be able to vote and to vote legally and within the rules that are set out by this committee.

It's my understanding, Mr. Chair, that the actual dealing with the issue on Bill C-18 is not necessarily going to be very time-consuming, because we've heard the witnesses, and most people here, I think, have an opinion on where that should stand. I think it would be eminently wise of this committee to not hold that legislation up and prevent it from being debated in the House and carried through with that stage.

I would strongly recommend to my colleagues on this committee, of which I've become a sort of semi-permanent part here, that we proceed in that way. So I speak very strongly in favour of the amendment to do Bill C-18 first.

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

Well, hopefully it would be a friendly amendment, and that is to follow up basically with your suggestion to reverse the order, to ask for concurrence of this Bill C-18, and then immediately go to the report on the steering committee.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Chair, I move that this committee immediately proceed to the consideration of the report from the steering committee, and after that has been dispensed with, move to concurrence in Bill C-18, and that that report be reported back to the House forthwith.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Okay. It might be more expeditious to move that the opposite way and deal with Bill C-18 first. However, the motion is there. It's a debatable motion.

What I could do is maybe ask colleagues if they need the witnesses any further, and if we do not, then I can certainly....

Thank you very much, colleagues. Seeing that there are no questions, on behalf of the committee, let me thank our witnesses, Monsieur Mayrand and his team, once again for being so well prepared and helping us make the decisions that we have to make. We appreciate your being here, and we can dismiss you at this point.

We have a motion on the floor.

Madam Redman, just so that it's your wording and not mine, could you read into the record what you would suspect to be the wording of your motion and then we'll proceed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

So there's a motion on the floor that we stop this business, move back to the steering committee report, and then come back to Bill C-18. Is that it?

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Thank you, and I'd like to thank the witnesses for coming.

My suggestion was going to be that after we've dispensed with the witnesses, Mr. Chair, we have the first report on the steering committee, which apparently we haven't dealt with. So after we've dealt with that, perhaps we could go to dealing expeditiously with Bill C-18. My understanding is that Monsieur Mayrand has really answered the only question anybody had, and we certainly want to see this unintended consequence of our previous bill corrected. So I suggest that after dealing with the steering committee report we move to concurrence and report back to the House supporting Bill C-18.

[Ken Epp, Conservative, Edmonton—Sherwood Park, AB]

Thank you.

Then this is my final question, Mr. Chair, with respect to Bill C-18.

Am I correct in reading your notes--because I didn't hear your actual presentation, but I am scanning the notes--that you feel that the issues you identified are properly and fully addressed in Bill C-18?

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

That's fine.

Again it goes back to enumeration here. I'm not sure if this is not dealing necessarily with Bill C-18 and disenfranchisement, but we talked about enumeration perhaps not being the best solution because people don't answer their doors, they respect their privacy, and the like.

Currently the situation is that when you file your income tax return, there's a voluntary checkoff box to allow you to indicate whether you want your name placed on a permanent voters list. Am I correct? I'm not sure whether we could do this or make this into law, but if that were a mandatory requirement, how much benefit do you think it would be? I know there are people, frankly, who on advice of accountants or whatever just don't check off that box. If everyone who filed an income tax return were required to check it off so their names could then be placed on a list, would it solve anything?

[Marc Mayrand]

That's another part of the problem, if you'll allow me.

There are a million electors who don't have what we generally understand as a civic address. We also have other electors who have a civic address but use a mailing address. They have all sorts of reasons. Bill C-18 will deal with both groups, allowing them to use their mailing addresses to establish their residences because of the correlation we can make to the list of electors.

With respect to enumeration, again I'm not sure it would necessarily be a fix to this problem, because it's the non-existence of civic addressing that is the problem. That having been said, we do enumeration in high-mobility areas and in those remote areas where, again, there's difficulty from time to time. In that regard, I invite candidates to help us define the areas where we should be doing more enumeration. We do that very early in the campaign, so we're getting input from parties and candidates as to where they think we should focus our enumeration efforts.

[Marc Mayrand]

Without reiterating my earlier response, I think there are important distinctions here that would apply. First of all, any adaptation here would be to facilitate the right to vote, not to restrict it. So that's one of the main considerations here. My preference is still to see Parliament adapt the legislation, hopefully as tabled, but again I understand we have a minority government, and we have byelections that can be called at any time. Some of them will have to be called in the next few months.

Again, even though my preference is to see Parliament adapt the bill, I will have to consider adaptation if the bill has not been enacted prior to an upcoming byelection or general election. I must say that any adaptation would be billed along Bill C-18, so the solution would be around what is being proposed in Bill C-18.

[Marc Mayrand]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Once again, I will be brief.

I am pleased to appear before the Committee to discuss Bill C-18, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (verification of residence).

This bill would allow electors in rural and northern regions of the country to establish their residence before voting. Bill C-18 responds to concerns that I raised with the minister and with you, Mr. Chairman, in October 2007.

Elections Canada worked closely with the government to develop the proposal before you today, and we appreciate the promptness with which the issue was dealt with.

The bill addresses two problems.

The first one is the fact that a large number of electors have no civic address. The majority of these electors reside in the Prairie Provinces, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the three territories.

The second problem is that those electors, as well as many electors living in the same areas who do have civic addresses, use their mailing address on most of their identification documents. In both cases, the electors would not likely be able to provide proof of their residence at the polling station, as is now required by the Canada Elections Act. Nor could they rely on someone from the same polling division to vouch for them as their neighbours will be in the same situation.

Bill C-18 provides that electors with no civic address or with pieces of identification that have a mailing address instead of a civic address can establish their residence if the information on their piece of identification is consistent with the information that appears on the list of electors. In this regard, Bill C-18 builds on and uses information contained in the list of electors for each polling division. As you probably know, the list contains the names of the electors residing in that division, their physical address, and their mailing address if it is different from the physical address.

In cases where the deputy returning officer, poll clerk, or a candidate's representative has a reasonable doubt regarding an elector's residence, the elector will be asked to take an oath as to his or her residence.

Electors who have not registered before polling day could be vouched for in the same polling division by registered electors who can establish their residence using the process described earlier. When vouching occurs, both electors will be required to take an oath as to their residence.

As I indicated in my letter of November 28 to the minister, I am satisfied that the changes being proposed in Bill C-18 would provide the necessary flexibility to resolve the particular challenge facing electors in rural and northern areas. As a result, they would be placed on the same footing as electors in other regions of the country.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, I wish to express my full support for Bill C-18, and I hope it becomes law in the very near future.

Thank you.