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.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

It's for Bill C-6, the bills and voting.

Canada Elections Act

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I 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 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.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, since this morning, I have felt a light breeze of hysteria blowing on this side of the House. Accordingly, I have decided that I should speak on this bill.

As politicians who have to face the electorate, we always state that the right to vote is not only a right, but should also be an obligation. So it works both ways. From that statement it follows that we must be able to establish the identity of the people who come to vote and to express their democratic choice.

I have heard many comments. They all came back to the fact that one could—at least, that is how it appeared to me—attack some segment of the population. In other words, the comments were discriminatory in some respect, which should not be the case. To exercise the right to vote, one must at least be capable of satisfactorily proving one's identity.

It would, perhaps, be interesting to look at the chronology of the events concerning voting with the face covered. We have gone through a similar situation in Quebec. Let us start at the beginning.

On March 22, 2007 the chief electoral officer of Quebec confirmed that women wearing veils could vote in the provincial election on March 26, even if they refused to uncover their face. Radio program hosts launched a campaign to persuade voters to go and vote with their face covered as a protest against the decision of the chief electoral officer.

On March 23, confronted with a public outcry and the possibility of seeing the election turn into a masked ball, the chief electoral officer of Quebec changed the electoral act: all voters would have to have their face uncovered.

On June 19, the members of the House of Commons adopted Bill C-31 to amend the Canada Elections Act. The bill provides for a photo identification procedure.

On September 6, the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada announced that women wearing veils could vote in the next federal election and in the September 17 byelections in Quebec without being required to uncover their face.

On September 7, the Liberal party, the Conservative party and the Bloc Québécois called on the Chief Electoral Officer to reverse his decision. The Muslim community of Montreal also expressed its disagreement with the new policy. The following day, of course, the New Democratic party reconsidered and demanded that the position of the Chief Electoral Officer be reviewed.

On September 10, at a news conference, Marc Mayrand, the Chief Electoral Officer, stated that he had no intention of using his exceptional power to reverse the situation before the September 17 byelections. On that date, at least four women voted in the byelection in Outremont wearing a burka, to show their disagreement with the Chief Electoral Officer. One man, in a wheelchair, voted wearing a balaclava.

On October 17, in his Speech from the Throne, the Conservative government gave notice of its intention to introduce a bill prohibiting electors from voting with their face covered. On October 23, as we had already announced, the Bloc Québécois introduced a bill to prohibit people from voting with their face veiled. On October 26, the Conservative government came up with a bill to prohibit anyone from voting in an election with his or her face covered.

Of course, the Bloc Québécois supports this bill in principle. However, we feel that there are certain provisions which, while not absurd, will have to be reviewed and probably amended. We are finding that the bill introduced by the government does not fully reflect the principle that all are equal before the law.

Indeed, the bill opens the door to violations of the principle of equality between men and women. The first five clauses of Bill C-6 were included to allow deputy returning officers and poll clerks to delegate their powers to another individual. This means that a male deputy returning officer could accommodate a female voter by designating a woman in front of whom she could uncover her face to confirm her identity.

The Bloc Québécois feels that this is unacceptable. We will, of course, support the bill at second reading, but we will demand that the first five clauses be repealed.

The bill also includes some exceptions. For example, a person who must keep his or her face covered for medical reasons could still vote by providing two authorized pieces of identification and by taking an oath. Bill C-6 also adds new provisions to the act that allow returning officers to appoint additional persons in polling stations, and to also delegate some of their responsibilities.

As I mentioned earlier, I heard some very strange comments, primarily from Liberal members, who said that this is a witch hunt, that we do not have the right to prohibit people from voting with their face covered, and that we were directly targeting a community. In fact, our position is based on the very principle of democracy, on the right to vote, and on the need to make it practically impossible to use someone else's identity.

Not so long ago, it would have been unthinkable for any voter to show up with their face veiled or otherwise covered, preventing their identification. Now, in a specific context where there is much discussion everywhere about reasonable accommodations, a common knee jerk reaction in some people is to often use certain pretexts to find fault with those who wear a veil or cover their faces otherwise. In Roberval, a veiled woman showed up and voted. We are not necessarily talking about a burka here.

This goes to show how the door can be opened for individuals who are probably looking to make a mockery of the whole situation and to demonstrate that it is possible to vote without proper identification.

I was quite surprised by the Liberals' reaction, especially given what the leader of the Liberal Party had said. The Canadian Press quoted him on September 9 as saying, “We disagree with Elections Canada decision and we ask them to revisit their decision. At the end of the day, you must be able to identify yourself when you vote”.

It was the Liberal leader who said that. Later, he stated that, on the one hand, he disagreed with Elections Canada's decision not to reconsider the issue of uncovered faces but that, on the other hand, he might be able to live with the provisions of the existing legislation. This means that, at one time, all political leaders in this House were singing the same tune, saying that identification was necessary to vote.

Several principles guide the Bloc Québécois' position on this issue. As I said earlier, the Bloc Québécois supports the bill. All voters should be equal before the law. I also indicated that, in 2007, the lawmaker amended the Elections Act to tighten the requirements with respect to voter identification. Among other things, Bill C-31, which was passed by the House of Commons in February 2007, no longer allowed people to vouch for more than one elector and required photo ID to be able to vote.

The Bloc Québécois and the other political parties believed that the Elections Act was clear enough and that by requiring voters to prove their identity, it was implicitly requiring them to uncover their faces.

However, because the Chief Electoral Officer refused to use his exceptional power to require that all voters uncover their faces, the Bloc Québécois believes that the act needs to be amended as soon as possible, as we are doing. That is why we introduced our own bill.

We must not forget that groups representing Muslim women assert that they have never asked to be accommodated in this regard. In an interview with Radio-Canada, Asmaa Ibnouzahir of Présence musulmane Montréal said:

These women have been voting for years, and they have never asked for special treatment, even though they know they could. They themselves took the initiative to show their faces, just as they do at customs or the passport office, because they believed it made sense for security reasons. So for them, it is perfectly natural to uncover their faces.

I believe that this quote is enough to put an end to the debate about the requirement to uncover one's face when voting. I therefore ask the Liberal Party to reconsider its position and face facts: in the interests of democracy, people must vote with their faces uncovered.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the truth is that this is just the latest manifestation of the government's politics of division and discord. We have only to look to the termination of the court challenges program or the government's opposition to the equal treatment of gays and lesbians as examples of its approach to governing.

The reality is this is a non-issue that the government has whipped up into tempest for its own narrow and limited political objectives. If the government wanted to address real issues facing our country in terms of elections, it could look to ways of addressing very serious concerns like ever shrinking voter turnout at election time.

In federal elections we are averaging only 66% voter turnout. At the provincial and municipal levels of government it is even worse, where turnout levels are in the 50% and 25% ranges, respectively.

Clearly, there is need to reform our electoral system to encourage more Canadians to vote, not to find or create situations that discourage voting. Simply put, Bill C-6 is another example of the government's pattern of targeting specific groups of Canadians. It is just not appropriate or fair.

Instead of simply aiming laws like Bill C-6 at one particular group in our country, we should be embarking upon a thorough and comprehensive review of our electoral system. We need to look at broad based issues. This could include the issue of photographic identification. Is it something we should require? Is it practical?

The reality is that current law, as noted before, does not require photographic identification. This is something we can look at in the context of a comprehensive review of voting regulations. Similarly, there are other means of voting that we need to look at in order to encourage Canadians to vote.

We have an aging population that finds it increasingly more difficult to vote. As the number of older Canadians grow, there are real challenges to their ability to exercise their right to vote at polling stations. This is especially true during winter campaigns.

Although there are some processes available to allow people in these situations to vote, they are cumbersome and act in reality as a deterrent to voting. Likewise, many Canadians travel during winter months and in winter elections may not have the opportunity to exercise their right to vote at polling stations. Again, while there are mail-in ballots, we should look at the process to determine how it might be made easier for overseas Canadians to vote.

Another major and ever increasing issue is that of apathy found among young Canadians in exercising their right to vote. These Canadians are the future of our country. What can we do to encourage them to vote?

We need to address issues like these because they are issues of substance. They speak to the heart of the issues facing our electoral system. Instead of playing political games with issues like those found in connection with Bill C-6, we should be looking to address these real and pressing concerns.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a compelling document. However, it is not only a document; it is the spirit of our country. It is the expression of the values we hold dear to our hearts as citizens of our great country. It is also something the government finds an inconvenience.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms speaks to our equality and the right to the free expression of our religious beliefs. Bill C-6, in essence, is looking upon the issue as some kind of cultural matter. The use of the veil is not cultural. It is an expression for Muslim women of their religious beliefs.

In view of the fact that the current election law does not require photographic identification, in view of the fact that mail-in ballots are permitted by the election law, in view of the fact that this issue has not been raised by the Muslim community that it directly affects and in view of the fact that voters can simply vote using a utility bill or a bank statement, why is the government raising this issue?

It is really my original question once again. Why? The government needs to answer this question truthfully.

It was the great philosopher Aristotle who said, “Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects”. This statement is something we should all consider today in the House as we debate the government's proposed law.

[Mario Silva, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Brampton West.

As we debate various legislative proposals in the House, we are most often dealing with what we would describe as the “what” question. What is the bill designed to do? What does it change? What does it replace in terms of current law? However, I must confess, like many of my colleagues in the House, that I am asking the “why” question when it comes to the Conservative government's Bill C-6. Why has the government brought forward this legislation and why at this time?

First, one could ask whether there is a pressing and widespread problem with respect to the integrity of the voting process in regard to women who choose, for religious reasons, to wear a veil. Quite frankly, this is simply not the case. If it were not for the fact that some politicians have raised this issue, I am not sure it would have materialized as a major concern for Canadians, their elected representatives or observers in the political arena in our country.

I read with interest a quotation from the head of the Islamic Association of Nova Scotia, who said of this issue:

There was no controversy. The Muslim community never complained. The women would gladly take off their veil for a woman official.

I will not dwell too much upon the possible reasons for the government to bring forward Bill C-6, but let us consider the normal motivation for legislative initiatives.

The primary and appropriate motivation is based upon a sound and pressing policy requirement. In other words, the introduction of a piece of law is based upon sound public policy and the greater good of our society.

The second and less acceptable motivation is for political purposes. In view of the fact that this issue is not of concern to Elections Canada and was not clearly in need of urgent remedial action, I can only leave members of the House to draw their own conclusions in regard to what has motivated the government to introduce Bill C-6.

I believe a number of my colleagues have already raised the issue of mail-in ballots in regard to Bill C-6. While the government seems preoccupied with respect to the issue of veiled women having to remove their veils in voting stations, it seems to be perfectly comfortable with the concept of mail-in ballots.

In the 2006 federal election there were approximately 80,000 mail-in ballots. Obviously it is, by very definition and practice, not possible to visually confirm the identification of a voter using a mail-in ballot.

Furthermore, Bill C-6 and current election law do not even require the presentation of photographic identification for the purpose of casting a ballot in a federal general election.

In practical terms then, Bill C-6 could create a scenario where veiled voters are required to unveil themselves after having presented several pieces of non-photographic identification. What possible benefit is derived from this unless the polling official personally knows the voter? The practical realities of Bill C-6 are simply absurd.

We should also take note of the fact that in nations like the United Kingdom there has been talk of addressing voter turnout issues by permitting voting over the Internet. Clearly, the future will likely include the use of such tools to facilitate easier voting by citizens in Canada. When and if this comes to Canada, it will only further relegate to insignificance legislation like Bill C-6.

The real motivation of the government is clear to many observers. The Global and Mail editorial page recently expressed the thoughts of many reasonable observers when it stated in regard to Bill C-6 the following:

Pandering to...prejudice is a cheap way to win votes. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is pandering by introducing a bill to force veiled Muslim women to show their faces at polls.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I partially answered that question earlier. It is very dangerous, on the basis of Bill C-6, to say that this is a strictly racial issue. The Liberals are playing a dangerous game this morning.

The member's example was the same as one I mentioned before. A voter who arrives more or less disguised at the polling station must identify themselves, as must any Muslim woman who wears a veil. It is purely a matter of identifying the voter. My colleague is right; there are even precedents in Morocco where some accommodations can be made. However, when a citizen appears before a deputy returning officer, he or she must be able to identify the voter. This is the purpose of the act, a principle which the Liberal Party should support this morning.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I participate today in this debate on Bill C-6, which here and now, in this House, renews the debate on veiled voting.

In these early hours of this debate here in the House of Commons, the whole issue surrounding this bill is a very emotional one. I see that my colleague who spoke this morning and gave a speech filled with emotion is now leaving the House. I can see this is a very emotional issue.

I want to begin by saying that I have a great deal of difficulty, after hearing the first comments by the Liberals, in understanding the Liberal Party's position today in this House. As recently as September 7 of this year, the Liberal Party of Canada was calling for amendments to the act. It called on the Chief Electoral Officer to take action and to reverse the decision he made concerning voting in the byelections that were to take place on September 17 in Quebec. Indeed, it is hard to understand today's statements by the Liberals on this matter, when we heard the leader of the Liberal Party stating the opposite on September 7.

However, the debate here is not new. We must remember that it is part of the debate that has been taking place in Quebec in the context of two recent votes. I think first of the byelection that confirmed the election of Pauline Marois. As it happens, while the issue of veiled women voting was not at the heart of the campaign it certainly was raised during that byelection.

We must also recall that this debate was also raised during the September 17 byelections in Quebec. As a matter of fact, the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada announced that women wearing veils could vote in the next federal election and in the Quebec byelections on September 17 without being required to uncover their faces. The following day, the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party—I emphasize that—and the Bloc Québécois intervened, calling on the Chief Electoral Officer to reverse that decision. Later, naturally after some pussyfooting and hesitation, the leader of the NDP thought better of it and also demanded that the Chief Electoral Officer's opinion be reviewed.

The result is that we are now considering Bill C-6 which seeks to amend the Canada Elections Act to require male and female voters to have uncovered faces when voting or registering to vote.

Of course, the bill before us today includes some exceptions, one of which involves allowing voters to keep their faces covered for health reasons, but only on the condition, of course, that two pieces of identification be presented.

Furthermore, under Bill C-6, certain exceptions would determine under what circumstances—and these are the cases for which the law provides flexibility—a voter must uncover his or her face.

I would remind the House that this kind of debate has already been raised this year, when we amended the Canada Elections Act in order to be able to confirm the identity of voters. As I recall, we thought that the problems raised in the context of the two byelections—especially the one on September 17—had been resolved by that amendment. However, Bill C-31, which we examined clause-by-clause in February 2007, made it mandatory for voters to produce photo identification in order to vote.

Thus, it seemed sufficiently clear that voters were obliged to prove their identity. Fundamentally, that is the spirit of this bill. It is not a racial question, as some members have said here today. Rather, it is a question of verifying the identity of voters. At the time, we thought that amending the Canada Elections Act through Bill C-31 was enough to clarify the situation regarding voter identification.

I would remind the House, however, that the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada refused to use his special authority to require all voters to uncover their faces in order to vote. The Bloc Québécois would like to see that legislation amended as quickly as possible. This is why my hon. colleague from Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord introduced Bill C-465, to amend the Canada Elections Act: in order to ensure that voters vote with their faces uncovered.

I would remind the House that this accommodation, which would allow certain voters to keep their face covered while voting, is not the sort of reasonable accommodation called for by the Muslim community.

I remember that, during an interview on Radio-Canada on September 10, 2007, Ms. Asmaa Ibnouzahir said that Muslim women had decided themselves to take the initiative and unveil their faces because they thought it was a normal thing to do so as a security matter, just as they do at the customs or the passport office. The Muslim community itself, therefore, as represented by Présence musulmane Montréal—an organization that is quite representative of the community—said that these women had been voting for years and had never asked for special treatment, although they knew they had the right to do so.

There is no demand or request for this kind of accommodation, which would mean that women would not need to uncover their face. That is why we need to act as quickly as possible. Is Bill C-6 perfect? No, it is not, but it has the advantage of dealing with the situation in principle, in view of the fact that the Chief Electoral Officer refuses to use his powers under the Elections Act.

What are the imperfections in Bill C-6? We think that it does not abide by the principle of equality between men and women. Under the first five clauses in Bill C-6, deputy returning officers and poll clerks can delegate their powers to another person. Under this provision, a male deputy returning officer could therefore accommodate a female elector by designating a woman before whom the elector could uncover her face to confirm her identity. This is totally unacceptable.

It is as if citizens of Arab or Muslim origin came into my riding office but refused to be served by my assistant because she is a woman. I would tell these people that my assistant is perfectly competent and is there to serve the citizens. There is no possible doubt in this case that the equality of men and women is a basic right. I fail to see why this principle of the basic equality of men and women cannot be upheld in the bill.

I will finish by saying this is clearly an emotional debate. It is a debate that we need, though, because of our responsibility for democracy. We need to find the right balance in our ability to accommodate people. It is important to be able to identify people when they exercise their voting rights. Of course there can be some exceptions for medical reasons, but in general, we should ensure that when a citizen comes to a polling station, he or she must address the deputy returning officers or poll clerks who are there, regardless of whether they are men or women, and identify himself or herself, in accordance with the legislation that we are trying to amend today.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on this important issue of democratic freedom in our country.

As my esteemed colleague from Don Valley West has said, this is a flawed bill. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects the rights of an individual to freely practise his or her religion without interference from the state. Regretfully, the Conservatives are proposing legislation that not only will divide Canadians, but also targets a religious minority for no other reason but to pander to the politics of fear and ignorance.

The Conservatives are showing their disdain for rights and freedoms, and Bill C-6, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act, is a flawed piece of legislation. It represents a knee-jerk reaction that would require Muslim women to unveil their niqab or burka for the purpose of visual identification at the ballot box.

Canadians could be forgiven for thinking veiled Muslim women pose an urgent threat to the integrity of our electoral system, and therefore it appears that the Prime Minister has made it one of his priorities to force voters to show their faces at the polls. But is there any shred of evidence that such a problem existed in the first place? The Conservative government has admitted there was no apparent case of fraud in three federal byelections that were held in September in Quebec when unjustified hysteria over veiled Muslim women first boiled over.

So what is it that the Conservatives are trying to fix? If a problem does not exist, what are they trying to fix? I think what they are trying to fix is that “if you do not look like me or act like me, then you are a problem”. I think that is really unfair to a large population of over a million people who have been law-abiding citizens, who have voted and who have never faced discrimination of the nature that they are seeing at the moment.

The legislation was not crafted in response to any incident involving fraud. Rather, it is irrational and hysterical. If a problem did exist, why did the Prime Minister not include these provisions in the electoral bill that was passed by the House less than six months ago?

The Conservatives have tried to dress up this bill as a means to enhancing public confidence in the democratic process. But it has nothing to do with electoral integrity and everything to do with pandering to the narrow-minded fears about minorities, particularly in Quebec, where this troubling debate over reasonable accommodation is now raging.

What if there is a requirement for visual identification? At the moment visual identification is not required by law in a federal election. In fact, Canadians have the option in this country to vote by postal ballot, where no identification is required, yet the Conservative government firmly believes that veiled Muslim women are a threat. I challenge any member of the House to document one single incident of electoral fraud in Canada that was committed by a veiled Muslim woman.

As Canada's Chief Electoral Officer has pointed out, over 80,000 Canadians voted in the last federal election through the postal system and none of them were required to provide photo identification. Why? Because the law does not require it. These people are snowbirds and other Canadians who are out of the country during a federal election. Should we therefore disenfranchise 80,000 Canadians based on irrational fear?

It may interest members to know that Muslim women currently serving in the Canadian Forces are permitted to wear a hijab on duty. Is the government therefore trying to say to Muslim women that it is okay to serve on the front lines of the Canadian military, but it is not okay for them to wear a veil when they vote?

The Canadian Forces wants to recruit more Muslim women because we desperately need them. We are in Afghanistan, and really, the Conservatives have no idea of what they are doing there. They do not even know what pluralism or diversity means, so what is the message the Conservatives are trying to convey? Is the government trying to uphold the rights of only certain citizens and succumbing to fear and sudden whims that pose no threats? As parliamentarians, we are elected to represent our constituency, and I feel obligated to resist policies that are made on irrational impulses.

We are elected to look at and consider legislation. If it is based on reasoning and rational thought, then we approve it. On this occasion, the bill as it currently reads unfairly targets a religious minority. Also, not only is it contrary to my beliefs, but more important, it is contrary to the law as it currently exists.

I would strongly urge the government to reconsider this legislation and reflect on its responsibility to uphold democratic rights in the country. Considering how flawed the bill is and considering that it is targeting only one community, it is important that it be tightened up, the flaws reviewed and the bill not passed, because it will never pass the charter challenge.

It is another example of the Conservatives' agenda of divisiveness and discrimination against one group. There are glaring inconsistencies and this is shamefully playing cheap politics at the expense of Canadian Muslims. It will not achieve anything. It will not achieve its stated goal of improving visual identification except in wanting one group to lift its veil. Really, it is a veiled attempt at discrimination against one group.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rather enjoyed my hon. colleague's silly diatribe, or entertaining diatribe I should say. He talked about blowing bubbles. Frankly, I think he was blowing smoke because all parties in the House agreed that something needed to be done quickly. This government has shown leadership by tabling this bill.

We would love to move on to Bill C-18, which is a significant problem that the government has already dealt with expeditiously. We would ask for the opposition's help in doing this. Let us get Bill C-6 behind us. All four parties agreed that this needs to be done, so why are they stalling? Why are they not showing leadership on this issue? They talk about leadership. Let us show some leadership in the House together with the government and get it behind us so we can move on. We need to quit stalling and get on with it.

[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.

[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.

[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.