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.

Statements by the Member for Mississauga—Streetsville—Reference to Standing Committee

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I actually think he should apologize. If one does get caught, one apologizes. We instinctively do that as individuals. For example, I might have been going the wrong speed in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lights went on behind me and the officer came over. I said, “I missed a speed sign? Sorry”. However, I did not expect not to get a ticket. He wrote the ticket and I thanked him for that because he was doing what he should do. I was not obeying the rules.

There is a consequence for not obeying the rules. It does not mean to say he cannot apologize. That is part of it. Certainly, in my upbringing, in my household, that was how my father approached it. He expected me to apologize if I had bent a rule or broken a rule of the house, which my mother had decided would be the rule for the five of us children. However, there was also a consequence. There was not only an expectation that I would say, “Sorry about that; I didn't mean to do that, but I did”, then my father would have a consequence, like grounding me or those sorts of things. The worst thing, at 16, was that he would not give me the keys to the car for a couple weekends. That was always a really heavy consequence, because then I would have to get the bus. No offence to my friends who take urban transit, but when one lives in the country, buses do not come around. Therefore, that was a real consequence if he did not give me the keys to the car.

Clearly, there are consequences in this place as well. One cannot absolve oneself simply by saying, “mea culpa; I am sorry”. We have to face the consequences of our actions in this place. If the Speaker had simply gotten up and said the member has apologized and it is over, we would not be here. The Speaker ruled otherwise, and that is why we are here. The Speaker, in my view, was asking us to get it to a place, get it resolved for all of us, not just for the member for Mississauga—Streetsville, but all of us. That needs to happen.

I implore the government members to allow it to get to committee and let the work be done. They will get back to Bill C-23. They do not have to worry about it. They have the numbers in the House. One thing this little Scots guy can do is count. There are more on that side than on this side.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Okay, but the point is that whether we're talking about emerging democracies or arguably one of the longest democracies on the planet, both have the same idea about how to address the fundamental questions of how the election laws should work, and what improvements should be made.

A government that got less than 40% of the vote but has 100% of the power should at the very least ask the people, “What do you think of what we want to do?” It really is just “we”, the Conservatives, meaning them, because nobody else got a say.

I know I keep coming back to that. I'm not trying to be repetitive on the point, but it's legitimate to take a couple of basic points and come back to them and underscore them without expanding on them, so I'm constantly coming back to the lack of democracy, the lack of input, the lack of caring what anybody thinks. That's what's going on, folks.

I do not know where Bill C-23 was written, but it was not written with the input of the opposition members or the Chief Electoral Officer. That alone should scare the dickens out of Canadians, that their election laws are being treated this way. By the time Canada Day comes, if the government has their way, the Conservative election law, or rather the election law to elect Conservatives, will already be in place. The next time we'll be talking about this and being seized of it in any way is after the next election, and that's just fine with them.

Back to my point, back to my motion. From the most experienced to the newest, the richest to the poorest, democracies everywhere are showing what it is to be democratic and to give the appearance of being democratic.

That takes me back, I had talked about the referral—I'm shifting gears, as you may have picked up, but I had mentioned earlier about the process of referring from first reading, and I used my own explanation, which is never as good as the bible. As everybody here knows, O'Brien and Bosc, House of Commons Procedure and Practice, is the bible.

Chair, I did mention earlier that the government has the option, if they wanted to, to push a reset button and get us back to first reading. We still could put this back on track. It really could be done. I don't imagine at this stage, with everything we've witnessed, that the government is at all interested, but by unanimous consent the House could turn itself back. I can ask and see if he can do anything.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, usually I would rise and say that I am pleased to join the debate, but I have a sense of trepidation about doing this. The member for Mississauga—Streetsville is someone I have come to know and quite like, so it becomes difficult when one has to stand and talk about his actions in the House.

My preference would have been for the government to simply allow this to go to committee, in which case the committee could have dealt with it a long time ago and dispensed with it. The committee could have ruled on it and brought back a recommendation. This way we would not be, as the government House leader has said, spending two days talking about this particular issue, which the member for Mississauga—Streetsville has ended up being the centre of.

Of course, this is public. It is televised. CPAC carries it. People can watch it on the Internet. Committees can be watched on the Internet, but they are less public than this forum.

Would it not have been collegial of the government, of which he is a member, to send it to committee to have it dispensed with? That is what the Speaker's ruling was intended to do. The Speaker believed that there was a case to have it resolved somewhere else and to have us look at it.

Here we are, looking at it here and throwing all the information out over and over again. It does not help the member for Mississauga—Streetsville to have it recast over and over again, but the government has given us no other opportunity. It has left us with this as the only outlet.

One of the government members said earlier that one may misspeak in the House. I started to think about when that happens. Has it happened to me as a member? It actually happened to me on Monday, during the debate on Bill C-18, the government's bill on agriculture.

It came to my attention in two ways. I did not actually know that I had misspoken. In relation to what is called UPOV '91, I actually talked about 1929, which is actually an international convention on plant protection. I interchanged 91 and 29.

The Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, when questioning me during the debate, said that I had gotten it wrong and was talking about something that had happened a long time ago. It dawned on me that I had misspoken and that I had used the wrong date. That is misspeaking. That is how one actually misspeaks.

The staff at Hansard then emailed me. I have the email here. It said that they would like to clarify the text. The email said:

Can you please confirm whether [the member for Welland] was referring to the 1929 International Convention for the Protection of Plants (Rome), or if he meant to say otherwise (UPOV 91)? Can you advise...?

Clearly we were debating UPOV '91, which is from 1991, not the International Convention for the Protection of Plants of 1929. That was dispensed with long before we were born. We may think that we are long in the tooth sometimes, but we are certainly not that long in the tooth.

That was an example of someone getting a date wrong and misspeaking. There needed to be a correction but not an apology. It was simply the wrong date that needed to be corrected to reflect what we were actually discussing and what the debate was really about, which was Bill C-18, of which UPOV '91 was a part.

Therefore, when the government rises to defend its colleague, which is admirable and I understand why it does that, to suggest that he misspoke, it makes it extremely difficult to comprehend. It stretches credibility, to be truthful.

Here is what the member actually said. I will quote it, because I have highlighted a couple of pieces that I want to put emphasis on to show how it could not have been someone misspeaking.

On February 6, 2014, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville stated, “Mr. Speaker, I want to talk a bit about this vouching system again. I know the minister represents an urban city. I am from a semi-urban area of Mississauga”, and this is what I want to emphasize, “where there are many high-rise apartment buildings”.

He was adamant about it. He knew that he was from a place where there are lots of apartment buildings.

He further stated:

On mail delivery day when the voter cards are delivered to community mailboxes in apartment buildings, many of them are discarded in the garbage can or the blue box.

He knew it was one or the other. He went on to state:

I have actually witnessed other people picking up the voter cards, going to the campaign office of whatever candidate they support and handing out these voter cards to other individuals, who then walk into voting stations with friends who vouch for them with no ID.

I want to highlight that he said that he witnessed it personally and knew that the cards went in either the garbage can or the grey box, because here in Ontario it is the grey box for paper. He said that he saw it at that level of detail and knew the people who took the cards out of the boxes. They were not strangers but campaign workers. I admit that he does not say if they were Conservative campaign workers, Liberal campaign workers, or other campaign workers. He just said “campaign workers”. We did not get any definitive information on that. The committee might be able to ask him who the campaign workers were and what he actually saw.

He then knew that these people went to the polling stations eventually. People vouched for those folks and they voted. He knew all of those things. That is hugely different from what I described earlier about my misspeaking in the debate on Bill C-18 when I got the date wrong. It is important to get the date right, but it was not misleading the House that the agreement actually happened in 1929 when it truly happened in 1991. The two situations are not even the same.

To bring the point home even more clearly, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville said it again. He said it slightly differently but basically with the same intent. He stated:

Earlier this afternoon I asked the Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification a question. I think my friend from York South—Weston will appreciate this because, just like the riding I represent, there are a lot of apartment buildings in his riding.

I emphasize his next words:

I will relate to him something I have actually seen. On the mail delivery day when voter cards are put in mailboxes, residents come home, pick them out of their boxes, and throw them in the garbage can. I have seen campaign workers follow, pick up a dozen of them afterward, and walk out. Why are they doing that? They are doing it so they can hand those cards to other people, who will then be vouched for at a voting booth and vote illegally. That is going to stop.

That will be stopped based on Bill C-23. It would put an end to vouching and it would not happen again. People could pick up as many of those cards as they wanted, because it would not matter. They would not be able to vouch for people. We would get rid of the cards and it would not matter any more.

The story was not misspoken, in my view. It was made up, because the member subsequently decided that he should come back to the House and say that he never witnessed it and did not see it. He did not come back to the House to say that he misspoke and that it was not in the apartment building but somewhere else. That would be misspeaking. If he had said, “I didn't know they were campaign workers, but I saw it”, that would be misspeaking. If he had said, “I'm not sure if they were in the garbage can or the grey box, but they discarded them”, that would be misspeaking. He literally laid it out and itemized it. He highlighted that it was in apartment buildings at the mailboxes on mail day, and people discarded them.

The member said he witnessed it, actually saw it with his own eyes, and that means he was actually there. He had to physically be in that place on mail day to see those residents, which meant he had to spend some time there.

After the member said it the first time, one would have thought that if he had truly misspoken, he would have said to himself that it was not really, wholly accurate, so why would he do it again? Well, if he reinforced the story again by saying almost the same thing verbatim, there are only two things that could be.

One is to suggest that one has some sense of speaking notes, and this is not to suggest that one party over another does not do this. Lots of us have notes.

If the member was allowed to go to committee, one could ask if the speaking notes were given to him by someone in the PMO, who told him to relate the story as if it was his when it really was not. Perhaps the member then realized that he had told a story that was not really his, but it was in his speaking notes, and he later knew that he had to retract it because it was not his story. The member might have felt contrite thinking it was something he should not have done, and he decided to retract the story.

I think that is a valid question to ask the member. However, we are not going to get that opportunity because we are here debating it, and the government thinks this is enough.

This brings me to the position of the government House leader. He talked about how telling this story was not misleading in the sense that someone was not being deliberately misled, but it somehow came to that at the conclusion of the story.

It really boils down to what the government House leader said in the House. He said:

It is quite common for us to misspeak in the nature of conversation...

—and I think I have articulated that—

...and I can understand the error made by the hon. member on the question of voting cards, because I think there are probably very few members in this House who have not, at second- or third-hand, heard anecdotes exactly to that effect.

Here we have the government House leader saying that everybody has heard those anecdotal stories about these cards that someone picks up and takes. Everybody has heard it.

He goes on to say:

I personally

—meaning the minister, the government House leader—

...have heard anecdotes from others, not having witnessed it myself. It is different from having heard an anecdote, but having heard it quite regularly, it becomes part of the normal discourse that “this is what happens out there”.

So the fact that we have heard an anecdotal story over and over again now makes it true. It must be true, because we have heard it more than once. If only that were true, because then if my friends across the way said, “We know you are six feet tall. We know you are six feet tall”, then I could actually believe I am six feet tall.

Well, it is not true. The fact that it is an anecdote will not make it true no matter how many times it is said. To base legislation on anecdotes is the worst type of legislation one could craft, by pretending the anecdotes are true and that we must change the legislation because we know this is what happens because we were told a story. Someone told a story that this is what happens, so therefore we must ban that practice altogether because, Heaven knows, we were told a story.

It is quite beyond belief, to be truthful, that somehow the government would come forward with legislation based on anecdotal evidence and that somehow that evidence must be clear, concise, and true. This is a government that will quite often say to us, especially in the agricultural sector, that something is based on sound science. Now it will be based on sound anecdotes. Now, as long as it is a sound anecdote and as long as it is said often enough, it will be taken as a true story.

Aesop's fables, even if told over and over again, will always be fables. They will not be true. They will be fables. Myths, whether urban myths or old-time myths, are simply myths. No matter how many times we repeat the myth, whether it be an urban myth, whether it be another myth, it will be a myth; it will never be true.

As for the member apologizing, I must admit that I do congratulate him for apologizing, but that apology will not take away from the fact that he came in the House and literally laid out a case in detail of what he said he saw and personally witnessed, not once but twice. He stood by it. He did not retract it that day, did not say, “Oh, my goodness. I think I have actually told an anecdotal story here. I should go back to the House and say that it is not a true story. I actually did not see it. It is what I heard.”

He did much later. It is commendable that he did retract, but it does not negate what he did the first time.

Many of us are quite often sorry for actions we have taken, but if we take actions, there are consequences for our actions.

The government always says to us, when it comes to criminal legislation, that it is about people taking responsibility for their actions, and if their actions are such that people deserve some form of punishment, then that is what is deserved by those people. There are times when I have to nod in agreement, although not always, of course. Sometimes there are mitigating factors.

In this particular case, the member should appear before committee. It is what the Speaker expects us to do. It is what the Speaker suggested that we probably should do, in my humble opinion. I will not put words in the Speaker's mouth and would never do that, but in my humble opinion, that is what I think he was trying to say to us, because it is only about what we say to each other and what we say to Canadians.

It pains me to say this, but when professions are put on a scale, unfortunately we are not near the top with the Canadian public. Quite often, unfortunately, the reason we are not at the top is because of what we see here.

Some of it is question period. Quite often it is just question period. However, now it is about misleading the House, which we are now debating. How exactly does that affect those who are watching and those who are looking at it? They shrug their shoulders and say, “Well, what do you expect from them? That's what they do. They don't really tell you the truth anyway.”

Words are what we use. Those are the tools of our trade. The words that we give to one another and share with one another are the tools of our trade. There is only way this place can function, which is for the partisanship and the back-and-forth to be acceptable. That is why the Speaker is sitting in the chair, refereeing: to ensure we stay within those boundaries so that repartee back and forth is acceptable.

What is not acceptable is coming into the House and misleading it. That is why there are rules. They are there for good reason. They are there to ensure that we do not actually do that and have legislation come before us that is backed up by myths, mistruths, anecdotes, or stories of some description that do not exist in real life, stories that we just simply make up, and then say, “We must do this because this is the story”.

The government prides itself on saying it bases a lot of its policies upon sound science, which is evidence-based and all about truthfulness to the best of one's ability and measuring, quantifying, and qualifying. Unfortunately, when it came to qualifying the member for Mississauga—Streetsville's words, they came up short, and the Speaker was very clear about how short they came up.

Now it is incumbent upon us, as difficult and as unpleasant as it may be for our colleague and for us, to send it to committee, where our colleague will then have to face whatever repercussions and decisions are made based upon his, not our, conduct that started this process. Those repercussions and decisions will come back for ratification.

We did not start this process. It is his words in this place that started us on this path, and the path can only come to its final destination, not its hoped-for destination, when indeed we go to committee, where he will have his opportunity to answer questions. From the committee will come some form of resolution. Only then, I think, can this be put to a final conclusion.

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for the question because, indeed, Bill C-23 contains many things. When the hon. member rose to speak to this bill, it was to talk about the vouching system. The Conservatives no longer want someone to be able to vouch for a voter's identity.

I have a little anecdote. I used the vouching system in 2008. I was a student in Sherbrooke at the time. I was living in an apartment with eight roommates. The hydro bill, the phone bill and the lease were not in my name. I moved around a lot, so the address on my driver's licence was my parents' address. I had to have someone vouch for me.

The Conservatives are telling students in this country that because they are students—students are more or less stable, their address is their parents'—they cannot vote. I am sorry, but in 2008, if I had not used the vouching system, I could not have voted. Voting is a fundamental right. It is important. The government keeps alarming everyone by saying that young people do not vote, but the vouching system was a good way to enable them to vote.

A member of Parliament makes up some story in the House because he wants to get rid of this option. I understand, the Conservatives do nothing for young people. If I were them, I would not want young people to vote either. In Canada, everyone has the right to vote at age 18. The Conservatives are trying to prevent that. That is what Bill C-23 proposes.

What we are talking about here is the member for Mississauga—Streetsville, who made up stories in the House. This case must be referred to committee because it makes no sense. If we let this go, there is no telling what this party will do.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her speech. She raised a number of interesting points.

She identified a question that a number of people are asking. Is this a Conservative Party tactic? Why would the hon. member want to use such tactics for Bill C-23? What is in this bill that the Conservatives are so afraid of?

[Isabelle Morin, NDP, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today to take part in this debate. I believe that it will have a significant impact on the future of democracy in this country.

On February 6, during a speech he made in the House of Commons, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville stated that he had personally witnessed voter fraud. That is a serious accusation. He said the following:

I have actually witnessed other people picking up the voter cards, going to the campaign office of whatever candidate they support and handing out these voter cards to other individuals, who then walk into voting stations with friends who vouch for them with no ID.

In my opinion, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville made a very serious accusation. A few weeks later, on February 24, the member came to and changed his story. He stated that, in fact, he had not personally seen what he had previously reported. He said that he heard such stories when working in the rental housing industry. That is why, on February 25, my colleague, the House Leader of the Official Opposition, raised a question of privilege, saying that the member had deliberately misled the House. I believe that that is exactly what the member did.

What are we to think of these contradictions uttered by a member of Parliament? As the representative of his constituents, he should ensure, more than anyone, that his words and actions meet the ethical standards that all Canadians are entitled to expect an elected member of Parliament to meet.

I would not like to be one of his staff right now. I have a duty to my constituents, whom I represent every day in the House. I am here to defend their ideals and values, to inform the House of their views. If I told false stories to the House of Commons, many people would probably call my office, send me emails or write to me on Facebook. It must be mind-boggling for his staff. The member decided that what he had told the House was no longer the truth. He made that decision two and a half weeks later.

I do not know what happened. The allegation was rather serious. He accused some people of election fraud. Perhaps he realized he had gone too far. However, for the past two days, our Conservative colleagues have been saying that it is no big deal. The member did not tell the truth, but because he apologized everything is swept under the rug, forgotten, and we should move on.

Indeed, I would like to talk about important issues, such as the situation in Ukraine and the economy. Yesterday, we were supposed to have a debate on food safety, which is a very important issue, but we now find ourselves talking about this matter. I too feel that we are talking about it a lot, but it is a very important issue. We are talking about our country's democracy and what is going on in the Canadian Parliament.

Yesterday, on March 3, the Speaker of the House ruled in favour of my NDP colleague. He clearly indicated that the member knowingly made false statements with the intention of misleading the House. The member deliberately told the House something that was false.

We must think before we speak. Earlier, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration said that if a member apologizes 18 days later, it is okay.

I would like to share a story. A few weeks ago, I learned of an immigration case in my riding. The lady came from Russia. When she arrived in Canada, she was asked about her status. She was asked whether she was married, in a common-law relationship or single. The common-law relationship does not exist in every country of the world. Therefore, she said she was single. A week later, she realized she was in a common-law relationship. She wanted to correct her mistake but was not able to do so.

Thus, there are times when it is important to be aware of what we say and what we do. We are parliamentarians. We speak on behalf of Canadians. I do not understand why that woman was told that she could not change her status. It was a nightmare trying to change the form. Here we have a member who apologizes, says he did not act deliberately, says he is sorry for coming up with this story to help his party, but it is not true. He apologizes, saying “I misspoke”. The Conservatives want to move on.

I think and I hope that we are more serious than that. I think this is a farce, and it is important to talk about it. It is important to explore this in committee, to see why the member did that.

We have been talking about it since yesterday. The member was in the House yesterday. He never stood up to defend himself, to ask a question, to say that maybe we should investigate further. He did not say anything.

I would remind the House that three conditions must be met in order for someone to be accused of misleading the House. The member met all three conditions. The first is that the individual made a statement that was misleading. The second is that the individual knew at the time that the statement was incorrect. Since it was entirely fabricated, the member knew that it was false at the time. The third condition is that, in making the statement, the member intended to mislead the House. We have seen this in the past. The member rose here to say that it was not true, because he knew that he deliberately misled the House.

Therefore, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville was in contempt since he said he personally saw what he described, when in fact he was fully aware that what he had just said did not reflect reality.

As was mentioned earlier, he did not say it just once. He said a second time that he had witnessed this fraud. Therefore, this member clearly intended to mislead the members of the House. This is an extremely serious matter that goes to the heart of our democracy and has to do with respect for our country's most important institutions.

The member deliberately chose to present as facts information that he knew was false, to justify the passage of a government bill that would deprive some Canadians of their right to vote.

We could talk about much more serious issues. I would much rather talk about the bill and its content, but that is what happened.

Moreover, the Conservatives are accusing us of wasting time. I am sorry, but it is not because of me that we are discussing this matter. It is because of one of their colleagues who rose in the House at the beginning of February and spouted nonsense. If I rose and began talking nonsense, I hope my colleagues would call me to order and remind me that I represent people and must speak the truth.

The member presented information to justify the government's decision to introduce an electoral reform bill that ends the vouching system, which tens of thousands of Canadians use properly. He did that as a member of Parliament. Therefore, initially, we had no reason to think his statement was not true. In making this statement, the member was fully aware that, in the eyes of Canadians, his status as an elected representative in the Parliament of Canada guaranteed that he was telling the truth.

Why did he show such contempt for Canadians? I do not understand.

I think there is a simple reason. The member for Mississauga—Streetsville invented evidence to support the government's plan to use Bill C-23 to eliminate the vouching system. I think it is sad that the government would use such tactics to pass a bill.

I am sure many people have noticed that the Conservatives are prepared to do anything possible to take the next election. That is what is going on here.

The member spoke about one of the aspects of Bill C-23. He wanted to talk about a supposed flaw that was completely manufactured, in order to manipulate what members of Parliament and the Canadian public thought about the Conservatives' Bill C-23.

The member's only goal was to make the Conservatives' plan to abolish the vouching system more relevant. This system enabled more than 100,000 Canadians to vote in the 2011 election.

In conclusion I want to say that it is very important to send this issue to committee so that we can shed some light on this affair and find out what went on during those 18 days.

During the debate, some members argued that we must not create an environment in which members are afraid to rise and apologize. However, the member did not rise the next day. He rose 18 days later, which is the problem. Therefore, I think this issue should be studied in committee.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Anyway, the point is that they did solve.... By virtue of what we just said, they went everywhere. At least they went to every province and every territory that existed at the time. That's the antithesis of the process that's being suggested here. That's my point, Chair. That's why we've made the motion.

I grant you that we have not done it this way per se, but it is not at all unusual or unacceptable that committees would travel when seized with pan-Canadian issues. What the heck could be more pan-Canadian than our election laws? If you'll accept the notion that our Constitution matters, it makes perfect sense that the Beaudoin-Edwards committee of the day went to every province and every territory. Why? Because it's the Constitution and every province and every territory is a party to it.

Cities aren't, as we know. Cities are not in the constitution. They are creatures of our provinces and territories. It's that legislation that brings them into existence, and there's usually specific legislation for different communities.

But the Constitution, that committee sat there and said to themselves—I'm guessing, but in some way or another, Chair, they said to themselves, “Okay, we have the Constitution. Who's impacted by the Constitution? Everybody. Well we can't visit everybody. The main parties to the Confederation that we have, it might make sense to visit them.” That's what they did. It sounds very democratic: the Constitution, which speaks to provinces and territories in the confederated state of Canada and the relationship powers and authority of said national federal government and those of the provinces and the territories. That's what our Constitution does.

So it would make every sense.... Let me flip it around and come at it the other way. Think how ridiculous it would be to talk about amending the Constitution or changing anything with the Constitution and you wouldn't go and ask the provinces and the territories what they thought. Yes, you could have them come here, but that's not what happened. Why? Because they showed the respect of a confederation. A federated state is different from other states and there is respect that has to be shown to the component parts. In this case, it's the provinces and the territories.

The federal government showed its respect for its equal partners in our Confederation of Canada by going—I suspect they probably went to their capitals. I don't know that for sure, but I'm suspecting.... At least they went to a major population centre in each of the provinces and territories, and said, “What do you think?”

Here we are in 2014, seized with a bill that proposes to amend our entire Elections Act. It's already somewhat controversial. We haven't even gotten to the guts of it yet, and we can't get the Conservative government members to agree that we need to show the same respect to Canadians that our predecessors have done, and that provinces and territories in Canada have done. I've also shown the examples of how other mature, respected democracies listen to their people. I've shown that emerging democracies that don't have the same reputation we do, the good reputation, went out and asked their people about their election laws.

When you look at it in its totality, everything I've been talking about, Chair, all of it taken together, one cannot, I don't care how, have a reasonable person look at this and say that the government is being democratic. There government's not being democratic. They are not being fair, and they really have no interest in hearing what Canadians think. What they care about is rigging the next election and getting the fix in early by getting their election law, the Conservative election law, the unfair elections act.

We have much to learn from those who came before, and I can tell you, Chair, that it cost them in their own time and their own constant dollars just as much money as it would have cost us, and it would have taken just as long, maybe even longer. The jets weren't as fast, but the fact remains that what is at stake here and what is missing is respect.

There is no respect shown for colleagues who happen to belong to other parties or who are independents in the House of Commons. They are showing no respect for Elections Canada by not even asking them to be part of this process. They are sure not showing any respect for Canadians and their right to be heard. It's all very disrespectful. It's a disrespectful bill. It's a disrespectful process. Part of why we're doing this is to give Canadians a chance to be aware.

I had mentioned some of the groups in my motion, in the first part, or at least some of them. This is not exhaustive when we make that statement. This isn't everything. But it was an attempt to provide fair representation of who we would have and why.

I want to return to a subject mentioned here, but not something I've already said about it. Referring to my motion about youth groups, I've talked about some groups, but I haven't said what we want to ask them. What we want to hear from young people is, first of all, what they think about the bill, and second, whether it meets their needs. We hear the minister in question period all the time referring to ID and how students are going to benefit, and things like that, but again, it's a democracy. The dialogue is two-way.

What we want to do is, fine, we'll hear from the minister. We showed that respect. We did that, and it was the official opposition that made sure that happened the way it did by giving a guarantee and honouring it. So we heard from the minister.

What we are asking for is the same respect for Canadians, and in this case, the case in point I am talking about, young people. We know that one of the biggest challenges we're facing is that more and more young people are saying, “A pox on all your houses. I'm not going to get involved at all.” They're throwing the whole system away. By doing that, it skews the results because not everybody is voting, so it's not everybody's opinion.

There are suggestions in this bill that certain educational aspects of the Chief Electoral Officer's job will be limited. Who is that going to affect the most if not our young people? They're the ones on whom we're trying to instill the notion of the importance of citizenship.

My colleague reminds me there are new Canadians who are thirsty to learn about their new country and thirsty to find a way to participate and be participants. Let me tell you, a lot of those new Canadians come from places where democracy isn't even spoken, where you hear a knock on the door at three in the morning, and you're not heard from again.

Now, we're not there. I'll leave it to experts like my colleague, Mr. Scott, to advise how far away we are from that. We are not there, I'm not accusing that, but I have to tell you, when you start ramming laws through that change the elections and you don't give people a chance to have their say, that's dangerous.

We want to give students and young people an opportunity to participate, to also bring out issues that aren't.... As I said before, there are things that need to be raised that maybe aren't in the bill, but that's the point to raise, “You didn't do this,” or “There's this problem over here.”

One of the best examples is the kind of powers that the Chief Electoral Officer has asked for in order to get to the truth when he's searching out fraud in elections. Those powers have not been given to the Chief Electoral Officer. I won't debate the merits of that particular point, Chair, but I will point out that it is part of the slippery slope of losing our democracy. It can't be said too many times how wrong it is to have this bill in front of us, when nobody asked the Chief Electoral Officer what he thought, what his recommendations would be? It's a process we've already done before.

We can bemoan the fact that young people aren't voting, and we do and rightfully so. It's a real concern, but it's not going to change if we don't ask them, because with a few exceptions, and my caucus has probably more than some of the others, we're not young people, and I don't speak for myself, but some of my colleagues are. You know, once you're here, your view of everything changes somewhat, so it would seem to me that someone who was, say, a youth activist at McGill, could make up some kind of crazy idea. A student at McGill maybe suddenly gets elected and becomes an MP. Something like that happens—it couldn't really happen, but say it did. It wouldn't take too long, I suspect—you can answer better than I to my colleague—that your view does shift a bit. I wouldn't call it a full Stockholm syndrome situation, but you start to become part of that world and you understand things differently. Sometimes it's a matter of, “Oh, I get that now; I didn't before,” but nonetheless you're viewing it differently.

What we still need in every democracy is to hear from those who are part of the voices that need to be heard and are those who aren't in the political loop, and by that I include the media. Those of us who do politics every day, an honourable profession, should be listening to the young people and asking them. That's why our motion includes the young people and their advocates, and new Canadians, because we don't know everything. Maybe some walk around believing that, but we don't. Even collectively we don't know everything. We can make mistakes. Sometimes a mistake is not doing something wrong, but the absence of doing what is right. It doesn't mean you've always done that for evil reasons, but even if by exception, or exclusion, or serendipity, you're making those mistakes, they have to be fixed.

We've made the case in our motion that young people, youth groups, their advocates, their representatives should be heard. We said the same thing for new Canadians. There's so much more we could be doing, Chair, rather than just being here defending, trying to get simple democracy, which is the right to be heard. What we should be doing is looking at trying to make this bill and our election laws as good as they can be. We're nowhere near that.

The government can stand up on their soapbox and say, “We're bringing in these great laws; these are the improvements.” Well, that's fine, but that's one voice that happens to be the government, but they won't give anybody else a voice, unless it's under their timeframe, their constraints, their rules, rather than giving people a chance to be heard in the places where they live.

That's why our motion mentions so many different groups, because we need to hear from them. We ought to be listening to them, commenting on proposals that are coming from the Chief Electoral Officer, from the collective experience of those of us who are here as a starting point.

We have such a democratic deficit on this process before we even get to the bill. That is shameful. I'll give the government this: they're consistently shameful when it comes to their denial of democratic rights to Canadians.

Chair, you mentioned to me that normally we don't have motions like this at PROC. Each committee is master of its own destiny, so we all do things a little differently. I would say to you, Chair, that's part of the reason we are where we are, because we were left with no choice but to do it. It's not so much colouring outside the lines, but trying to change where the lines are, to give everybody a say.

At least it's an attempt, because we can't go to every province and every territory. It's just not going to happen, but we could have worked out something. It's a shame because we're rapidly losing any opportunity for that to happen. The government is digging in. We're digging in. People are starting to become aware but not in enough numbers to move the government, not at this point anyway.

That's why we included in our motion as many representative groups as we could to at least start the notion, because it's not exhaustive, it's not exclusive, that there are other people we need to hear from. Our motion gives an example of what some of those groups might be.

On the question of travel, if we don't go out and give students an opportunity to be heard, how is it going to happen? There will be some representatives, perhaps. That will be good. That will be helpful. But it's still not the same as hearing from Canadians.

I know you won't let me read any more e-mails—it's frustrating, but I respect your right to make that ruling—but it is an indication, if you read enough of them, where you start to see.... I didn't have anything to do with that. We're not pushing, at least I'm not. I don't know anything about it. They just come in to me. There's enough evidence that Canadians want to be heard.

We're left with continuing to fight over what we consider to be basic rights of Canadians. Our motion has called for travel. I've given examples of how different jurisdictions have looked at this differently, and I've compared it in my comments as a way to support my arguments and to support my motion.

I can give more.

In the U.K., the mother ship, they now have a select committee on political and constitutional reform and they are doing a study on voter engagement. It's an ongoing study, but they're doing the crazy idea of asking the British people what they think. It sounds like a familiar argument, to give your own citizenry a say in your election laws and voting procedures.

What's interesting is that they're actually focusing—and this is what I meant earlier by the kind of things we should be doing to make our laws better. This is exactly the kind of thing. This is a perfect example to underscore my point, which supports my motion. They want to increase voter turnout. Did they stay in London? No, they didn't. They were giving all the British people an opportunity to be heard, and that's all we're asking.

Listen, I can't go too far, I know, Chair, but I think it's fair for me to give a representation of a couple of the questions they're asking themselves to show how they're tied in to what we're doing.

For instance, under reasons for and impact of low voter engagement, they ask their own people what the main factors are that have contributed to low voter turnout in recent U.K. elections.

We could be asking a similar kind of question. What are the deficiencies in our election laws? What socio-economic factors affect registration and turnout, and what, if anything, can we learn from this about how to improve voter registration and turnout?

I can't go into the specifics, Chair, because it's not part of my motion, but I certainly can make the point that according to our Minister of Democratic Reform, those are exactly the kinds of issues that Bill C-23 is supposedly going to address.

We in the opposition feel there is a really good chance that not everybody is going to see it that way. We'd like to give them that chance to be heard, especially when you have to take into account the geography of Canada.

They also ask how arrangements for British citizens living abroad to register for and vote in elections in the U.K. can be improved. It's not earth shattering, and I don't imagine that alone would generate too many headlines, but those are exactly the kinds of tombstoning questions you would ask if you're going to be looking at changing your election laws.

Rather than all of us sitting here asking ourselves those same kinds of questions and asking how we can get answers to those kinds of questions because we want to improve these things, we're left with having to bring in a motion which, as the Chair has pointed out, is a little bit different from what we normally do, simply because we're trying to force the government to be more democratic than they're prepared to be on their own inclination.

The very questions they're asking in Britain, and remember, that is the mother ship; that is where all these traditions start. When you go to a Commonwealth meeting, you'll find that with regard to all kinds of questions about parliamentary procedure, almost all of them, very quickly they will start by asking what they are doing in Westminster, what they are doing in the U.K., because they've been doing it for so long, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. But we're not.

Maybe a basic democratic lesson we could still learn from the mother ship is that when you want to change laws that affect people everywhere and that are fundamental to your democracy, your very first starting point should be to ask Canadians, or your own people in a generic sense, what they think.

In the U.K. example, you could tell just from the procedure that they cared what their people thought, so they put together a process that allowed their citizens to have their say. In the U.K. it's the same thing; in Canada, not so much.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

It is true, Mr. Speaker, my grandma would never have done that kind of thing. She had more intellectual honesty than that.

I am trying to understand what happened between February 6th and 24th.

If someone tells the House that he saw people commit illegal acts, why did it take him 18 days to realize he saw nothing of the kind?

No apology will erase the contempt of Parliament committed on February 6. What happened during those 18 days? How is it that the member for Mississauga—Streetsville appears to have suffered hallucinations on February 6 and suddenly had to set the record straight on February 24? We would like to understand.

Basically, this sham, this preposterous story, is supposed to justify the Conservative minister’s electoral reform bill. Constructing public policy and major reforms on baseless statements, smoke and mirrors, is very serious and utterly unacceptable.

We in the official opposition act in a responsible and honest manner. We want to know exactly what happened. Was the member influenced in a way that made him make such statements? Was he subsequently influenced again when he said he had seen no one commit an illegal act? If that is true, how is it that he, as an honest politician, did not notify Elections Canada?

This has nothing at all to do with misspeaking. I might be mistaken about the name of a constituency or a person and then have to apologize, but that is not at all the case here. The member stated on two occasions that he had personally seen such actions.

This brings us back to all the defects in the electoral reform bill. We are told, in an entirely Orwellian tone, that this bill will protect us from the influence of big money, whereas maximum contributions are being raised from $1,200 to $1,500. How can anyone have these two ideas in mind at the same time? This is absolutely inconsistent.

If you want to reduce the influence of big money on elections and political parties, you increase public funding and cut individual contributions. However, the Conservatives are doing the opposite. They probably have more friends than we do who are able to write cheques for $1,500. They are not being serious at all. They are cheating by creating a legal framework that will benefit them in the next election.

This is extremely serious in a representative democracy such as ours, in which people must be able to trust the laws that govern them. Not only do the Conservatives risk preventing tens of thousands of people from voting, but they are raising the limit on individual contributions to a political party to $1,500 and preventing Elections Canada from investigating by stripping it of that power and conferring it on a third party.

What enrages me most about Bill C-23 is that the Conservatives want to prohibit Elections Canada from promoting the right to vote. This is quite disturbing when voter turnout has been declining for years now.

The main body that organizes elections in our country will not be able to tell people that it would be good for them to go and vote, that their votes count and that we need them. No, the only thing it will be able to tell them is the location of their polling station. Elections Canada will no longer be allowed to encourage people to exercise their right to vote and to have a voice in the representation and governance of their country. That must suit somebody. That must benefit people who are not counting on citizen engagement or people’s desire for real change in this country.

It is particularly odious to make false statements in the House to justify an electoral reform bill that has undergone no public consultation, either with the opposition parties or with the Chief Electoral Officer, and even less with the people of our country.

For the NDP, that is unacceptable. We will stand against it.

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the extraordinary member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine. I would like to congratulate her. It is important that we listen to what she has to say. It will be very interesting, more interesting than what we just heard.

I would like to take a moment to quote the member for Mississauga—Streetsville. I think it will give us some insight into what the word “misspeak” means to the Conservatives, or what it means to them to have misspoken.

On February 6, the member in question said the following:

Mr. Speaker, I want to talk a bit about this vouching system again. I know the minister represents an urban city. I am from a semi-urban area of Mississauga, where there are many high-rise apartment buildings. On mail delivery day when the voter cards are delivered to community mailboxes in apartment buildings, many of them are discarded in the garbage can or the blue box. I have actually witnessed other people picking up the voter cards, going to the campaign office [I suppose he is following them] of whatever candidate they support and handing out these voter cards to other individuals [he saw three things there], who then walk into voting stations with friends who vouch for them with no ID.

He personally saw at least four things happen. He witnessed them.

Later that same day, he said this:

Earlier this afternoon I asked the Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification a question. I think my friend from York South—Weston will appreciate this because, just like the riding I represent, there are a lot of apartment buildings in his riding. I will relate to him something I have actually seen.

That same day, he repeated and reiterated his previous statement, and I quote:

On the mail delivery day when voter cards are put in mailboxes, residents come home, pick them out of their boxes, and throw them in the garbage can. I [first person singular] have seen campaign workers follow, pick up a dozen of them afterward, and walk out. Why are they doing that? They are doing it so they can hand those cards to other people, who will then be vouched for at a voting booth and vote illegally. That is going to stop.

Then, 18 days later, the member Mississauga—Streetsville had an epiphany. He suddenly realized that his story was completely fabricated and that he was gravely mistaken when he said that he had seen, with his own eyes, people using voter information cards to commit election fraud. It took him 18 days. I would like to know what went through his mind on February 6. Did he have a psychotic episode? Was he under the influence of drugs? Was he following instructions from his own party to make a dismal and fraudulent attempt to justify Bill C-23, which would prevent people from voting by using the voter information card they receive from Elections Canada and having someone vouch for their identity?

The Conservatives have a problem: they consistently give us public policies based on stuff they make up. Good public policy is usually based on good research and objectivity, on an analysis of a situation supported by facts to back up statements and proposals.

Bill C-23, which would implement voter suppression tactics worthy of the Republican Party, challenges a fundamental right of Canadian citizens—exercising the right to vote—based on arguments that are basically tall tales that misled Parliament.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Speaker, our party has demonstrated that we vote our conscience. We can point to many times when we have done that in the House. We can point to very few times when that has happened with the NDP over there.

I am very surprised that the hon. member does not see the partisanship involved in this. This is all it is. It is politics by the NDP. The NDP members are using an apology made in the House to try to prolong and continue to filibuster one of the most important pieces of legislation that has been put before the House, Bill C-23, the fair elections act. We know what that is about, and Canadians know what that is about. We look forward to getting on with the job and getting it done.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Really, Zimbabwe, come on. Even they get it that you have to let your people have a say in their election laws. But until the government decides otherwise, we will persevere.

Well that's interesting. I see that now. There's another reference here, Chair. On April 26, 2005—that might be the same one and I don't want to do that; that would get me in trouble. I won't do that.

I will return, however, to.... I was mixing it up and trying to keep it interesting here, because I don't want to lose anybody.

Returning now to why it matters that we go to other cities as I mentioned in the second bullet point of my motion. I read an article into the record that announced to the people of the north that they be given an opportunity to have their say on Bill C-15, so I won't say anything I've already said. However, part of why we want to do this and why it's in my motion is we want the public engagement portion. It's important. I want again to make some reference to the local media having an opportunity to talk about the importance of this national issue as it relates to where they live.

What I'd like to do now, consistent with what I've done so far and I have not read this, is actor the meeting. I talked about what happened with the media and what they said to the citizenry, advising them of what's going on, what was expected, saying, “Hey, come on out.” They had the event, but there's still another piece. When you're interacting with the public, often it's like dealing with the cosmos, you can only go as fast as the speed of light and you've got to leave. You go out there and then you just start going and it continues to go and go and go. The reference to I Love Lucy is still out there somewhere floating around. It's much the same thing when we do media and stuff, we go into a community, we do some stuff and then we leave; or even here in Ottawa when we leave and then the media continues, but what happens then is important. It's part of the process. It's part of the communicating and conveying of messaging to the population, so it's important.

So, how did that play out in the example I gave earlier? I can hear you asking that in your mind, Chair, and I'm ready to answer that question.

Northern News Services reported on February 3, 2014, just a couple of weeks ago, and I have a copy of it, saying why it's relevant, and this is why it ties to my motion:

Northerners had their chance to tell the federal government what they think of Bill C-15 on Jan. 27 and the consensus was strong opposition to eliminating regional land and water boards, and an unhappiness about the federal government's perceived failure to properly consult on the bill.

Sounds familiar.

What's interesting, when I read the one earlier, Chair, if you recall, the article mentioned the fact that one of the things they were doing was looking at eliminating the regional land and water boards. Ordinarily, you'd think when there's a good idea like that it would have a lot of support and you would read an article saying that hey, people loved it and it's a great idea. It turns out that's not the case. They didn't like it. Well, if they hadn't held the public hearings, how would you know what the public thinks?

We're in the same boat on Bill C-23. How do you know what the public thinks if you don't ask them? The article goes on to say:

"Nothing is more important than this," said Tlicho Grand Chief Eddie Erasmus, who signed on to devolution in March 2013.

He called the bill - which will alter two of the territory's founding documents: the NWT Act and the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act -- unconstitutional and said that he is prepared to stand up to the proposed legislation in whatever way he can.

Canada has returned to the old colonial ways of thinking they know what is best for us. They are silencing our voice. This is not the constitutional promise that was made in the Tlicho agreement.

Members of the federal Special Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development were in Yellowknife for a marathon meeting—

That we have, but that's it, that's all. They had a marathon meeting and we're having a marathon meeting, but that's it, and maybe the coffee, but that's it.

—where they heard from 33 witnesses over nine hours on Bill C-15.

I won't go into it too far, Chair, because I accept that I would be bumping up against relevancy. I appreciate your letting me read what I did, because I do believe that was relevant. Obviously, you felt the same way, but I won't push my luck with you, Chair. I will set that aside and move along.

I have some quotes here, Chair, but I want to stay consistent with your.... I'm asking you straight up. Do I have any latitude at all in terms of reading comments that are coming in either to committee members here or to my leader that are relevant to what I'm talking about?

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

Mr. Speaker, I find this debate unfortunate. We are having a discussion, not because of the partisanship of the official opposition, but because the Speaker of this House has ruled that there is an issue that should come to the members in order to, quoting the words of a former Speaker, “clear the air”.

An opportunity to clear the air has not been seized by the Conservative benches. I acknowledge that the hon. member for Mississauga—Streetsville did not need to apologize to the House. He could have perhaps pretended away the incident and never admitted to the incident that he claimed he saw, he had never seen.

I find the events that have taken place here extremely perplexing. As a member of Parliament, I will go back to my constituents and try to explain it. I will be unable to explain how it is that the member told us, two different times, that he saw voting cards being removed in order to stuff ballots by people who did not have a right to vote in those locations. I find that very troubling. I think we should be able to get to the bottom of it.

Calling Bill C-23 the unfair elections act is merely marketing; it is hardly misleading the House. Everyone knows that we are talking about Bill C-23. Some of us, myself included, Preston Manning included, find Bill C-23 going entirely in the wrong direction. We should try to make sure that people can vote, not remove their ability to vote.

My question to the hon. member is, would he not agree that we would have been much better served in this discussion, once the Speaker ruled, to get an explanation as to why these two very contradictory statements came before this House?

I will say that I appreciate the member for Mississauga—Streetsville apologizing. I will thank him for that, but I would like an explanation.

[Costas Menegakis, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today because I want to participate in this debate and address the motion proposed by the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley. The motion proposes that the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs study the facts surrounding the statements made by the member for Mississauga—Streetsville. I propose at the outset that we already know the facts. The question is what we do about it.

A study by the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs would be redundant and a waste of time, in my submission. The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs is one of the busiest committees, producing more reports than any other standing committee. The committee already has numerous projects on the go, including studies arising from private members' business and a question of privilege related to Elections Canada. The committee is examining changes to the Standing Orders and is currently studying Bill C-23, the fair elections act.

At the present time, the committee is under siege by an NDP filibuster aimed at delaying the fair elections act, Bill C-23. This is unfortunate because Bill C-23 is a very important piece of legislation. This bill would protect voters from rogue calls and impersonation with a mandatory public registry for mass calling, prison time for impersonating elections officials, and increased penalties for deceiving people out of their votes. It would allow the commissioner to seek tougher penalties for existing offences and empower the commissioner with new offences to combat big money, rogue calls, and fraudulent voting. It would crack down on voter fraud, make rules easier to follow, allow for small donations in and big money out, respect democratic election results, uphold free speech, and provide better customer service for voters.

Getting back to the motion before the House, I would like to draw everyone's attention to a quick review of the facts that led to this question of privilege. On February 6, during debate on Bill C-23, the fair elections act, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville made a statement in the House about voter identification cards. He rose in the House on February 24 and corrected the record. The next day he added, “...I recognized that this was an error on my part”. He then sincerely apologized to all Canadians and all members of the House for the statement he made. He added that it was never his intention in any way to mislead the House, for which he has the greatest amount of respect.

As we know, it is a long-standing tradition in the House to accept the word of a member and to accept his or her apology. Notwithstanding that tradition, on February 25, the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley rose in the House on a question of privilege charging the member for Mississauga—Streetsville with contempt; this, of course, after the member for Mississauga—Streetsville had delivered his apology to Canadians and all members in the House.

The government House leader responded by making the following point. He stated:

...the presumption in this House is that we are all taken at our word, that the statements we make are truthful and correct. That we are given the benefit of that doubt brings with it a strong obligation on us, in the cases where a member misspeaks, to correct the record so that nobody is left with inaccurate perceptions.

In this particular instance, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville, has done exactly that. Having misspoken in this House and having realized his comments were in error, he has come to this House and corrected the record.

That is the obligation that exists upon members. That is an obligation to ensure that nobody is left under false impressions. That is an obligation he has discharged. That is the obligation upon all members here, and for that reason I think that alone is sufficient to rebut any concern that there has been a contempt.

I will end the government House leader's quote there.

Also in that debate, the member for Kingston and the Islands recognized that the only reason the House was engaged in the debate on the matter was the fact that it had been raised by the member for Mississauga—Streetsville, who took his duty and obligation to correct the record seriously.

Instead of accepting the apology from the member for Mississauga—Streetsville, the NDP House leader chose to raise the matter as a question of privilege, putting the onus on the Speaker to rule.

When the Speaker finds that there is a prima facie question of privilege, the task of formulating the question to the House falls to the member who raised the issue. In this case, it was the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley. As we all know, his privilege motion sets aside all business of the House. I believe he could have found another way to express his displeasure, without engaging all of us in the process, debate, and drama of a question of privilege.

The debate on his motion does not only use up the precious time of this House, but it proposes to use up a great deal of the precious time of a committee. This exercise is wasteful and unnecessary.

I will be encouraging members to vote against the proposal from the NDP for three reasons. One, the member who made the misleading statements apologized and voluntarily corrected the record. That is a very important point for all of us to realize. He apologized and voluntarily corrected the record.

Two, there is no merit in a committee study since all of the facts are known. He made a statement and he apologized for it. The real and only question left for the House to decide is how it wants to move forward on this issue considering the facts before it.

This brings me to the third reason to oppose the motion. The one outcome we want to avoid is to create an environment where MPs are punished for doing the right thing. The right thing for this House to do is to accept the member's apology and move on.

However, I am afraid it is too late for the high road at this point. The member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley has the entire House going down his road.

What does the NDP want to accomplish with a committee study? I looked at the procedural references the NDP House leader cited in his presentation to his question of privilege. In his intervention, he cited a reference from page 115 of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition.

His citation references a case from December 6, 1978, where Speaker Jerome ruled that a government official deliberately misled a minister and that constituted a prima facie question of privilege. The member for Northumberland—Durham, who raised the question of privilege was invited to propose his motion to the House. The motion was defeated, and the matter was not sent to committee.

The NDP House leader also referenced a ruling from October 19, 2000, regarding misleading statements made in the House. Speaker Parent stated that he could find no support for a claim that the privileges of the House had been breached; so no committee study resulted from that.

He included a ruling of our current Speaker from May 7, 2012. The Speaker did not arrive at a finding of a prima facie question of privilege there either.

There was, however, a committee study that resulted from a ruling he referenced from February 1, 2002, regarding two statements made by the then minister of defence. In that ruling, Speaker Milliken noted the need for clarity in House proceedings and the need to ensure the integrity of the information provided by the government to the House. He also stated that integrity of information was of paramount importance since it directly concerned the rules of engagement for Canadian troops involved in the conflict in Afghanistan, a principle that goes to the very heart of Canada's participation in the war against terrorism.

A motion was moved referring the matter to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, and almost a week later, on Thursday, February 7, 2002, it was adopted.

The committee heard from a number of witnesses in that case. It heard from the member who raised the matter, Mr. Brian Pallister. It heard from the Clerk of the House of Commons, and the law clerk and parliamentary counsel of the House of Commons. It heard from the hon. Art Eggleton, the former minister of national defence; the deputy chief of the defence staff; the deputy minister of the department of national defence; the chief of the defence staff; the deputy clerk of the Privy Council, counsel and security and intelligence co-ordinator; the clerk of the Privy Council and secretary to the cabinet; the assistant deputy minister, global and security policy, department of foreign affairs and international trade; and J.P. Joseph Maingot, former law clerk and parliamentary counsel, House of Commons, and author of Parliamentary Privilege in Canada.

In addition, members of the committee were invited to submit questions in writing for Commodore Jean-Pierre Thiffault, commander of the Canadian joint task force in southwest Asia.

That is an impressive list of witnesses. Obviously, there are some similarities between this question of privilege and the question of privilege in 2002, but I believe members would recognize the many significant differences. There might have been more meat on the bone in the 2002 case than the straightforward facts of this case.

Also, I think it is worth mentioning that the status of the two members involved is significantly different. The 2002 case involved a minister of the Crown. A minister enjoys a special role in providing information to the House.

That said, and despite all that was involved in the 2002 study, and all that was at stake, the committee had to focus on the task at hand, the issue of two contradictory statements made in the House.

The report back from the procedure and House affairs committee stated:

We are not concerned here with the Minister's performance as a minister, nor with the chain of command or lines of communication in the military, the Department of National Defence, or the Government.

The committee also felt it was necessary to point out the following:

Parliamentary committees charged with examining questions of privilege must exercise caution and act responsibly in drawing conclusions. They must guard against allowing partisanship to colour their judgement. The power to punish for contempt must not be exercised lightly. It exists for those rare occasions when Parliament’s ability to function is impeded or compromised.

One could, in the case before us today, connect some dots and come to the conclusion that this is not about statements made by the member for Mississauga—Streetsville. Other agendas are at play here, agendas that are clouding the judgment of the NDP. I am certain that most reasonable people would agree that the case before us is of a different scale in importance than that in 2002. Even still, the conclusion of the committee in 2002 was simple and to the point. It stated:

After a thorough review of all the circumstances, the Committee has come to the conclusion that the Minister made a mistake....

It concluded that no contempt of the House was committed.

What are the facts surrounding the statements made by the member for Mississauga—Streetsville? He made a mistake. He rose in the House and said, “I recognized that this was an error on my part”. He followed that recognition of fault with an apology to the House and to all Canadians. He made it clear that he did not intend to mislead the House.

I submit that a committee study of this case is not necessary. It only makes sense in the mind of the New Democrats, who fervently obstruct anything constructive that comes on the floor of the House and to our committees. I understand that the role of the opposition is to oppose, but in this case, it has crossed the line.

As the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs warned, in 2002, we in the House must also guard against allowing partisanship to colour our judgment in the matter of privilege. We must not execute our power lightly.

The NDP should refrain from using this question of privilege to fight its battle against the fair elections act. It only exposes its fiend, outrage, and phoney crusade in its opposition to legislation that will put everyday Canadians, not big union bosses, in charge of their democracy.

I have a number of quotations from people across the country. I have documentation from Elections Canada, in cases where it has found fraud in past elections in this country.

As well, I hear the words of my constituents, who speak on a daily basis. I can tell members that they do not want election fraud any more than anybody else in this House. Supporting the fair elections act would go a long way to giving back fair elections to Canadians.

We all know that things happen during elections that should not happen. That is what the legislation, Bill C-23, would address.

With respect to the question before us, I encourage all members of the House to see past the partisan colours of their party. Let the House get back to business, and let the committees get on with their agendas. There is no place in committee for this matter. It has been settled. The member stood up and he apologized.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I'm not stopping you.

To the point, Chair, we would see a group like the Council of Canadians with Disabilities as a primary, specific group we might look to. They are a national human rights organization of people with disabilities working for an inclusive and accessible Canada. You could almost put those words into another sentence about what Canadians want in their election laws.

The priorities of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities include disability-related supports, poverty alleviation, increased employment for persons with disabilities, promotion of human rights in Canada—the right to vote is that—ratification and implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. I'll just read one or two, Chair. I won't read the whole thing.

They believe, in terms of citizenship, that people with disabilities “have the same rights and responsibilities as Canadians without disabilities.” My first position ever, when I was 22 years old, I was elected chair of the health and safety committee in the little shop that I worked in. That's when it became clear to me with health and safety, if you don't know your rights, you don't have any.

In terms of citizenship, they're specifically concerned that “socially made barriers, which prevent participation and discriminate against people with disabilities must be eliminated.” Again, it would be obvious things like making sure that polling stations are accessible.

Chair, the other thing I wanted to say about learning early on is that all of us are only temporarily able-bodied. Every one of us will be disabled at some point. The only issue is whether it happens sooner or later. That's the only difference. There aren't just the barriers that we tend to think of, those of us who are able-bodied. There is a whole host of challenges that people with disabilities face in Canada. Our motion is here to ensure that the issues that would affect those fellow Canadians are taken into account when we look at Bill C-23.

Do I know what all those issues are? No, but then I doubt anybody else around the table does either. That's why we would invite them. We would invite them as expert witnesses representing a segment of our population, to ensure that those of us entrusted with passing the laws of our nation understand the implications of either changing the law or not adequately addressing challenges and problems that already exist.

That's why we have included in my motion various groups and organizations and points of view to ensure that we get as good a bill as possible. Would it be perfect? No.

As I said, I'm already aware of some clauses and things that we agreed to in our work a couple of years ago that I would already be looking at differently. That comes from experience. That's evolution of thought. Also, there's just having others look at it and give their opinion. That's why you have consultations.

That's why we were so proud to see a country like New Zealand having all kinds of consultation and that it wasn't being led by a political party. It was led by their version of our Elections Canada. That's how much they trust them. They let them lead the consultation. They let them produce the discussion paper and then they went back out again and said, “What do you think about what we've said about what you said?” This was before it even got to the politicians. We are so far away from anything like that.

In our motion we speak of groups that have been active in our society. In fact the actual words, Chair, that we used were “as well as specific groups which have been active in society on election rules.”

The first one we mentioned was Fair Vote Canada. Fair Vote Canada is a grassroots, multi-partisan citizens campaign for voting system reform. They promote the introduction of an element of proportional representation into elections for all levels of government and throughout civil society. The position of our party is that we should be moving to a proportional representation system as a further refinement of good democratic governance, but that's for another day.

It is worth saying, Chair, that one of the criticisms of proportional representation is that it doesn't usually lead to any one party receiving a majority control of the House, and that's seen as a problem. Yet the best example I can point to in the decade that I've been here—

Statements by the Member for Mississauga-Streetsville—Reference to Standing Committee

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for sharing his time with me.

This is a grave matter we are debating here. It goes to the credibility of this place. The comments that I will make at the end, I hope, will give pause to reflect on a situation where we have a majority government.

What is the situation before us? We were debating Bill C-23, which is proposing significant amendments to the Canada Elections Act, with a number of amendments that are facing huge debate across the country, but within a vacuum of ability for Canadians to speak out. In the course of the debate, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville decided to speak twice in this place and to share certain information. As has been raised here previously, it was in the course of debate on a very significant bill to Canadians that sets out the rights to exercise the franchise. The member has now apologized to the House and admitted that he misled this place on observations that he personally witnessed in the use of the voucher system.

Why is this important? It is because of changes to the voucher system that the government wants to proceed with, which is to do away with the voucher. Frankly, right now, hundreds of thousands of Canadians, from seniors to first nations to students, rely on vouchers to exercise their franchise. We are fortunate to live in a country where everyone in society has the right to vote if they are a citizen. I raise this matter because I have received letters. I understand the same letters have been sent to the minister responsible for the new election bill.

I received a letter from the president of the students' union for the King’s University College, the president of the students' union for the University of Alberta, and the student association of Grant MacEwan University. These are all major institutions in my city.

What they relayed to me and the hon. minister is that they are deeply concerned that this move to remove the voucher is going to make it more difficult. Sieger Siderius, president of the students' association for the King's University College said: “...making the ability to vote more difficult seems antithetical to the inclusive democratic system that has developed in Canada”.

The president of the students' union of the University of Alberta, Petros Kusmu, said: “Voter turnout from students and youth is already relatively low in federal elections”. They think it is important that the government move toward making it easier for students to vote, and they are deeply troubled that to remove the ability to vouch may have graver results, lowering voter turnout from students.

The students association for Grant MacEwan University expressed the same concerns. “Students unable to provide [a] valid piece of identification under the Fair Elections Act as currently proposed risk disenfranchisement”. They are calling on me to call for the government to provide expanded consultation so they can voice their perspective.

Given that the government is still refusing to allow a committee to travel to discuss this important piece of legislation, the only opportunity for a person to find out what is in the bill and what the issues are around the voucher system is to view CPAC, or come to Ottawa if they have the opportunity, if they are studying here, and observe the debate.

What did the hon. member for Mississauga—Streetsville say in this place? He said:

I have actually witnessed other people picking up the voter cards, going to the campaign office of whatever candidate they support and handing out these voter cards to other individuals, who then walk into voting stations with friends who vouch for them with no ID.

He said that once. On February 6, he again said:

I will relate to him [he means the Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification] something I have actually seen. On the mail delivery day when voter cards are put in mailboxes, residents come home, pick them out of their boxes, and throw them in the garbage can. I have seen campaign workers follow, pick up a dozen of them afterward, and walk out. Why are they doing that? They are doing it so they can hand those cards to other people, who will then be vouched for at a voting booth and vote illegally. That is going to stop.

As is clear in the House, and as the members representing the government side have attested to, almost three weeks later, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville stood up in the House and confessed that he completely misled the House, not once but twice.

How are we to be assured that Canadians following this debate managed to follow every day of it, so that they will have learned that in fact this hon. member had misled the House? This is a serious matter. This is a serious bill we are discussing and it is absolutely imperative that factual information be brought forward. There have been many questions back and forth in question period about proposed changes to the Elections Act, and a lot of concerns raised on behalf of constituents about the plan to do away with the vouching system.

This is a very significant matter. We are talking about the very right of Canadians to exercise their democratic right to vote for the members in this place. We have heard from young people, certainly in my city, who are deeply concerned about this proposed amendment. We had a member testify in the House that he personally had witnessed voter fraud with the use of vouchers, and then admit he never did witness any such thing. This is not simply a case where perhaps somebody had told him third-hand that there might be some fraud with vouching. He actually stood in this place twice and said that he personally had witnessed this and had witnessed voter fraud.

What is important is that, according to our procedures, the House Leader of the Official Opposition raised a question of privilege, the member spoke to it, and the Speaker issued a ruling. In issuing his ruling, the Speaker said that he had to consider three factors based on precedent. One was that it had to be proven that the statement was misleading; two, that it must be established that the member making the statement knew at the time of the statement that it was incorrect; and three, that in making the statement, the member intended to mislead the House. The member himself has apologized that he has done all three. However, aside from that, the reason we are here debating right now is because the Speaker made a ruling in this matter and, as the procedure goes, we do not get into this debate unless there is a prima facie case of contempt in the House.

We have heard a number of members state that we do not bring forward this kind of motion lightly, and it does not happen very often, and it certainly has not happened often while I have been in this place for more than five years. Therefore, it seems appropriate, given the procedures of the House, which are laid down in a chart in our procedural book, which is agreed to by all the members in the House, that there will be a vote in this place.

What happens when we have a majority government? We are having a debate here and we begin to sense how people might vote. It may be that those members on the other side might have a bit of conscience and think that this is reprehensible behaviour and that just standing up and saying, “Oh gosh, I should not have misled the House” is not enough, and that maybe this matter should be referred to the committee and an appropriate response taken. There is no predetermination of what the response is. The member could, for example, simply be asked to come before the bar of the House and apologize to the Speaker. It is not terribly reprehensible. We are not going to lock him up behind bars and so forth.

I am stunned that the members are complaining that we are taking up the time of the House on this. Would it not be nice if instead we were using the time to decide how many communities in Canada we were going to talk with about the proposed changes to the Elections Act, so that we could actually have a debate among Canadians on how we should change the law.

Clearly, my constituents and the youth in my city have expressed their will. They would like to have a voice in this statute. They have a right not to be misinformed on what has happened with the vouching system, and regrettably they have been given misleading information in this House. We can only hope that they have been able to follow this debate and that they know that in fact there is no clear evidence of fraudulent use of the voucher system.