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.

Fair Elections Act

[Jacques Gourde, Conservative, Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very interesting question.

Our bill will eliminate cash loans to candidates for party leadership races and under other circumstances. We are talking huge amounts of money. Increasing the contribution limit for Canadian citizens from $1,200 to $1,500 may offset that.

I would like to point out that candidates nominated at the last minute do not always have time to raise enough money to kick off an election campaign.

Once we raise the limit for all candidates, they will be able to work and run an honest election campaign that is fair to other candidates in the same riding.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to make a few comments about Bill C-23, which is before the House, unfortunately, for far too short a time for debate, thanks to the closure motion put forward yet again by the government.

Conservatives are acting as though issues of democracy and the very way we elect our representatives in Canada are not important issues. They are acting as though the kind of detail and complexity of a bill of over 200 pages can be commented on, debated, and discussed in literally a few hours. Unfortunately, that is symbolic of the cynicism that underpins the bill and some of the very concerning elements that are in it.

I would like to start by talking about the importance of democracy to Canadian citizens. I was reminded of that in my constituency of Vancouver Quadra, not just this past weekend, where I had organized several events to engage with voters, but the previous weekend, where I had organized a town hall on the subject of democracy. One might think this is a topic for academics or a handful of people who are interested in theories around our electoral system and political framework in Canada, our democracy. In fact, at the town hall that I hosted 10 days ago, 200 people turned out. We were not able to fit everyone in; we were not able to provide chairs for everyone.

What I heard again and again, and what I have been hearing in Vancouver Quadra, is that this is one of the key concerns that voters have today about the direction the Conservative government and Conservative Prime Minister are taking Canada. There are many other concerns as well. There are the kinds of breaches of trust with Canadian citizens when environmental regulatory frameworks are virtually eliminated with the stroke of the pen, in a way that is misrepresented to the public. I could list many of the changes that the Conservatives have made, including to the Navigable Waters Protection Act, the Environmental Assessment Act, and others.

That is a concern to people in Vancouver Quadra. There are also issues around immigration policy. There are issues around access to employment insurance. There are issues around government spending on advertising that crosses the line into partisan advertising. This is advertising done to advantage the Conservative Party and Conservative government, but using taxpayer dollars. There is a huge range of issues that concern people in my constituency in Vancouver Quadra. However, underpinning those is the erosion of democracy. That is what I hear about time and time again.

For example, the government cancelled the mandatory long form census, with a supposed explanation that there was an invasion of privacy, while at the same time the government brushed off concerns around the collection of metadata and the tracking of people's movements through their devices that are using Wi-Fi. The government brushed off concerns of that invasion of privacy, an invasion that the Ontario Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian considers to be very dangerous for the future of our democracy and takes Canada down a totalitarian path.

It is these concerns about democracy that I hear again and again.

The other changes being made are also being made in a way that is anti-democratic.The more we shrink our democratic principles in Canada, or the more the Conservative government shrinks access to true, open, and accountable democracy, the more it is able to rush through omnibus budget bills that have major policy changes embedded in them without the ability of members of Parliament to adequately debate them, and without adequate public consultation or respect for the concerns of the public.

Bill C-23 is focused on the issue of democracy and, unfortunately, is a further erosion of our democracy. Bill C-23 is an opportunity for the government to strengthen some of the fundamentals of our democracy through our electoral processes, in a way that would be non-partisan and could be respected and appreciated by Canadians. It could begin to reverse the increasing reputation of the Conservatives for their dictatorial and highly partisan actions on behalf of their voters and to the detriment of our democracy. This is an opportunity to address that distressing tendency of the government, and it has failed to take it.

I want to confirm that there are several minor provisions in the bill that the Liberals do support.

In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada found that the ban on transmitting election results before polls close infringes on freedom of speech. The fair elections act will repeal that ban and ensure respect for freedom of speech.

Having a limit on early election results is not practical, and eliminating that necessity is a positive.

The bill also provides an extra day of advance polling. This change will give Canadians four days to vote in advance polls.

Having one more early advance voting day is positive. Again, it is minor.

For almost two years now, the Conservatives have been promising a bill to reform the Canada Elections Act. Instead, they have torpedoed reform by gutting the enforcement provisions.

That is damning. The Chief Electoral Officer, who was appointed by the Conservative government itself, has called the bill an affront to democracy. That is a very strong statement, by someone who is not given to partisan statements. Canadian citizens need to stand up and take notice. It is an affront to democracy, rushed through by the Conservative government to reinforce its benefit and partisan gain.

What are some of the principles we need to consider here?

First is voter participation, which is important in a democracy, and access for all Canadians to the right to vote. Second is respecting the rules; in other words, no cheating. For that, we need effective compliance and enforcement. Third is non-partisan party input.

This bill has undermined all of the principles I have just mentioned. It is intending to suppress voters by making it more difficult for 4% of Canadians who have the right to vote but may not have the kind of photo ID that would be necessary. It would marginalize remote first nations reserve residents, the poorest Canadians, and seniors who no longer have a driver's licence and might not have a passport. This bill is making these things worse.

On the topic of respecting the rules and no cheating, I have a laundry list, which I will not be able to get to, of all of the cheating that has been done by the Conservative Party and its members. This would be an opportunity to plug the loopholes.

Bill C-23 is going to make compliance and enforcement much more difficult. It makes it much more partisan.

It is a shocking and shameful bill that the government is putting forward. I would call it the “voter suppression with impunity” bill. We need to see changes to this bill at committee.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member's speech, and I am a little shocked that the Liberal Party would call this bill “voter suppression”.

If the member is referring to the requirements that voters should be Canadian, should live within the riding they are voting in, and that they should vote only once, then so be it.

I want to talk about the Liberal Party for just a moment, and the statistics of elections in the past. My riding is Scarborough Centre. In 2007, the Conservative government brought in a bill that disallowed people who had only the white voter card from voting. We have heard stories about people just picking the cards up in apartment buildings and voting.

I want to make a point. In Scarborough Centre, in 2006, before that legislation and, after the legislation, in 2008, the actual Liberal vote in Scarborough Centre dropped by over 5,000 votes. In Scarborough—Agincourt, it dropped by 5,000 votes; in Scarborough—Guildwood, it dropped by almost 4,000 votes; in Scarborough Southwest, it dropped by over 4,000; and in Scarborough—Rouge River, which was rampant with allegations of fraud in the last election in 2011, in the 2008 election, after we implemented legislation to stop voter fraud, the Liberal Party vote dropped by over 6,000.

I just want to bring this to the attention of the Liberal Party. When the member talks about allegations of fraud or things like that going on, it is the Liberal Party that is probably the most concerned about this legislation because in fact, proven by historical records, it is their party that is being fraudulently supported.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member has just pointed out that the Liberal Party vote has dropped. There is actually a direct connection with the kind of anti-democratic, hostile, negative, and untrue attack ads the Conservative Party has been pioneering on Liberal Party leaders between elections.

This is another aspect that shows a lack of principle by the Conservative Party. I would also like to mention that in my riding of Vancouver Quadra, I was aware, a few days before the election, that calls were coming in to those constituents who had been identified by the Conservative callers as Liberal voters.

These constituents were receiving harassing phone calls late at night and on weekends by people identifying themselves as Liberal callers, but when we checked those call numbers, we found that they were from a call centre in the United States that was later found to be tied to the very fraudulent voter suppression calls made through the Conservative Party database.

[Pierre Nantel, NDP, Longueuil—Pierre-Boucher, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague from Vancouver Quadra on her speech.

I doubt that there is anyone in a better position than we in the House to get more information on what people think about spending limits for leadership races.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his comments. I also thank him for remembering that I ran for leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada.

That gave me the opportunity to hear from Canadians across the country, and I talked to them. Their concerns about what has happened to our democracy matter to me.

What is more, we have a Prime Minister who has referred to Elections Canada, a neutral, non-partisan agency charged with making sure our elections are fair, as being, in his own words:

“The jackasses at Elections Canada are out of control”.

This, as he aimed to fundraise, on the back of his dismissive comments about our public servants who were charged with ensuring fair and free elections.

Elections Canada has been attempting to do just that, in a laundry list of election violations, and it is now being punished by the Conservative government in an effort to provide an advantage to themselves and to reduce the percentage of the public who vote by marginalizing those who need help the most.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and for Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, it is interesting to hear the Liberals talk about this bill in light of the member before me mentioning that ensuring a fair election is something that the Liberals are afraid of, that because we brought forward a bill that would ensure a fair election, would see leadership candidates being responsible for the debts they incur, and would bring in limits with respect to leadership contests, that is somehow a disadvantage to the Liberal Party.

Imagine that, a bill that would make elections fairer, make it easier for Canadians to vote, and would give them more access to polling stations is somehow something that the Liberal Party is terrified of. The fact that they are in third place in the House of Commons, I guess, must be the fault of Elections Canada and not the fault of their terrible policies and decisions they made when they were in government.

More specific to the bill, there has been a lot of discussion on a number of its aspects. Some of the debate has been good and some not so good. I note that some 16 New Democrats and 16 Liberals have already spoken to this bill. Many have mentioned vouching and voter identification. I will get to that in a second, but I first want to talk about the process of elections and why it was important for us to bring forward change.

We know that members opposite, from both parties, including the government, all knew that some changes had to be made to the Canada Elections Act. That goes without saying. We have, of course, been consulting for a long time. The Minister of State (Democratic Reform) and the Minister of State (Multiculturalism) have been working very hard on this, and we have brought forward a very comprehensive bill.

One thing we had to do was look at the people who have been charged with undertaking elections. I listened to the Chief Electoral Officer yesterday on TV and he said something I believe to be true. He said that Canada is a very large, very diverse country, and that voting in a country of this size has a lot of challenges. I would say one of the most important functions we have for preserving our democracy is making sure that elections are done fairly and that Canadians can have confidence in the fact that the people who have voted are the right people and that those votes reflect the population.

After the 41st general election, Elections Canada sought some advice from the people who actually work for it, in a series of post-mortem sessions with returning officers. This is a result of Elections Canada talking to all returning officers in all of the 308 ridings across this country. On page 10 of the report, it states:

ROs identified that there is a need to give out more information to electors; for example, there are not enough outreach activities and communications about where the RO office is located and on the voting process.

They suggest taking out ads explaining that advance polls would be busier. They suggest that ads should be taken out to tell people how to vote, what identification is required, the special balloting process. They are saying that the process of holding an election is something that these returning officers—and, again, I refer everybody to page 10 of the report—thought was something Elections Canada could have done a better job of in helping to organize an election across such a vast land.

I will also go to page 17 of that same report, which talks a bit about the problem that some of the returning officers had at advance polls. It states that:

A high voter turnout was a reality for most ROs, significant enough that there were many complaints about wait times. To improve the flow when it is busy, ROs suggest putting a single signature line on the list of electors….

It appears that having electors write too much information was causing a dilemma.

Those two items, I think, speak to the fact that the people who were placed on the ground to make sure our elections are done fairly were experiencing problems of congestion, of people not knowing where to vote, when to vote, and what identification was needed in order to vote. The returning officers suggested that should be the role that Elections Canada should focus on, going forward, if it wants to make the process of elections better.

I note that in the bill brought forward by the Minister of State for Democratic Reform, we took that advice from the returning officers and put it right into the legislation, re-focusing the mandate of Elections Canada so that it can focus on what its own employees said is a priority: getting people to vote and making sure elections run smoothly.

When we talk about why the vote is not where we would like it to be and why there has been a decline in voter participation, clearly, one reason has to be that Canadians do not always find it easy to vote. That has to be one of the problems. We are seeing that when we add advance polls, more Canadians use them. The bill would add another day of voting, making it easier for Canadians to vote, so having a fourth day of advance polling, we think, will help to get more Canadians out to the polls.

Ultimately, I find it passing ridiculous that the opposition parties are suggesting the reason Canadians are not voting is that Elections Canada is not placing an ad in the paper, explaining to them or trying to energize them to vote, because that is our job. It is the job of parties and candidates to get people to vote, to energize them to vote.

I cannot imagine anybody would miss the fact that there is an election going on. There are signs everywhere, and the media, every night, follows around all three campaigns on TV. There is advertising, phone calls are made, and literature is delivered at doors. People are knocking on doors.

Elections Canada does some work with respect to telling people how to vote and where to vote. The voter cards explain to people where their poll is. I cannot imagine people not understanding that an election is taking place, but I think what they get upset about is that when they go to vote, it is a difficult process. They have to wait in line. The bill would put more resources in hand to make sure it is done fairly.

With respect to vouching, I would refer all members of the House to page 25 of the bill. Of course there are 39 pieces of identification that are acceptable with respect to proving an address, but the bill also goes further to say, on page 25, in both French and English:

(3.1) If the address contained in the piece or pieces of identification provided under subsection (2) does not prove the elector’s residence but is consistent with information related to the elector that appears on the list of electors, the elector’s residence is deemed to have been proven.

That gives everybody the opportunity to make sure they cast a ballot.

However, is there a burden of proof? Absolutely. I cannot imagine that Canadians would accept that we should just completely drop the demands for identification and say that anybody can vote. That would be inappropriate. At the same time, we are expecting that Canadians have identification, but in instances there is still, according to the bill on page 25, in French and English, an opportunity for Canadians to cast a ballot.

It goes even further. We heard a lot about robocalls, and not just during elections. The riding of the member for Guelph was singled out and charged with respect to robocalls, and I think all Canadians have accepted that all parties have to do a better job of making sure that we do this fairly.

That is why the CRTC would be maintaining a registry. They would maintain scripts and recordings so that Canadians and the Elections Commissioner would have access to information if an investigation is required.

In summary, we would be letting Elections Canada do what it needs to do to be the actual guardians of elections in this country: to focus on voting, to focus on the process, and at the same time, we would be giving the Elections Commissioner the power he needs to make sure that voting is done fairly and that nobody breaks the rules. When people do break the rules, the new act would give the Commissioner the tools he needs to enforce the Elections Act in a way that we have not seen in a long time.

I do hope all members will take a moment to read the bill and reflect on that before they cast their ballot.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to ask my colleague a question on a very specific point he made in his speech.

I am referring to the elimination of Election Canada's mandate to educate Canadians by raising awareness about their duty and right to vote. Anyone who follows question period even a little bit knows that the Parliamentary Secretary has two daughters who are still minors.

I wonder whether he thinks it is right that Elections Canada can no longer go to the schools to teach young people that they have a right to vote and that they can exercise that right when they are 18.

Does he think that there is no benefit to running these awareness campaigns between elections and not necessarily during the election period? Elections Canada had an educational component to its mandate that helped make people aware of their right to vote.

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think our schools also have the opportunity and the responsibility to teach our students why it is important to vote. That is why on Remembrance Day every year we take the time out to honour the veterans who guaranteed and fought to make sure we have the right to vote.

Getting back to reality, when asked about the process of election—and here I would request the member to take a look at this—the returning officers themselves on pages 10 and 17 identified the fact that the process of voting is what Elections Canada needed to look at moving forward. How to vote, where to vote, the identification needed, when the advance polls would be, the special ballots, and the location of the returning officer were things they felt would help improve elections and make the process of voting easier.

We reflected upon that and what the Chief Electoral Officer said, including as recently as yesterday, about the difficulty of holding elections in this country. We have put that in the bill and have guaranteed it moving forward. I think Canadians can have confidence that all elections moving forward will continue to be fair.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I believe it is very important that we recognize that the proposed legislation before us has in fact fallen short and that the government has dropped the ball on this.

The government can talk all it wants inside the chamber on what it believes about this particular bill. However, I would challenge the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister. Would the member take me up on an offer to go outside Ottawa, whether Winnipeg or Toronto or anywhere else he chooses, to debate this proposed legislation with no time allocation as the government has done with the current bill, where we can talk about the good, the bad, and the shortcomings of the legislation? I would welcome the opportunity.

Would the parliamentary secretary be prepared to debate this legislation outside Ottawa with someone like me and justify his government's position on it?

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to the member of Parliament from Manitoba, I tend to focus on my riding and my community, speaking to my constituents and hearing what they have to say.

The process, of course, will continue not only through debate here but also at the procedure and House affairs committee where it will be given another thorough vetting. The committee will hear witnesses and the bill will come back to the House for more debate.

I note that only six members of the Liberal Party have taken the opportunity to speak on the bill, and for the most part they have talked about why they lost an election over the last number of years as opposed to actually focusing on what is in the bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, does the parliamentary secretary agree with the provision in proposed legislation mandating that an additional early voting day fall on a Sunday? If it were the last election, that would have been Easter Sunday. Does that bother him at all?

[Paul Calandra, Conservative, Oak Ridges—Markham, ON]

Mr. Speaker, under the new proposed legislation there would be four opportunities for voting in advance polls. One extra day, I think, would help make sure that more Canadians have the opportunity to vote.

On Easter Sunday, I will be in church with my family, as will a lot of other people. I suppose there will be a lot of Canadians who are not in church on Easter Sunday. We are a very diverse country. That is why we are adding an extra day so that all Canadians have access to four additional days to vote, not including of course other opportunities for Canadians to vote by special ballot.

I think that is good news for Canadians and good news for democracy, and I hope the hon. member will take a look at that and support it.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I feel privileged to stand today to speak to Bill C-23. I am going to go back in history a little and talk about my background.

I had parents who were good enough to speak at the dining room table about things like elections, so my six brothers and sisters and I learned about elections that way. We learned from them the importance and duty of Canadians to go vote when it was time to vote. Sometimes we talked about the issues, even before we were old enough to know some of them. I had that ability in my past life. Then I became a small business person who had a very busy life. Twenty-four hours a day 7 days a week I worried about a business I had to run. However, I am proud to say I do not remember ever missing an election: municipal, provincial, or federal, because my parents had instilled in me the duty of Canadians to vote.

Long before politics I never thought about the actual running of elections. I never thought about the rules that are there to make sure Canadians vote fairly and accurately. I did not think of them, but I certainly went to polling booths, gave them my name, showed my ID, received a ballot, and made my choice based on the work that the parties or the candidates had done during an election.

Fast forward now through a whole pile of life to 10 years ago when I decided I would become a candidate. I became a little more interested in what was happening with elections: how elections were run, what Elections Canada did, who made sure people got to the polling stations, who generated the lists, and who made the rules as to what days we could or could not vote. I still ran into some of my peers, small business owners and other very busy people, who would have loved to have more time, who wanted to exercise their duty as Canadians to vote, but sometimes the hockey practice or a scout meeting got in the way. We know how that is: life gets busy and that happens.

Move forward now into this Parliament. I have been here almost 10 years. Now, as the chair of the procedure and House affairs committee for a good number of years, five I think, I have been dealing with Elections Canada during that time. I now know more about elections and Elections Canada than I care to know. After each election, the Chief Electoral Officer writes a report and sends it back to Parliament. The procedure and House affairs committee gets to review it and from that comes up with elections legislation. The Chief Electoral Officer is one of the people from whom we get most of our ideas for changes to the legislation. We certainly have had many discussions at committee.

It is a fun committee. I see some of the members here in the House today. We tend to get a lot done, but elections are one of the things we are responsible for. We tend to work on a good, consensus basis without a great deal of argument. We have had many witnesses over those times looking at the Chief Electoral Officer's report and other pieces in our discussions about elections. We have had many briefs come to us from those witnesses. This is where this piece of legislation has come from. It has come from answering those questions.

I am going to say something from a business point of view. First, if I am trying to attract more customers, as a business person I need to first find out why customers are not coming to my business and where else they are going. We have done the same thing with elections. If people are not going out to vote, let us find out why and then we will know where to go to find those people.

As the speaker before me said, why a person votes, why they are making that urgent visit to the voting booth, has to do with the parties. It has to do with the candidates. However, the who, what, when, and where the polling station is, what time it is open, and how many of them there are is set by Elections Canada. Most non-voters told Elections Canada in a survey that practical reasons were what prevented them from voting in 2011. Travelling was cited by 17%, as they were away from home. Work or school scheduling accounted for 13%. Also, being too busy was cited by 10%, and lack of information was mentioned by 7%. That is just to name a few.

Over the past several elections there has been a steady rise in the proportion of electors identifying everyday life issues as the main reason for not voting, and a steady decline for political reasons. That is according to Elections Canada, the “Report on the Evaluations of the 41st General Election of May 2, 2011” by the Chief Electoral Officer, which we have discussed thoroughly at committee.

Better customer service will remove some of these practical issues, some of the reasons like, “I can't make it because it's the middle of hockey practice, it's the middle of my business meeting and I had to stay at work”.

We are offering more voting days. During the 2011 general election, more than two million Canadians cast their ballot on an advance poll day. Two million Canadians took into account the fact they were not going to be able to be there for voting day and went to an advance poll. We are adding an extra advance poll on the seventh day. So the tenth, the ninth, the eighth, and the seventh days before election day will now all be advance poll days, the seventh being a Sunday.

My pastor knows where I should be on Sundays but he also knew that I operated a business seven days a week and that sometimes I was not always able to be there, which also opens up the opportunity that afternoon of my going to an advance poll. That in itself offers something to the percentage of people that I said, from a customer service point of view, were not able to find a day to vote.

Let us go from attracting those customers to the poll to the point of view of my being a business person trying to attract more people to our business. In that case, the other step I would take is to tell them where I was. I would tell them what time my business was open. I would tell them when I was available to give them the service they were looking for. That is all we are asking of the Chief Electoral Officer and Elections Canada, to please tell people where and when they can vote. Please tell Canadians how many days are available to vote and that, by special ballot, it is almost the whole 35 days of an election. There will now be five advance polls days plus a full day of election day voting at each of the other polls.

This is a tough business to run with 308 ridings across this country, soon to be 338, and about 200 polling stations in each of those ridings. Imagine turning that on and off from an Elections Canada point of view. I admire its ability to turn that type of service on and off and the way it is done, but let us use our time to tell the people of Canada when and where they can vote. Let us as politicians, as members of parties or not, give the reasons why people want to go to the polls. It is up to Elections Canada to tell them when and where. It is up to us to get them there and tell them why.

I will recap quickly. It is about customer service. There are many other parts of the bill that I know, when it gets to committee, the committee will be happy to deal with and talk about. We will have a great discussion. We will certainly see lots of lots of witnesses. In summary, I just wanted to talk about the customer service side of an election and the customer service side of Elections Canada.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's speech. I admit that I find the comparison a bit clumsy. Obviously all the comparisons are a bit clumsy, but here the hon. member was talking about customer service as it relates to a civic right, that of voting to determine who will lead the country. I think that one important thing that has not been mentioned is the fact that a large part of the population does not vote because they have become quite cynical about politicians and politics. That is what we should be focusing on.

However, Bill C-23 before us today is something that will help fuel this cynicism. Once they see such measures as increasing the annual contribution ceiling, those who feel that elections are bought will wonder whether there is any point in voting, given that the elections are bought by those with the means to do so, in any case. What we must do—and Bill C-23 does not do—is show each and every Canadian how very important their right to vote is. By eliminating the prerogatives of the Chief Electoral Officer, this bill would reduce the opportunities for education.

How is the right to vote a customer service? It is civic right. I would like the hon. member to explain that one to me. It seems that the comparison does not hold water.