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.

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

There's no preface. We know where we've ended up. It's that Bill C-23 be amended in clause 48 by deleting proposed subparagraph 143(3)(b)(ii) as set out in amendment G-5.

I'd like a recorded vote, please.

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

—in the 87% to believe that the question they were asked is about whether you have ID. The question was on proving who you are. No wonder 87% reasonably thought that proving who they are and where they live is essential.

I think that's a fairly important correction.

The subamendment that I'd like to move, Mr. Chair, to amendment G-5 is a short one. It's that Bill C-23, in clause 48, in proposed subparagraph 143(3)(b)(ii), be amended by replacing “they know the elector personally” with “they know the elector”. This would eliminate the word “personally”.

Since we've lost on the other amendment, I'd like again to give the government a chance. This is much closer to the examples that even Mr. Richards was just giving. I hope the government would come halfway by understanding our argument about why the word “personally” is superfluous, especially when the examples given by Mr. Richards included the question, “Do you know the person well enough to know where they live?” which is already there as a criterion.

If we eliminate the word “personally”, I honestly think we have something resembling a fair meeting of minds. I don't think the concerns we've been presenting have been unreasonable. In a context in which the government has yet to vote in favour of a single opposition motion, I would really welcome some support on this one.

I hereby move that subamendment.

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

Mr. Chair, the NDP was absolutely, absolutely thrown off their game when they saw that Ipsos Reid poll that shows 87% of the people believe in our position. They do not believe that Canadians should be allowed to vote without producing any identification. That is what Canadians feel. This reflects that, because now to be able to vote, even if you can't prove residency or you don't have identification for residency, you can do it by signing a note and having a co-signer sign a note that testifies they know this person, they know where this person lives. That is what Canadians want to see, and that's what's reflected in Bill C-23.

Thank you, Chair.

[Philippe Méla, Procedural Clerk]

That Bill C-23 be amended in clause 48 by adding after section 143.3(b) the following: “3.1 No one may be prosecuted for any offence under this Act on the sole basis of not having complied with section 143.3 (b)(ii).”

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Chair, certainly, first off, I would concur in my colleague's remarks. She's absolutely right. Make no mistake that there are going to be problems with this.

However, the first thing I want to say is that this not just an ordinary flip-flop. This is a flip-flop of historic proportions. This is a double backflip somersault with a twist in terms of flip-flops.

Before I get to my argument, the first thing I want to say very clearly is that had there been proper consultations in the beginning with all the people who we ultimately heard from, who convinced the government through public pressure to change their position, we could have avoided all this.

If they had simply knocked on the door of the Chief Electoral Officer, the elections commissioner, and a few other experts, we could have avoided all of this. This is what happens when governments bring in legislation that significantly changes important things and they don't consult with anyone. This is the kind of thing that happens.

Let's start at the beginning. If everyone recalls, the government started talking about this because there was so much fraud, because there was so much potential for fraud. In fact, the minister was reading out Mr. Neufeld's report, holding it up and saying, “There's the proof right here. It's in the report. Mr. Neufeld did this study, this expert study, and here's what it said.”

What did Mr. Neufeld say when the minister used his report to say that there was either widespread fraud or the potential for widespread fraud? Mr. Neufeld said, “I think any fair-minded person who reads that report would come to the conclusion that he”—meaning the minister—“has not been fair in his assessment of my findings.” He also went on to say, “there was no evidence of fraud whatsoever”. He also said that he had “only been privy to a handful of cases of voter fraud” in his career.

That was the argument. That was the foundation the government laid out for denying vouching. Then, of course, we all heard the minister's talking points. They were repeated here for a while, but anybody who has followed this closely saw those talking points soften up just a little. Line by line they sort of disappeared, and as time went on, they stopped defending....

Then they went back, and now we're here with this amendment, and it needs to be said, the Prime Minister in particular.... I don't normally mention the Prime Minister at the committee level, but I have to tell you, I sit right across from him and he's been getting up every day when he has the chance and saying that the NDP has this extreme position that people can vote with no ID.

Meanwhile, the vouching available in the last election meant exactly that. People could walk up with no ID and they could get someone to vouch for them, and Mr. Neufeld's report said, “there was no evidence of fraud whatsoever”. So there's nothing extreme about saying that maybe we should use the same vouching system that let the current Prime Minister be elected Prime Minister.

Now, it's cute, if you'll notice.... I'll be shocked if they utter the word “vouching”. They won't use the word “vouching”, but that's what this is. They've brought it back because they knew they had to. It was not going to stand, so they tried to find a clever little way to make it look like it's not really vouching while at the same time they spin out a political message that the NDP has this extreme position about people voting without ID. Of course, they don't mention the fact that this is exactly how he became Prime Minister, and that this system was in place, and that the experts who reviewed that election said, “there was no evidence of fraud whatsoever”.

So why was this even brought in? Get ready for your tin hat throw-out comment, because this is exactly the sort of the thing that the Republicans in the U.S. are doing, and it's about voter suppression. Make no mistake about it. These little things they're throwing in here, like “personally” and a couple of little factors are all meant to hang on to as much of the voter suppression technique as possible, because it works, unfortunately.

Rather than just being up front, because they have no idea how to be up front; that's just a foreign concept to them, as evidenced by Bill C-23 landing here without even asking the Chief Electoral Officer what he thought.... Rather than being up front and saying, “You know, we got the vouching thing wrong. We really did. We're going to go back to what we had because clearly there's no problem.”

That's not what's happening. Instead, they refuse to use the word “vouching”. They say “attestation”. Fine, call it whatever you want, but it's vouching. Somebody is saying, “I know them personally and I know they live there”, and under any definition, that's vouching.

They're trying to be too clever by half. Nobody is going to be fooled. Is this better? Yes. But make no mistake. It's the bare minimum they could do facing the avalanche of public criticism they received not just in Canada but internationally.

Again, it would have been a lot easier in the beginning, or even now, if you'd come in and said, “You know, we got it wrong”. You'd have taken some heat for the flip-flop, but it's the flip-flop with the double twist and the double somersaults and still trying to come out on top, that you didn't go to vouching but you've still got a bit of your voter suppression technique in there. There will be Canadians who otherwise could have voted in the last election, who can't this time because the vouching has been limited.

I have no doubt that tomorrow we'll see the Prime Minister get back up again and talk about the NDP's extreme position. I want to emphasize again that the extreme position the Prime Minister is saying the official opposition has is exactly the system that was in place in the last election. That was fair enough to let Prime Minister Stephen Harper get elected, but somehow that's not supposed to be a fair basis to have for the next election. Nonsense. It's voter suppression.

Thank goodness for the integrity and honesty of our officers of Parliament, current and former, including Madam Fraser, who came forward and said that this bill is an attack on our democracy. And there were all those Canadians who came in here knowing how vicious this government is. People are frightened of this government, but they still came down here and they said this is wrong.

Thank you to all of those Canadians who did that. Every Canadian who attended a rally, signed a petition, sent an e-mail, all contributed to getting back some of our democracy that this government was trying to take away in this bill.

We will be up front. Our intent is to vote for this section because it is an improvement. It does reintroduce vouching as an important and positive tool in our electoral system, but we will vote against the clause. At the end of the day, the government is still taking away democratic rights and access to voting that Canadians had in the last election. They will not have that in the coming election. We're going to continue to do everything we can do to get this fully changed.

We're not at the end yet, Chair, although I am getting close.

With regard to the process, we're not at the end yet. We still have to go through these amendments. It has to go back to the House for report stage and third reading, so there's still time. There's still time to push them to do all of the right things. If we can get half a loaf of democracy, which is a shame in Canada that we get half a loaf of democracy, we'll take it.

We will continue to persevere so Canadians can have their full loaf of democracy, which they not only deserve but they had in the last election, and this government is going to take it away in the election coming up.

Thank you, Chair.

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

Adding the language “they know the elector personally” is new and it seems they want it to be a little bit additional to the idea they know that the elector resides in the polling division.

To me this is a problem, because it opens up the ability of whatever officer on election day to be able to start asking, “Do you know this person personally?” and make judgment calls. What does “personally” mean? For how long, and in what context?

I can see absolute chaos, as well as potential unfairness. Inconsistency of application is one form of unfairness and then there's the unfairness of turning somebody away because an elections officer says, “You haven't known them for a year. You haven't known them for a week. You just met them an hour ago.” But you reliably know they live at that address because the social agency that has paired you up with them has indicated that they use your services. I think the openness, the generality of this, is going to produce a real problem of application.

I have a second concern. Mr. Richards may remember we had a bit of a discussion on this. Under the current Canada Elections Act, the sections on vouching, there is basically the idea that what I was calling citizen-to-citizen vouching is completely acceptable. The idea is you know the person, where they live, you've come to know them enough that this is the person who lives where you're vouching for them and that's all that has ever been required.

I'm hoping it's not an intention, and I can't imagine it's an intention, but this is by result potentially an anti-homeless clause, because if you use a system like the one described for London or anything that's similar to it, there's a danger that the threshold of knowing the person personally won't be met. The citizen-to-citizen vouching has literally been written out of the possibility by using the word “personally”, and whether that means you live in the same division and it's family, you live in the same division and it's a neighbour, you live in the same polling division and it's somebody else who somehow you know personally, whatever that might mean, I just think it goes far too far for what is otherwise an openness of spirit to everything else that was heard in the days of testimony.

I'm hoping that through some further discussion we can find a way. I will be wanting to amend this to excise it because I think it's completely unnecessary to start with, and then I do believe it can create barriers. I'm hoping that the other side will look at my concerns and say that's not what they intended and therefore we can work with this, and let's see what we can do.

I wanted to flag one last thing about this. Let me take a step back. In the 2011 election, roughly 900,000 or a million people were able to vote, legally able to vote by authorization of the Chief Electoral Officer, by using the voter information card as proof of address alongside a piece of valid ID. Some figures suggested over 400,000 actually did it that way.

We know that one of the government's amendments to the Canada Elections Act in Bill C-23 is to get rid of the use of voter information cards. So we have, let's say, 400,000 people who use these and we don't know what percentage of them can easily find that piece of ID with an address to replace the voter information card, but we do know that this new system will allow them to come out with their ID and if they can find somebody voting at the same time or somebody they know, they can have them vouch.

What percentage of those 400,000, along with the 120,000 who vouched the last time who could find a piece of ID, are going to need vouching?

I actually think there's a big potential for additional red tape here because—and I'll explain this later when we get to voter information cards—a decent percentage of those 400,000 who use the VICs will remember that they did so. A decent percentage of them probably couldn't find a piece of address ID, and the only choice for those people now will be vouching. This will create potential logjams and all kinds of pressures on some polls if that turns out to be the case.

What's the solution? That we happily embrace the government's amendment, hopefully getting rid of this knowing personally business and we keep voter information cards, because then, what will that do? That will accomplish exactly what Mr. Neufeld recommended in his report.

Let's diminish the amount of vouching that's needed. One way to do that is to increase the use of voter information cards and make them generally available.

If the voter information card is available, you don't get to the vouching fallback here for many people because they will actually be listed and will be able to use the voter information card. Some of them will be able to find other pieces of ID with their address; I recognize that.

There's a danger, however, that this well-intentioned amendment, the government's version of vouching, address vouching, will potentially add to the numbers of overall vouching because the VICs are gone. If the government is content with that, then I just hope Elections Canada can find a way to make sure that they're ready for the pile-up that might occur at some polling stations. I think the easiest way, again, is to replace it to make sure the VICs stay, as well as this amendment.

However, there will be people who will not be able to vote because we heard good testimony that made sense just as a matter of logic, that there are some people in society who, by the time an election is called, can't lay their hands even on the one piece of identity that would then allow for vouching, plus they would have to find somebody to vouch. There will be cases, and it may not be nearly as many as otherwise would be the case if this weren't brought in, but because the right to vote is a constitutional right, every possible effort should be made to allow anybody entitled to vote, to vote.

We have to be aware that, as Mr. Lukiwski said, the vast majority would be able to vote using this, and the rest of the provisions, the showing of ID. But he accepted, by using that expression, that some people won't, and that, ultimately, is what the current vouching provisions in the Canada Elections Act are intended to be there for, as the final safety net.

That's also why there are scholars who have begun to write about why not having that kind of final—let's call it—full vouching ability could lead to.... The absence of that may be declared unconstitutional.

I'm delighted to see this. I really do think that the government's bringing vouching back into the Canada Elections Act is a positive. I actually thank the government for doing that, for having bent to pressure, frankly, but hopefully members of this committee also conveyed all the testimony they heard, and that played a role.

After having set out the context, I'm hoping we can have some discussion on this “they know the elector personally” business.

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

Okay. Just for the record, NDP-30 and NDP-31 would have been the NDP's amendments to restore the Canada Elections Act to the vouching provisions that are there, that we've lived with in this country until Bill C-23, but by virtue of the line conflict, we won't be able to move them so we'll discuss vouching in the context of this amendment. I wanted to be on record that those two amendments can't be put forward.

This is welcome, although it also has problems in scope. It's welcome in the sense that the committee did indeed hear among its 71 witnesses a lot of groups and representatives of groups who very articulately set out why it was that removing vouching from the Canada Elections Act could impact them, large numbers of different sectors of society. We already knew about 120,000 people had vouched in the 2011 election, and a face was put on that in committee, I would say, for a good chunk of the folks who would have needed to vouch.

At that level the outcry across Canada about the removal of vouching appears to have had an effect. I can only say I welcome and am glad the government is putting forward an amendment to their withdrawing of vouching that institutes a vouching by address system whereby one piece of ID plus vouching is going to allow people to vote.

I have a couple of concerns I want to flag and see if we can talk through them and get to the point of a possible very small amendment.

I'm not sure if people following the committee remember we had testimony from a Professor Abe Oudshoorn, who works with the homeless in London, Ontario. He described an organized process of vouching in London. Social workers and community workers on the day of the election will take clients who show up at their agency to polling stations and vouch for them. He later explained this meant they would obviously have to pair them up for their specific polling divisions because you can only vouch within your polling division.

This was made easier for a number of elections in one of our biggest agencies. The London InterCommunity Health Centre was a polling station, for example. Staff there were kept busy vouching. He predicted by the end of the day it was very hard to find a London social worker who hadn't vouched for somebody.

He explained it as follows. This was part of our testimony:

When a person experiencing homelessness but without identification enters an agency and expresses an interest in voting—often the agencies have a sign that says, “Ask us how you can vote”—they are connected with someone who can vouch for them, whether it's someone who works in the agency or another person who's homeless who's also said that they would like to vote. They will be accompanied by someone who can vouch for them at the polling station. This is made simpler in our community because one or more of the serving agencies use our polling stations and it makes it a little easier for everyone in terms of the walking.

The reason I've taken the time to set this out is that one of the provisions in amendment G-5 that sets out the conditions for vouching adds a threshold that doesn't currently exist in either the law or the practice of vouching under the Canada Elections Act.

I'm referring to new proposed subparagraph 143(3)(b)(ii). It basically says that one of the conditions of being able to vouch for somebody.... Actually, there are two paired together on the second page of the amendment:

(ii) they know the elector personally,

(iii) they know that the elector resides in the polling division,

At the moment, the law effectively is only the second one, (iii). They know that the elector resides in the polling division because it's taken as a given that when you know that, you actually know the person sufficiently to know that. There's no test for how well or how much better you know the person other than knowing that.

By introducing “they know the elector personally”—

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

Mr. Chair, I'm sorry for jumping in to point out that this wasn't identical. It was in the sense that the representative shall be appointed based on merit.

The significant difference from previous amendments that is found in this particular amendment, PV-27, is based on recommendations from the Chief Electoral Officer, as well as from Democracy Watch, as well as from Mr. Neufeld particularly.

There's no question there has been controversy throughout the period since the first reading of Bill C-23 over the content of the Neufeld report. There's no question the review of the 2011 election by Mr. Neufeld commissioned by Elections Canada reflected that there were a number of errors. The errors were not, as you will recall from testimony, related to attempts at fraud, apparent fraud, or even suspicion of fraud. What they did relate to is that our electoral system depends on a lot of people who are hired at the last minute and who do not necessarily receive adequate training.

The key difference between this amendment and previous ones is to allow the returning officer to appoint the central poll supervisors 180 days before the writ. You will recall from Mr. Neufeld's testimony how significant he feels it is that we stick to fixed election dates. Then you know when the writ's going to be dropped and then you can start bringing in the chief election day workers well enough ahead that they get the training they need to reduce error rates.

If you stepped back and were inventing our electoral system from scratch, you wouldn't invent the system we have . We've eliminated the enumeration. We don't have a voters list that's reliable. We're now relying on multiple pieces of identification. We have a bunch of people picked by political parties who are appointed at the last minute and not given adequate training.

This is an attempt to say that in the case of those central poll supervisors who play such an important role, let's hire them early and make sure that they're the bulwark of the system with adequate, in fact excellent, training.

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

I'm moving it.

Again, just for the sake of completeness, we've been moving amendments until this point to make the returning officer, therefore Elections Canada, responsible for all appointments of elections officers, the central poll supervisor. In effect, although with different wording, that is the case in the current act.

Bill C-23 changed that and made central poll supervisors effectively subject to the de facto appointment of the candidates or the parties—this is the provision we have now—who placed first in the last election. Therefore, the whole point was that unbalanced the system that existed. The theory of neutrality was that there'd be a deputy returning officer of the first party, and a poll clerk from the second. This squeezed out any other parties, so it was a problematic system, but nonetheless this would have unbalanced it.

There have been a lot of comments from informed observers from the NDP, from the opposition, to say that was a mistake to include. I won't belabour the point, other than to note that the minister did say it was among the changes that he would support.

I understand that by virtue of voting against clause 44, the government will return us to where the act currently is on central poll supervisors. However, before we get there, I'd like to have a vote on this and get to returning the Canada Elections Act to a situation where the central poll supervisors would not be appointed by the first-place party.

Could we vote on this, and then go to clause 44?

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

All right.

The Canada Elections Act as it stands now says in paragraph 64(2)(a) that the returning officer posts in the returning office a notice of grant of poll with the name, address, and political affiliation of the candidates. Bill C-23 takes out the address. You're adding back in just the postal code but no further information.

Am I correct?

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

I've moved it, and I think it's obvious that this can stand with everything in the Canada Elections Act that has been kept in place or slightly modified by Bill C-23 to this point. It's still the case that returning officers do appoint people, for example, when parties have not used their right to nominate people who end up getting appointed.

In that context, one of the recommendations that has appeared in at least one Chief Electoral Officer report is that one of the best opportunities to inculcate a sense of civic engagement in youth is to realize that they're a source of election day workers. The ones who are in their late teens, in the last two to three years of high school, for example, might potentially be available in by-elections, etc., and for more than one election. As part of this, they may be more likely to be engaged by the democratic process.

That's the thinking behind the amendment, and I'll leave it at that.

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

Everybody has NDP-24 in front of them. I basically would like to move this in the following way: “That Bill C-23, in Clause 23, be amended by adding, after line 34”—although it has been deleted—the following.... Then, where it says section 42, that would read 42(1). Then the text would be the same as you see in front of you: “In making appointments of electoral workers, returning officers shall give special consideration to recruiting youths”—I guess that's English—“who are 16 years of age and older”.

Proposed subsection (2) would read:

The Chief Electoral Officer may develop programs designed to assist in the recruiting and training of youths as electoral workers, which programs may be part of, or otherwise connected to, public education and information programs, including civic education in schools, colleges and universities.

I'm going to hand this over in writing because I've written the “that” part here.

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

Exactly, but at the moment the Bill C-23 amendment adds “registered associations or registered parties” to the existing section 41. So here, having lost all along, I'm just worried that if we vote with Mr. Simms on this one, we'll leave in place a provision that doesn't reference registered associations or parties, which we have already voted to include.

Democratic Reform

[Bruce Hyer, Green, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, the hon. member is in error about the position of the NDP on this issue. It has always been in favour of proportional representation and still is.

Bill C-23 will be back before the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs late tonight. The leader of the Green Party will be tabling substantial amendments to this very flawed bill and we all hope that Bill C-23 looks very different when it returns to the House.

My question this evening has not really been answered. I and hundreds of thousands of Canadians would like a proper response. Will the Conservatives fix the crisis in Canadian democracy resulting from the antiquated and anti-democratic electoral system that discards half the votes cast in every election?

There is no evidence of voter fraud in Canada, but there is lots of evidence of electoral unfairness in the way the government abuses an already flawed electoral system.

I will ask again. Will the Conservative government ensure equal and effective votes for all Canadians through a more proportional electoral system?

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

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I understand your recognition that these are substantially similar, but they are only slightly differently worded. I think it's important to recognize that we have the opportunity before committee not to make this a pro forma exercise but to really look at each amendment. We have the opportunity here to remove partisanship from the selection of poll workers and registration officers.

The current draft of Bill C-23 solicits the names of candidates for these positions from those parties who have finished first and second in that riding. In that, we have created the perception of partisanship in poll workers. I think that's an important thing to emphasize. That's why all the opposition amendments at this point are trying to put in place the principle that was so well expressed by the evidence of Mr. Neufeld, that choosing poll workers, registration officers, and poll supervisors solely on the basis of merit will increase public confidence in our voting system.

We're running through the amendments relatively quickly at this point, and I understand that, but I want to emphasize the point of principle here, that it will enhance the fairness, and the perception of fairness, in the entire voting process if no partisan operatives are involved in recommending registration officers.

With that, I'll close.