Bill C-50 (Historical)

Citizen Voting Act

An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act

This enactment amends the Canada Elections Act to
(a) eliminate the international register of electors and incorporate all of the information contained in it into the Register of Electors;
(b) require electors who are resident outside Canada to make an application for registration and special ballot after the issue of the writs at each election;
(c) stipulate that electors who are resident outside Canada may only receive a special ballot for the address at which they last resided in Canada;
(d) require that electors who are applying for a special ballot under Division 3 or 4 of Part 11 include in their application for registration and special ballot proof of identity and residence and, if they apply from outside Canada, proof of Canadian citizenship;
(e) require that an external auditor perform an audit and report on election workers’ compliance with special ballot voting procedures and requirements for every election;
(f) authorize the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to provide the Chief Electoral Officer with information for the purpose of assisting the Chief Electoral Officer to, among other things, delete from the Register of Electors the names of persons who are not Canadian citizens; and
(g) add the offence of voting or attempting to vote by special ballot under Division 3 or 4 of Part 11 while knowing that one is not qualified as an elector and add offences under those Divisions of attesting to the residence of more than one elector and of acting as an attestor when one’s own residence has already been attested to.

Business of the House

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I saw that my friend the opposition House leader was out in the foyer of the House of Commons yesterday having a press conference at which he showcased the incredible productivity of the House of Commons during the 41st Parliament. Of course, these were actually Conservative initiatives he had on display, which were passed thanks to our diligent, hard-working, orderly, and productive approach to Parliament. However, I sincerely appreciate the New Democrats' efforts to associate themselves with the record of legislative achievement that our government has demonstrated.

Before getting to the business for the coming few days, I am sure that hon. members and Canadians will have noticed that we have been bringing forward a number of pieces of legislation in recent days, and we will continue to do so for the days to come.

These bills will give effect to important policy initiatives that the Conservative government believes are important for Canada's future. Together they form the beginning of a substantial four-year legislative agenda that our Conservative government will begin to tackle under the Prime Minister's leadership after being re-elected on October 19.

Thanks to the productive, hard-working, and orderly approach that I just spoke about, we have delivered real results on our legislative agenda. In fact, over 90% of the bills that were introduced by our Conservative government between the 2013 Speech from the Throne and the beginning of last month will become law before Parliament rises for the summer.

Now I will go on to the schedule for the coming days.

This afternoon we will continue debating Bill C-35, the justice for animals in service act, also known as Quanto's law, at third reading. I am optimistic that we can pass it later today so that the other place will have a chance to pass it this spring.

I also hope that we will have an opportunity to have some debate today on Bill S-2, the incorporation by reference in regulations bill.

Tomorrow, we will finish the report stage debate on Bill S-7, the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act. Early and forced marriages, honour-based violence and polygamy should not be tolerated on Canadian soil, but unfortunately the opposition disagree and are striving to rob Bill S-7 of its entire content.

On Monday, we will consider Bill C-59, the Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1, at third reading. This bill will reduce taxes, deliver benefits to every Canadian family, encourage savings with enhanced tax free savings accounts, lower the tax rates for small businesses, introduce the home accessibility tax credit, expand compassionate leave provisions—and the list goes on.

Tuesday will see the House debate Bill S-7 at third reading.

On Wednesday, we will take up third reading of Bill S-4, Digital Privacy Act, which will provide new protections for Canadians when they surf the web and shop online.

On Thursday I will give priority to any legislation to be considered at the report or third reading stages. On that list will be Bill S-2, the incorporation by reference bill, which would help keep our laws up to date in response to emerging scientific and technical recommendations.

Bill C-50, the citizen voting act, will also be considered once it has been reported back from the procedure and House affairs committee. This legislation would play an important role in accommodating the decision of the Ontario Superior Court should we not have the benefit of the Ontario Court of Appeal's decision in time for this year's election.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

In your opinion, does Bill C-50 go in an opposite direction? It's certainly different.

[Jamie Biggar, Campaigns Director, Leadnow.ca]

My name is Jamie Biggar. I'm the co-founder and campaigns director at Leadnow.ca. We're an independent non-profit that brings Canadians together for an open democracy, a fair economy, and a safe climate.

Last year we helped tens of thousands of people across Canada speak out against what they called voter suppression measures in the updates to the Canada Elections Act.

I want to start with the premise that voting rights are fundamental rights and essential to the health of our democracy, and then the recognition that in a globalized society and economy, we can expect that Canadians will work, travel, and live abroad extensively and that those trends will only grow. As a forward-looking country that values democratic rights, we should be looking to protect their right to participate in Canada's democracy by strengthening their access to voting.

Unfortunately, the measures in this bill—we agree with many of the other experts and commentators on this issue—would make it harder for Canadians abroad to vote in Canadian elections by creating unnecessary barriers that will stop people from voting. Those include the requirement to register only once the election's been called, the need for constant reapproval of the registration, the one voucher per voter rule, and the limitation that the voucher come from within the person's old riding.

At Leadnow we create a platform for people to speak collectively to government on issues that concern them, especially democratic rights, so I've brought some comments that reflect the input that we've received on Bill C-50 from the community.

Kate writes, “As someone who lives outside of Canada but very much hopes to return some day, it is disheartening that the government is trying to make it more difficult for me to exercise my rights as a citizen and to participate in the governance of my country. It is even more offensive somehow that it is being done in such a banal and bureaucratic way, tightening regulations to address a problem that doesn't really seem to exist.”

Kate's comments reflect some of the core insight and sentiment in the discussions we've seen about this bill from Canadians across the country. Instead of strengthening the voting rights of Canadians, the provisions in Bill C-50 strengthen the growing bureaucratic voter-suppression regime in Canada. As many in this room already know, there's no coherent justification for these measures.

The proponents of bureaucratic voter-suppression measures, especially in some jurisdictions in the United States, point to the supposed threat of voter fraud; however, voter fraud appears to be a largely fictitious problem. Individuals have little incentive or means to impact the outcome of elections through fraudulent measures, so they don't do it. This is actually something we understand quite well through our work at Leadnow, because our work focuses on facilitating democratic participation. We understand that the key ingredients for democratic participation are low barriers and high motivation.

People will act when they believe that a cause matters and that their actions will make a difference. Individuals correctly recognize that individual cases of voter fraud would have little impact on an election, so they don't appear to participate in it on any significant scale.

On the other hand, electoral fraud organized by political parties or other interested groups is a real threat to elections around the world. Efforts to protect the integrity of elections should focus on detecting, preventing, and punishing organized electoral fraud by groups with the means and interest to change election outcomes, and effectively, to steal elections.

To defend the integrity of our elections we should focus on stopping organized electoral fraud. Voting rights make us feel that we are part of the country, part of the body public. To be excluded through bureaucratic voter suppression sends a clear message to Canadians living abroad.

Alexis writes, “A Canadian is a Canadian, regardless as to whether they are in Canada or abroad. We are proud of our country and extremely patriotic, and we care deeply what happens there. We watch news reports and keep up with current affairs and election issues. To deny expat Canadians the right to vote in a Canadian federal election would be extremely undemocratic and far more unpatriotic than what you accuse us of.”

I would urge the committee to consider the examples that we're increasingly seeing around the world where voting access is being strengthened for folks who are living outside of their home countries, increasingly, in fact, through online voting measures. I also urge the committee to consider that instead of imposing bureaucratic voter-suppression measures on Canadians, we should be expanding voting rights to more people living in Canada and strengthening our access to voting at home and abroad.

In sum, instead of imposing bureaucratic voter-suppression measures on Canadians living, working, and travelling abroad, let's focus on the real problems: declining voter turnout, eroding trust in our electoral system, and the threat of organized electoral fraud.

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Alexandrine Latendresse]

We are resuming the meeting.

We are continuing the study of Bill C-50. I would like to thank the witnesses very much for being here today.

If everyone is in agreement, I will start with Mr. Paterson and Mr. Biggar because they are appearing by video conference. That way, we can at least be sure that we'll hear their opening remarks in case a technical problem arises. We will then move on to Professor Milner.

To start, I invite Mr. Paterson of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association to make his presentation.

[Prof. Gillian Frank]

When we first brought the lawsuit there was an option to change the rules. Also, Megan Leslie, an MP, introduced a private member's bill asking for the five-year rule to be stricken. There were opportunities along the way to make it possible and available for expatriate Canadians to vote, regardless of duration abroad.

At every turn this government has chosen to fight our attempts to be re-enfranchised, and they continue to do so. I see Bill C-50 as an extension of this ongoing court battle. The short answer is yes, there were opportunities to strike down the five-year rule.

I believe I heard you ask earlier about what could have been done or what other responses were possible. Any number of responses were possible. The most welcoming would be to court Canadian expatriate voters, welcome them to the fold, to embrace them as members of the polity, and to campaign among us to solicit our votes.

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

Thank you for that clarification on the electronic voting system.

I also wanted to ask Professor Frank a few questions and thank him for being here.

In your opinion, is Bill C-50 an adequate response to the court ruling? Is it the response you expected, yourself being a stakeholder in this matter before the court? Do you think the government's Bill C-50 is a satisfactory response?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

I was surprised to hear that you had to hand in your driver's licence to do this, to sacrifice your own driver's licence in order to drive in the United States. This is one of the issues we're going with. As was pointed out earlier, and you quoted, this certainly is a solution in search of a problem.

You also said Bill C-50 falls within this inglorious tradition of what you called voter suppression.

The two things that are at play here, the permanent voters list as well as the time that it takes, in addition to your testimony, as Madame Latendresse also pointed out from being in Moscow, the disenfranchisement under Bill C-50 is now going to be astronomical as opposed to what it was before.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Is it appropriate to be proceeding with Bill C-50 at this time, given the fact of what the decision is and given the fact that the election is coming in October.

[Prof. Gillian Frank]

Is it appropriate for the government to be doing Bill C-50?

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Thank you very much.

I don't have a lot of time. I wish I could spend more time with you, but I want to move to Dr. Frank.

Considering the government is challenging Justice Penny's ruling, is it appropriate or not to be doing this Bill C-50? That's probably the easiest question you're going to get.

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

I'll explain the basis of my question. According to the numbers we have currently, about 2.8 million Canadians live abroad. Of that number, barely 6,000 have participated in elections. In my opinion, the changes made by Bill C-50 won't help increase the number of these people and help these millions of Canadian citizens who, I think, have the right to vote but can't because the current system is just too complicated. I think these changes are instead harmful.

I think that if we compare our system to the French system, which seems to really encourage every French citizen to take part in the electoral process, we will see that we still have a lot of work to do.

Professor Frank, my question has to do with the other obstacles faced by Canadians living abroad. You spoke about it earlier.

You and Mr. Reid mentioned the driver's licence. Information I recently received indicates that certain U.S. states require individuals who want a driver's licence from that state to give up the licence they already have. I was quite surprised to learn that. I find it very difficult to justify. Yet that's the kind of situation that we need to consider if we are asking Canadians to prove their residency, their identity and their citizenship using Canadian ID cards. I have a lot of trouble understanding why we are creating obstacles to voting.

In terms of the postal system, you said that it sometimes takes three weeks. When I lived in Moscow, it would take three months to get a letter from my parents. We say we're trying to harmonize the system, but in reality, the experience of citizens living abroad is something else.

Could you give me a reason that justifies the changes that we want to make to the Canadian electoral system?

[Prof. Gillian Frank]

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.

In March 2011, I learned that I was no longer eligible to vote when I attempted to obtain a special ballot through the Elections Canada website. I discovered that because I had lived outside of Canada for more than five years, I could not participate in the then-upcoming election. I had moved to the United States in 2001 to pursue a Ph.D. Under previous interpretations of the rules, my regular visits to Canada had reset the clock, thereby allowing me to retain my right to vote.

In 2011, I was a post-doc at Stony Brook University where I taught an undergraduate course on the history of civil rights movements in the United States. The irony was not lost upon me that while I was teaching my students about the struggles of individuals and groups to apply their citizenship to the fullest of its means, and to press forward persistently for freedom and democracy and the removal from their society of any forms of second-class citizenship, I was unable to vote anywhere. Essentially, I was teaching my students about people who had far less privilege than me who understood a basic truth: that enfranchisement is a basic recognition of citizenship. The right to vote empowers and dignifies citizens.

If the committee is interested, I can take you through the details of the various attempts I have made, along with others, to ask the government to restore expat voting rights, but I want to rest upon one detail. At the beginning of our effort, we attempted to petition Parliament to ask for redress, only to learn that Parliament does not recognize petitions from non-residents. In other words, until recently I had no vote and no means of petitioning my own government while living abroad.

Over the past four years, I have heard from many Canadian expats from around the world who shared my desire to have their voting rights restored. We believe that democracy, like the Canadian flags we wear on our backpacks, should travel abroad with us. Like me, these expats are likewise concerned about Bill C-50, which they see as an attempt to disenfranchise us.

Because of the tenaciousness and support of our lawyer, Shaun O'Brien, the generosity of her law firm, Cavalluzzo Shilton McIntyre Cornish, and the wisdom of Justice Penny's 2004 decision, we saw vindicated our conviction that the right of every citizen to vote was at the heart of Canadian democracy. Each citizen must have the opportunity to participate in the selection of elected representatives.

Justice Penny wrote the following:

...the government is making a decision that some people, whatever their abilities, are not worthy to vote—that they do not “deserve” to be considered members of the community and hence may be deprived of the most basic of their constitutional rights. But this is not the lawmakers’ decision to make. The Charter makes this decision for us by guaranteeing every citizen’s right to vote and by expressly placing all citizens under the protective umbrella of the Charter through constitutional limits on the power of the government to limit a citizen’s right to vote.

When I learned of Justice Penny's decision last year, I was elated. I am, however, dismayed at Bill C-50, which threatens to undermine much of our hard work over the past four years. I therefore offer the following to the committee.

Bill C-50, as it is currently written, violates the spirit of Justice Penny's rulings and attempts to perform an end-run around them. It adds onerous requirements by creating a narrow timeframe to submit burdensome paperwork. These new requirements make it more difficult for most expats and impossible for others to vote.

I am directly impacted by the ID requirements. I no longer have my Ontario driver's licence, which was my sole Canadian document listing both my former address and containing a photo. I had to turn this in upon obtaining a driver's licence in the U.S. I have no doubt that the overwhelming majority of my expat peers in the United States are in a similar position.

While I can probably secure some other forms of documentation, I now have to go through a process that is unnecessarily time-sensitive, time-consuming, and subject to the unpredictable schedule of post offices in Canada and the United States. I wonder why the government is not seeking to make voter registration easier, less time-sensitive, and more accessible. Rigour and access need not be mutually exclusive.

In my course on the history of civil rights, we studied in detail the history of voter suppression. A favoured tactic to thwart further registration, we saw, was the use of bureaucratic red tape to create administrative roadblocks that were justified in the name of protecting the integrity of the system, electoral fairness, or maintaining the democratic process.

Such justifications offered a respectable veneer to those who were actively undermining the democratic process by requiring frequent re-registration, registration at inconvenient times, provision of information unavailable to many targeted voters, and so forth. It also sent a strong message to targeted segments of the population that their vote is not welcome. I fear that by attempting to accomplish administratively what can no longer be accomplished since our recent court victory, Bill C-50 falls squarely within this inglorious tradition.

Over the past four years, reporters have asked me to justify my right to vote. My answer is simple. I am a Canadian citizen and want to have the right to exercise my citizenship to its fullest capacity. I also point out to these same reporters that it is the politicians who are attempting to limit constitutional rights who deserve far more scrutiny than those asking for access to their constitutional rights.

In closing, I wonder why my own government is so determined to spend so much time, money, and energy disenfranchising expat Canadians. Other witnesses have generously suggested that this legislation is a solution in search of a problem. I would merely ask who stands to benefit from making voting so difficult for so many Canadian citizens.

Thank you for allowing me to make these remarks.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

That's great. We'll make a ruling then.

Thank you, Mr. Frank and Ambassador. We're happy to have you here today on Bill C-50.

Go ahead, Mr. Frank. If you have an opening statement we'd like you to start with that. We'll then do an opening statement from the ambassador, and then we'll have a round of questions from the members.

Also, members I will have to leave at about a quarter to noon. My more-than-able vice-chair will be taking over the chair at that time so it should be seamless.

Mr. Frank, please go ahead with your opening statement.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

We can start our meeting. We are still looking at our order of reference on Bill C-50.

We have with us today—is it Professor Frank?

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

Because the two situations are different. Electors living abroad can provide proof of residence in the country where they are currently living. But it would likely be difficult for them to provide proof of an address where they lived 10 or 20 years ago.

We were told very clearly that if the elector is able to provide proof of where they lived in Canada and if their parents or sibling, say, still lives there, that information will remain on the register as long as there hasn't been a change. If the person comes back to Canada and moves to another riding, that's one thing, but until then, why not keep the register as it is now in order to make it easier for these electors to vote rather than harder, which is what Bill C-50 does?