Bill C-23 (Historical)

Fair Elections Act

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act (“the Act”) to require the Chief Electoral Officer to issue interpretation notes and guidelines on the application of that Act to registered parties, registered associations, nomination contestants, candidates and leadership contestants. It also requires the Chief Electoral Officer, on request, to issue a written opinion on the application of provisions of the Act to an activity or practice that a registered party, registered association, nomination contestant, candidate or leadership contestant proposes to engage in.
The enactment also modifies the Chief Electoral Officer’s power under section 17 of the Act so that the power may only be exercised to allow electors to exercise their right to vote or to allow votes to be counted. It also limits the Chief Electoral Officer’s power to transmit advertising messages to electors and requires the Chief Electoral Officer to ensure that any information so transmitted is accessible to electors with disabilities.
The enactment further amends the Act to permit the Chief Electoral Officer to seek approval from parliamentary committees to test an alternative voting process (but where such a pilot project is to test a form of electronic voting, the Chief Electoral Officer must first obtain the approval of the Senate and House of Commons). The enactment also eliminates the mandatory retirement of the Chief Electoral Officer at age 65 and replaces it with a 10-year non-renewable term. It provides for the establishment of an Advisory Committee of Political Parties to provide advice to the Chief Electoral Officer on matters relating to elections and political financing. The enactment also amends the Act to provide for the appointment of field liaison officers, based on merit, to provide support to returning officers and provide a link between returning officers and the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer. It also enables the Chief Electoral Officer to temporarily suspend a returning officer during an election period and provides for the appointment of additional election officers at polling stations. Finally, it empowers registered parties and registered associations, in addition to candidates, to provide names of individuals for election officer positions and changes the deadline for providing those names from the 17th day before polling day to the 24th day before polling day.
The enactment also adds to the Act Part 16.1, which deals with voter contact calling services. Among other things, that Part requires that calling service providers and other interested parties file registration notices with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, provide identifying information to the Commission and keep copies of scripts and recordings used to make calls. That Part also requires that the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission establish and maintain a registry, to be known as the Voter Contact Registry, in which the documents it receives in relation to voter contact calling services are to be kept.
The enactment also replaces Part 18 of the Act with a new, comprehensive set of rules on political financing that corrects a number of deficiencies in the Act. Notably, the enactment
(a) increases the annual contribution limits for contributions to registered parties, registered associations, candidates and nomination and leadership contestants to $1,500 per year and by $25 per year after the first year;
(b) increases the amount that candidates and leadership contestants may contribute to their own campaigns to $5,000 and $25,000, respectively;
(c) permits registered parties and registered associations to make transfers to candidates before their nomination is confirmed by the returning officer;
(d) requires a registered party’s auditor to complete a compliance audit in relation to its election expenses return indicating that the party has complied with the political financing rules;
(e) requires registered parties, registered associations and candidates to disclose details of expenses for voter contact calling services in their returns;
(f) reforms the rules governing unpaid claims, making it an offence for claims to remain unpaid after three years and strengthening the reporting of unpaid claims;
(g) reforms the reporting requirements of leadership contestants;
(h) permits higher spending limits for registered parties and candidates if an election period is longer than the 37-day minimum;
(i) includes new rules on political loans; and
(j) defines “capital asset” for the purposes of reporting the distribution cost of advertising or promotional material transmitted to the public using a capital asset, so that the expense is reported as the corresponding rental value for the period in which it was used, and for the purpose of the disposal of the campaign surplus.
With respect to voter identification, the enactment amends the Act to require the same voter identification for voting at the office of the returning officer in an elector’s own riding as it requires for voting at ordinary polls. It also prohibits the use of the voter information card as proof of identity, eliminates the ability of an elector to prove their identity through vouching, allows an elector to swear a written oath of their residence provided that their residence is attested to on oath by another elector, and requires an elector whose name was crossed off the electors’ list in error to take a written oath before receiving a ballot.
The enactment also amends the Act to provide an extra day of advance polling on the eighth day before polling day, creating a block of four consecutive advance polling days between the tenth and seventh days before polling day. It requires a separate ballot box for each day of advance polling and details procedures for the opening and closing of ballot boxes during an advance poll. Finally, it gives returning officers the authority to recover ballot boxes on the Chief Electoral Officer’s direction if the integrity of the vote is at risk.
The enactment also amends the Act to, among other things, establish a process to communicate polling station locations to electors, candidates and political parties, to provide that only an elector’s year of birth is to be displayed on the lists of electors used at the polls, instead of the full date of birth, to permit candidates’ representatives to move to any polling station in the electoral district after being sworn in at any polling station in the district and to establish a procedure for judicial recounts.
The enactment further amends the Act to change how the Commissioner of Canada Elections is appointed. It establishes that the Commissioner is to be appointed by the Director of Public Prosecutions for a seven-year term, subject to removal for cause, that the Commissioner is to be housed within the Director’s office but is to conduct investigations independently from the Director, and that the Commissioner is to be a deputy head for the purposes of hiring staff for his or her office and for managing human resources.
The enactment also amends the Act to add the offence of impersonating or causing another person to impersonate a candidate, a candidate’s representative, a representative of a registered party or registered association, the Chief Electoral Officer, a member of the Chief Electoral Officer’s staff, an election officer or a person authorized to act on the Chief Electoral Officer’s or an election officer’s behalf. It also adds the offences of providing false information in the course of an investigation and obstructing a person conducting an investigation. In addition, it creates offences in relation to registration on the lists of electors, registration on polling day, registration at an advance polling station and obligations to keep scripts and recordings used in the provision of voter contact calling services.
The enactment further amends the Act to provide for increases in the amount of penalties. For the more serious offences, it raises the maximum fine from $2,000 to $20,000 on summary conviction and from $5,000 to $50,000 on conviction on indictment. For most strict liability offences, it raises the maximum fine from $1,000 to $2,000. For registered parties, it raises the maximum fine from $25,000 to $50,000 on summary conviction for strict liability political financing offences and from $25,000 to $100,000 on summary conviction for political financing offences that are committed intentionally. For third parties that are groups or corporations that fail to register as third parties, it raises the maximum fine to $50,000 for strict liability offences and to $100,000 for offences that are committed intentionally and for offences applying primarily to broadcasters, it raises the maximum fine from $25,000 to $50,000.
The enactment amends the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act to authorize the Chief Electoral Officer to provide administrative support to electoral boundary commissions. It amends the Telecommunications Act to create new offences relating to voter contact calling services and to allow the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to use the inspection and investigation regime in that Act to administer and enforce part of the voter contact calling services regime in the Canada Elections Act. It amends the Conflict of Interest Act to have that Act apply to the Chief Electoral Officer. It also amends the Director of Public Prosecutions Act to provide that the Director of Public Prosecutions reports on the activities of the Commissioner of Canada Elections.
Finally, the enactment includes transitional provisions that, among other things, provide for the transfer of staff and appropriations from the Office of the Chief Electoral Officer to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to support the Commissioner of Canada Elections.

[Natasha Kim]

I believe it would. The CRTC gave examples where they had presented notices of offences against calling service providers outside of Canada. But in the case of the fair elections act, the political entities or the third parties would have to be Canadian, or connected to Canada somehow.

First Nations Control of First Nations Education Act

[Jonathan Genest-Jourdain, NDP, Manicouagan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, let us resume where we left off a few minutes ago.

Following consideration of Bill C-33, as well as the study I did with my colleagues and the meeting that took place two days ago with representatives from APTN and the Assembly of First Nations, in the office of the Leader of the Opposition, I have been telling my colleagues that we need to stand back when first nations take assertive action. They want to be heard and they will very likely mobilize in the upcoming months because of this draft bill on first nations education. By that, I mean let us not try to score political points.

In my last few years in the House, all too often I have noticed that some politicians, regardless of their party affiliation, usually try to score political points at public gatherings. Given the identity issue that is primarily at stake in this bill, namely first nations education, we must act judiciously. That is why first nations must be front and centre and their assertive action, their own arguments and their own points must take precedence.

It is also important to recognize that education is chronically underfunded, which naturally affects the quality of education offered in remote first nations communities. Unlike what has been claimed, it is the chronic under-funding that has affected the delivery of education services in most of the remote regions. This contradicts the claims we have heard here and what the bill is trying to imply in a roundabout way, namely that the first nations are responsible for overseeing and maintaining the quality of education and that they should shoulder the blame for their lax approach to integrating and applying the recognized education principles.

Statistics and interventions show that the chronic underfunding has been primarily responsible for the adversity in these communities. My chief said that communities can receive up to 35% less funding than the rest of the Canadian public might receive.

Therefore, the first nations members, teachers, principals, and staff who are responsible for education have had to make do with less funding and under less-than-ideal conditions. The very fact that I am here today and that there has been an increase in the level of education in these communities is evidence of the resilience of first nations members.

The government must also try to get the consent and support of community members when it enacts public policy, which has not been done or has not been done often enough. With this bill and with many others, the Conservatives have shown a rather narrow view of the concept of consultation, research and consent. I have witnessed this in my few years in the House.

That is why members of first nations, who are the primary stakeholders, were only somewhat involved. In fact, their degree of involvement remains unclear to this day. The AFNQL told us that it had not been consulted, and the vast majority of first nations members said the same. That is deeply deplorable considering the nature of the issue, the education of first nations people, which is closely linked to their identity and will ultimately lead to self-determination, a basic principle of our justice system and our parliamentary system. Self-determination of peoples can be achieved only by emancipation through education. That is why primary stakeholders must be involved in the drafting and enactment of this particular kind of bill.

It is important to keep in mind that the honour of the crown and the responsibility of the state are inextricably linked to the enactment of public policies that affect matters relating to the quiddity of being Indian. Identity and quiddity are synonyms, but there are differences. The term “quiddity” is used primarily in a legal and “aboriginal law” context.

The education of first nations is also covered by the fiduciary responsibility that must be observed between the crown and first nations. That is my understanding, and I think that many jurists in the country would agree. As such, attempting to attribute all of the blame for the questionable outcomes of education in these communities to teachers and first nations is quite inappropriate.

Canada is currently in an uncomfortable international spotlight. UN representatives, auditors and rapporteurs have come here over the past two years because our reputation has gone beyond our borders.

Europeans, who know a thing or two about this, decided to come take a look at what is going on with respect to education, housing and food.

I met two of those rapporteurs, so I know that Canada's human rights reputation is suffering worldwide. That is the subject of another debate.

Education is covered by this fiduciary relationship. The honour of the crown and the Government of Canada are involved every time that appalling situations come to light. Just six days ago, I was in an Innu community in Pakuashipi where members mentioned that educational adaptation is necessary, given the distance, remoteness and cultural subtleties of aboriginal communities. Teachers had to adapt out of necessity. Sometimes, children are simply brought into the forest because it is nearby. It is culturally relevant and part of the nomadic cycle and life cycle of these communities. Therefore, adjustments need to be made.

The Government of Canada must consider these specific characteristics when it drafts bills like this. Moreover, when this kind of reform is put forward, stakeholders in the community must truly be involved. Otherwise, it remains an empty shell. In this case, I would go so far as to say that authoritarianism is at play here. I will come back to that later.

The substance of the bill submitted for our consideration today shows this desire to control and interfere that is oftentimes selective. The Conservative government is trying to intervene selectively in the things that might cast an unfavourable light on the situation internationally and on education. Given that the government was exposed, it is trying to intervene in a draconian way, just as it did in many other areas in recent years. I was able to gauge this desire to intervene. The Conservatives are cherry picking, meaning that they intervene in matters that expose them and that are somewhat comfortable to them.

Therefore, the legislative instrument submitted for the consideration of the House was to outline the obligations and responsibilities of the federal government in the provision of education services on reserves, rather than to exonerate the government of its obligations by transferring the horrible consequences of the chronic underfunding of educational institutions to the institutions' local administration.

The narrative presented so far by stakeholders, who are most often Conservative stakeholders, is that the communities and stakeholders are responsible for the quality of education, even though the chronic underfunding has now been calculated. Indeed, the chronic underfunding has been calculated at a rate of 35%. My boss, the Leader of the Opposition, announced that.

I would point out in passing that, under subsection 91(24) of the Constitution Act, the Government of Canada is responsible for Indians and lands reserved for Indians. That is the first building block in our institution.

The government must provide education from kindergarten to grade 12 on reserve, and it must provide measures for post-secondary education. This must involve financial investments wherever they are needed. So far, this dynamic has received the most exposure.

There was tacit recognition in rather oblique language when the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development announced recently, with a great deal of hype, that there would be a huge financial investment in either 2016 or 2017. Those funds are needed now, not in 2016, because there is a dire need.

Nevertheless, we must acknowledge that this is a step forward. There had been no such recognition up until now. The government therefore took a step forward and indicated that if $2.4 billion—if memory serves—needs to be invested in 2016, that means that this area is now drastically underfunded. Now the question is what other areas will it pilfer from to come up with that money, but that is not my problem.

The selective interventionism and punitive nature of the Conservative government's initiatives clearly illustrate the inadequacy of the “my way or the highway” approach to providing services to the public and meeting government obligations regarding basic rights. I am talking about the punitive nature and selective interventionism because I have seen them first-hand, since I travel around to communities that have asserted their rights and have taken a stand, and are now being punished for it.

This is punishment. The government is simply making cuts. The government finds that the number of students does not correspond to the list that dates back to who knows when, and for that reason it is cutting $460,000 from the budget. For a remote community, that is a lot of money. These are punitive measures. Make no mistake.

Now I will say a few words about the moves the Conservatives keep making to off-load their obligations and their responsibility for government inaction on education for first nations youth by shifting the blame onto local stakeholders who have to deal with difficult conditions and limited resources.

The current government is trying to off-load its obligations not only to Canada's aboriginal peoples, but also in terms of providing services. We saw that with Canada Post. It is trying to off-load its obligations. Service delivery is more or less favourable, more or less on this government's agenda. In any case, the government will have to change its position, what with the general election just around the corner. Soon we will likely see the government handing out goodies, if I may put it that way.

Let me read a subclause that was brought to my attention; it belongs to a different time. The last time I had to analyze a section of legislation that reads a contrario goes back at least 13 or 14 years, when I got into law school. That is certainly a different time, but here it is still: clause 41 of the bill before us today reads as follows:

41. (1) The director of education, the principal, the teachers and the other staff of a school must provide all reasonable assistance to enable the temporary administrator of the school to exercise their powers and perform their functions and must provide any information relevant to the administration of the school that the temporary administrator requires. They must also comply with any direction given by the temporary administrator relating to the administration of the school.

Subclause 2 is where the harm lies:

No proceedings lie against any person referred to in subsection (1) for having in good faith provided the temporary administrator with assistance or information or complied with their directions.

Strangely enough, the title of the subclause is “Immunity”. We know, of course, that the Conservatives often use a word to mean the opposite—they talk of transparency and the Fair Elections Act, even though there is actually nothing very fair about it—and this subclause is no exception. If you read it a contrario, it means that the director of education, the principal, the teachers, and the other staff members of a school can be sued if they do not provide the administrator with assistance in good faith.

It remains to be seen what good faith is and what level of co-operation is adequate in the eyes of the Conservatives and the minister. Ultimately, I very much doubt that the minister will be the one making the assessment. This kind of not-so-veiled threat is really disgraceful. Circumstances will make the Conservatives see that they are not the only ones able to make threats like that. They may have to put up with some heat this summer.

I submit this respectfully.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, first, let me acknowledge my colleagues', and I say that in the plural, co-operation with respect to both Bill C-30, the fair rail for grain farmers act, and Bill C-25, the Qalipu Mi'kmaq first nation act, today. We appreciate that co-operation.

This afternoon, we will continue with the second reading debate on Bill C-33, the first nations control of first nations education act. That debate will conclude tomorrow and we will then proceed with a committee study of this important legislation this spring.

Monday shall be the fourth allotted day. We will debate a proposal from the New Democrats.

The Liberals will then get their turn on Tuesday, which shall be the fifth allotted day. I am still waiting to see a proposal from the Liberal leader on the economy. Maybe he is still finessing his newest definition of the middle class. I recommend to him the recent study from the U.S.A., the one that has been widely reported, which demonstrated that the Canadian middle class, according to his recent definition, that is the median income, is doing better than ever in history. For the first time, the Canadian middle class is doing better than its American counterpart. Perhaps we will see that on Tuesday as the subject of debate in the Liberal motion, since they claim that the middle class is their priority.

On Wednesday, we will start the report stage debate on Bill C-23, the fair elections act. I want to take this time to acknowledge the hard work of the members of the procedure and House affairs committee. My friend was just talking about the hard work they have been undertaking and the difficult pressure they are under. Largely, it should be said, it is a result of the lengthy filibuster, of which the New Democrats were so proud, at the start, whereby the committee lost many days, when it could have heard witnesses.

Notwithstanding that loss of work, those delay tactics, and the obstruction by the New Democrats, the committee has got on with its work. It heard from almost 70 witnesses. It had over 30 hours of meetings. Now it has gone on to complete about a dozen or so hours of detailed study of the clauses of the bill and the government's reasonable and common-sense amendments to the bill. I expect that it will complete that work shortly.

Despite the long hours the committee members are putting in, I know that they will be keenly anticipating the appearance, before the next constituency week, of the Leader of the Opposition at that same committee. That will, of course, be in compliance with the House order adopted on March 27 respecting the allegations of inappropriate spending and the use of House of Commons resources by the New Democratic Party. There the hon. member for Outremont will have the opportunity to answer many important questions of interest to all Canadians, including, I am sure, some questions from his own caucus members, who have been dragged into the scheme the NDP leader has put in place.

Finally, on Thursday morning, we will consider Bill C-3, the safeguarding Canada's seas and skies act, at report stage and third reading. After question period, we will resume the third reading debate on Bill C-8.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this was not a good month for this government: three of its bills were rejected by the courts because they were flawed.

Given that the government is routinely invoking time allocation and closure, the work on the bills has been sloppy.

This morning, another flawed bill, Bill C-30, was sent back to committee because this government did not do a good job in the first place. Mr. Speaker, you were obliged to reject the manner in which the government put in place this bill.

The government's process is not working. The courts and even the Speaker of the House have to call this government to order.

Now the government seems to be doing the same thing with Bill C-23, the unfair elections act. The committee was working to address many of the problems that exist in the bill. The NDP, as it always does, offered sound amendments to bring forward on this bill so that it would actually work for Canadians and Canadian democracy. However, we have the government now setting an artificial deadline. When the committee still has over 200 pages of the bill to scrutinize and still has hundreds of amendments to consider, the government is saying that the committee has to finish its work within just a few hours.

This is obviously going to be another bill that the government is going to screw up. How can the government expect bills to stand up to scrutiny if it will not allow proper scrutiny in committee and in the House?

My question is very simple. What will the Conservatives do next week to start restoring the confidence of Canadians that has been sorely lost by the amount of botched legislation we have seen coming from the government?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This recommendation, members of committee may recall, was made by Duff Conacher, the witness for Democracy Watch, in which he suggested we take this opportunity under the fair elections act to create a legislative framework for the leaders' debate. I think we'll all agree that the leaders' debate has become a very significant pivot point during election campaigns and I think a lot of Canadians assume that there are some set of rules and that Elections Canada supervises them.

Probably all of us around this table know it's basically a large cartel of public and private broadcasters—CBC, Radio Canada, TVA, Global, and CTV—that makes a decision among the news directors, generally in consultation with the leaders of the more established parties, and there are no rules. Since there are no rules they can be applied rather inconsistently. So this amendment as proposed by Duff Conacher of Democracy Watch would suggest that the Chief Electoral Officer would henceforth have the ability to set the number and date for election debates, supervise them, invite to the debate the leader of every party in the last election that either had a candidate elected under that party's banner or had won 5% of the vote, and then require all the broadcasters in Canada to broadcast the debate.

This is in the interest of fair, transparent, and consistent leaders' debates for greater public information and engagement in electoral campaigns.

So I submit to you amendment Green Party-40.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This relates to a recommendation from Mr. Mayrand in relation to bingo cards. People who are not familiar with voting day procedures won't know what we're talking about, but those of us who have been candidates know what they are. It's the information about who has voted and who hasn't voted on the day of the election. They allow poll workers for the various parties to run around and collect them, figure out who has voted and who hasn't voted, and call out your vote to make sure they get to the polls.

Bill C-23 does something that hasn't been done before with our election laws, which is to allow the cards produced on these days to be collected by the parties afterwards for additional personal information that they build up on the voting base. The purpose of my amendment is to remove this use of bingo cards as a further intrusion into personal information and also as creating a risk that the Chief Electoral Officer has mentioned, that this could, in some circumstances, require the returning officer to unseal a ballot box. The recommendation of the Chief Electoral Officer is that this provision should not be included in the bill.

My amendment seeks to change clause 67 on page 34 by just shortening it up. It would delete the lines around the representatives of the candidate’s party, and the providing after polling day, and read as follows:

with one copy of each statement of the vote in respect of the candidate's electoral district.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We have a version that was printed in error. Some members may have it incorrect in front of them. Your chair will fix it, but right now Bill C-23, in clause 58, be amended by replacing lines 29 to 31 on page 29 with the following:

open between the hours of noon and 8:00 p.m. on Saturday that is the 16th day before polling day, and on Friday, Saturday, and Monday, the 10th, 9th, and 7th days, respectively, before

Mr. Lukiwski, are you okay on that now, then? I have the dates now and the numbers right. Okay.

Pardon me?

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

No, that's okay.

No other party has an amendment like this, and it does take some explanation. It also takes some sensitivity as to why I'm bringing this forward.

Let me just state at the outset that a previously non-controversial—I haven't seen anything in the media about it, but I think it's quite significant—portion of C-23 has been to create four new advance poll days. I'm certainly very much in favour of more advance polls. However, one of these days will forevermore, as a mandatory rule, fall on a Sunday. That's the first time in the history of Canada that we have had a profound civic engagement mandated on a Sunday.

Now, this country has moved a long way, and for good reason, since 1906 and the Lord's Day Act. It said that as much as the state could decree it, people could not be busy on Sundays. You couldn't keep your store open; you couldn't do things on Sunday. I'm certainly not trying to prevent people from doing the day-to-day things that an increasingly secular society wants to do on a Sunday. However, had this law been in place in 2011, we would have had mandatory advance polls across Canada on Easter Sunday.

I do know that the Conference of Catholic Bishops expressed concern when there was a mandatory advance poll on Good Friday in the 2011 election.

It should go without saying that the Prime Minister can choose to avoid such things as advance polls falling on such sacred days as Good Friday by choosing an election day that is further out than the mandatory minimum number of days. There is some flexibility about what days on which advance polls will fall.

In this case, there will be no way that any future prime minister, short of amending the act, will be able to avoid an advance poll falling on a Sunday. I have raised this in debate in the House at second reading. Conservative members of Parliament expressed the view that they wouldn't personally vote on a Sunday and that people certainly have the choice of not voting on a Sunday, and that a vast number of Canadians don't find it a trouble to observe the Sabbath because they don't.

My concerns are twofold. One is the impact on those who must attend at advance polls, and they will include scrutineers who volunteer, as well as poll workers, as well as Elections Canada folks. They will have to be engaged on a Sunday. There is an issue of their religious observances, which one might agree for a large number of Canadians happen to fall on a Sunday. The other concern, regardless of religious concerns, bears on the logistics. Quite a lot of polling stations in this country are co-located in churches.

My amendment proposes to move that extra advance polling date to a Saturday. A lot of churches have no problem whatsoever, and as a matter of fact benefit from having the polling station at the church on the corner. Everybody knows where it is. On Fridays and Saturdays, it doesn't make any difference.

But I think it's going to create a lot of logistical problems of real significance. Again, whenever we're changing how people vote, where people vote, it can create more confusion. I think this amendment will resolve and avoid both potential difficulties for practising Christians, as well as avoiding logistical difficulties for churches that serve as polling stations.

I would ask my friends in the Conservative party to support my amendment so there would be four advance polling days, but it will not include a Sunday.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, the assertions made by Mr. Christopherson are incorrect.

The Chief Electoral Officer reports to this committee. Mr. Christopherson will be aware, and others on committee will be aware, of the fact that I have expressed frustration on numerous occasions in regard to the opaque nature of his reporting, of how difficult it is to tease out actual detailed information on things as simple as whether or not any individuals have been prosecuted, and if so, how many and where, for voting fraudulently.

I've mentioned examples of how his reports are frequently very short of information on the specifics that we—effectively, his board of directors—need to review. This committee has the opportunity to ask any question, and indeed, it would be my intention to ask questions about these subjects afterwards.

As everybody knows, I've mentioned on a number of occasions how I was very proud to have set up the meetings of groups of disabled people—or a group of disabled people—that led to the inclusion of certain provisions in clause 7 of this bill, Bill C-23, which will amend section 18 of the Canada Elections Act, specifying and requiring the Chief Electoral Officer to ensure that people can get out and vote and that they know how to exercise their rights, rights that are there in principle but not in practice if people are unaware of how to exercise them.

These are rights such as the right to become a candidate or finding out how to put your name on the list of electors if it was left off. The voter information card simply says, as one knows if one looks at it, that this shows you were on the voters list. But you don't know that you're not on the voters list if you don't have the voter card, right? This includes how to vote—different times and dates and locations, including voting by mail, voting at the returning office and so on—and how to vote if you're disabled, if you have problems getting access to the polling station, and so on.

These are all things that we have to enumerate in the law because they weren't being done adequately. I point to this all to make the point, Mr. Chair, that it's actually pretty difficult to figure out how to make sure that he then reports adequately in the future. I'm serving notice now that, statutory requirement or not, it is my intention—assuming we have someone on the committee after this law goes through after the election occurs, and if I'm still elected—to be asking him how he complied: how much money he spent, did he spend it in both official languages, and did he do a review afterwards.

If he doesn't have answers to that, I'll be very critical. It's his obligation to keep accurate records on these matters, and it's our obligation to ensure that he does so in a competent manner.

There is one final note, Mr. Chair, which is interesting with regard to the issue of competence in the administration of the vouching procedure, something that was, after all, the issue on which the litigation over Opitz v. Wrzesnewskyj in Etobicoke Centre took place. In that matter, the CEO did nothing to audit or investigate until such time as the matter was before the Supreme Court.

Then and only then did he ask Mr. Neufeld to prepare a report, so I would not say that alacrity in dealing with problems associated with voter verification has been very high on his priority list, and we seek to make sure that it will be, in order to ensure that all Canadians actually are able to exercise their section 3 right, which includes the right to have my vote count. It doesn't count for much if an election can be controverted where I voted legitimately and others did not, thereby changing the results in the riding.

That, of course, is the entire point of the security measures we're putting in place. They're reasonable. They are absolutely balanced to the issue at hand. We seem to forget—or at least members on the opposite side forget—that there are millions of Canadians who can be deprived of their section 3 right if their vote is cast in a meaningless manner because other votes were cast improperly by those who were not eligible to vote, or perhaps even fraudulently.

Thank you.

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

Thank you very much.

I thank my esteemed colleague for his intervention. However, I do take issue with a number of things he said. Primarily, he mentioned that in his opinion at least, there's no way the government would have changed any portion of the original bill had it not been for the public pressure.

I take issue with that, because from the outset, even though our government...and the minister responsible for this bill said he thought it was a very good bill, he also said that if there were useful suggestions that came out of committee, he would certainly listen and entertain amendments based on that testimony, and that's exactly what has happened. We have introduced approximately 45 amendments based on the testimony we've heard. I think that's a good thing. I think that certainly illustrates that the government is listening.

With respect, however, to the overarching motion and the request to withdraw this bill, clearly that's an implication, or at least a direct inference, that the bill is not worthy in its current state or as amended in that process we're going through now. I take great issue with that, because I would argue that Canadians think this is a pretty good bill. I'll buttress that statement with a few facts, or at least a few pieces of information, for the benefit of all those who are perhaps watching.

The two most contentious issues that we have heard from witnesses and from members of the opposition with respect to this bill have been identification requirements and vouching. Yesterday I mentioned to members of this committee that in the most recent Ipsos Reid poll, it showed that 87%...or at least I stated that the Ipsos Reid poll demonstrated that 87% of Canadians felt it appropriate that before being allowed to vote, Canadians show identification.

In a subsequent intervention, Mr. Scott, on behalf of the opposition, said I was mis-characterizing that poll, because the exact wording said that 87% of Canadians felt it appropriate that Canadians prove their identity and their residence. The direct implication there was that you don't need ID to prove who you are and where you live. I can only suppose that this means he felt that vouching would be a form of proof. What he failed to inform the committee, however, was that in that very poll, at a later point in the poll, it showed that 70% Canadians disagreed with the concept of vouching.

So if you want to connect the dots, if you have 87% of Canadians feeling that you need to prove your identification and residence, and 70% didn't want that to happen via vouching, what's left? What's left is what we've been advocating from day one: you have to prove your identity through proper ID presented at the time of voting. That's exactly what Canadians feel.

I would also point out that also included in the poll is a breakdown by political support. It found that 66% of people who consider themselves to be supporters of the NDP felt that vouching should be eliminated. So not only in the court of public opinion does the general public disagree with the NDP position on vouching; their own members disagree. Their supporters disagree with the NDP position on vouching.

That's why I continue to say that in the court of public opinion, we are on the right side, and in this argument the NDP has lost badly in the court of public opinion. Canadians expect voters to present ID. They don't like the concept of vouching.

The best analogy I've heard comes from one of my colleagues, so I have to attribute this to him, the Honourable Ed Holder. He put out a piece to his constituents on the concept of vouching. The analogy he gave was this. Let's say two guys walk into a bar. One clearly looks middle-aged and the other one looks much younger. The bartender comes up and says to the younger-looking gentleman, “I'm going to have to see your identification.” The older gentleman says, “That's not necessary, bartender. I'm going to vouch for him.”

Would that be acceptable to anyone? Of course not. It's not acceptable to the laws of the Province of Ontario or any other laws in any other province that have usually the age of 18 required. That's because Canadians expect people to show proper identification in order to do just about anything these days.

Both on the question of identification requirements and on the question of vouching, we believe we've addressed the views of Canadians very appropriately in this bill, and on many other issues where we heard dissenting views from either Canadians or those who chose to join us as intervenors in this committee, we have listened and responded. I think the amended version of Bill C-23 will be a bill that does what it is intended to do: improve the Canada Elections Act.

Again, I notice with great interest my colleagues opposite have not mentioned many other attributes of the bill that were lauded, approved, and applauded by people who came before this committee. Coming in with a robocalls registry, for an example, to stop fraudulent robocalls, was very well received. They talk about the movement of the Commissioner of Canada Elections from Elections Canada to the DPP. Yes, the opposition disagreed with that, and yes, there was some disagreement, but quite frankly it does make the Commissioner of Canada Elections far more independent. Even Sheila Fraser said she would not have a problem with that as long as there was adequate and full communication between Elections Canada and the commissioner. One of these amendments ensures that this will happen.

Without taking too much extra time—and I thank my colleague Mr. Scott for being brief and succinct in his comments, and I'll try to do the same—I think the final, amended package, which we are dealing with today, is a good piece of legislation supported by the vast majority of Canadians. We're very proud as a government to be able to present that to Canadians.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

That's great. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

This motion, which I gave notice of, I'd now like to table and move:

That the Committee present a report to the House of Commons recommending that Bill C-23, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act and other Acts and to make consequential amendments to certain Acts, be withdrawn.

The idea behind this is that the official opposition would like us to start fresh, albeit benefiting from the process that's occurred to date, which has had all kinds of learning elements in it. This is where we probably should have started with the bill in the House, given the nature of the Canada Elections Act, where much more extensive preparation, engagement with knowledgeable stakeholders from commissioners of Canada elections to chief electoral officers, and so on, should have occurred, not to mention a much more collegial, extensive process with the other parties in Parliament.

The government has backed down on a number of very important areas that have been resisted by the official opposition, by civil society, and I do suspect by Conservative MPs. With the amendments the government's been forced to agree to, this bill will be better than Bill C-23, that is, the unfair elections act, as tabled by the minister, but it will be still much worse than leaving the current Canada Elections Act in place.

41st General Election

[Robert Chisholm, NDP, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to present a petition on behalf of members of my constituency and many Nova Scotians beyond, including South Shore—St. Margaret's, who call on the government to reject Bill C-23 and bring forward genuine electoral reform that will stop fraud, prevent big money from distorting elections, and ensure every Canadian can exercise their right to vote.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

I would like to move NDP-33.

The amendment would delete proposed subsection 143(3.3) in Bill C-23. The proposed subsection in the bill reads as follows:

A candidate or their representative may examine but not handle any piece of identification presented under this section.

Now, “a candidate or their representative” is effectively shorthand for scrutineers. It's very rare you'll have a candidate bouncing around at every polling station, so it's a representative. What this authorizes is that those who are not actually the desk officers but the people making sure that the process, for your party's sake, for your candidate's sake, is working well can simply say, “Can I see that piece of ID?” They can examine it but not handle it.

I'm not going to say it's a matter of handling; it's just that somebody has to hold it up to them and they can see it. The Chief Electoral Officer brought our attention to this. It was part of his amendments. He suggested that this be deleted, so this is what this amendment does. It would delete those lines, and therefore this new provision wouldn't exist.

I won't give you the number of reasons, just in case I forget what number I gave, but one reason this is a problem is privacy. For average voters there are pieces of ID on the lists, and on maybe expanded lists, that might have information that a person is content that a person at the table could look at but not a random person.

The second thing is it has the potential, and this was actually the Chief Electoral Officer's point, to produce the perception, or the feeling, on the part of the voter of harassment. It doesn't actually have to be harassment for that to occur and for that to produce some kind of a disincentive to voting the next time, or just an unpleasant experience during voting, which has to be avoided at all costs.

The third thing is that it could actually be harassment or intimidation. Let's just say that's unlikely, by and large; I don't assume that average scrutineers will act any more dishonourably than the average voter. We don't believe the average voter is inclined to commit fraud. I don't believe the average scrutineer would intentionally harass or intimidate, but that would be perhaps the result and the feeling.

There's a last thing that's tied to these: lineups. Really, the idea that you have an enthusiastic scrutineer, who does not have to have any bad faith, or simply a scrutineer under instructions to carefully check ID.... It produces lineups. It produces frustration. It could even produce, among people at the end of the line, their deciding not to wait anymore.

Canadians, by the way, however much we are maybe one people who will line up better than others, are not exactly patient when it comes to this kind of thing. People are used to fairly quick voting in this country. This could contribute to a very different experience. There are reports south of the border of the use of asking for ID as a way to create lineups. I would hope we wouldn't get into that kind of scenario, but it's possible.

I would end by saying, Mr. Chair, that I move to delete this new examination of identification documents provision, and leave it in your capable hands.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

I will try to keep it very brief, Mr. Chair.

I wanted to make a few points. I don't think I need to go over.... Mr. Reid covered it quite well. When we talk about the accuracy of the voter information card to be used as identification, there are errors with one in six or more of the cards. We don't have to go over that ground again. That's quite clear, despite whatever the opposition wants to try to claim about its accuracy. That certainly is a troublesome rate of error, and one which I think does create some concern.

The other point I'd like to go over...I won't conjure up the spectre of alien abductions again, as my colleague Mr. Reid did, but it certainly was a good, entertaining example. When he was discussing that, he was alluding to the fact that he was finding it difficult, much as I was, to imagine as we went through the hearings, someone who would not be able to provide the identification required. I noted that throughout the hearings we never heard from a single witness who had indicated that they or anyone they knew would not have been able to vote under the provisions in this bill.

A lot of hypothetical examples were given, but never any concrete examples. The opposition likes to talk a lot about concrete examples. We never heard a single concrete example of a voter who would not have been able to vote, who could not have the ID required. I find it hard to imagine. Having said that, obviously we have just made an amendment here to allow someone to co-sign an oath as to their residence. That I could see as quite a reasonable amendment.

In terms of this card, I have just stated that outside of hypothetical examples, we did not hear from anyone who would have had trouble to produce the ID required, especially now that they can co-sign an oath to attest to their residence.

Furthermore, all the hypothetical examples that were given wouldn't apply to the voter information card because it's mailed to their last known address. We heard an example of a homeless person who obviously wouldn't have any mail. Certainly voter information cards wouldn't apply in that case. The student who is at an educational institution away from their parents' home, yet receives all their mail at their parents' home, but is choosing to vote at the poll where they're going to school, their voter information card would go there. I don't see how it would solve the issue, if one existed, which we certainly didn't establish. I've already identified the accuracy rate concerns.

As to some of the other claims of the opposition that indicated we should be prepared for all these people to show up at the polls next election with nothing but their voter information card, I would also point out that one of the other provisions in Bill C-23 requires Elections Canada to better advertise the logistics of voting. That obviously includes things like what identification to bring. Many witnesses came before this committee who indicated they were not aware of what they needed to bring in order to vote.They were quite surprised to learn about some of the possibilities available to them. That obviously indicates a better job needs to be done. That is something this bill requires, something we would expect Elections Canada to undertake, and therefore people would be aware of exactly what would be required to vote. I think that indicates the voter information card need not be used as a piece of identification, and Bill C-23, including the amendment we've just made, would facilitate every voter who wishes to vote to be able to vote in our elections.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

As long as you have one of the authorized 39 pieces and the VIC, which was primarily authorized to show address, then you could vote.

One of the reasons for the project was that in fact the requirements for the new ID requirements only entered into force after amendments in 2006 and 2007 to the Canada Elections Act, before which there actually was pretty much a trust-based system of voting in this country in terms of ID not being necessary.

What it did is it produced enough evidence that people were not voting, not even going to the voting stations, because they were either confused or couldn't find the pieces of ID to put together, and it was decided that the VIC, which already existed as a notification of registration, could be used and authorized as a form of identification for this purpose. It worked as a major initiative. It led to—now didn't lead directly to, but in Mr. Neufeld's report, he had two corresponding recommendations. He had a bunch of recommendations about how to deal with irregularities, including better training and recruiting, but he ultimately said that one of the other goals should be to reduce the amount of vouching needed, not to get rid of vouching but to reduce the need, and one way to do that was to increase the availability of the VIC as a second piece of ID to show address, and that led to the Chief Electoral Officer saying It is indeed his intention to authorize the use of voter information cards in the next general election.

Perhaps completely unrelated to that, Bill C-23 was tabled in the House of Commons and eliminated the ability of the Chief Electoral Officer to authorize VICs, not just in the case of the 900,000 who were able to in 2011, but every Canadian who would have been able to use it in 2015.

The last point is that one of the kind of anecdotal scenarios in the last two months has been the multiplying VIC, the VIC that ends up in somebody's hands with the name in more than one way, with the formal possibility being suggested that the person could thereby try to vote multiple times. Another scenario has been the VIC that travels in groups, in lobbies of residences, and is picked up and somehow or other, in the fictional imagination of one Conservative MP, is then distributed to others who can then vote with them.

The problem with these scenarios, apart from there being no evidence it ever occurs along those lines, is that you need a second piece of ID to vote. You need to produce the ID that shows your name, your identity, that then gets used with the VIC. You would have to be motivated not just to say, “Ah, I can vote with this VIC, and I'm not going to vote in my own name.” You'd have to be that kind of person too, because you're not going to show up at the same polling station and vote twice under different names. The VIC would have to have been sent or get in the hands of somebody who otherwise can't vote, or doesn't want to vote in their own name, and then you'd have to be motivated to forge the second piece of ID.

Not likely, and so therefore it's not that surprising that the minister in the House, I believe it was Monday, giving all the examples to back up his claim that people receiving multiple VICs voting multiple times could not be backed up by virtue of the fact that the only two examples he continues to be able to give is of a satire show, Infoman, charting two people who ostensibly tried to vote with two VICs, but—you know what?—could not, and I won't go into the details about why they could not. So there are, in fact, no examples available to the minister of people using VICs fraudulently.

Yet, we have a proposal by the government to get rid of, certainly, the most accurate piece of federal ID as one piece of ID that can be used in tandem with another. It cannot be used on its own, according to the current system.

All this is, really, is an attempt to return the law to where it was and also, I hope, to avoid huge chaos in 2015, when all the people who were first introduced to the fact they could formally use VICs as part of their voting will now have to be reprogrammed to make sure they do not try to vote in that way this time and instead look for other pieces of ID. Many of them will be able to find these, with different degrees of effort, but certainly, let's say, at least in the thousands will not.

I'd like to move this amendment NDP-27, to achieve the return of voter information cards as something the Chief Electoral Officer may authorize.