Bill C-6 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (visual identification of voters)

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to require that electors have their faces uncovered before voting, or registering to vote, in person, and supplements the authority of Elections Canada to appoint sufficient personnel to manage the conduct of the vote at the polls.

Canada Elections Act

[Jean-Yves Laforest, Bloc, Saint-Maurice—Champlain, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the member who told us that Canada, for one, does not have photo ID. It would be a basic document that could serve as identification. I would like him to explain something to me.

I know that, in Quebec, the photo on a driver's licence is mandatory, although it is not a universal measure. Nevertheless, there is a photo on the health card and it is used to identify individuals. In my opinion, individuals with a health card should have the right to vote. Every individual who is entitled to vote should have a health card. If you do not have a health card, you would not have the right to vote.

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

Mr. Speaker, what I said, and I stand by it, is that there is no universal card in Canada. Yes, I know that Quebec has photo health cards, as does Ontario, but not everyone does, because adding a photo is a relatively recent phenomenon. In Canada, some provinces do not have photo health cards, so health cards are not a universal solution for the country.

Driver's licences are similar. In any event, as far as I know, only 80% of the population has a driver's licence. It is the same thing with all the other official photos found on ID cards or passports. There is no photo ID for all Canadians who have the right to vote. It would have to be created. I am not saying that it is something we should not consider. I am saying it is something we could consider. However, that is not the purpose of the bill before us.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member gave what I thought was a very useful speech. I learned a few things that I did not know about identity.

I have a question for the member. It is not likely in the very near future that I will become a Muslim woman, veiled or otherwise, but if I understood the member's speech properly, if I were to walk into a polling station wearing a cowboy mask or something of that nature, I could still vote. I could be “accommodated” if I insisted on not removing any kind of facial mask which would somehow or other prevent visual identification.

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

Mr. Speaker, if that were the choice on the directive given by the Chief Electoral Officer, I suppose the member is right. Therein lies the problem. This is very serious. That is why I am not prepared to dismiss out of hand some of the concerns that have led to this.

Indeed, what if we followed what some people did in some of the last byelections in Quebec, in jest or as a lark or to prove a point, by arriving with Halloween masks and so forth? Someone apparently arrived with a pumpkin, but I do not know about that. We cannot dismiss this out of hand.

I would hope that Canadians would understand. We have just celebrated Remembrance Day throughout Canada. We underline Remembrance Day. People have died to protect our right to democracy and the right to vote, so we cannot make a jest of the right to vote. I would discourage anyone from doing so. I suspect the Chief Electoral Officer might have in his discretion the ability to prevent that.

It is not a red herring in the sense that it has just flared up now as a reaction to this. I think we need to address these matters very seriously. If we were to choose to go to the polls with paper bags over our heads, we would start having problems. The problem that we are trying to solve now is non-existent. It is not a difficulty.

I have to repeat myself. If the bill is adopted, we are going to be forcing a small group of Canadians to not respect their own religious belief, if that is why they are wearing a veil. At the same time, we are not going to ask them to identify themselves visually because they could do so in any other way. It is incongruous. There is a huge gap in logic in the bill and I think it is problematic.

[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, 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.

[Irwin Cotler, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Mr. Speaker, do I understand that there really are two fundamental rights engaged by this bill, the right to vote in section 3 of the charter, and freedom of religion under section 2(a) of the charter, and both of these rights can be protected and need not be in conflict, and this bill in effect forces a conflict that makes it unnecessary?

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Ottawa—Vanier should know that I will interrupt at 5:30.

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

Mr. Speaker, I wish I could have been as succinct as that in describing it, but essentially that is the crux of the matter in a nutshell. We are being asked to expedite this. I think that would be a tragedy. Let us be very careful. I hope the government side is listening.

Let us consider referring this to committee before second reading, where it can have a true debate. The committee can do its work, listen to all and then can present to the House, if there is a need, something that stands the test of the charter, the test of avoiding conflicts of rights, and the test of what Canada stands for.

The House resumed from November 14 consideration of the motion 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.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to take part in this debate on voting with the face uncovered. The fact that this issue was brought up during the three byelections in Quebec is due in large part to the initiative of the Bloc Québécois. Decisions were then made by the Chief Electoral Officer of Quebec, during the Quebec election last March.

There was a great uproar in Quebec when the Chief Electoral Officer of Elections Canada, Mr. Mayrand, announced that he did not plan on using his power to address a loophole in the Canada Elections Act with respect to voting with the face covered. But the Chief Electoral Officer of Quebec used the power set out in section 19—if I am not mistaken—to fix a situation that went unnoticed by parliamentarians.

The people of Quebec were therefore especially upset by Mr. Mayrand's attitude and, throughout Quebec, people wanted him to reconsider his decision and take the necessary measures to ensure that voters vote with their faces uncovered. He would not do so, however, claiming that it was up to parliamentarians to correct the situation. His was a very weak argument, since the precedent had already been set, as I mentioned. Indeed, to ensure that the general election in Quebec ran smoothly, the Chief Electoral Officer of Quebec had decided to use his power to correct the situation, since parliamentarians had failed to do so.

As soon as the Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Mayrand, revealed that he had no intention of making a decision, the Bloc Québécois, through my hon. colleague from Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, sent him a letter, calling on him to correct the situation and to ensure that, when voting, all voters confirm their identity by uncovering their entire face.

Furthermore, in the hours that followed, if memory serves, all the parties of this House made the same appeal to the Chief Electoral Officer of Elections Canada. The Prime Minister then intervened, saying that common sense dictated that voters must prove their identity when voting, which is also our position. Identification means more than just presenting documents or ID cards; it also means being able to guarantee that that individual is the same person as the one on the photo ID cards, and for that to be possible, the person's face must be fully visible.

As I recall, the Prime Minister wasted no time stating his position on the matter, and the leader of the Liberal Party took the same position. That is why it surprised me that yesterday, some of our Liberal colleagues did not seem to think there was a problem. It is strange that just after the byelection, they thought there was a problem and that now, for reasons I do not quite understand, they are flip-flopping on the position the Liberal Party leader took at the time.

I also remember that the NDP leader agreed with them initially, and that a few hours later, he started to adjust his stance on the issue. Unfortunately, I have not yet heard the NDP's opinion in this debate.

That being said, I do remember that all four party leaders spoke out in favour of voters showing their faces. At the time, it just so happened that I was giving a press conference to announce the Bloc Québécois' activities leading up to its convention in October 2008. Right then and there, as soon as Mr. Mayrand, the Chief Electoral Officer, stated that he had decided not to intervene, we condemned the situation.

Within hours, the Bloc Québécois whip announced that he would introduce a bill on the subject. That is exactly what he did. We introduced a bill requiring voters to show their faces when voting, a bill that respects gender equality.

When he tabled the bill, the member for Beauport—Limoilou requested the unanimous consent of the House to fast-track it, to move it through all stages quickly, but that did not happen. The Conservative Party, for strictly partisan reasons, refused to give its consent so that it could table the bill now before us.

Obviously, we cannot oppose the bill in principle, because we prompted this decision by the government. We could have moved much faster if there had been unanimous consent with regard to the bill introduced by my colleague, but that was not the case. Now, we have this bill before us.

As I mentioned, we support the bill in principle. However, the government has not tackled the root of the problem with its bill. Yes, voters will have to uncover their faces in order to be identified and be able to vote. But it is up to the Chief Electoral Officer to decide how this obligation is to be met, even though the Muslim community never made any specific request about this. This is where the real problem lies. The bill is responding to a request that was never made by a specific community that has been identified as the community to which the Chief Electoral Officer's decision was meant to respond.

The problem with the bill that is before us is that it is still up to the Chief Electoral Officer to determine how voters are to meet the requirement to identify themselves. We would not want Muslim women to ask to uncover their faces only in front of other women, because gender equality with regard to election officials would not be respected. In our opinion, religious considerations have no place in public spaces. We are not saying that religions are marginal or unimportant, but government employees have a responsibility to enforce the law fairly and equitably for everyone. In our opinion, there is no basis for this. I repeat that there has never been a request, on religious grounds, that Muslim women, for example—I am using this example because it has been reported most often in the media—be able to ask election officials to be allowed to uncover their faces only in front of another woman.

In our view, this is exactly the same as if a police officer wanted to arrest a man and the man invoked his religion and said that he could not get into a car with a female police officer. It is the same kind of thing. And that is the direction in which we will be going.

In committee, we will be proposing that a number of provisions in the act be tightened to ensure that such cases do not arise and that it will not once again be the responsibility of the Chief Electoral Officer to decide the procedures relating to the obligation for people to identify themselves when they vote. We have been sent a signal: it is up to parliamentarians to provide a complete response to the problem raised in the three byelections in Quebec.

We therefore support the bill in principle, but in terms of the manner in which it will be applied, we will want to be sure that religious considerations will not conflict with the fundamental principle, the obligation that electors have to identify themselves properly when they vote. We will therefore also be wanting to raise the question of postal ballots.

We will quite properly be raising the fact that while an elector has to identify himself or herself by showing his or her face in an election, there will be no such obligation for postal ballots. We will therefore want to amend the Elections Act accordingly in this regard. We will see whether this is acceptable during debate, but logically, it seems to me that we will have to move in that direction.

For example, it is mandatory to uncover one’s face and have one’s face uncovered when passport photographs are taken. In the area of airport security, the authorities are entitled to ensure that people are properly identified, by way of the passports or ID cards that are requested. Logically, for a right as important in a democracy as the right to vote, out of fairness to all electors, we have to ensure that the same methods are applied, including that everyone have an obligation, for the process of identification, to vote with his or her face uncovered.

That is the position that the Bloc Québécois will be taking. Once again, I would repeat, on the substantive issues, we support the bill. In our view, it is crucial that we ensure that all electors are equal before the law. As I said earlier, it is those principles that we will be arguing for in committee.

To conclude, I reiterate that the Bloc Québécois supports the bill in principle. All electors must be equal before the law. The Bloc Québécois and the other political parties believe that the Elections Act, as amended in 2007, was sufficiently clear. However, because the Chief Electoral Officer has refused to use his exceptional power to require that everyone who votes do so with their face uncovered, the Bloc Québécois believes that it is necessary to amend the act as quickly as possible.

As well, the Bloc Québécois notes that the bill presented by the government is not a complete response in terms of the principles of the equality of all persons before the law. As I said, the bill in fact opens the door to violations of the principle of the equality of men and women.

The first five clauses of Bill C-6 were introduced in order to allow deputy returning officers and poll clerks to delegate their power to another individual. This is what I was talking about earlier, and felt was the weak point in this bill. Using that mechanism, a male deputy returning officer could accommodate a female elector by designating a women before whom the elector could uncover her face to confirm her identity. In our view, that violates the principle of equality between men and women and of equality among all electors.

The Bloc Québécois will support Bill C-6 at second reading but will require that the first five amendments be changed, as I stated, to ensure that everyone has the same obligations with respect to the law.

I mentioned that the Bloc Québécois acted quickly in this matter. We wish to closely monitor this issue particularly since we are aware that it is at the heart of a debate that is extremely important to Quebec—the place of religion in public space.

That is not all. As I mentioned, we believe that by virtue of the principles of equity and equality, and out of respect for the values of Quebeckers, which are shared by Canadians, Bill C-6 must be amended to ensure that it fulfills its purpose. The government wanted to address the issue raised by the Chief Electoral Officer; however, its solution is inadequate and is not in keeping with the expectations of the Bloc Québécois and of Quebec society as a whole.

In the hours following the decision by the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, the parties in the National Assembly were united. Premier Jean Charest, the leader of the ADQ, Mario Dumont, and the new leader of the Parti Québécois believed that common sense dictated that individuals should vote with their face uncovered to ensure proper identification and also, as I mentioned, for security reasons, as is the norm. Therefore I find it difficult to see how, in the case of such an important right as the right to vote, these rights would be violated.

As I was saying, the Bloc Québécois will support Bill C-6 at second reading.

[John Godfrey, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a few questions for the hon. member. He spoke of the need to correct the situation, but I want to know what situation he is talking about. What is the problem he is trying to resolve?

I would like him to tell us exactly how many incidents there were during the general election in Quebec in the spring and during the three byelections in Quebec in September. How many times did the legislation fail in terms of elector identification? How many people, whose faces were covered, ran into problems when they cast their vote?

Where is the sense in asking someone to uncover their face when it is not necessary and is even impossible to have a universal photo ID card across Canada? It does not exist. We cannot ask citizens to get a driver's licence just to vote. There is no mandatory photo ID for the entire voting population. What happened to common sense? What is the link between a photo ID card and the need to uncover one's face?

The hon. member spoke of principles, but what principles? Does he mean the principle of nonsense? There is no link between uncovering one's face and the need to produce photo ID, since such universal cards do not exist in this country.

Quite frankly, what is the situation he is trying to correct? Let him elaborate on specific incidents and tell us what principles and common sense he has in mind.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to emphasize that the point here is equality among voters and equality between men and women. There was only one incident: four women voted with their faces veiled, which they justified using the Chief Electoral Officer's directives. It is clear that this was an isolated incident. We should be grateful for the voters' sense of responsibility and wisdom in the three ridings that held byelections. If not for that, this issue could have been blown way out of proportion.

This is not about specific issues; it is a matter of principle. If we offered a group of voters the opportunity to vote with their faces covered—except for medical reasons, obviously, as set out in Bill C-6—we would be violating the principle of gender equality. Moreover, if we are talking about a specific religion, the Muslim community never asked for this.

I would like to quote part of an interview with Mrs. Ibnouzahir on Radio-Canada:

These women have been voting for years. They have never asked for special treatment, even though they know they have the right to do so under current legislation. They themselves took the initiative to show their faces, just as they do at customs or at the passport office, because they believed it made sense for security reasons.

They do not think it is unreasonable to show their faces when they vote. Why create an exception that goes against the values of Quebec society and, I think, Canadian society, to act on a request that was never articulated by any group in Quebec or Canada?

The Bloc Québécois wants to engage in a real debate between a vision of society known as multiculturalism, which seeks to bring all cultures and ethnicities into society, and Quebec's intercultural approach, which seeks to integrate all members of a society into a common culture.

I think that it is essentially the Trudeau legacy that is making the federal Liberals go back on the approach developed by their leader when these incidents happened. If I remember correctly, I think that the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada felt that common sense and the need to respect the right to equality between female and male electors dictated that it was necessary to vote with the face uncovered. Now, it seems as though some comments were made within the caucus or the core electorate of the Liberals that led the party to change its approach, reverting to the approach of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Society is made up of individuals and groups that join together rather than stand apart. So we will not wait for the incidents to happen. We are happy there have not been more.

A parliamentarian is responsible for addressing concerns as they arise, and not waiting for there to be a problem. It was the Chief Electoral Officer who asked parliamentarians to fix and clarify the situation. This is why we want to go further than Bill C-6 to ensure that the Chief Electoral Officer has all the necessary parameters to enforce the law as it should be, and as the parliamentarians in this House thought it would be. I think that the Liberals should start to seriously reflect on this. Perhaps this explains their problems in Quebec. They are completely disconnected from the way Quebeckers think.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the response given by the hon. member. He talked about responsibility and wisdom. I saw no wisdom in his response. I found it a veiled attempt at discrimination.

The bottom line is that currently as the law stands there are people who can mail in ballots and who can do special ballots. They do not have to show their faces. There are 80,000 to a million people who vote that way. Where is the wisdom in trying to target one community?

I am very proud of Mr. Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the prime minister who brought in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It protected everyone and did not discriminate because I did not look like them. I would like to see where the wisdom is in the discriminatory practices of this member.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, our party sees the fundamental principle as the equality of men and women. It is a basic principle in public life. As I mentioned before, a man who does not wish to be arrested by a female officer is denying this right. Religion is of no consequence in a public space. The police officer, whether male or female, has the same responsibilities, the same obligations and the same rights under the law. The same principle is true for elections. In addition, I repeat, this has never been an issue for the Muslim community. We had testimony in this regard from several witnesses, including members of the Muslim Canadian Congress.

In my opinion, the answer to the member's remark and question is very clear. Here we see the legacy of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, a view of society that is outdated in several respects. In fact, citizenship issues have been clarified over the years. In this regard, Bill C-6, although incomplete, uses a much more modern approach to the integration of newcomers than that of multiculturalism, which has led to problems not only in Canada and Quebec, but also in Great Britain.

It may be time to wake up and realize not only that public spaces must respect rights and values in a manner that is equitable for all individuals but also that public spaces are secular spaces.