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.

Canada Elections Act

[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, 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.

[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 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.

[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 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]

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.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am glad the member finished the way he did. We hear many things in the House which are specious, disingenuous and condescending. Both being new members in the House, I congratulate my colleague on being such a fast learner.

The member talked about the charter of rights, which everyone upholds. The government also has an obligation, including opposition parties, to ensure that those rights are not abused, which does not suggest for a second that any rural voter has abused those rights. I come from a riding where there was evidence of significant voter fraud during the last two elections. It is important that we uphold the rights of the charter. It is also important for us to ensure that those rights are not abused.

I thank the hon. member for his support for Bill C-6, an important issue which needed to be cleared up by all parties because all parties wanted it.

My colleague, the parliamentary secretary, did point out that all parties cooperated on recovering from an error that was made as an honest mistake by members of all parties. Therefore, there is a lot of blame to share. There is also a lot of credit to share, and the parliamentary secretary did attempt to share that credit with all members of the House.

The member spoke for 20 minutes and the last minute was terrific. The first 19 minutes qualified as those characteristics of parliamentary debate which do not sound good in this place.

Is he going to support this, yes or no? It is important and we all want it. Let us not hold it up. Let us just get on with it, support it and correct what has been done.

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

Mr. Speaker, I almost rose on a second point of order on the comment that I might have been covering up something. It is not something we do. I am not the new democratic reform for parole, but we support the bill. It will be sent to committee.

Some of the real life situations that have been learned will be melded into the bill. My friend is doing a spectacular job as parliamentary secretary, no doubt because he had good experience in Chatham, New Brunswick. I can see that New Brunswick influence in his work daily. However, I urge him to take his parliamentary secretary job very seriously and realize there is a process in this House, which is bicameral for the moment.

There are an awful lot of committee reports and verification questions through committees that take place in other places. Many officials at Elections Canada have been involved in this issue. As parliamentarians, we all need to realize that our work does not stop when a bill leaves the House. It really only begins because we have to see that our laws are working out there.

[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.

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

Is it not typical, Mr. Speaker, that the urban MP representing the New Democratic Party would talk for some time about this specific bill, which attempts to rectify one million primarily rural voters getting back on the lists. Is it not typical that in that one and a half minute non-question there was no mention once of rural Canada? Is that not the problem in this instance that the bill is attempting to address?

Is it not typical that the NDP would bring up all kinds of problems and have no solutions? Is it not typical that its legislative agenda has very little in it with respect to democratic reform? Finally, is it not typical that the NDP, which in effect is responsible for a Conservative government, would somehow attempt to blame the Liberals for not having a solution to the problem that she, some two years later, is suggesting is an urgent problem?

If democratic reform and the identification of voters was a huge problem for the NDP, it should have found its panacea in the Conservative government. It did not. It should have an aggressive democratic reform agenda. It does not. As far as I am concerned, NDP members may be in their places a long time, far away from you, Mr. Speaker, in the House.

[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, I am looking at the changes here in Bill C-18.

Let us assume the voter is a senior who does not drive. Right off, he or she does not have a driver's licence with a photo. Perhaps the person has a very old health card. If that person happens to live in Ontario, the health card does not have the person's photo, so that does not work. Perhaps the person would then pull out a credit card. There is no address on the credit card. Perhaps the person belongs to a local art gallery or museum, but there is no address on those. Maybe they have a credit card from a local store like The Bay, Sears or Shopper's Drug Mart. However, there is no address on those cards either. What about the citizenship card? There is no address on the citizenship card either.

In those cases, how does this bill actually help these poor seniors who have been in Canada for maybe 30 years, 40 years or even longer? They might even have been born here. They do not have ID with an address because they do not drive. We do know that 20% of Canadians do not drive. If those people happen to have moved not too long ago, their names are not even on the voter's list.

How would this bill help someone with a problem of that nature? Yes, the bill does fix the rural problem. The one million voters that were left off the list are now back on it, but how would it actually help those seniors who do not have an ID with an address on it?

[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.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was listening to the hon. member for Drummond talk about the millions of people who will not have the right to vote, especially in rural regions. I represent a primarily rural region and this worries me a bit.

In light of this problem, I would like to know what the hon. member thinks of an elector ID card system. I would like her opinion on the possibility of everyone having an elector ID card.