Bill C-23 (Historical)

Fair Elections Act

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

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

Fair Elections Act

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Saint-Laurent—Cartierville for his speech. I know that he closely followed the progress of the bill in the House and in committee. He delivered a very interesting speech that underscores some things that, I agree, are extremely problematic in this bill.

I share his opinion on the final point that he made: something major is missing from this bill and that is the power of the Commissioner of Canada Elections to compel witnesses to testify. I would like to read what the commissioner himself said when he came to committee.

...I want to be absolutely clear: if this amendment is not made, investigations will continue to take time, and in some cases a lot of time. Importantly some investigations will simply be aborted due to our inability to get at the facts.

The commissioner himself came and told us that in committee. If the person who is called to investigate electoral fraud in Canada tells us something as loud and clear as that, then I would like the hon. member to explain to me why, in his view, this amendment was not included among those proposed by the government.

Why would the government deny this right, which seems extremely important for getting to the bottom of real electoral fraud in our country?

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her question. I also want to thank her for the efforts she has made over the past few weeks by our side to get answers from the government, including the answer to the following question. How come what is good for Quebec, Ontario, the Yukon, Manitoba and the competition commissioner is not good for the Commissioner of Canada Elections?

The minister gave only one answer and repeated it like a parrot, as did all his Conservative colleagues. They said that the commissioner has the same power as the police. The police have all sorts of powers and recourse that a commissioner does not. That is like comparing apples and oranges. If we are comparing apples and apples, there is a government that is soft on crime right now and that is the Conservative government.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague if he could help Canadians interpret what is going on with the government's approach to the bill, because weaving its way through the debate in terms of the tone and character from the government is what I think most Canadians would describe now as just simply meanness. I think it perhaps culminated or peaked when the minister responsible for this bill made specious and spurious allegations at the Senate, the other place, in committee, when he alleged that the head of Elections Canada was opposed to the bill because he was personally looking for more power and for more money.

For Canadians who are watching this, it is the tone of meanness that is, I think, now getting them very worried indeed about the bill. We have seen the pattern of conduct in other areas manifested by the government: other firings and pushing out of senior officers of Parliament, Linda Keen of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and the former parliamentary budget officer; a recent attack on the Supreme Court of Canada chief justice; an attack on Sheila Fraser, the former auditor general of Canada; an attack last week on VIA Rail's outgoing president; and of course this ridiculous and unacceptable attack on Mr. Mayrand as head of Elections Canada.

Could he help us understand what it is at play here? What is it that motivates this regime to personalize its attacks when there are dissenting voices that speak truth to power?

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague from Ottawa South has asked me a very difficult question. I am afraid I have no answer.

The government is behaving as if it is paranoid. It is sure that it is surrounded by enemies. Elections Canada is an enemy. The Chief Justice of Canada is an enemy.

It is the Prime Minister's style of governing his country. It is time to end it.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to follow my colleague, the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville.

Opposition and government members can agree that the fair elections bill has been a mess from beginning to end. This legislation reflects the incompetence and stubbornness of the Conservative government.

Indeed, the government stubbornly refuses to deal with the facts and the reality of what actually happens on the ground when voters go to the polls. It also refuses to see what is not happening. The bill attempts to eliminate fraud that has yet to be identified.

It also reflects the government's usual bad faith in its approach to governing, as pointed out a few moments ago by my colleagues from Saint-Laurent—Cartierville and Ottawa South.

The government created ghosts to justify the measures included in its legislation. What did we see in the House? What did Canadians across the country see? They saw the government's ideological approach, as always. More than that, we saw a partisan approach. We saw the government playing politics. Worse yet, when it comes to improving the efficiency of our electoral system, we are now behind where we were before the bill was introduced.

One might even say that things were better before the government got involved. We suffered a setback because the credibility of the electoral system among Canadians was undermined as the government took every opportunity to foster political cynicism. It did so by engaging in shenanigans and taking an overly aggressive approach.

However, the government was successful in two ways. I suppose it can pat itself on the back for that achievement. First, it drew the attention of Canadians to the ins and outs of our electoral system. After all, this is not an everyday topic. It is not something we discuss every evening, around the dinner table. We rarely discuss the workings of the electoral system among friends. However, because of the introduction of this bill and the related controversy, I noticed that people in my riding were quite aware of what was going on. They did not really like what they saw and their response was rather negative.

The second thing the government managed to do was that it showed Canadians how it likes to operate. Canadians saw that the Conservatives love to play politics on issues that the government should consider in a serious and dignified manner. I will add that the government did itself a disservice in terms of public opinion. At the beginning of March, Angus Reid published a poll, and I will give you the headline. It said that the more Canadians are aware of the fair elections act, the more they oppose it.

According to the poll, nearly two-thirds of respondents firmly believed that the government introduced the bill to settle its score with Elections Canada, in particular, and with other political parties. Why are Canadians responding so negatively to this bill?

As members who are in touch with our constituents' values, we know that Canadians have a very keen sense of fair play. This bill flies in the face of Canadians' sense of fairness. In other words, Canadians recognize that we should not change the rules of the game without the consensus of all parties involved, including the voters themselves.

We called on the government a number of times to go out and consult Canadians on this highly controversial bill. The Conservatives replied that they were not interested, that they would rather stay here in Ottawa, that they would not hear what Canadians think about this bill and that they would stick to discussing the bill around a table on Parliament Hill.

On the one hand, this bill does not go far enough, as others have already mentioned. Elections Canada will not be able to compel testimony from someone who is aware of a case of election fraud, as the Commissioner of Competition can do. On the other hand, it goes too far when it transfers the duties of the Commissioner of Canada Elections, who operates under the purview of Elections Canada, to the office of the federal chief prosecutor, which will now be responsible for investigating cases of election fraud. This office, however, does not want that power.

What a farce. The person being given the responsibility is saying he does not want that additional power. The prosecutor himself said that it would be dangerous for him to have oversight of the electoral system because such an arrangement could undermine voter confidence and give the appearance of a conflict of interest. Any appearance of conflict of interest undermines the credibility of the process, and people lose confidence.

The electoral system is a sacred democratic institution. The government must not undermine the people's confidence in their electoral system. I think that doing so is very dangerous. This is a farce because the person to whom the government wants to give the power is saying, “no, thanks”.

At the heart of the controversy is the vouching system, which seemed to be working just fine until now. Nobody complained about the system. Our vouching system is fine, but the government wants to change it even though there is no empirical evidence of any fraud.

Earlier, the member for Don Valley West drew a comparison to the pieces of ID required to obtain a health card in Ontario. He said that people have to present three pieces of ID. That is quite a stringent requirement.

Similarly, my colleague from Saint-Laurent—Cartierville said that, when we ask the government questions, it compares apples with oranges when it should be comparing apples with apples.

There are cases of fraud involving health cards. We know it; it has been proven. People who obtain health cards fraudulently have a pretty clear motive: they want benefits. That is what motivates fraud.

However, when a person wants to vote despite not having the right to, he derives no monetary benefit. He is not really helping himself. Basically, he is helping an organization, a party or a candidate.

Even then, it is not clear that he will be able to influence the outcome of a vote in a particular riding. They are comparing apples with oranges when they should be comparing things that are actually comparable.

I will end there. This bill is an absolute disaster, and the opposition will vote against it categorically this evening.

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

I completely agree with my colleague that this bill is not at all democratic and that it ensures that fewer and fewer people will be encouraged to vote and will understand the electoral process.

This bill will not in any way help the Chief Electoral Officer or the Commissioner of Canada Elections conduct investigations and more efficiently uncover election fraud. It makes me sad to learn that some young people will not be able to exercise their right to vote simply because they will not have access to the information required. We have learned that the Chief Electoral Officer's work with primary and secondary schools will be very limited.

There is a college in Beauharnois—Salaberry, and the students will not have access to the information because the Chief Electoral Officer will not be able to talk to college or university students or other targeted groups such as seniors. The Akwesasne reserve is located in my riding, and advertising will no longer be permitted there either.

I would like to know what my colleague thinks of this inability to provide future voters with information.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was going to talk about this in my speech, but the time has passed rather quickly.

It is very disappointing that the Chief Elections Officer cannot encourage people to vote. In the Senate some senators said that this authority had to be taken away from the Chief Electoral Officer because it was a conflict of interest. They seemed to be saying that because the CEO wanted to get more people to vote, he would not look into fraud.

That makes no sense. Agencies that monitor financial markets also have a dual role. They monitor the integrity of the system and they also want people to participate in financial markets. That is a false argument.

[Stéphane Dion, Liberal, Saint-Laurent—Cartierville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague three very quick questions.

First, does my colleague know of any other democracy that prohibits or quite simply limits the responsibility of the chief electoral officer to encourage voter turnout? Is there another democracy that does that?

Second, are there any democratic countries that are allowed to promote voting among people who are too young to vote, but not among people who are of age to vote? Is there any logic to that nonsense?

Third, does my colleague know of a single study on the sociology of voting that shows that the main reason why people, especially young people, do not vote is that they do not know when, where and how to vote? Is there a single study that came to that simply absurd conclusion?

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot name a single study or a single democracy.

This bill is harming Canada's international reputation. There are even experts in the United States who have spoken about our electoral reform bill. An expert came from Europe to tell us it is a mistake.

As a country, we should be feeding the flame of Canadian democracy, not depriving it of oxygen. We must protect our international image as a healthy, well-developed democracy.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is great to stand and speak to the fair elections act. As the chair of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, I have gone what seems many months not being able to say too much about what I was, I will not say forced, but forced to sit and listen to, but it certainly was a long study. I was proud to commit the time to try to move forward and work together with the members of the committee on this piece of legislation.

I would like to start with the fact that the members of the committee worked very hard together and worked fairly well together. Sure, we had our rough points, but we worked pretty hard.

If you will indulge me, Mr. Speaker, the member for Louis-Saint-Laurent contributed well and even had to celebrate her birthday at a night meeting of the committee, so we thank her for that sacrifice, also the member for Toronto—Danforth and the member for Hamilton Centre whose voice rings in my ears even when I am away from this place. There was the member for Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, the member for Wild Rose, and the member for Etobicoke Centre. A great fill-in member, the member for Oxford was there a lot. The member for Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington and the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands spent a great deal of time with us at committee to look at this legislation and move it forward.

We know it was long hours and I am told it was around 31 hours of study at committee. As the chair, one must pay attention and the hours seemed much longer than 31. Some 72 witnesses appeared at committee. On top of that, there were many more briefs from people who were unable to attend or who sent us briefs with their opinions. We had witnesses by teleconference from Australia, more than one from the United States, and from across Canada by teleconference and in person at the committee.

Every witness who was asked for by every party in the House to attend was asked to come. Those who could, did. Those who could not, sent briefs or at least shared with us their information. We wanted to make sure that we gave every opportunity to each person who asked could those good people attend.

From the beginning the committee set a date for the completion of its study by motion to the committee, so it was not a surprise to anyone at committee when we were going to end. The pile of work heading toward that date sometimes seemed like it would not move, but it did. The reason for the date for the conclusion is that the Chief Electoral Officer had told us ahead of time the election legislation coming forward needed to be in his hands by a certain date so that by the election 2015 in October, he would be able to run an election on that piece of legislation. We set the date.

All members knew of this deadline. Some chose to use their time for other purposes, some for much longer debate than perhaps was needed, but all in all, we shared good information with each other. As a committee, I am very thankful we were able to work together and at the end of the day, take a pretty great piece of legislation and make it even better with some amendments that we were able to move forward.

Let me discuss some of those. Canadians have spoken. The information we are hearing from them, certainly on the voter identification side, is that they are reasonably pleased with where we are headed. I can say now what I heard in my riding while in coffee shops, at church suppers and yes, I do attend the odd one. People would come to my constituency and ask questions about the fair elections act. There are a number of people who watch this on TV and say they know I am the guy from the fair elections act.

Yes, I know; I have a cult following out there now, but even in my own constituency office, I was able to share with them where we are headed.

My constituents would say, “What about this voter ID thing?” I would say, “Well, I know you as a good Canadian citizen. What part of it is bothering you?” They said they had heard that some people would not get to vote. I asked them if they believed that people in Canada, in a modern democracy, should be able to go to the polls and not have to prove who they are. Every person I spoke to in my riding, bar none, asked what I meant when I said that people could vote without proving who they were. What did I mean when I said that no identification was needed?

I told them that was the difference.That was what we were discussing at committee. What we were trying to deal with was whether it is okay for people to come in and have someone else say who they are, or whether they should have to pull out something and say, “This is who I am and this is where I live”.

We have made an amendment to the bill to help with this last part about saying where they live. We did that because we think that if someone can say, “Hi, this is who I am”, then someone else at the same poll who has identification could help them with the part about where they live.

Many people in the riding during that time talked about how there are 18 months until the next election. If someone knew right now that they did not have the identification that they needed, could they not go and get it? We even heard this from some of the testimony at committee.

There are some great community groups out there. I think it was the London Homeless Coalition member who told us at committee that the organization had a whole group that does nothing but help people get ID, because people do not need ID just for this. It is really important to them and they really want to make sure that people can vote, but the organization worries about people needing identification for some other basic things in life, so it has a group that helps people find identification.

Voters and constituents in the riding suggested that with enough notice of what the requirement might be, people should be able to go out and get ID in order to vote. Both of the parties across from me require ID to vote in specific party functions in their parties. Members of both opposition parties must show ID if they want to pick a leader, and the great citizens of Elgin—Middlesex—London at least agreed with me at the time that it would probably be a good idea to have to show ID to vote.

While we were at this committee, many people were following us, whether it was on CPAC or in other ways. A high school group in my riding was following closely on CPAC, and after one of the meetings, I had a meeting with them by Skype. I love to get out and speak to all the high school groups that I can about what the job of a member of Parliament is like.

This high school spent a great deal of time following this committee, and because of the length of the meetings, I could not always be in my riding, so I met with them on Skype one day. Online, we went round the room, and I asked if there was anybody there who could not vote tomorrow. They all said no, that ID was or could be available to them if they wanted to go out and get it, and that they could certainly get it by the October 2015 deadline.

Again, we can make a great piece of legislation even better by amending it to include taking an oath. If a person goes to vote and can prove who they are but not their address by showing ID, and they are at a polling station with someone else who has ID displaying who they are and where they live, both of them can sign an oath attesting to the address of the person who does not have the ID with an address on it.

As one of my constituents who I believe was a farmer said to me, “I can get all the ID I need to go vote, yet other people could go into a voting station without all that ID. Why don't they just do the same work I did to get it?”

I also wanted to share that there have been a number of elections over the years I have been on this committee, and after every election the Chief Electoral Officer sends a report to our committee for us to review. I have now been through three of them, perhaps four, and three times the Chief Electoral Officer sent us a group of recommendations to look at. Many of the recommendations over the years from the Chief Electoral Officer for additions or changes to the Elections Act are in fact in the fair elections act. I wanted to make sure we shared that also.

While I am talking about the Chief Electoral Officer and his powers, his ability to run elections, we should compliment Elections Canada on what it does. In my riding, there are over 200 polls. There are 308 ridings across this country, so Elections Canada runs an event that has many points of interest and many places someone can go. Hopefully it gets all the people to the right place at the right time, which is part of why I think the great suggestion is that Elections Canada spend the majority or all of its time telling people when and where and what time to go vote.

Many of the surveys that we heard during this study and have heard at procedure and House affairs when looking at previous Chief Electoral Officers' reports tell us why people do not vote. The question is always asked after every election, after the votes are cast and we are all here. Elections Canada does a pretty good job of doing surveys itself or of hiring other people to do surveys to find out whether an individual voted, and if not, why not. In every case the leading answer was, “I was really busy. I did not find the time”. In this piece of legislation we have created another whole day of pre-election dates that we can now vote on.

Many citizens say in those same surveys that they did not know they could go to the election office and vote at any time during an election. They say they did not know there was a special ballot or that there were different election days. They thought that they had to show up on election day but did not really know where it was. That is why they did not vote, so telling people where and when and what ID to bring is pretty important.

I was searching through the paper on the weekend, trying to decide what else I might do. I was in the movie section, and there were some great ads for movies. The ads told me what time the movie started and what theatre they were at. Based on that, I could make my decision about what I might do that evening. There was no place in the ad that told me why I should go to see that movie. It might have listed who the stars were, and that might help me make up my mind. However, I think it is our job as the 308 men and women in this House to really provide the why to voters. It is our job to tell people why they should come out and vote for Joe. or why they should come out and exercise a ballot at any time.

It is not clear that it is the job of anyone other than the political people in this country to do the why. If Elections Canada does a great job of telling people the where, the when, the ID to bring, the different methods, the visit to the returning office, or the using of the special ballot for voting offshore, that would be one job absolutely taken care of. They can leave it up to us to talk about the why.

As I said, I spent some time in this job talking at schools. I love going to schools and talking to students about my job as a member of Parliament, which, by the way, is the best job one could ever have, and we certainly share that.

I mentioned in my statement about even using Skype to talk to high school classes. We have asked the Chief Electoral Officer to keep that in place as another way of making a great bill better. There was an amendment to ask Elections Canada to please keep things like the student vote in place. I have been active, and I know many of my colleagues from both sides of the aisle have been very active, in student votes in past elections. We get high school students talking about how elections work, what they look like, what it takes to be a candidate, and then they actually hold an election at the high school level. We get them very interested in being voters from that point on.

I am glad with the changes allowing the Chief Electoral Officer to use a program called “Student Vote”. Getting it back into the schools is a fantastic change in this piece of legislation.

One of the other things we talked a lot about and heard about at committee was something we heard about more before the legislation came forward and maybe less afterward. It was using the CRTC as a way of watching and regulating voter contact. I think I can safely say that in the last election—and I will try to underestimate it—I made about 200,000 phone calls in my constituency. We had two town hall meetings calling every house in the riding, and then there were a number of others, whether it was to get out the vote or to tell people about advance poll day. We called just about everyone there too. A great number of phone calls were made in the riding. Did I ever hear from anyone from CRTC? No, because if there are rules and we follow them, this is not a problem.

If the phone call comes in and it is “Hi, I'm Joe Preston. I'm your Conservative candidate, and I—”

[The Deputy Speaker, Joe Comartin]

Order, please. It is unparliamentary to use a member's name, including one's own name. It is the third time it has happened in the last week, so you are not the only one guilty of the practice, but it is in fact improper.

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

Mr. Speaker, I forgot I cannot refer to members of Parliament, including myself. I take it back and I apologize profusely for that breach in procedure. It is probably wrong that the chair of the procedure and House affairs committee did not do that right.

I made a number of phone calls. Every one of them said what my name was and who I was representing and gave a phone number where I could be reached. Then it went on with whatever the message was, such as reminding people that advance polls were tomorrow. At the end of it I again said what my name was and where I could be reached. If that is done properly, there is no trouble at all.

The CRTC told us at committee that there is much good use of telephones during campaigns, and they would be able to take on the role of how we work together as politicians during campaigns. There would be certain rules to follow, and we should all know them ahead of time or we should all be aware of them if we are not, but the CRTC would be able to take over and tell us if anything like robocalls happened. By adding this piece, by taking that whole electronic monitoring aspect and putting it into CRTC, I think we have been able to make it a better piece of legislation.

I would like to finish by thanking the committee, all of our witnesses, and Canadians who care a lot about how we get elected, how important it is that we do it properly, and how important it is that it be a rules-based system. In a mature democracy, from what I have heard from my constituents, asking people to prove who they are before they vote is probably appropriate. I also thank my helpers, the other members of the committee, for doing the hard lifting.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as one of the hon. member's little helpers, I am pleased to ask a question.

The member tries very hard to be a fair-minded chair. I think he was a little more successful in a minority government, but that is probably as much a biased comment as anything.

I will be very direct. Given that the member worked very hard to be seen as fair-minded and reasonable, as the chair of the procedure and house affairs committee, I would like to ask if he believes that it would be fair-minded and reasonable, before any government attempted to change the election laws in Canada, for the government to at least consult the Chief Electoral Officer and the Commissioner of Canada Elections? Is it not common sense to consult at least those two people before any government were to bring in a brand new election law?

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

Mr. Speaker, as I said, I hear that voice in my sleep. Sometimes I sleep with the TV on, and he might very well be on it.

The answer is, as I shared during my speech, that over my number of years as the chair of procedure and House affairs, the Chief Electoral Officer has had much contact with us, has appeared at committee a number of times after each election, and shares with us a group of recommendations that he would like to see as changes to the Elections Act before the next election.

Of course he has done that. I think some 38 of his recommendations are in the fair elections act. The consultation at the committee level and in conversation with the Chief Electoral Officer has taken place.

[Rodger Cuzner, Liberal, Cape Breton—Canso, NS]

Mr. Speaker, my friend and colleague and big London Knights fan, in his speech, identified the fact that Elections Canada should not be putting forward a reason why Canadians should be going to vote. It should not be involved in the why, just in the where and when.

However, last year the government, in the Canada job grants ads that it spent millions and millions of dollars on, told Canadians why they should be accessing this program that did not even exist. There was a why there.

Could the member square that circle for me?