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.

[Marc Mayrand]

Again, that's provided by the legislation. I guess it's reasonable in the context that these workers work in pairs. They are appointed by.... There is a check and balance built in.

I would point out something which I will raise in another forum. Bill C-23 goes much further. That's the bill that proposes to reform the Elections Act. That would be a concern for me because, from now on, under the new bill, poll supervisors will be appointed by the party that won the riding in the last election. Poll supervisors oversee what's happening at the polls, and they are resource persons to those workers who work in teams. Again, I'm not sure, in reading this in the context of this piece of legislation, how they would fit with one another.

On one hand, this bill requires the utmost non-partisanship on my part and the part of all agents of Parliament. On the other hand, another bill builds an element of partisanship into the system. I'm not sure how we're going to deal with that in the future.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you. Metaphorically. Mr. Reid is such a help.

To help you, I want to restate, for probably the umpteenth time—but I'd rather be restating this offer than my version of hammering my shoe in my hand to get the attention of this government—that I, or another representative of this party, am available 24-7 to respond to an overture from the government to sit down and try to negotiate a fair compromise.

Now, when I say the word compromise, as someone who is an old—you know, that used to be just an expression, now it's more descriptive—negotiator from way back, I get the fact that we're not going to get everything we're asking for because that would be a different approach, and we could have taken that one: we're going to stand on this, and it's this or nothing. But, no, my leader was very clear. My marching orders were to do everything possible to get a fair process in place. We were not only to do that, but were to be seen to do that, which is why I have put every card on the table along the way, no games. I haven't spun anything.

When the parliamentary secretary and I began our discussions off-line, as people knew we were doing, they started very positively. I've done other negotiations with the parliamentary secretary and I can't think of a time we didn't find a way through a dilemma, a compromise we could both live with, and the other parties as well. Then it stopped. I don't know why. Obviously I wasn't told, but it certainly felt like the iron curtain of the PMO coming down and saying, “This is over”. So in negotiations, I entered those negotiations and I didn't think I'd come out of here with everything. I had no expectation at all that I'd be going back to my leader and saying, “There you go. Got it all signed, sealed, and delivered. Won everything.” No, I didn't expect that at the beginning of those discussions. Neither should the government, however, believe that a negotiation means that they get their way and we stay here, hidden in plain sight in the capital. No. The purpose of negotiation is that everybody gives a little bit.

Would we get all that we wanted, even though we're fighting for Canadians' rights everywhere? Any time you make a compromise, you run the risk that one of the opposition parties is going to come after you because they accuse you of not staying the course, and not being strong enough, and strident, and principled, yada, yada, yada. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

It's not as important as this bill. We are prepared to take that hit, if you will, by not getting all that we're asking for. But, Chair, that kind of an approach requires two parties, not just one. So the government would have to accept, for at least some of the time, that this committee studying Bill C-23 would be outside the safety and security of Ottawa and would be in the communities where people live.

What is that number? How many? That's what we would negotiate, Chair.

This is my dilemma for you, Chair. Unless and until the government indicates that they're prepared to be reasonable, it's hard for me to give you the reasonableness, as you see it from your perspective, that you would like from me, which is to just shut up, stop talking, and let things go on. But you see, Chair, the problem right there is that the government is insisting that it's their way.... I was going to say, “It's their way or the highway”, but actually they won't go to the highway, so maybe you can think of something more clever than that. But it's their way or no way.

You want me to hurry? Are you serious?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

My colleague is telling me I could teach logic. That makes my heart sing. I hope my mom is watching. She'd be thrilled to know that someone like you would think that, because she still hasn't gotten over the fact that I left high school in grade nine. Well, it's my mom, and I don't blame her. It's a good thing my daughter wasn't that stupid.

However, back to the point. I have to stay on the point. I want to play, Scott, but the chair is going to keep me on the point.

I think the point was, if I can remember that complex formula again.... I'm not very good at this stuff. There was a bill about the Northwest Territories. The committee studying the bill went to the Northwest Territories to give the people who live there and who are affected by it a chance to have their say. By extension, we're suggesting that BillC-23, being studied by PROC, should actually go out into the country and give the people who are affected by the bill their say. I think that was it. That was the complex, radical, over-the-top, obstructionist idea that those maniacs over in the official opposition came up with. I think that connection can be made. Then again, I could be wrong. But it seems to me that there is a direct connection.

Where does that leave us, as we get down to less than the last half-hour of this fun meeting? Where does that leave us? Maybe it's time for a recap, Mr. Chair.

A recap would suggest that we have a motion in front of this committee. The witnesses we've asked for—I'd be shocked if that's controversial. I may eat those words, but my assumption is that if we can get a process nailed down, then that's the toughest part. Usually, at this committee, and at most committees I've been on, Mr. Chair, under your leadership, once we've crunched where, when, and how long, who is usually fairly straightforward. Reasonable people come to a reasonable conclusion, and fairness guides it. It works. Imagine that—Canadians, eh?

That really is not the key part. I put it in there because I worry about what they might do if we don't. But that's really not the key focus today. It's not the controversial part. It's the next part.

Just to remind us all, what was that request again? This is in the motion:

That the Committee request to travel to all regions of Canada, (Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, Northern Ontario, the Prairies, British Columbia and the North), as well as downtown urban settings (such as the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver) and rural and remote settings, and that the Committee request that this travel take place in March and April 2014.

If we were to do that, Mr. Chair, here's what could happen. I know you've been putting the pressure on me as the spokesperson for the process on this, with my colleague Mr. Scott being the key lead on the bill. You've asked me to get us to the business part as quickly as possible. You're doing everything you can within the rules to cajole and encourage. I know that if you could, you'd reach out and bat me one on the ear, just to try to get me to....

I respect that, Mr. Chair. I understand where...except the bat on the ear. I wouldn't respect it that much. But it was a nice turn of phrase, I thought.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We will call our meeting to order, meeting number 17.

We are here on the orders of the day of Bill C-23, which is before the committee.

I will remind the members that we are televised today and we are doing committee business of course. Mr. Christopherson has the floor, but before he takes it I would like to ask if we can get to committee business today, please. We are here as a steering committee trying to plan our study of Bill C-23, and I ask Mr. Christopherson to start but remember we'd like get to this piece of legislation one day.

Mr. Lukiwski, on a point of order, we're starting early today.

Statements by Member for Mississauga—Streetsville

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I was in the chamber when the original comments were made a few weeks ago and then yesterday when the member stood in his place to provide clarification.

It is important to recognize that members often stand up and make accusations that someone has misrepresented the facts. Over the years of being a parliamentarian, I could safely say that on at least a dozen or so occasions a member has said one thing, with the intent to leave an impression, but then had those comments thrown back at the member and raised in a matter of privilege to say that the member originally misled the house.

I want to go back to the specific statement on February 6 that the member for Mississauga—Streetsville made, and I will quote directly from the document, which states:

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.

However, the following is the important part, which I think we have to take note of, and I am quoting the member directly:

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.

This is not just an off-the-cuff comment. This is a very serious allegation.

We know that there is a great deal of debate on Bill C-23, the fair elections act. I suspect, Mr. Speaker, that you will likely find that Elections Canada, among others, is following the debate. Therefore, as the NDP House leader has already articulated, and which I will reinforce, one could question why a couple of weeks later, yesterday, the member stood up inside the chamber and stated:

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order with respect to debate that took place on February 6 in this House regarding the fair elections act. I made a statement in the House during the debate that is not accurate. I just want to reflect the fact that I have not personally witnessed individuals retrieving voter notification cards from the garbage cans or from the mailbox areas of apartment buildings. I have not personally witnessed that activity and want the record to properly show that.

I would like to highlight two things.

One is that, having commented on many matters of privilege related to misrepresentation, I have heard numerous Speaker rulings, which say that all members are hon. members and one has to be able to clearly demonstrate that the misrepresentation was intentional.

It is very difficult to narrow down what would be a privileged issue on this particular point of misrepresentation. A member of Parliament would have to intentionally mislead or lie and then admit to intentionally misleading and lying, and to say both, inside the chamber, in order to qualify as a violation of our rule of misrepresentation, which is in fact what we have here. It is unique in terms of the privileges that I have seen raised over the many years I have been a parliamentarian.

Let there be no doubt that it was not an offline comment. This was seriously articulated by the member. He stated that he saw individuals with take-out voter ID cards who then used them in an illegal fashion. It is very clear. I understand that he implied that on more than one occasion. We should be looking seriously at that.

Let me add a second aspect to this. Earlier I made reference to Elections Canada. We should get more clarification from the member on why he waited so long to apologize. Is it because Elections Canada approached the member after reviewing what he said? It is a very serious allegation. Did the member share his concerns with Elections Canada prior to raising them here in the House?

It seems to me that the reason the member stood yesterday is he felt that his statement in the House was going to be looked at seriously by Elections Canada and other stakeholders because the accusation that he made during second reading was serious. There was illegal behaviour within that election which the member would have been aware of, if we believe what he said actually took place.

I am very curious, and I am sure many members are curious, about what the member actually saw. He tried to correct the record, but he did not provide very much detail. Did he see some of the voter cards in the blue bins and just left them there? Did he see anyone approach the blue bins? Did he see some people pull out the cards and throw them in the garbage? Did he follow to a campaign office the individuals who pulled out those voter cards? A lot of questions need to be answered.

I would suggest that this issue is a matter of privilege. I would also suggest that the member come forward and articulate more details or appear before PROC to answer a series of questions on whether he violated our rules.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do rise on a question of privilege. I rise today pursuant to Standing Order 48(1).

It has been demonstrated that the member for Mississauga—Streetsville has deliberately misled the House. Given the seriousness of the matter, it is my duty as a member of Parliament and House leader for the New Democrats to bring the matter to the attention of the Chair and to the House. Members of the House are well aware of the rights and immunities afforded to parliamentarians, so that they may carry out their duties as members of Parliament. However, for the sake of clarity, let me remind my colleagues that on page 65 in Erskine May' s Treatise on The Law, Privileges, Proceedings and Usage of Parliament, “parliamentary privilege” is defined as:

...the sum of the peculiar rights enjoyed by each House collectively...and by Members of each House individually, without which they could not discharge their functions....

What I believe we are looking at here is a contempt of Parliament, one that is an offence against the authority and dignity of this House, one that chips away at the foundation of our parliamentary democracy and the requisite for healthy and honest debate. This is a serious charge. We take it seriously. We would insist that the government also do so.

Let me take a moment to provide the House with an account of what has taken place. In hearing my remarks, Mr. Speaker, I will ask you to find that the grounds exist that this is a prima facie contempt of Parliament, at which point I will be prepared to move a motion to have the matter referred to the appropriate committee for further study.

Yesterday morning, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville rose in the House and said the following:

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order with respect to debate that took place on February 6 in this House regarding the fair elections act.

I made a statement in the House during the debate that is not accurate. I just want to reflect the fact that I have not personally witnessed individuals retrieving voter notification cards from the garbage cans or from the mailbox areas of apartment buildings. I have not personally witnessed that activity and want the record to properly show that.

Let us take a look at what it was that the member for Mississauga—Streetsville said in the debate on February 6 while the House was debating the government's unfair elections act at second reading, under time allocation imposed by the current government. It seems clear-cut to me and to others that the member was providing misleading statements in the House, given what he told the House just yesterday. In a question for the Minister of State for Western Economic Diversification, the member for Mississauga—Streetsville said:

Mr. Speaker, I want to talk a bit about this vouching system again.... 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 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.

Does the minister not believe this kind of thing will get cleaned up properly with this bill?

Later in the day, the member rose again to mislead the House during the questions and comments portion of his own speech. He said:

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. 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.

The context of this, and why this is equally important to the fact that the member misled the House, is that he misled the House to justify the reason his government has brought in its unfair elections act. He has brought evidence forward as a member of Parliament, whom we take on faith as telling the truth when he does it, saying this is the reason the government has brought in this bill, to end the vouching system that some tens of thousands of Canadians use properly, by claiming there is evidence of voter fraud that he has seen and witnessed and brought forth as evidence to this House. That is a serious charge. It is a serious charge and may sway members of this House to, in fact, support the government's legislation, when they ought not to if it were not the truth.

Members must know that they have the information needed to do their job well, which is to represent their constituents. The government wasted no time in passing Bill C-23 in the House at second reading by using a time allocation motion. Now, it is fast-tracking it through the committee stage without having heard from interested Canadians and members of civil society from across the country.

To think that it is somehow acceptable for members of the government to come into the House and make up stories as justification for the supposed merits of this terrible bill is totally ludicrous and should not be allowed to simply pass, by having the member rise more than two weeks after the fact, during a private member's business hour, and reveal to the House that this was all, in fact, untrue.

In his ruling on February 1, 2002, on a similar matter, Speaker Milliken stated:

The authorities are consistent about the need for clarity in our proceedings and about the need to ensure the integrity of the information provided by the government to the House.

The authorities to which Speaker Milliken was referring include, but are not limited to, the following: House of Commons Procedure and Practice, second edition, which states, on page 115:

Misleading a Minister or a Member has also been considered a form of obstruction and thus a prima facie breach of privilege.

Page 63 of the 22nd edition of Erskine May states:

...it is of paramount importance that ministers give accurate and truthful information to Parliament, correcting any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity.

Erskine May is even more precise when a member later admits that the statements he or she made were not true. On page 111 of Erskine May's Parliamentary Practice, 22nd edition, it states:

The Commons may treat the making of a deliberately misleading statement as a contempt. In 1963 the House resolved that in making a personal statement which contained words which he later admitted not to be true, a former Member had been guilty of grave contempt.

Mr. Speaker, on May 7, 2012, and in a handful of rulings since, you have stated the following regarding the conditions that have emerged surrounding misleading statements in the House, which I will cite:

It has become accepted practice in this House that the following elements have to be established when it is alleged that a member is in contempt for deliberately misleading the House: one, it must be proven that the statement was misleading; two, it must be established that the member making the statement knew at the time that the statement was incorrect; and three, that in making the statement, the member intended to mislead the House.

That is a clear and high bar to prove all of those three conditions in order to find a contempt of Parliament: that the statement has to be untrue, that it has to be established that the member knew it at the time to be untrue, and that when making this untruthful statement to the House, the member was intending to mislead the House. This seems to me a very straightforward case, and I am sure all members of the House would agree.

The first of these conditions has been met, since the proof that the statement was misleading comes directly from the member himself when he admitted that what he said on February 6 was false. The second condition has been met since the statements in question have to do with what the member of Mississauga—Streetsville did or did not personally witness. On February 6, he told the House that he was relating something to the House that he had actually seen and then yesterday told us he had in fact not seen these things at all. What we are talking about is voter fraud, something very serious and not casual.

The third of these conditions has been met since there can be no other explanation as to why the member for Mississauga—Streetsville made the misleading statements that he did over two weeks ago, other than to deliberately and intentionally mislead the House on an important piece of legislation that affects all Canadians. He clearly intended to mislead the House by fabricating a story and then tried to use it to justify why members should be voting in favour of the Conservatives' unfair elections act.

Members of the House will remember a case in 2001-02 in which my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst, among others, argued that Senator Eggleton—who was defence minister at the time—had deliberately misled the House. It happened during question period, when he was responding to questions regarding how much he knew about when exactly prisoners captured by Canadian troops in Afghanistan were transferred to the Americans.

Speaker Milliken ruled that there was a prima facie case of privilege and referred the issue to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs for further study.

After hearing a former clerk of the House, Bill Corbett, testify about the issue, the committee indicated the following in its 50th report to the House:

...it is not uncommon for inaccurate statements to be made in the course of debate or Question Period in the House. The issue is whether the statements were made deliberately, with the intent of misleading the House or its Members. In the case where a Member later admits to having knowingly provided false information...the issue of intent is clear.

Mr. Speaker, let me repeat that last sentence because it is important in satisfying the conditions you have set out.

In the case where a Member later admits to having knowingly provided false information...the issue of intent is clear.

We are at the point in the life cycle of the current Conservative government where it seems to be out of gas and spinning its wheels. Bill C-23, the unfair elections act, is creating solutions to problems in our voting system that do not exist, when the real problems of our electoral system have often been the ones the Conservatives have perpetrated on the Canadian public.

The member for Mississauga—Streetsville went so far as to make up a story to try to persuade members to vote a certain way on this flawed bill. Time and again, the Conservatives' lack of judgment and these types of dirty tricks are exposed. However, despite all of this, instead of changing their behaviour to fit the rules of the game, they are changing the rules of the game in order to fit their bad behaviour.

In a ruling on October 19, 2000, regarding misleading statements made in the House, Speaker Parent stated:

Only on the strongest and clearest evidence can the House or the Speaker take steps to deal with cases of attempts to mislead members.

Mr. Speaker, with the strongest and clearest evidence at out disposal, I would urge you to find that a prima facie case of contempt of Parliament has occurred, at which point I will be prepared to move the appropriate motion to have this case referred to the standing committee.

This bill is a contempt on the voting public. The member for Mississauga—Streetsville has performed a contempt in this House. It is a sad and perhaps tragic irony, but it is a fact. The conditions that this House has laid out—you yourself included, in your statements and rulings to guide all members in the way we conduct ourselves—are the conditions we have applied to this case. It is clear in all three of those very precise indications and tests that the member has misled the House knowingly, which is a prima facie case of contempt. The fact that he did it in a bill that is meant to disrupt and perhaps further erode the confidence of Canadians about our electoral system is tragic.

Opposition Motion—Instruction to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs Regarding Bill C-23

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, once again, the only thing the Conservatives have managed to do today is avoid saying anything about the content of the motion.

The motion is not Bill C-23. The minister prevented us from spending more time debating that bill. Then he had the nerve to rise while we were talking about a motion to let the committee do its work properly after preventing us from engaging in further debate in the House. Maybe if he had been there when I expressed my opinion, or if others had had more time to say what they think about this issue, he would have the answer to his question.

I would advise him to read the motion, since he likes to tell us to read his bill. Our motion is a little shorter than his bill. He should read those ten lines and then tell us that what the motion proposes is anti-democratic.

[Françoise Boivin, NDP, Gatineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am quite pleased to have the opportunity to speak to our opposition motion. First, I would like to mention that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for York South—Weston.

I am pleased to rise to speak to the motion because I have already had the opportunity to speak to Bill C-23. I believe that it is important to point out that this motion is being brought forward on an opposition day.

It is an opposition motion, as the previous speaker, the member for Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, pointed out, and it concerns some very specific points in the very specific context of Bill C-23. Time allocation has been imposed to prevent discussions from continuing and to shut down debate. A time limit has been imposed in order to send the bill to committee as quickly as possible, which will prevent many of our colleagues from expressing their views on this matter.

Based on what I have heard today in the House, what is about to happen in the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs may not be what I would call a great example of democracy.

When I arrived in Parliament for the first time, in 2004, I had the great pleasure, as a new MP, of sitting on the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. I recognize that there was a minority government, but that was another reason for us to work together.

I heard the member, who is the vice-chair of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, tell us that the committee members usually work together quite well. I think it is important to explain why to the people in the House.

The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs belongs to all of us. This committee is responsible for ensuring that our democracy is healthy and is working well. The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs deals with questions of privilege or the various issues that the chair is sometimes called upon to consider. In general, the members who sit on this committee realize that they have the very important job of ensuring that ours is a true democracy and that this democracy and our ability to speak in the House are not undermined. Our rules and procedures already do enough to enable the government to play hardball when introducing its bills.

We need to put this bill in perspective. It is not a matter of repeating speeches similar to the ones we heard on Bill C-23. I am sure everyone here had the pleasure of reading that brick of a bill.

I agree with the member who spoke before me. He said that the bill contained a lot of technical aspects. However, there are also a lot of substantive elements in this bill. I was shocked to hear them say with a straight face that the bill was all technicalities. I certainly do not think that figuring out how we can get people to exercise their right to vote is a technicality. Figuring out who will oversee how Canadians exercise their right to vote, how our elections are carried out and so on, is not a technicality. I think it is important to point that out.

Now we have a motion that was moved by my colleague from Hamilton Centre. As I was reading the motion, which starts with, “That it be an instruction to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs that...”, I could not believe that we were forced to move a motion in the House to obtain a right that I think should have been a sine qua non in Bill C-23.

I read the motion and saw what it was about. Sometimes, during discussions that take place in the committee I sit on, I have concerns about the daily exercise of a real democracy. When I hear speeches like the ones I have heard today and there is such a lack of discussion, I am extremely worried that this will extend to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

We all know how important consultations are. I realize that I can use Skype and my computer to consult people. However, absolutely nothing beats meeting people in person. It is not true that anyone who wants to voice their opinion of certain decisions that are about to be made can come to Ottawa and speak their mind.

Earlier, I heard my colleague talk about a trip taken by the members of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs. I was probably the only member of the committee who refused to go along. Is it right to travel to Australia, New Zealand, England or Ireland to study the changes in the electoral system, when we could read about them in a book by the wonderful Law Reform Commission of Canada?

It seems to me that, instead, we should go see what impact Bill C-23 will have on certain communities in Canada and certain groups that are targeted by some of the measures. We should talk with different groups, not just about the issue of vote suppression, which is extremely important and a major concern of the NDP, but also about the fact that this Conservative government thinks low voter turnout is a result of Elections Canada failing to do its job to promote the elections.

Last week, I went to my riding and talked with some people, including some young people from Nicolas-Gatineau composite school. There was a fundraising activity organized by Alexandre Guindon, a bright young guy in his final year of high school. We talked about the current state of Canadian democracy and how young people are not interested in voting.

If youth are disinterested, it is not because Elections Canada is not doing its job. It is because this kind of issue has been treated with such a cavalier attitude. We are faced with a government that does not pay much attention to the existing rules and then changes other rules. That raises some questions. The public is becoming somewhat cynical, and I am seeing that not just among young people, but among seniors as well. They are saying that voting is becoming increasingly complicated, that they no longer know what is required and that they have no desire to go vote. We need to meet with these people in their communities and reach out to them.

It is impossible to be against the idea and possibility of meeting with groups if none of them have made that request to the committee. It concerns me to see that the Conservative majority on the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs is standing in the way of openness and the full and appropriate exercise of democratic rights.

I am gravely concerned to see that this has spread all the way to this committee, because this is the committee that protects our privileges. If it is unable to protect Canadians, I wonder how capable it will be of protecting those who represent Canadians in the House.

Everyone should reflect on that for a minute. We were told to read the bill and we read it. Now, the Conservatives need to read the motion and realize that it will not bite. It simply says that Canada, a democratic role model for other countries on how to exercise the right to vote, should start by looking in the mirror.

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

Mr. Speaker, I sincerely thank my hon. colleague for his intervention. I have been working with that member on the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs from the very beginning.

When he speaks, he often raises excellent points. I heard many in his speech here today. I think some elements need a little clarification.

He told a lot of anecdotes, so I will also use a bit more of an anecdotal approach. Personally, for several years—I mean about four or five years—I lived far away from my parents while I was in school, and I never changed my address. I did not have any of the things that students are asked to have in order to vote where I was. I therefore always used vouching in order to be able to vote, since I lived a 10-hour drive from my parents' place.

I wonder if the member could explain how he can justify the fact that someone like me who is interested in politics would not have been able to vote in federal elections if the measures proposed in Bill C-23 had been in effect at the time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to join the debate here. I have listened with considerable interest to the foregoing discussions, some of which, to be honest, seem a bit histrionic given the nature of the subject matter we are dealing with.

I have spent over a decade on the procedure and House affairs committee. Normally, people ask me how I manage to pull through on such an uninteresting committee and how I keep myself awake. However, as members can see, there is fun, travel, and lots of histrionics involved in all of this stuff, apparently.

The motion proposes to have the committee do three things with regard to Bill C-23, an act to amend the Canada Elections Act.

First of all, the motion proposes to hear witnesses, and it provides what I think is a very reasonable list of them:

…witnesses from, but not limited to, Elections Canada, Political Parties as defined under the Canada Elections Act, the Minister of State who introduced the bill, representatives of first nations, anti-poverty groups, groups representing persons with disabilities, groups representing youth advocates and students, as well as specific groups which have been active in society on elections rules….

It is all good, and I can think of others that I would add to that list.

The motion has three things, and I will drop down to the third, which is:

…proceed to clause-by-clause consideration of this bill after these hearings have been completed, with a goal to commence clause-by-clause consideration for May 1, 2014.

This is probably a reasonable timeline more or less, and one could quibble over that. However, in general, I do not think it is an unreasonable timeline.

Then, in the middle of the motion, is to have the power

…to travel to all regions of Canada, (Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, Northern Ontario, the Prairies, British Columbia and the North), as well as downtown urban settings… and rural and remote settings, and that the Committee request that this travel take place in March and April 2014….

As a member of the committee, I would get to join in on this road show. Putting aside the small quibble that I never considered northern Ontario to be a separate region of Canada on a scale with, say, Quebec, I find it to be a fairly reasonable layout of the different parts of the country we could go to. The trouble with travelling around this way is that it would not improve our ability to hear from witnesses who have worthwhile, intelligent things to say.

I had the good fortune to be on the last travelling road show of the procedure and House affairs committee about a decade ago. I think I am the last person still on the committee who was on it at the time we travelled, in that case, all over the planet to hear about ideas for electoral reform. We divided the committee into two groups. Some of us went off to Australia and New Zealand while others went off to Germany and Scotland to look at their electoral systems. We were looking at alternative electoral systems to what Canada had at the time, and still has.

I wrote about my experiences in an article, which I happen to have a copy of here, called the “Road to Electoral Reform” from the Canadian Parliamentary Review in the autumn of 2005, in which I made the following observation:

On February 1, 2005, committee members (including me) voted a travel budget of $289,695 for the European and Antipodean trips. Later, while the committee was abroad, one committee member…complained to the media about the large size of the travel budget.

It was not I who complained but a member who at the time was sitting as a Liberal and who now sits as a New Democrat. However, I concurred at the time and I still concur with the assessment that we did not get value for money on that occasion. I assume we can travel more inexpensively this time, were we to do so, than we did travelling all over the world.

For one thing, the committee insisted on travelling business class. I am sure we could all agree to travel coach, at best, and perhaps by some other means of locomotion. There was a fair bit of expense, partly because, as all such committees do, we had to ship translators, clerks, and all kinds of people, to make sure that we could function as a committee wherever we happened to be. However, it seems to be a lot of expense for not much benefit.

In the intervening years I have chaired the international human rights subcommittee. We hear frequently from experts who come from all corners of the globe by means of video conference. We have seen video conferencing vastly improve from where it was 9 or 10 years ago. We have people, not just from first world countries, but from other countries, who come in loud and clear. The fact is that we can hear from people from more or less anywhere without the need to travel, and we can provide them with simultaneous translation and so on.

Now, this is significant because we regularly hear from two different witnesses. In fact, the week before the break, we heard from one witness in Ottawa and another witness by video link at the same time We got two for the price of one in the allotted hour. We cannot do that when we are on the road, unless we also have video links on the road with us, which would be an additional expense. I cannot see how we would improve our efficiency with that.

The fact is that when we are dealing with issues like problems relating to urban groups, downtown areas, or remote areas of the country, we are going to get a lot of common issues. We are going to get distinctions too, and we will best see what those issues are if we have an interaction of the sort that can be done electronically. All of this can be done better without travelling than it can be done when we are travelling.

For example, there could be a goal to look at some form of infrastructure. If we were going to consider whether a new tunnel had to be blasted through the Rocky Mountains to accommodate a rail line, I could see the point of travelling. I cannot see the point of travelling for this sort of situation.

There was a very interesting case before the Supreme Court about a year and a half ago, in which a former Liberal member of this place, Borys Wrzesnewskyj, challenged the election of a current member of this place, the member for Etobicoke Centre. The Supreme Court heard the case, which had to do with whether it was legitimate for individuals at a seniors' residence that has closed access—these are the very elderly who have 24-hour care—and who voted in the absence of someone vouching for them, ought to have had their votes counted.

Interestingly, in that election it was the Liberal position that they should not have been allowed to vote because no vouching had taken place. That is the opposite of the position that is being taken today.

However, the interesting thing about this is that the Supreme Court of Canada held hearings in Ottawa and it was able to do so without having to travel to the site. Now that court and other courts have, on very rare occasions, travelled on location. Courts might do this sometimes for murder investigations, for example. However, in this case it did not feel the need because there was no need.

The issues that we are dealing with are issues that can be dealt with best by doing it here in Ottawa. That is a very clear example.

In the midst of saying this, I overheard a member pointing out that it was a split Supreme Court decision. That is correct. In fact, there was a majority and a minority. I am not sure how that relates to the question of whether it had to travel. First, good Lord, if we could not allow split decisions, nothing but unanimous votes could occur in this place, let alone the Supreme Court, so I cannot imagine what the member's objection is.

However, no one objected. No one on the Supreme Court, or anywhere else, objected to them holding these hearings in Ottawa. It was the best place to listen to these arguments.

I sometimes hear people using such extraordinary language in this debate that one would be left with the impression that they are talking about the kinds of civil rights abuses and voter rights abuses that took place in the American south prior to the 1960s.

I am looking at a petition that is available online where people are encouraged to write in about Bill C-23. It has made incorrect assertions.

Under Bill C-23, Voter ID cards will no longer be accepted. This will prevent thousands of students, seniors and Aboriginal people from voting.

Actually, under Bill C-23, the card that reminds people to vote will not be accepted as ID. That is very different from what is being implied here, that somehow people's identification would no longer be accepted. Of course, this would not prevent anybody from voting.

In the example I just gave of Borys Wrzesnewskyj saying that the current member for Etobicoke Centre should not be allowed to sit here, what he was saying is that we insist that individuals be deprived of their right to vote if they do not meet up with the highly technical definition, and highly restricted version, of their right under section 3 of the charter to vote. That is the position that the NDP has defended. The broader position that one has a right to vote has not been taken into account.

The NDP uses this kind of language. Here is another example from the same petition:

Bill C-23 makes it much harder for students, seniors, aboriginal people, and low-income Canadians to prove their right to vote, and will prevent many thousands of Canadians from voting.

The fact is that many people have distinct issues that can make it difficult to vote. These people include seniors, some of whom do not have the kind of ID that we often think of, such as a driver's license; students; aboriginals; and, I would mention, disabled people, particularly people with mobility issues.

I would add other groups to the list as well, such as people who have recently moved. The NDP motion makes no reference to people in suburbs. I guess I can see why the NDP has forgotten that the suburbs even exist, given the amount of electoral success it is having there. Recently constructed suburbs across the country have not been properly enumerated. In every election, this is where there are the greatest problems.

When I was first elected, I remember very distinctly that in Kanata, a suburb of Ottawa, Morgan's Grant was an area that had just been built. It is not new anymore, but it was in 2000. One polling station was set up, which included something like five or six times as many voters as any of the other polling booths at that location. The result was that after the poll shut, it took over an hour for everybody to go through and vote, simply because Elections Canada had not been aware that so many people were living in the area, which on their maps was still empty fields.

All of these people have genuine problems related to exercising their ability to vote. What these people need to know is how to exercise their franchise. How can they learn that? They can learn that if Elections Canada runs advertisements advising them how to exercise their franchise, for instance, if they have just moved into a location and have not received a voter card, or if they have been asked to go and vote on the voter card at an address that is wrong. That happens a lot. We hear all kinds of talk about how the Conservative Party was ostensibly trying to send people off to the wrong locations.

Let me tell the House about what happened in my constituency. When the riding of Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington was set up in 2004, people who lived in the town of Perth were told to go and vote in Perth Road Village, which sounded good. The local returning officer was unfamiliar with Lanark County, which had been added to the riding. However, Perth Road Village is the road from Kingston, Ontario, to Perth. Perth Road Village is an hour's drive from Perth. Therefore, residents were told to go and vote in a place that they literally could not get to.

What do people do in a situation when Elections Canada has told them to go and vote in the wrong place? What do people do if they go to the polling station they are used to going to and there are no forms to fill out so that they can vote at a location other than the one they normally vote at? Are they deprived of their ballot, their right to vote and their franchise? Those are the kinds of questions they should be answering for people, but of course, they do not do that.

Their advertising right now is all about why people should vote. We have all seen these ads from various elections. I suspect that they are extraordinarily ineffective at getting people out to vote. The ads are all about why it is people's fault that they are not getting in a vote, why they are not motivated enough to get out and vote, and why they should be motivated. If they were better human beings and better citizens, they would be out there voting. That is nonsense.

The primary reason for people not voting is that they do not know how to.

The Chief Electoral Officer does not go around knocking on doors, but during elections I do. We have all had this experience, I suspect. We knock on the door, but the person does not come down, at least not immediately. Then we realize that the reason it did not happen is that the person is an elderly shut-in on the second floor who cannot get down until a son or stepson or whoever comes and carries him or her down the stairs, or perhaps someone was changing a diaper. How are those people going to get out and vote? Letting those people know how they can vote at advance polls or how they can vote by mail, et cetera, can be an enormously valuable exercise. That is being offered.

I mentioned the highfalutin rhetoric suggesting that somehow people are being deprived of their right to vote and that somehow we face a civil rights crisis of the sort that existed in the American south. I find this deeply offensive, and I took the time to go and look up a couple of examples of the abuses that went on in that part of the world in that era to make the point that nothing of the sort exists here.

I have with me a couple of Louisiana literacy tests from the 1950s and 1960s. These were collected by a man named Jeff Schwartz, who is a former volunteer with the civil rights group Congress of Racial Equality. He has been collecting and archiving and putting online some of the forms that were used in various southern states in order to ensure that African-American voters could not participate.

The courts had agreed in the United States that it was reasonable that people had to have at least a grade 5 education or had become knowledgeable to that level in order to exercise their citizenship rights. By the way, no such rule exists in Canada. There is no requirement that a person be literate in order to vote. That is a very important distinction.

However, that requirement could then be manipulated. Local authorities could test and see whether an individual was fit to be registered to vote. The authorities would exercise these tests in a highly arbitrary manner designed to ensure that every white voter, no matter how ignorant or illiterate he or she might be, would get to be registered, and that every African-American would be excluded, no matter how intelligent, articulate, or well educated that individual might be.

Having looked at some of the questions on this test, I can say we can forget about a grade 5 education. I have been in five degree programs, including two Ph.D. programs. I have taught university and I have published two books, and I cannot figure out the answer to some of these questions.

For example, here is a question from the Louisiana form:

Write every other word in this first line and print every third word in the same line, (original type smaller and first line ended at comma) but capitalize the fifth word that you write.

What is the right answer to that question?

Question 9 from this list states, “Draw a line through the two letters below that come last in the alphabet”, and there is a series of letters.

Question 10 states, “In the first circle below write the last letter of the first word beginning with “L” , and there is a series of circles.

Another question is “Cross out the number necessary, when making the number below one million.” That is interesting. Does it mean the number below 1,000,000, which is 999,999, or does it mean to take the number with all these zeros and scratch them all out to get 1,000,000? Of course, this was designed to ensure that if I were a white guy and got it wrong, it would be right, and if I were an African-American guy and I got it right, I would be wrong anyway.

By the way, the literacy test mentions that “This test is to be given to anyone who cannot prove a fifth grade education” and “Do what you are told to do in each statement, nothing more, nothing less.” That is an important caveat that makes sure someone will fail. It continues: “Be careful as one wrong answer denotes failure of the test.” Imagine if that was on a driver's test. We would have no drivers in Canada. It then states, “You have 10 minutes to complete the test.”

I could go on and on. If I get the consent of the House, I would love to table these items so that members can examine them. If not, I can provide the email address.

My point here is there have been genuine abuses of the rights of voters. I have given an example from the United States, but we can find examples from other countries, including this one.

No such abuse is being considered or has been considered by any party that is here. The fact is that we have a good system, but we want to make it better by doing a series of technical amendments to how elections run in Canada. It would benefit the country and it would benefit democracy.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his comments. I really enjoyed working with him for many years as part of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

When we were working together in committee, we were always able to come to a consensus and move forward without constantly butting heads. However, I find his question a bit sad. I would like to remind him that during the last committee meeting, we spent an hour asking the minister questions and there was no stalling or anything of the sort. Well, that is where the committee is at right now.

During the first committee meetings about Bill C-23, the government very clearly stated that it was not completely closed to the idea of holding public hearings. That was what we proposed in exchange for our collaboration, and the government said it would look into it. In the end, the government slammed the door in our faces and said that it was out of the question.

I am wondering what happened to discussion, co-operation and understanding. I do not think that the NDP is the problem.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this motion today. It is absolutely crucial that we examine Bill C-23 properly. Not only is our motion—which calls for public hearings on the matter to be held across Canada—entirely reasonable, but these hearings are absolutely essential in order to better understand our Canadian democracy and improve the Canada Elections Act as much as possible, as it should be.

I am fortunate to be a member of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, the committee we are discussing here today, the one being asked to conduct these consultations. As vice-chair of the committee for a little over a year now, I have had the opportunity to take part in many debates. For instance, at the beginning of this period, the committee was tasked with examining the recommendations of the Chief Electoral Officer. The committee also had to produce a report on what it thought of those recommendations and on the changes that he recommended that the government make to the Canada Elections Act.

After the 2008 election, the Chief Electoral Officer made about 50 recommendations. Some were minor, while others were quite significant. They would have corrected the major problems with the Canada Elections Act. When the matter came before the committee, the process was quite long and a great deal of discussion took place.

However, the tremendous advantage of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs—and one of my colleagues here today can confirm this—is that it is one of the committees that operates most effectively on the Hill. That is my opinion. Most of the time, things are dealt with by consensus and by mutual understanding, and we almost always manage to find common ground that everyone can agree on. That is the advantage of dealing with matters that are usually non-partisan.

As for the recommendations of the Chief Electoral Officer, at the time, I thought we had an excellent discussion. In the end, we were able to produce a report that most committee members agreed on. They found many of the Chief Electoral Officer's recommendations to be worthwhile

We now have before us a bill that we have been waiting for for a very long time. It has been a long time since these changes were requested. It has been a long time since the committee tabled its report. It has been a long time since the NDP, in response to major election fraud issues, had a motion unanimously adopted in the House, outlining the specific changes that needed to be made to the Canada Elections Act as quickly as possible. This is urgent. The Chief Electoral Officer was very clear. These changes must be made as quickly as possible so that they can be implemented in time for the 2015 election.

If we wish to prevent other cases of major fraud, such as the robocalls, and other issues that emerged during the 2011 election, such as voter suppression, then yes, significant changes need to be made as quickly as possible. However, Bill C-23 contains all sorts of measures that come out of left field and do not solve anything. That is a problem.

For example, the Chief Electoral Officer made an excellent recommendation with regard to vouching: election workers should be hired in advance in order to prevent as many problems and administrative errors as possible. Right now, the Chief Electoral Officer does not have that authority. He was therefore asking to be able to hire election workers earlier in the process so that he would have more time to give them the proper training and did not have to hire workers too quickly and at the last minute. This would considerably reduce the number of administrative errors made on election day. Is this measure included in the bill? No. Instead, the government decided to completely eliminate this system, which allowed some groups of people, namely young people, people living in rural areas and others, to vote. This bill will completely deprive them of that right.

It is thus absolutely essential to go and get the opinions of the people who will be most affected by this bill, meaning people with reduced mobility, seniors, members of first nations and students.

I would like to focus on youth and students, because they are very important to me. Last spring, I tabled a motion before the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs to study voter turnout among young people.

We know this is a major problem because fewer and fewer young people are voting. The numbers are quite alarming. During the 2011 election, the 18 to 24 age group had the lowest turnout by far at 38.8%. That means that barely 38% of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 came out to vote on election day. Those who did vote used the voter card or vouching. Youth voter turnout is currently at a catastrophically low level. What is more, some of those who voted in 2011 would not have been able to if these measures had been in place.

The minister keeps saying that his bill will contribute to improving youth voter turnout. The problem is that this is not 1984 and ignorance is not an asset. Just because the minister says that the bill will improve youth voter turnout does not mean that it will magically be so. The truth is, if the Conservatives were truly interested in improving youth voter turnout, then why would they get rid of the voter card as a form of identification for voting, and why would they get rid of vouching? No other measure has made it easier for young people and students to vote.

To come back to the heart of the motion, if the Conservatives are so convinced of the merits of their measure, if they are so convinced that it will truly help young people vote more, then why would they not consult them? Why would they not go across Canada, meet with the groups most affected and ask them whether they really think that these measures will contribute to improving voter turnout at every election?

When I hear what the Conservatives have to say about how they have no intention of consulting or desire to consult, that tells me they know exactly what they are doing. I think they are perfectly aware that these measures will make it harder for young people to vote. That is their goal. That is what they are trying to achieve.

Consulting—going to see people to ask them what they think about an issue as fundamental as our democracy—is not complicated. It is something committees do all the time.

Two years ago, I participated in a diplomatic mission of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development. I went to Ukraine with an all-party group of MPs to hold public consultations. All day long, people from all over came to talk to us about democracy in Ukraine, about how it works, about what could be improved, about major problems and obstacles to democracy in Ukraine.

We did not stay in Kiev. We went all over, to all the regions. We went to Kharkiv in the east and Lviv in the west. We travelled around. We went to see people. That gave us a complete picture of the reality over there. Had we stayed here in the basement of the Centre Block, had we told the Ukrainians to Skype us and tell us what was going on in their country, I do not think we would have been able to understand the situation as well as we did.

It was an extraordinary opportunity. It is something that Parliament must do, and it is fantastic. Why can we not do the same thing here, in our own country? Why is it so hard to say that this is something very important that needs to be done? We need to go to every region across the country to meet with people and talk to them about the state of our democracy and the proposed changes. We need to ask them what they think and find out what their reality is.

We need to go to downtown Vancouver, where homelessness is an issue. We need to go up north and talk to aboriginal communities. We need to go anywhere where there are major issues. That is not too tall an order if we want to do our best to improve democracy in Canada.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I would prefer to see the committee take direction from the House rather than see what we know is going to happen, which is that the Conservatives, who are in the majority on the committee, will take their direction from the parliamentary secretary. We know that is what happens on all committees.

We heard a lot of the government spin on Bill C-23 from the member for Mississauga—Streetsville, but we heard nothing on why he is opposed to engaging Canadians in their own communities. When he was talking, I almost had a vision. That vision was that the Conservative backbenchers in this place would actually stand up for democracy, break ranks with their government, and allow a committee to travel across the country and hear from Canadians. I ask the member opposite if he thinks it might even be three or four.

I hear Conservative backbenchers get up and talk about how they are members of the government. They are not; they are members of the governing party, and they have a responsibility to their constituents to stand up.

Does the member think that one or two or three might stand up for democracy, rather than the usual situation of being puppets on a string, taking their direction from a parliamentary—

[Brad Butt, Conservative, Mississauga—Streetsville, ON]

Thank you very much for that interpretation, Mr. Speaker.

I have been here all day listening to the debate. Just about every single speaker on both sides of the House has talked about elements contained in Bill C-23 as part of the debate today. Obviously, the member for Malpeque was not paying attention.

The bill would also make it harder to break elections—

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The motion before us today is not about the fair elections act. The government already invoked closure on the fair elections act in this chamber. The motion before us today is about whether certain witnesses should appear and whether the committee should hold cross-country hearings. That is the motion. I submit that the member is out of order in his remarks by talking about the fair elections act. We are not talking about it.