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

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

Mr. Speaker, I almost rose on a question of privilege when my friend referred to me as the new democratic reform critic. I think what he meant was the new critic on democratic reform for my party. It is almost in the way things are said, not what is actually said.

With that in mind, I do want to congratulate the parliamentary secretary. I would have had many questions for him, but I will pose those questions hypothetically to you, Mr. Speaker, and to the public who may be listening.

If this is a housekeeping bill and will cure the problem of a vast number of rural voters being unable to vote now because of a gap in the legislation, and if it is that non-contentious, and if it means so much to enfranchise over a million voters in this country in Liberal, Conservative and other party ridings, then why was it not given higher priority than Bill C-6, which we just debated, which by and large seems to affect an extremely small number of people, which seems to respond to a problem that does not exist?

Why was this legislation not given priority over a number of other bills that have achieved headlines far and wide across the country? Perhaps the answer is in my question itself: because it is better politics to get more press than to do what is right for over a million voters in this country.

Briefly speaking of Bill C-18, it is true that the parliamentary secretary has worked very hard in trying to get all parties together to bridge the gap that exists with respect to so many voters. It is true that discussions were held. It is true that a number of people have been consulted with respect to drafting the bill. But it is equally true that the government has misrepresented the facts which underlie the reason that we are here today.

If everybody had listened intently to the parliamentary secretary and to the Minister for Democratic Reform himself, it would seem that the Conservative Party is riding forth like the knight on the white horse to cure this problem. The truth is they sat on it; they ignored advice that came to their attention, or I guess in a legal standard, should have come to their attention as government earlier on, and I will get to that in a minute.

In announcing that the bill would be introduced, the Minister for Democratic Reform said, “Once again our government is showing real leadership by taking quick, decisive action to strengthen our voting system by addressing the problem of verifying the residence of voters”. I agree with everything there except “real leadership“ and “taking quick, decisive action”. He also said, “The legislative solution introduced today will ensure that legitimate voters will be able to exercise their fundamental democratic right to vote”.

I might remind all members of the House and some on the other side of the lack of fanfare or even notice of the fact that we have a Charter of Rights, and that the Charter of Rights is celebrating its 25th anniversary. I, as a relatively young member of Parliament, am a child of the charter. The charter in section 3, and I bet if I had a quiz on the charter, people could not pick the section that guarantees this right, which is the basis upon which this debate should begin and end, the democratic right of citizens, states that every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein. It is a very short section. I actually counted the words. That section has the fewest words in the whole Charter of Rights, but it is so succinct.

I find it kind of interesting when we look at the democratic reform ethos of the Conservative government how it has been interpreted by the courts has largely been with respect to the rights of inmates and judges to vote. Who would have thought that those two groups would be put together in terms of rights?

There have been significant court cases on whether inmates have the right to vote. People convicted of serious crimes are now determined by our courts to have the right to vote. So fundamental is this right, yet it would seem that the government, in its wisdom, by forging ahead with Bill C-6, might in effect be depriving a few unconvicted, uncharged citizens of this country who profess their religious beliefs of the right to vote, but inmates have the right to vote. I find that a curious turn of events given the government's very strong and strident support of an anti-crime agenda. The irony, of course, is quite delicious.

The other irony in the theme of my discussion and how it is not a case where once again the government is showing real leadership on that white horse is that in fact the Senate of Canada, one of those institutions that the government does not seem to really support, did in fact during its deliberations on Bill C-31 raise questions with respect to the qualification of voters, which as I indicated is guaranteed in the Charter of Rights. A group of senators reviewed the legislation, and let us remind ourselves that the other place has a duty to review legislation passed by the Commons.

We heard the parliamentary secretary for democratic reform in this House stand up and say, “Everybody missed it. Everybody in the Commons, all parties, missed it. It is just a big old mistake and a million people might not be able to vote. We are sorry. We put a whole bunch of bills ahead of this one because we care so much about those million voters in rural Canada who cannot vote. We are going to put a whole bunch of other bills ahead of this one and we are going to blame everybody equally.”

Not so fast. Let us work backward. On June 27, the bill itself, Bill C-31, received royal assent. Prior to that, in the month of May and before that time, the Senate of Canada was wrapping up its hearings. A number of questions were had of the Chief Electoral Officer at that time. Those questions went to identifying individuals who did not have addresses. The Chief Electoral Officer is another person who seems to be on the government's hit list. If we add it up, there are Muslim women and minority communities, the Senate of Canada, and now the Chief Electoral Officer. These are targets of the new government and its parliamentary secretaries, who wield such great power.

My friend who spoke to this bill today should be very mindful that the Chief Electoral Officer offered solutions himself, which came up as a result of the Senate's verification and review of legislation. He wrote, “In light of comments that I have already received”--as a result of Senate hearings--“I am considering broadening the list”--and he referred to identification--“to include attestation letters that could be signed by a person of authority in homeless shelters and student residences. Such letters would establish the residence of the individual and constitute one of the two pieces of identification required under section 143(2)(b)”.

It was also suggested there were problems, generally speaking, in ethnic communities with respect to voter turnout and verification.

He wrote to the questioner:

You had also suggested that Elections Canada should advertise in ethnic media to communicate the requirements for voter identification to the electorate and, in particular, ethnocultural communities. As part of its commitment to communicate clearly with a variety of groups within the electorate, Elections Canada has sought to tailor the information provided to ethnocultural communities.

He went on to describe what Elections Canada in fact had done in the ethnocultural communities and he talked about the attestation letters. The attestation letters prove the point that the Elections Canada officials are doing their job. The attestation letters were an afterthought as a result of the Senate hearings.

What we have is the Chief Electoral Officer, mindful that this is the act under which he is empowered, attempting to accommodate the law as written as a result of a verification and review in the other place. As a result, attestation letters are now, in practice, what prevails for homeless people, people in student dorms and other such facilities.

Would we not think that the question might be that in its thorough review of this legislation the government ought to have addressed the issue of attestation letters and made it, rather than a practice, the law? And would we not think that, and we may get to this when we send this to committee and correct it, in a thorough review, having had the experience of the byelections, the government would make it a priority to fix whatever flaws it had seen in Bill C-31?

In effect, do members not think the minister responsible, who wanted quick and decisive action, and the parliamentary secretary, who lives in a semi-rural riding, might have thought it very important to review what was already on the books in terms of committee work, or does the world for the Conservative government and the officers of democratic reform for the government end when the bill is presented to the Senate?

I suggest, not. I suggest that whatever happens in the Senate in the review of a bill is very much within the purview of the Minister for Democratic Reform. If he were not so busy taking questions for the Prime Minister and other people who are ducking issues, he would probably have time to do that. It also falls within the purview of the parliamentary secretary. He should have reviewed the work done by the Senate.

However, I am not here to defend the Senate on this item. I am here to defend the Chief Electoral Officer, who responded to a Senate inquiry. It is almost as if the democratic reform team over there did not exist. The real work was being done in the trenches by the Chief Electoral Officer and by serious senators who were involved in the review of the legislation.

In summary, it is very important for us to remember that the bill will, when taken to committee and fixed in a number of ways with the leadership that other members of the committee will offer to the bill, attempt to fix a problem that was actually created when it was decided we all must have forms of identification to vote.

If I could be non-partisan for a minute, we have to realize that we made a change when we decided in Bill C-31 that everybody had to show identification to vote. We owe it to ourselves to understand that in some countries this is the case and in others it is not. Clearly with respect to the over million rural voters, it effectively disenfranchised them. One has to ask the question we asked throughout the Bill C-6 debate. What was the problem before? Was there widespread abuse or fraud, concealment of identity or multiple voting in the rural ridings of Canada? I do not recall complaints made to Elections Canada.

It is like Bill C-6 where we do not have a single complaint to Elections Canada about voter fraud. We have the hums and ha's of the Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, who may have been driving by and saw people with pumpkins on their heads and somehow this became a very large issue.

What we have in this case is probably what will be the rub of the discussion. The serious rub of the discussion for members of Parliament is whether we will go to full identification, meaning photo identification. Countries in the democratic reform capacity not as sophisticated and not as developed as us have gone to that way. There are countries in west Africa that require photo identification to vote.

We have photo identification and a comparison against it, as said in legislation, to have a passport, which will allow us to enter other countries and to re-enter Canada. We have photo identification required by law by many provinces to have a driver's licence. We have photo identification requirements in many administrative and quasi-administrative instances in the country where government agencies are involved.

Do we want to take that bold grand leap toward photo identification for voting? It is a question with which we must all come to terms, be mature about and decide whether we want that. However, if we do not go there, if we do not jump in that large ocean, then we have to stay on the shore. There is no half-way on this.

It seems to me that whatever happened at Bill C-31, whatever happened in the Commons during the debate and in the Senate during its purview, with the poor Chief Electoral Officer trying to keep the middle ground, we have a situation where we are half wet. We have a situation where the first means of voting is to show one's picture ID, but the law does not say that the returning officer in charge has to compare one's face to the photo ID. It seems to be assumed that people would do that, but after all we are here to make law.

We are not here to just to recount our personal experiences. We are not here to talk about pumpkins at polling stations. We are not here to talk about multiple votes without proof. We are not here to talk about the anecdotes. This is a serious place where laws are made.

If we are to have a debate, the debate should be that if we say photo ID is one way of proving people's ability to exercise their charter right to vote, then we should also say that the photo ID should be compared to people's faces, which requires people to show their face. The law does not say that. Worse, the law goes on to say that the person only has to produce, as a second means of voting, two pieces of ID which have an address on it. As interpreted, those addresses have to concur with the list of electors. That is yet again a situation where no person's face is required to be shown. We are half wet on this issue. It is incongruous and very difficult for the Chief Electoral Officer to be sure that everyone who votes is voting.

Then we have to ask the question about our history. I would think that this particularly applies to rural Canada. In our history do we have such widespread voter fraud and multiple voting situations that we have to go that far? I would think not. What we have to rely on are the principles of trust, that when a Canadian citizen comes to the voting box, then in our heads, as lawmakers, as government officials and as the delegated responsible persons from Elections Canada, we should think of section 3 of the charter, “Every citizen in Canada has the right to vote”. It should be written large in both official languages at every polling station. We should do our utmost as parliamentarians to ensure that has been put into effect.

What has happened here is, in our rush to be half modern and half photogenic, we have said that one has to fit with the other.

On the positive side, the bill will go some way to cure a problem that exists because of our zealous pursuit of attempting to get rural people, our large rural population, to conform perhaps to a metropolitan view of how we identify ourselves. I think it is an identity issue. I think it is an issue that defines us as a nation.

In our country we have had periods in some cases of rapid urbanization and we have had periods of slow urbanization. I submit that in this history of our country, and what better place to do this than in the House, parts of western Canada were rapidly de-ruralized and rural Canada lost a lot of its character in the period which we now know as the dust bowl period.

We know that in periods of economic recession, parts of eastern Canada were denuded of its people. One only has to look at the outport situation in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador to know that people were pulled away from their rural roots.

The process of de-ruralization is occurring much slower in my province and in the rest of the Maritimes, but it is happening. We are becoming, as the last census showed, an urban nation.

What Bill C-31 did was it added insult to injury to rural Canadians by saying, “We are going to apply a city standard to rural Canadians. We are going to apply a metropolitan standard to rural Canadians. You shall be like us”.

What the good part of Bill C-18 suggests is that we are apologizing, as parliamentarians from all sides, to rural Canadians. We are saying that we were a little too hasty, a little too urban in our thought and we apologize. We are saying that rural Canadians have the same rights as we do as guaranteed by section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

Kudos to rural Canada and kudos to Bill C-18. We will fix and add to it, as we will at committee, and it will make good legislation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we all agree that we want to raise the level of voter turnout. One practice would raise the voter turnout, and that is door to door enumeration. We used to do that for many years. When the Liberal Party was in government, it got rid of door to door enumeration. Now tenants, students, young people who just turned age 18 and new immigrants who have just become citizens are no longer on the list. They have not been enumerated. Because they are not on the list, often they scramble to try to get to the polling station if they even know where their polling station is.

The key element that would help to increase the voter turnout is not in this bill, not in Bill C-18 and not in Bill C-31.

I remember a few months ago, in the spring, the Liberal Party said that there was all kinds of voter fraud and they suggested we ask Elections Canada to examine a few ridings in Toronto, for example. Therefore, a lot of money and time was spent to check whether there was fraud. Elections Canada said that there was no massive voter fraud. There was no fraud at all. A few people had made mistakes.

If we all agree there is no voter fraud, then why did the different parties pass Bill C-31? We said that it would not fix anything and it created other problems. Now we have another bill. I have no confidence it will fix all the problems or that voter turnout rate will go up. I know people will be disenfranchised because of the problems that are still inherent in this whole debate, which is the lack of door to door enumeration in the first place.

I cannot see how, after a lot of time, energy and money spent on these papers to study this bill and that bill causing embarrassment, the bill will fix these problems. It will fix the problem for those people from rural Canada who have been left off the list, but I guarantee we will encounter other problems.

I hope we return to door to door enumeration so people who need to be on the list will be on it and they can then have a chance to vote.

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

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

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

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

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on Bill C-18, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (verification of residence). First of all, I would like to say that the Bloc Québécois supports the principle of the bill.

In February 2007, the House of Commons adopted Bill C-31. This bill amended the Canada Elections Act primarily to reduce the possibility of fraud or error by strengthening requirements pertaining to the identification of voters. the Chief Electoral Officer had already expressed concerns about possible problems caused by the requirement to provide proof of identity and residence.

On December 7, 2006, when he appeared before the committee studying Bill C-31, he gave parliamentarians the following warning.

The requirement to prove residence presents a significant challenge. It is worth noting that in Quebec, which is the only province requiring ID at the polls, electors only need to prove their identity, not their residence.

As well, the chief electoral officers of other Canadian jurisdictions have pointed out that in many rural and northern areas of the country, especially west of Ontario, the address on the driver's licence is not the residential address but the postal address.

He got it right. According to Elections Canada, 1 012 989 electors, or 4.4% of qualified electors, do not have residential addresses meeting the requirements of the Elections Act as amended by Bill C-31.

In preparing this speech, I wondered how many voters in my riding might be affected. We inquired with the office of the Chief Electoral Officer. So far, all we were able to obtain was an acknowledgement of receipt, conforming that my inquiry had been referred to the appropriate branch. That takes some doing. Having been made aware of a problem, Elections Canada is unable to tell an elected member of the House of Commons how many voters in her riding might be affected.

But if an election were held today, nearly one million voters across Canada, including 15,000 in Quebec, would be prevented from casting a ballot.

These are the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of voters in the various provinces who do not meet the new requirements of the Elections Act. A journalist from La Presse also tried unsuccessfully to obtain an explanation from Elections Canada.

At various stages of the electoral process, electors are expected to provide undeniable proof of identity, particularly at the time of casting a ballot. Identification systems may also be used for registering voters or granting staff members access to their place of work or to a computer system. Some countries rely on the honesty of voters and do not require them to provide any documents as proof of identity. Other countries do require proof of identity, hence the need for personal identification systems.

In some countries, the use of ID cards is widespread, while in others, ID cards are not intended for everyday use. The public's response will determine whether or not this is an appropriate practice.

For electoral purposes, voters may produce ID cards when registering or at the polling station. Such cards may also be useful to give election officials access to their place of work or to other restricted access areas such as polling and ballot counting stations. They may also be used by the personnel responsible for voter registration or verification of voters lists.

Most ID cards used when voting do have the advantage of helping reduce opportunities for fraud. The ones that include a photo, a signature or a fingerprint ensure an even tighter control, but they must be used with caution, while taking into consideration the country's cultural context. Some security printing processes, such as holograms or coloured illustrations that are hard to copy, also reduce the risk of false ID cards, as do identification procedures that rely on biological information.

In its present form, the Canada Elections Act requires all electors to prove their identity and their residence before being allowed to vote. The new requirements on voter identification are based on a unanimous recommendation made by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

In order to prove his or her identity, an elector must: provide a government issued identity card with his or her photo, name and address—a Quebec driver's licence, for example; or provide two pieces of identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer, with both pieces showing his or her name, and one piece showing his or her residence; or ask another elector, whose name appears on the list of electors for the same polling division, to vouch for him or her, after having provided the above-mentioned pieces of identification.

The concern expressed by the Chief Electoral Officer, which we share, is that some electors may not be able to provide pieces of identification to prove their residence, as required by the law, because they live in an area where there are no municipal addresses, or in a region where such an address is not usually indicated on the driver's licence or other identification documents. This concern is the topic of the current debate, and we must find a solution.

The legislation needs to be corrected to ensure that a million citizens are not deprived of the right to vote. Bill C-18 will allow electors in regions where pieces of identification do not contain a civic address, just a post office box, general delivery or a rural route, to use identification with an address other than a street address to verify their residence on condition that it is consistent with the information on file in the National Register of Electors.

The same rule will apply to people who vouch for another elector. If the address on the voucher’s identification is consistent with the information in the list of electors, it will be deemed sufficient proof of residence. I would like to look a bit more closely at this bill.

It would allow electors to present identification with an address other than a civic address to verify their residence on condition that it is consistent with the information on file in the National Register of Electors. This is meant to cover people who live on rural routes, for example. The bill also authorizes an election officer, a candidate or a candidate’s representative to require the elector or the voucher to take an oath in order to prove his or her place of residence.

In these cases, the residence of the elector or voucher will not be deemed proven unless the person takes an oath. We believe that it is reasonable to require an ID card with a photograph, if available, in order to verify the identity of electors and ensure the integrity of the election system.

People whose names are not on the list of electors but who want to register on polling day or at an advance polling station will have to prove their residence by presenting identification with a civic address because the list of electors does not have any information in it that would make it possible to compare a mailing address or an incomplete civic address.

The government’s purpose here is to adjust our aim. The verification of residence bill makes the identification requirements more flexible for electors who do not have a piece of identification with a street address on it when they have to prove their residence in order to vote. We what we wanted to do with Bill C-31 was not to restrict the criteria for qualification as an elector but to change the way in which the elector exercises the right to vote.

We added an additional way of proving one’s place of residence by presenting pieces of identification which corroborate the elector’s declared identity.

We believe as legislators that we should do everything in our power to ensure that there are no more cases of impersonation at elections.

We believe that the integrity of the democratic process needs to be better protected in elections, something that is absolutely essential to recognize political rights.

We are also very aware of the fact that no bill should have the direct or indirect effect of depriving a person of his or her right to vote.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

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

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

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

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

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-31 asks electors to bring a piece of photo ID when they go to the polling station. That does not present a problem in Quebec, because driver’s licences and health insurance cards have photographs. However, the Chief Electoral Officer has authorized two original pieces of identification, one of which can establish your name and the other your residential address.

The identification card can be a health insurance card, social insurance card, birth certificate, driver’s licence, Canadian passport, a credit card to identify the name, a Canadian Forces identity card, a health card, employer card or old age security card, or a public transportation card. There are also documents that can establish name and address, such as a credit card statement, a bank statement, a utility bill such as a telephone, cable, hydro, gas or water bill, or a bill from a public utilities commission. This can also be a local property tax assessment, a residential lease or, for students, a school report card or transcript; and the list goes on.

An older person will have no problem voting, and could even go in with another elector who will vouch for him or her, if that elector has all of the pieces of identification. Everything has been done in Bill C-18 to facilitate things and to remedy the mistake that was made in Bill C-31, which contained the restriction that prevented some people who have post office boxes from proving their address. This bill corrects the mistake that interfered with a million people in Canada voting.

I do not think this poses any problems of the kind suggested by my colleague in the NDP. I know the New Democrats do not support this. We have often seen this in committee, particularly when it comes to bills that require identification. They think this means that homeless people would not be allowed to exercise their right to vote. Everything is being done, however, in the present Bill C-18, to accommodate those people.

The right to vote is also a responsibility that rests on every citizen. Everyone must be informed about how that right can be exercised.

I have just come from a meeting of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, at which the Chief Electoral Officer spoke as a witness. He informed us that he is in the process of initiating a broad campaign to raise awareness everywhere in Canada, to genuinely inform the public about their rights and the methods available to them for exercising the responsible right that the right to vote represents.

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

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

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

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for her question. I think having an elector ID card could resolve a number of problems. Mind you, the system will never be perfect. There is always some problem we need to address. It is also the role of the Chief Electoral Officer in every general election or byelection to take note of the shortcomings and try his best to correct them.

Nonetheless, there will always be the possibility of fraud or mistake. In my opinion, it would be a good exercise for the government to look into the possibility of having an elector identification card to reduce the possibility of fraud or mistake.

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

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague's speech brings me into this debate, as does the NDP speech. Is it not essential for us to ensure the integrity of our electoral system? I see that the NDP position is to have electors who do not have identification swear an oath in order to vote. Is that not irresponsible?

The very least we must do to ensure the integrity of the electoral system is to require identification with a photo, if possible, but not necessarily. I understand, since the current Elections Act requires a piece of identification with the person's home address, that this might be very difficult to enforce, because more than a million electors do not meet these criteria.

Unlike the NDP proposal whereby an oath is enough, should we not at least require a piece of photo ID, if possible, in order to ensure the integrity of our system?

[Pauline Picard, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I think that the NDP's proposal, which would give voting rights to any person who swears an oath, is unacceptable. That proposal was rejected by the other three political parties last session during consideration of Bill C-31.

We believe it is reasonable to require photo identification, if available, to verify the identity of voters and ensure the integrity of the electoral system.

I would like to point out that there have been serious fraud cases. The time when someone could pile a bunch of people onto a bus and have a voter swear an oath to identify them is over.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-18. Of course, if all members of the House had done their job when Bill C-31 was before the committee, we would not be in this position.

The parliamentary secretary spoke about the fact that the NDP opposed Bill C-31 simply because it was concerned about homeless people. There are a couple of things I would like to say about that. I am sure the parliamentary secretary could not possibly be suggesting that homeless people should not vote. We know that homelessness is a rising crisis in this country and that there are increasing numbers of homeless people in Canada. I would be very surprised to hear members of the House say that homeless people should be disenfranchised.

I point to the preliminary report of the UN special rapporteur, Miloon Kothari, that was released on October 22. It talked about the fact that Canada has a crisis in housing. We have a national crisis that is in an emergency situation. We know that independent sources are talking about increasing homelessness. We know homeless people often do not have identification that would allow them to vote.

Members of the Bloc are suggesting that somehow the New Democrats are not in favour of integrity in the voting system and that is absolute nonsense. The member for Vancouver East had a very concrete suggestion, one that has been used in Vancouver East, which was the use of statutory declarations for people who showed up with no identification and were not on the voters list.

NDPers are certainly very conscious of maintaining the integrity of the voting system and of ensuring there is no fraud, but I am also very aware that the Chief Electoral Officer also indicated that fraud is by no means rampant in this country. One wonders, when we attempt to use a sledgehammer on a small isolated problem, what the overall intent is.

When the parliamentary secretary answered a question I asked him about what this particular bill before us was going to do for people who were going to be disenfranchised, living in transient shelters and homeless, he indicated that the quote I read was actually not a quote of his from Bill C-18 when in fact it was his response to Bill C-18 amendments proposed by the Senate.

When the former Bill C-31 came back to the House for further review and consideration, I want to point out to members that New Democrats not only identified problems with that bill, and I am going to talk about some of them, but they also proposed solutions. They were concerned about rural voters in small communities. We talked about them being in small isolated communities. Not all rural communities are small and isolated, but we were certainly conscious of the fact that other community members could be disenfranchised.

On June 18, in response to amendments to Bill C-31 proposed by the Senate, the parliamentary secretary said:

What we are trying to do, by presenting a bill that will give increased and expanded voting opportunities for all Canada, is attempt to raise the level of voter turnout.

What we actually did with Bill C-31, in effect, is disenfranchise nearly a million rural voters. When those kinds of comments are made, one wonders if homelessness was considered as well.

The parliamentary secretary went on to say again on June 18, 2007, regarding amendments to Bill C-31 from the Senate:

I think there is no greater fraud that could be perpetrated on Canadians than that of an individual voting in a federal or provincial election who pretends to be someone that he or she is not.

Surely, there is also a fraud in disenfranchising voters. People have talked about section 3 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. When we pass legislation that says Canadians will not be allowed to vote because of where they live in rural Canada, surely that is perpetrating a fraud.

On that very same day of June 18, in response to Bill C-31 amendments from the Senate, the Minister for Democratic Reform said:

As I have mentioned on other occasions, this bill makes a number of changes to the electoral process that will reduce the opportunity for electoral fraud, improve the accuracy of the national register and the lists of electors, facilitate communication with the electorate and improve the administration of elections. These are changes that will be of benefit to all parties, to all candidates, and to all Canadians because it will make our electoral system, and in turn our democracy, stronger.

The Minister for Democratic Reform was supporting a piece of legislation that was actually going to make sure that some Canadians could not vote. How is that possibly in keeping with provisions for making our democracy stronger? In fact, in the government's rush to reduce a virtually non-existent fraud problem, it has actually made sure that well over a million Canadians will not be able to vote.

The bill attempts to correct that. If we are going to correct a piece of flawed legislation, I would argue that we need to correct all of the issues that were identified when Bill C-31 came forward initially.

Often in the House, we hear people talking about accountability, transparency, and fiscal responsibility. Bill C-31 was before the House and the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Bloc pushed it through despite some very strong reservations identified by New Democrats, and solutions suggested as well I might add. Now we are in the process of fixing a flawed piece of legislation at what cost to taxpayers.

We have a responsibility when legislation comes before the House. I have heard members say that not every piece of legislation is perfect and we have to do what we can do to get things through the House. However, when we do things hastily and without adequate consideration for broad ranging impact, we end up not only delaying the process, but we end up spending far more money than we needed to spend in the first place.

When the government brought in Bill C-18 to fix the problem of disenfranchised rural voters, it was not fixing the problems with respect to people who perhaps were homeless or living on low incomes. Does that mean we will have to bring another bill back before the House, at great expense to taxpayers, in order to fix a problem that should have been fixed when Bill C-31 was originally before the House?

I heard the parliamentary secretary speak about the fact that the primary reason that New Democrats opposed the original bill was because of our great concern for homeless people. We are absolutely concerned about people who are homeless. Whether it is their right to vote, their right to adequate shelter, and everything in between like health care, liveable wages, adequate education, we are concerned. I am very proud as a New Democrat to stand up and speak about these things in the House.

New Democrats identified a number of issues in Bill C-31 which are not being addressed in Bill C-18 and are still going to continue to be a problem.

We talked about the fact that the bill would result in thousands of individuals not being able to exercise their right to vote because of a lack of proper identification due to poverty, illness, disability or having no stable address. This also included people who were temporarily housed in transition shelters. We put forward a recommendation around the statutory declaration as an alternate means of identification for an elector to prove his or her identity.

We also talked about the fact that there were some serious problems with the vouching system. With the vouching system, one person can vouch only for one voter.

Sometimes, for example, there may be someone who lives in a riding and works a lot with people who are homeless, some of the street workers, who often have daily contact with people who are homeless. That person would only be able to vouch for one of those people who he or she works with on a regular basis. We were arguing that using that vouching system is a legitimate way to say that someone should be able to prove who they are and that one should be able to vouch for more than one person. That seems perfectly reasonable.

Surely, if one's credentials are good enough to vouch for one person, they should be good enough to vouch for five, six or ten people. What difference does it make?

I want to highlight the fact again that when New Democrats were speaking about the problems with Bill C-31, which have not been fixed in Bill C-18, they were identifying more than homelessness as an issue. The member for Vancouver East, in a very good speech that outlined a number of the problems and potential solutions, said:

What is being offered as the main solution to this problem is a voter identification system. In looking at the bill and knowing where this came from at committee, we want to express some of our concerns about what may be the unintended consequences of the ID system on voters. In particular, we are concerned about how this would impact low income people, people who live in small remote communities and aboriginal people who do not have the necessary ID outlined in the bill.

Clearly, the member for Vancouver East, who is a very experienced member of the House and has been a tireless advocate for homeless people, was also talking about people who are not only homeless but who lived in small and remote communities and aboriginal people.

Therefore, I think that is a very good example of how New Democrats talked about issues that included the homeless and others. Further on in her speech she talked about a solution. She said:

However, I have looked at this carefully and have talked to lawyers in my community who have been involved in providing assistance around statutory declarations for voters with no ID, and they are very concerned, as I am, about what this provision will mean. At present, it is acceptable for a voter to make a statutory declaration along with a person in the community who can identify the voter. In the downtown east side, it has often been a street worker, someone who knows many of the people in the community, who vouches for the individual. Under the new bill, [Bill C-31], this would no longer be allowed.

Bill C-18, which is before the House, does not take into account that provision that would have prevented the disenfranchisement of a number of people in our communities. The member went on to say:

We are prepared to see this bill go to committee. The government has said that it is willing to look at amendments--

We, of course, know that what happened is neither the government, nor the Liberals, nor the Bloc supported some of the amendments that the NDP put forward. This is the important part. The member also said:

--to ensure that by dealing with voter fraud, we are not at the same time unintentionally disenfranchising people who have a right to vote, who want to vote and who are voting legitimately, but would be precluded from doing so by these new provisions.

We have seen the first round of people who will be disenfranchised by Bill C-31.

I talked a bit about the vouching system and how extremely complicated it is in terms of the fact that we have one person who can vouch only for one person.

The member for Ottawa Centre, again a tireless defender of democratic reform and people's right to vote, in his speech against Bill C-31, and this is prescient, identified some problems that could occur. He said, “I would hate to see unintended consequences that would do the same here”. In this context he was referring to some problems that happened in the civil rights movement in the United States where people were, some would argue, intentionally disenfranchised and there were court challenges that resulted from that. He said:

We have seen laws in this country that have done that. I refer to B.C. and its so-called section 80, whereby people were not able to get on the voters list until the actual day of the election simply because of a flawed enumeration system. It is important to acknowledge, with the way the bill is presently written, that a charter challenge could happen.

The member for Ottawa Centre spoke about the fact that there could be unintended consequences of the bill and what do we see but over one million voters in Canada not able to vote because of this very deeply flawed bill.

The member goes on to talk about solutions. People in the House have said that New Democrats only oppose things, not propose things. That is wrong. We talked about the fact that enumeration, which has been cancelled, would have been a very good way to ensure that we had the best possible electoral list so that people would be accurately reflected on that voters list. It would certainly ease voting when it comes to voting day. That would have been one solution, along with the use of statutory declarations.

One of the members referred to the fact that New Democrats are not doing anything on democratic reform. Again, that is absolute utter nonsense because we know the previous member, Ed Broadbent, with whom I was very proud to serve as a member of the New Democrat caucus, presented a very detailed plan on democratic reform. Part of that plan dealt with corporate lobbyists. When we talk about democratic reform, we had the member for Winnipeg Centre yesterday pointing out the fact that measures to deal with corporate lobbyists under the Accountability Act still have not been put in place.

The member for Winnipeg Centre has been tireless in talking about ethics and accountability in this House.

We have a government that ran on a platform of accountability and so-called clean government and now we have a situation of Conservative corporate lobbyists who, because of the Conservatives' failure to enact certain provisions of Bill C-2, the Accountability Act, they have pretty much a free licence these days.

[Pat Martin]

An infestation.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

An infestation, as the member for Winnipeg Centre points out.

This is all about democratic reform and accountability in our voting system.

We also had an opportunity in this House to put forward proportional representation and members of this House folded like a stack of cards. We had an opportunity to ensure every vote counted so that we did not end up with a government that sometimes ended up with a majority when it only had 35% of the vote. Now that truly is a democratic reform initiative.

The member for Vancouver Island North brought forward a motion proposing electoral reform that would have substantially impacted on the way this House operates. Instead, members chose to disregard that very good motion. Canada is one of the few western democracies left that does not have some form of proportional representation.

I think New Democrats have a very proud history of fighting for democratic reform, electoral reform and for standing up for working class and middle class families to ensure their vote actually counts for something in this House. We are proud to be in the forefront in that area.

To get back to Bill C-18, I want to emphasize how broad the scope is of this problem. In a CTV news story on November 2, it stated:

Elections Canada last week disclosed that one million rural Canadians do not have a proper residential or civic address--complete with street name and number--as envisaged by the original legislation.

--that is Bill C-31--

Rural addresses are more often post office boxes or rural route numbers. On native reserves, a resident's address is sometimes simply the name of the reserve. The problem is particularly acute in the North, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Under this bill, many communities in our province simply would not have the right to have their votes registered. Our member for Timmins—James Bay is one of those. The member for Timmins—James Bay has called on this House to not only look at the disenfranchisement of rural voters, but also to look at the disenfranchisement of homeless people, transients, students, other rural people and aboriginal people. The list is very long.

When Elections Canada released its report, it gave some specific numbers, which I think are important. It released a report to Parliament saying that 4.4% of eligible voters do not have the proper address required by law. In Nunavut, 80.75% of the voters cannot offer a street name or address; 27.3% in Saskatchewan; and 23% in Newfoundland and Labrador. That is a serious problem.

I am hoping the House will look at the impact Bill C-18 would have on rural voters but I also hope the House expands its view and looks at all the other people who are disenfranchised.